In Spite of Himself. A tale of the West Riding

Front matter

w > A TALE OF THE WEST RIDING. BY AMELIA E. BARR, Author of "Ian Vedder's Wife," "A Bordir Shepherdess," "Between Two Loves" &°c, &C. Hon&on : JAMES CLARKE & CO., 13 & 14, FLEET STREET. 1S88. CONTENTS. CHAP. pAGE I.— Bevin Mill i II.— Joe 17 III. — A Great Change 33 IV. — Thus Runs the World Away ... 49 V. — Joe Pleases his Father .... 67 VI. — Master and Mistress of Bradley . . 81 VII. — Things that Trouble 97 VIII. — Life at Bradley Court .... 113 IX.— Joe's Forthput . . . . . .128 X.— Edith's Hard Blow 144 XI.— Edith Wins Two Victories . . . 160 XII.— Samuel Yorke 180 XIII. — Amos and Joshua Perkins . . 198 XIV.— Scandal 216 XV. — Amos Makes Morning Calls 232 XVI. — Joe's Progress 251 XVII.— The Mill that Amos Built . .264 XVIII.— Partners A TALE OF THE WEST RIDING.

Chapter I. The Owner Of Bevin Mill

The day was made To number out the hours of busy men ; Let them be busy still, and still be wretched, And take their fill of anxious, drudging day. Dryden. So sullenly addicted still To his one Principle — his Will — That whatsoe'er it chanced to prove No force of argument could move ; For Obstinacy's ne'er so stiff As when 'tis in a wrong belief. Hudibras. THE tree God plants no wind hurts. It is shaken by tempests and drenched with rains. The dew and the sunshine nourish it. It grows to fair proportions, and brings forth fruit in its season. So also is the man whom God makes. He is chastened by sorrow. He has the discipline of patience and of disappoint ment. He has the comforts of love and the sweet surprises of godsends. All the capa bilities of his nature are drawn out and per fected.

He turns his face to the sunshine, and is gracious and blessed in all his ways. The self-made man — as the word is generally understood — is different. He has built up a great business, but he has neglected himself. He has made beautiful his dwelling, but for gotten to ennoble the man who is to inhabit the splendid rooms. He is stunted in all his senses but those necessary for making money. His nature remains incomplete, and there is small hope of any grander development, because he is perfectly satisfied with his own work. Sooner or later, however — if God be merciful to them — these architects of a special manhood find out the magnitude of their limitations. Reluctantly they are forced to admit that, though they control money, they cannot control things not to be bought with money — love, respect, and obedience.

They discover that the honour of the market-place does not include that far more impartial judgment of their own households, where they are weighed in a truer balance, and found often to be grievously wanting. Amos Braithwaite was a self-made man, and he asserted the fact whenever he could with a consequential satisfaction. Every one who knew him — and many who did not know him — had heard the little bluster of affected humility in which he was wont to complacently state his own case. " I weren't born wi' a silver spoon i' my mouth — not I ! When I wer' a lad I sell'd papers i' Bradford Market, and I'm proud of it to-day — I am that ! I'd no father or mother to advise me, and I niver hed a day's schooling ; but I wer' determined to git on, and I did git on. All I know I learn'd mysen. All t' money I hev I made mysen.

And look at me now! There's many a swell as thinks himsen summat extra wi' his fine schooling as I could buy out and out to-day. And thou knows it's so — eh, Martha ? " He was delivering his favourite oration to his sister-in-law, Miss Martha Thrale — a shrewd, handsome Yorkshire woman, who had managed his household affairs ever since the death of her sister, nearly twenty years previous. She was quite familiar with it in all its variations, yet when he said, " And look at me now ! " she lifted her eyes a moment from her knitting and looked at him. What she saw was a tall, stout man with a head whose chief strength and mass was in the hinder part — a man strong, rough, elemental, with a firm will, a choleric temperament, and a great energy for self-service. His dexterity of mind and acuteness of judgment were indicated, not only by his keen grey eyes, but by the way in which their lids were drawn horizontally over them.

Still, though the large corneas gave an animal expression to the face, the whole head indicated nobler possibilities of character, for the mid-region was well arched, and it was not unlikely that, under favourable circumstances, feeling would rule intellect, and the calculating selfish element vanish before an earnest and fervent affection. He stood upon the handsome hearthrug with his legs planted well apart, as firm on the broad basis of his self-complacency as the pyramids on the desert ; and his hands were clasped beneath his coat-tails. This coat was of cloth of his own manufacture — good, substantial cloth, made in a manner as uncompromising and un fashionable as its wearer. A stolid, solid, upright, downright man, with plenty of sinew and bone to carry out whatever his mind planned or his will determined.

" And look at me now ! " So Martha Thrale looked at him for a moment ere she answered : " Some folks do think as thou hest done varry well to thysen, Amos." " So I hev. Varry well, indeed ! I hev niver wanted either friends or enemies ; and I'll tell thee what, Martha : one sort hes happen helped me just as much as t'other sort. I've niver courted friends, and I've niver feared enemies. And I sud like our Joe to do just as I hev done, and to be just such a man as his father is." " I sud think thou would like to bring up a son as could show there could be somebody a bit better than thee." Amos looked angrily at her. He had often said that " Martha Thrale wasn't like t' rest o' women folk — made o' wax, or some such stuff; " and he saw and understood the settled look upon her large, calm face.

" So our Joe hes been trying to get round thee, hes he ? Sure-ly to goodness, thou isn't going to help t' lad in his folly ! As ta never did such a thing before, I'm surprised as thou sud do it now ; I am that, Martha ! " " Thou hesn't reckoned up our Joe correctly. There is a deal in Joe that niver was in thee, Amos." " I sud hope not. Now, then, hear what I hev to say — I'll hev none o' his rubbishy, romancing books. He's a deal better among t' wool-bags than spoiling good paper wi' bad poetry. There's all t' poetry anybody need hev in that Wesleyan hymn-book o' thine. I know our Joe, and I know there is no more poetry in his head than there is in ' Bradshaw's Rail way Guide.' I'll not hev it there, anyhow ! Let him stick to t' mill. I reckon nowt o' a man that talks against what brings in good money.

It's mean as mean can be. Thou knows that." " I think our Joe sud hev a chance to follow out his awn inclinations. Ivery bird flies best with its awn feathers." " Joe hesn't got any feathers of his awn. He'll hev to come to me for t' ways and means to do his flying. But I tak' notice that young fellows in these days can allays read their title clear to whativer t' old man hes that takes their fancy." " Most fathers would be proud of a fine lad like our Joe. In t' way of study, nothing beats him. He is all for learning t' French language now, and hes found out somebody that can teach him how to talk it, and help him a bit with his violin beside. Joe tak's to music like a bird to its song. He does that, Amos." " Whativer are we getting to, Martha ? Thou fair caps me ! I'll hev no French and fiddling in my house ; mind that now !

French, indeed ! I wonder to goodness who educates them foreign creatures ? I could not mak' sense o' a word the man spoke when I met him wi' Joe." " And he didn't understand thee, I'll be bound." " I speak good Yorkshire, and that's the best o' good English going. Joe's mother wer' allays reading poetry. It's bad for a lad when he hes hed a mother given to poetry and nonsense. T' lad might hev done varry well but for her heving a bee in her bonnet." " I think thou hed better say nothing at a' of Joe's mother, Amos. Thou knew varry little about her. That was thy loss, not hers." " I sud think I know summat about my awn wife, Martha." " Thou knew nothing of her. How could ta ? Thou wert that throng making money that thy home was nobbut a place to eat and sleep in while t' engine stopped. I'll say this for my sister Ann : if ta hed known her thou would hev thought more of her."

" We wer' speaking o' Joe, and not of thy sister Ann. And as for Joe Braithwaite, I'll hev no high-flown ideas put into his head by a lot o' women and schoolmasters. It is more than a bit thy fault, and thou knows it, Martha. Before t' little lad hed his first breeches on, thou wert telling him all sorts o' lies about fairy folk — thet's so ; " and Amos looked reproachfully into Martha's face. The look upon that face was something new to him. It meant rebellion on his own hearth stone. In twenty years he had seen nothing like it. Isa thunderbolt had fallen at his feet it could scarcely have amazed him more. There was a spirit of revolt in Martha's very silence. The click of her knitting-needles seemed to be contradicting him, and he felt the necessity of instantly asserting himself. Under such circumstances he naturally took his stand upon his success in business.

That was a subject a woman ought naturally to feel snubbed by. She could not emulate him. And she could not criticise him, at least with any show of propriety or justice. So he added, with a fine tolerance, " Thou hes been too soft wi' Joe. Thet is a woman's way. But it's a' wrong. When Joe puts himsen rayther too for'ard, I wonder thou didn't say a few words that would hev taken t' sharp edge off his fine talk. Nobody can do that better than thee. Thou sud hev said " " What sud I hev said ? " "' Look at thy father, Joe ! See what a big fortune he hes made ! ' " " One would think, Amos, that thou hed done some great and good action in making thy awn fortune. Laying up money for thysen ! Does ta' think that entitles thee to t' love and grati tude of thy fellow-creatures ? I don't believe they think so, my lad."

" Don't thee try to be sarcastic wi' me, Martha. I don't mind thy words. I hev made nearly half a million o' pounds. What is a few words to figures like them, eh ! " " Haifa million o' pounds ! — they are nothing if thou puts them against real goodness and knowledge." " Nothing ! " gasped Amos ; then, with the contempt such a statement, in his opinion, de served, he answered : " Thou art talking for talking's sake. Women are a foolish lot. Is there aught i' this world better than honestly earned money ? " " Ay, there is ; and what's more, t' Bible up holds me in saying so. For it makes out that wisdom is better than gold, and knowledge better than rubies and fine gold." " I niver heard such things." " How could ta hear them ? Thou niver goes to church or to chapel, and thou niver reads ought but t' newspapers.

If anybody sud quote t' New Testament to thee it would be so unlike any o' thy notions that thou would be sure to think t' words were written by some one as wanted to turn t' world upside down with their foolishness." " Say no more, Martha ; say no more ! It's fair nonsense arguing wi' women. T' long and t' short of it is, I'll hev Joe think as I think, and do as I do. Tell him that." " Tell him thysen." " Ay, I will." Then he left the room with an air of injury that for a sew moments half imposed upon Martha. She had to have a conversation with her own conscience before she felt quite at ease again about her position. Siding with a son who was inclined to set himself up against the wishes of his father was no light thing in her eyes, and only to be justified by circumstances indisputably warranting such opposi tion.

She thought such circumstances existed, and whetherh er judgment was right or wrong, she was, at least, actuated by the most sincere regard for the highest interests of her nephew. Her affection for |him was almost maternal in character, for since the death of his mother, in his third year, she had been a mother to him. She loved him wisely and well, and beyond this tie there was a sisterly bond that neither the changes of life nor the great change of death had been able to weaken. Joe was not only Joe, he was also " Sister Ann's dear bairn." And sister Ann was a memory to Martha, holding all other memories of their short, happy youth together. After Amos had left her in such high dudgeon she sat very still, " remembering." Her knitting dropped from her hands, her eyes looked far beyond the dreary village, straggling up to the park-gates.

She saw the old rectory among the low, curving hills. She was with her sister in its pleasant rooms and garden. She heard her voice filling the dim spaces of the ancient church with the joyful Sabbath psalm. She clasped her hand over their father's grave. She recalled all their struggles and privations together, until Ann married Amos Braithwaite. What for ? She would not ask herself the question. She believed fully in the purity and kindness of Ann's motives ; and, if her good intentions did not turn out well, Ann was not to be blamed for the failure ; for, alas ! mistakes are punished in this life quite irrespective of good intentions. The marriage had not been a happy one ; and after the birth of her child Ann never rallied. She was ill for three years, and then she went quietly away one night, when all the household were asleep.

Amos was relieved by her departure. He had outlived his fancy for the frail beauty, and the expense and trouble of her long sickness had been a great trial to him. Yet, after it was over, he forgave the poor woman fully, in consideration of " t' fine little lad she hed left him." On this child all his hopes settled themselves. It was his ambition to make money, and to buy land, and to call the land after his own name. Therefore, a son to carry on the name was of the first importance to his project. Martha thought of all these things, but she did not think of them as Amos did. She looked on Joe as an individual soul, and not as a link in a family chain. She did not believe his welfare ought to be sacrificed either for the plans of his father or the good of a posterity as yet mythical and uncertain.

She had made some solemn promises to her sister regarding the boy, and she meant to fulfil them if it was possible for her to do so. " But there are so many ' ifs ' in all human calcula tions," she thought ; " and we are ready enough to pick out t' varry worst we can find. Deary me ! Human hearts are just nests o' fear. They are that ! " Then she rose and put away her knitting, and going to the window looked down at the great mill in the valley. Excepting for its water privileges, and its nearness to the chief wool markets, the situation of Market Bevin was not desirable. No scenery in England could be sadder or wilder than the bleak range of hills girdling it on two sides — bare hills partitioned into fields by leagues of stone walls — here and there a dreary village where quarrymen lived ; here and there a desolate mansion standing forlornly in the midst of fields that were not green or pleasant looking.

Bevin Hall, the residence of Amos Braithwaite, was a much finer place than the situation warranted. It had been built centuries before mills had been dreamt of. Then the lonely mansions had been the homes of country squires, and the whole valley a secluded, agri cultural locality. When the spinners began to build mills on the banks of its waters, and the quarrymen to break up the hill sides, then the Bevins abandoned their old home, and Amos bought the place at what he considered " a varry low figure." He did not dislike the sight of the smoking mill. He thought when the hundreds of windows in its five storys were all alight, it was a really grand piece of architecture. It did not trouble him that the agricultural inhabitants, with their simple, old-fashioned manners and customs, were obliged to make way for the vivacious, alert, arrogant mill " hands."

He rather liked matching his own tongue and his own arrogance against theirs. He had been an operative — he knew all the resentment of labour, and he often told himself " that there wasn't varry much they could say, or do, he wasn't up to." But the restless, disputatious life did not seem to Martha Thrale a good life. She knew how often Amos and his " hands " were in open and very vigorously expressed dissent. She knew that their goodwill was merely a cessation of hostilities, and when Joe expressed his dislike to the mill work, and to the mill itself with its stony yard, its black dust, its sulphury clouds of smoke, its inky water, its loathsome smells of heated oil, soapsuds, and cesspools, Martha was in sympathy with him, and thought his reluctance a very reasonable one. How Joe's own desires were to be gratified she hardly knew ; and her thoughts at this hour brought her no nearer the solving of the question than they had done many a time before.

But there was at least no great hurry. Amos had talked in the same way for years. There was nothing special in his attitude. She did not reflect that, as a rule, the great events of life dawn with no more note of preparation than the sunrises do.

Chapter II. Joe

Grief seldom joined with blooming Youth is seen : Can sorrow be, where Knowledge scarce has been ? Rowe The World's a Wood in which all lose their way, Though by a different path each goes astray, The World's a Labyrinth, where unguided men Walk up and down to find their weariness ; No sooner have they measured with much toil One crooked path, in hope to gain their freedom, But it betrays them to a new affliction. Beaumont. JOE BRAITHWAITE was a very handsome young fellow — one of those fresh, blonde Englishmen whose magnificent physique and perfect health are a promissory note for any amount of probable success. His figure was tall and spare, his aspect strikingly winning and manly, and a quick, undaunted spirit looked out from his clear blue eyes. With a slightly poetic temperament, he inherited also from his mother a love of elegant surroundings and a disposition to take life pleasantly.

But such tastes were not dominant ; the gay, pleasure-loving young man had in him the stuff of which heroes are made — indifference to pain, perfect self-reliance, indefatigable per severance, and a simple resolution, which, when it was called into action, would march straightforward through fire and water to its goal. He had been to various schools, and under various teachers learnt many things whose very names suggested nothing to the unlettered Amos. Indeed, the father had rather tolerated than acquiesced in some of his son's studies ; and, perhaps with good reason, he declared that, as regarded Joe's bringing up, " he hed been bamboozled by a parcel o' women and school masters." And yet, when Joe quoted Pliny or Aristotle with an air of " that settles the ques tion," or rolled out a couplet of musical, though very likely imperfect Greek, as an illustration, the old man had a certain sense of pride in his clever son, although, feeling himself to be in a dark and unknown territory, he answered only with a doubtful and contemptuous " Humph !

" In Joe's earliest childhood the practical father JOE. 19 had given strict orders regarding " fairy tales and giants, and suchlike lies and nonsense." But to say that his aunt and nurse constantly and strictly disobeyed these orders is only to say that they were women. And one Sunday night, when Joe was seven years old, he had been so completely dumfoundered and routed upon this very subject, that it was not at all remarkable he should prefer avoiding, for the future, any allusion to personages so far out of his experience and knowledge. It was on a wet Sunday evening in spring ; too wet to walk over his park and gardens, very much too wet to permit Martha Thrale and Joe the use of the fine carriage-horses to carry them to the Wesleyan Chapel a mile away. He had slept all he could ; his ledger was at the mill ; another meal was out of the question for a couple of hours : so he bethought himself of " little Joe " as a means of passing the tedious time.

He found the boy at his aunt's side. She was reading to him, and Joe's bright, handsome face expressed nothing but delight and wonder. Amos listened also for a few minutes. It was a marvellous story of the killing of a giant by a little lad with a sling and a stone. In the father's opinion it was an altogether improbable affray ; and he speedily interrupted it, saying, with an angry decision, " Hev done, Martha ! Hev done wi' such nonsense ! Of all t' lies that iver were invented, that one is a topper, I sud say." " I'd know what I was talking about, if I was thee, Amos Braithwaite. I reckon to do my duty by t' little lad, and I'm only teaching him his Bible lesson." Then she quietly opened the Holy Book and placed before thc disconcerted father the objec tionable history. He was troubled and annoyed by the circumstance.

Before this untoward confirmation of his opinions, he had had an im pression that the Bible was a book only suitable for chapels and churches and the Sabbath day ; and after it, he was more than ever convinced that there was some radical incompatibility between it and the big book which lay upon the high desk in the counting-room of Bevin Mill. When Joe began to go to school Amos soon found out that a self-made man is not at all points a match for a self-willed boy. His posi- JOE, 21 tive instructions to the schoolmaster had been — " Solid reading, writing, arithmetic, and chemis try. None o' your rubbishy Latin and Greek and poetry." But the school was not in any measure dependent upon Amos Braithwaite. It had a noble foundation, and the master did not think it necessary to vary the prescribed routine to meet the taste of one patron.

So Joe's inclinations towards poetry and literature were fully encouraged, and he took some prizes in the very studies which his father had for bidden. But this was almost a venial offence compared with the audacity of Joe's latest proposition — to bring a Frenchman into the very parlours of Bevin Hall, in order that he might learn to speak a language which Amos declared " no body could mak' a word o' sense of," and which he always associated with everything that was immoral and extravagant, with Popery and atheism and anarchy. And now that Martha Thrale had actually set herself against him, he felt that a crisis had come in the relationship between himself and his son. It was just as well, he thought ; things long undecided would now be brought to a settlement, And Amos was glad of it ; for though he expected trouble and opposition, he was prepared to meet it with all the stubborn will of a strong but narrow mind.

He was very fond of Joe, and in an unac knowledged way, very proud of him. Though he would not have admitted it, he was also vain of the young man's beauty and stylish air ; and whenever Joe strolled into his presence with his thoroughly-at-ease, satisfied manner, Amos always looked at him with a curious mixture of admiration and disapproval. Hitherto there had been no serious disagree ment between them, for Joe had shown no very decided symptoms of rebellion. There had certainly been one prolonged dispute about his desire to go to Cambridge, and another equally positive when he requested permission to travel for two years ; but Amos had " put his foot firmly down " on both requests, and that had been the end of them. Joe had given in before, and the self-confident father did not think he would make any firmer stand about any other disputed question.

Still, as he now meant to make his son a proposal which was to decide all the future JOE. 23 between them, he was unusually nervous about it, especially as he perceived that he would have no support from Martha Thrale. He delayed it from day to day with a vacillation singular to his character and humiliating to his self esteem. One fine spring evening, as they sat at dinner before the open windows, the moment of de cision arrived. Neither had expected nor in any special way provided for it at that hour. It arose out of a circumstance and from a remark which seemed irrelevant. Martha Thrale was called from the table by some unusual domestic event, and Joe's first remark related to a pleasure tour which a friend of his had in contemplation. " For sure," answered Amos, " young Warps is varry rich, and he can afford to fling his brass and his time away among foreigners, if he has no more sense than to do so.

If a man reckons to spend his life in pleasuring and laking, he had best do it while he's young, for he won't get much out o' such ways when he's old. So I don't say Warps is wrong if that is what he is after. But there's better jobs for a man to do ; there's good work, and makin' something of t' gifts one hes for getting hold o' a bit of money- " But you would make life a drama in two acts, father — working and sleeping." " I don't know what ta means by makin' life a drama. I'd niver do it. I sud think it would lead one into all sorts o' bother. Young Warps, and owd Warps, too, look over us a bit, I fancy ; but we can put as much brass down as any of them, I daresay ; ay, Joe, as any of them." " Young Warps is a very good sort, I think." " T' owd man couldn't see me yesterday ; no, not even with t' help o' his eye-glasses.

He looked as if he owned both sides of t' street.' "They have had more than a little trouble with their ' hands ' lately." " Serve them right, too. They hev allays got some fad on hand about ' lifting them up,' and makin' gentlemen and ladies of born ' hands.' When a cup is made of common pottery you can't turn it into fine Darby china ; and it'll tak' a cleverer man than owd Warps to mak' gentle men o' his ' hands ' by persuading them to read t' poets." JOE. 25 " He subscribed £500 to the new reading room." " Does ta think, Joe, I hevn't heard tell o' that? Owd Warps likes to show himsen his better side out, and that is why he gave £500 ; but when all is reckoned up, he'll mebbe not hev given as much as other folk. I gave .£100, but best givers are them as hev to pinch them sens a bit to spare aught ; and what wi' buying wool, and paying wages, I hedn't a £500 to spare ; I hedn't that.