Love and Money (14 page)

Schofield growled at this flattery but said that no doubt the
Leeds Mercury
would have the announcement of the funeral arrangements tomorrow and then he would see.

“But we haven't been invited yet, as far as I know on,” said he.

“Oh! A letter will come,” said Sophia confidently.

“Now, Sophia,” said Schofield: “Don't you go thinking Percy will bequeath you anything, for he won't.”

“He might leave you a little of something, Schofield,” demurred Sophia. “For the Amens, you know.”

“Not he,” said Schofield stoutly: “He's forgotten it long ago.”

At the bottom of his heart, however, he thought that Percy might just possibly leave some trifle or other
to my good friend Schofield Priestley in remembrance of his kindness.
The bequest would be something quite useless, of course—a large ugly piece of china, or a small broken brooch for Sophia, or something of that kind; Schofield could not imagine Percy doing anything sensible, even in his will. However, it would be agreeable to be present, and hear the will read and meet his nephew, Percy's only child, whom he had never seen; all the Priestleys' friends and neighbours seemed to expect him to go; his sons seemed rather to look forward to managing a market day on their own; and the letter of announcement which Sophia had confidently expected—though it struck Schofield as cold and late—did in fact arrive. Accordingly he put on his best coat and hat and rode off very early one wet Tuesday morning.

The sun was not yet fully risen and the wide landscape of turbulent hills looked chill, colourless and grim. A strong wind howled at his back and from time to time sudden gusts of rain in very large drops poured heavily down on him from the grey clouds flying across the sky. It struck him that it was on just such a day as this that he had first thought of his lozenge Amens; he laughed a little to himself and shook his
head and reflected sagely that it was a strange world in which strange things happened; look at himself and the Amens and Sophia! The rain thickened, he drew his cloak more closely about him and hoped he would be sufficiently warm; in his experience standing at gravesides was a chilly business. Poor Percy! Well, now he was dead and would soon be gone.

It was close on noon when Schofield reached Carshaw Hall.

Schofield was a West Riding man and it was not his habit to be daunted, but he was certainly surprised and impressed by the size of the place, which was much larger and finer even than Sir John Resmond's mansion, hitherto the largest and finest he had seen. The park with its smooth grass and tall trees and white statues, the great long stretch of the house, with its rows of huge tall windows, its roof balustrade and two-fold door, opened his eyes wide in astonishment. There was a tremendous bustle of serving-men and grooms about the doorway and his horse was snatched away from him and led off to distant stables almost before he could dismount. Within the house the scene was even more remote from Schofield's experience. A concourse of gentlemen, all with embroidered coats and high-dressed hair, stood in a high light room painted in pale green and white, surrounded by elegant furniture and pictures and ornaments such as Schofield had not set eyes on since that day thirty years ago at Sir John Resmond's.

“If I hadn't given Percy my Amens, I might have lived here,” thought Schofield, looking about.

Old Sir John Resmond himself, looking very frail, was sitting in a handsome armchair with one foot on an embroidered stool and a group of men around him flattering him. Schofield bowed to the old man and received a punctilious but cold little bow in return; it was obvious that Sir John did not know him.

“Your name, sir?” said a footman in Schofield's ear.

Schofield gave it, adding firmly: “Brother-in-law.”

“This way, sir,” said the footman, bowing, and led him
into a smaller though no less elegant room, presumably reserved for relatives of the deceased.

A young man, pale, pinched and peevish but otherwise resembling Percy so closely that he must be his son, came forward from a group by the hearth to greet Schofield, then hesitated in surprise before this unknown and unfashionable person.

“I am your Aunt Sophia's husband,” said Schofield firmly.

“Oh! Yes! I am delighted to make your acquaintance, sir,” said Percy's son, bowing, flourishing a lace handkerchief and trying in vain to repress the look of distaste which had crossed his pale weak face at Schofield's appearance. “My mother will no doubt wish…” He broke off, be-thinking himself too late as Schofield saw, that Mrs. Percy Ormerod would probably not have any great desire to see this particular visitor. “A glass of wine, sir?”

“He's more of a fool even than Percy,” thought Schofield grimly, accepting the wine offered by the footman on a silver salver: “He'll lose all he's got before he's fifty or I'm”

he was about to conclude his sentence in the usual way: “a Dutchman,” but instead substituted, as even less likely: “an Ormerod.”

It is needless to go through all the humiliations and vexations which Schofield experienced that day: hustled aside, admitted to the company of relatives only by asserting his right to be so, icily received by Percy's widow—whose ugly, cross and decidedly elderly features explained to Schofield why she, an earl's sister, had accepted Percy in the first place—and by the former Miss Maria Ormerod, who asked him: “And how is poor Sophia?” as if Sophia were married to a baboon or a member of some similarly inferior species. A place had to be laid especially for him, an unexpected guest, at the dinner after the funeral, and because he was late at sitting down, he was ill served. (The dinner was somewhat scanty in any case in Schofield's opinion; there were many courses but little to eat of each; Madam Ormerod was of a rather niggardly disposition, he judged.) No
Priestley was mentioned in Percy's will, and no invitation for the night was extended to Schofield. His horse fared much the same as himself, he thought, for the animal gave him a reproachful glance when at last he managed to extricate him from the extensive stables. Altogether, when Schofield rode out of the gates of Carshaw Hall he gave a great sigh of relief, although the rain was now heavy and continuous and the wind rising.

It would have been wise, doubtless, in view of the inclemency of the weather and the fatigue of himself and his horse, to put up for the night in Annotsfield. But Schofield was so sore and vexed, so in need of his Sophia to comfort him, that he rode straight on through the lashing downpour, and to the alarm of all at High Fold reached home in the early hours of the morning, wet to the skin. As his daughter Mary pulled off his boots and Sophia ran to make him a hot posset, he sneezed.

“You've caught cold, father,” said Mary reproachfully.

“It were always a risky do, visiting with Ormerods,” replied Schofield grimly, as he sneezed again.

Five days later Schofield lay in bed, surveying through half-closed eyes his family, who stood gathered about him. His cold had turned to a fever, he found it difficult to draw breath and was well aware that he was about to die.

“Oh, Scofe!” wept Sophia, taking his limp roughened hand in hers. “My darling Scofe! Me and mine have ever cost you dear!”

At this reference to his precious Amens, Schofield with an effort opened his eyes fully and looked at his wife. Though her lovely complexion had lost its youthful glow, to Schofield it still seemed exquisitely clear; her cheek was lined here and there but still retained its gentle curve and softness; her beautiful eyes, faded a little from their deep blue, had still that sweet winning innocent air which had first made him love her, and they brimmed with fondest love as they gazed at him now. Her hair, though slightly greying, still looked
wonderfully fair and felt silky to the touch; her hand which clasped his own so tenderly had lost some of its whiteness in performing a myriad services for himself and his children, but, wearing his wedding ring, was still the prettiest hand he had ever seen. Schofield looked at the sons she had given him: tall, vigorous, handsome, warm-hearted chaps. He looked at his daughters: fine, lively, comely, virtuous girls. His children were none of them perfect, of course; they all had some touches of wilfulness, having inherited much spirit from Sophia and more than a little West Riding obstinacy from himself. But they were sound at heart, merry and honest and unafraid. Schofield smiled. Exerting all his strength, he just managed to raise his head, and looking into Sophia's eyes exclaimed with the utmost conviction: “Eh, lass, it were worth it!”

Having thus at last expressed fully his lifelong love, Schofield laid back his head and died content.

Sometimes From The most unromantic sources—a town directory, an old map, a prosaic modern incident, a couple of advertisements from age-yellowed newspapers—a poignant human tragedy leaps out which has lain hidden for many years. Nobody has ever known it in its entirety until you piece it together now, for at the time when it was enacted, when the human beings concerned loved and hated and suffered and struggled, the motives of each were unknown to the rest; they all saw only the puzzling outward actions, and struck out blindly in a perplexity as great as their pain. Only later when they are dead and forgotten, their sad hearts stilled, do the facts emerge which, like missing pieces in a jigsaw, when slipped into the known framework make the whole picture suddenly plain.

Such a story began to unfold itself for me one spring afternoon a few years ago when, having lost myself walking in Upper Whindale, round the turn of a lane I came suddenly upon a lonely public-house, the Delph Inn, and entering it to ask my way, saw a framed plan hanging on the taproom wall.

Since Whindale itself is an important factor, indeed almost a character, in the story, I must describe it briefly here.

A remote upland valley in the Yorkshire Pennines, Whindale is for most of its winding length contained by steep craggy banks, interspersed here and there with gentler slopes of grass. Stone of excellent quality was quarried in Whindale in former times, and even today cranes and other quarry apparatus can be seen on some of the more accessible slopes. (The inn I entered clearly derived its name from this characteristic of the valley,
delph
being a West Riding word for
quarry.) At the head of Whindale, where the Whinburn stream rises, the valley expands into a broad high shallow cup, which merges upwards into the surrounding moors. In the clear sunshine of that cold afternoon the bright green of grass, the dark velvet green of ling and moss, the brown and black of bracken and peat, which pattern Whin Head (as this cup is called), stood out with almost fierce clarity. Scattered along the Whindale slopes are old farmhouses and old cottages whose long row of windows in the second storey proclaims them former hand-loom weavers' dwellings. Most of these cottages are now desolate ruins, deserted in the last century when the industrial revolution drew the weavers down to the towns. The wind blows hard and cold in Whindale; the steep rough lanes, stony and grass-grown, end dis-hearteningly at these derelict houses or peter out into moorland tracks; the stark black ruins give the impression that humanity has lost the struggle and the moorland is marching relentlessly down upon the once inhabited valley. Altogether there is a wild, savage, somehow sinister air about Upper Whindale; and a glimpse of civilisation on the far horizon, in the shape of the mill chimneys and condenser towers and rows of houses of the town of Annotsfield, all diminished to the size of toys by distance, sprawling over a hillside miles away down the valley, seems only to intensify the remoteness of Whin Head.

Entering the Delph Inn from such a wild and lonely landscape, I was quite startled to find myself confronted by a coloured poster of a huge handsome mill hanging on the wall. I approached and examined the poster, which proved to be a surveyor's coloured drawing, glassed and framed, with the heading:
Estate belonging to the Whin Head Mutual Spinning Company. Advertised to be sold by order of the liquidators, July 8th, 1862.
The picture of the mill, a massive six-storeyed erection with a tall chimney and a large warehouse at the side, occupied the top right-hand corner of the poster; below was a plan of the lots of land to be sold, with the river Whinburn curving along in the foreground at the bottom of the page. Lot One (pink) contained the mill by the stream;
Lot Two (yellow), higher up the hill, figured a large stone quarry; Lot Three (grey), higher again, lay between the quarry and a lane which ran along the hillside in a direction more or less parallel to the stream below and then turned down to the quarry. The lands adjoining the Mutual property were left white, uncoloured, with the names of their owners printed in faint italics; Mrs. Rosa Boocock, I read; Mr. Eli Boocock; Executors of Thomas Thornton Archibald, Esquire. I was giving a passing smile to the social distinctions of the 1860's when I received a further shock of surprise. A building on the lane in Mrs. Boocock's land, was marked Delph Inn.

“Surely this huge mill can't stand just below here?” I exclaimed. “In this wild spot?”

The landlord grinned.

“You never seen it?” he said.

“Never. I'd no idea there was a mill so far up the valley. How on earth do they get the coal in?”

“They never used no coal,” said the landlord. “Mill was never occupied. Never finished, come to that. That there on the wall's only a fancy picture, like. Chimley never rose higher nor nine or ten feet. Only the top storey ever had a floor. They took the best stones out, you know, and it's a ruin now.”

“I'll go down and have a look,” said I.

“Aye—well—be careful,” said the landlord. “It's a bit of a scramble, you know. Go on down this lane—Delph Lane—it'll take you halfway down the hill. But when it stops, be sure you strike off well to the left—there's a bit of a path there down the crag. Don't fall into t'quarry, think on.”