Tales of the West Riding (8 page)

“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.

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.

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.

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.

“Now, father,” said Joe mildly.

“If tha doesna believe me, go and look for thisen,” said the old man, wiping his moustache. There was a kind of arrogant triumph in his tone which vaguely disturbed his son.

“You've said it so often before, that's all.”

“Mebbe I have. This time it's different.”

“Why?”

“Embankment's sunk so top of waste-pan is above top of embankment,” said old Booth triumphantly.

“What does that mean, father?” said his wife.

“It means that watter'll flow over embankment before it can flow into waste-pan and drain off through tunnel below. I tell you, make no mistake, yon reservoir will brim if this rain goes on. Go see for yourselves if you don't believe me,” repeated the old man, with an airy wave towards the door.

“Maybe I'd best go up,” said Joe wearily. He crossed to the door, opened it and looked out.

The night was dark and cold, and heavy rain, intermixed with sleet and flakes of snow, poured violently down. A chorus of protest arose from the rest. “Don't thee go, Joe—don't stir out—tha'll catch thi death o'cold.” Joe shut the door.

“If it's right bad, happen we ought to mention it to Mester Beaumont,” he said.

“Not me,” said his father.

“Keep away from Beaumonts, Joe,” said his wife.

“Maybe your brother would go, Lizzie,” suggested Joe.

“That he never will. He wouldn't demean himself, he's had enough of Beaumonts.”

“It's drawer's job to give warning, surely,” said Mrs. Booth.

“There's nowt to be done now, ony road,” said the old man. “A wall that size can't be built up in half an hour. She'll brim, you mark my words.”