Tales of the West Riding (7 page)

“It's yon spring,” said the old man, pointing to the small stream on the left. “It's wrecking the puddle.”

“How can it when it rises twenty yards away?”

“That isn't its natural place of rise,” said the old man, shaking his head. “It rises right under the embankment. Them as built the wall tried to push it down and block it off, I reckon; but there it is, you see.”

“This is all supposition,” said one of the other commissioners angrily. “We can't pull the whole embankment down and spend another forty thousand pounds for a wild notion about a spring.”

“We can't, because we haven't got forty thousand pounds to spend,” said another sardonically.

“We can't leave it as it is, however,” said a third.

“Why not?”

“Well, us don't want wall to fall down, I take it.”

“That's all fiddle faddle.”

“John Booth is the drawer here and visits the reservoir every day, so we ought to hear what he has to say,” interrupted Mr. Beaumont authoritatively. “What makes you think the spring is undermining the embankment, John?”

“Watter in t'spring is always coloured, like—muddy,” said John. “There's puddle in it, Mester Beaumont. Where did clay come from, if not from what's in the wall?”

“All this is Greek to me,” thought Rosa impatiently. She turned abruptly aside, and found herself face to face at close quarters with John's son.

All accounts describe Joe Booth as a good-looking young man, shapely in figure, with large brown eyes and curly dark hair, but beyond all that as having something especially pleasant, kindly, goodnatured, so to say affectionate towards all, in his expression. He therefore appeared quite a suitable person for Miss Rosa Beaumont to address; not likely to be gross in speech, and intelligent enough to appreciate the honour. So she gave him a pleasant condescending smile, and was just about to speak to him when she saw a sudden change in his face. A half-smile curved his handsome lips; the brown eyes glowed. Rosa was about to be astonished at his effrontery in looking at her like that, when she perceived that he was looking beyond her. She turned. There a few yards away on the hillside stood an ordinary working girl; fair-haired, pink-cheeked, cheerful, tastelessly dressed, short and solid. Joe Booth's beaming glance was for her, and she responded with the wide smile of assured love. Her teeth were poor, reflected Rosa, turning away in a fury. Such rudeness! To turn his attention from Miss Rosa Beaumont while she was speaking! How offensive! What were the lower classes coming to!

“I am tired, father,” she murmured in his ear.

“Yes—well—we must have a full commissioners' meeting soon,” said Mr. Beaumont in a valedictory tone, stepping back from the group. “Take my arm, child. The matter is very serious, gentlemen, and needs careful thought. If large repairs to the embankment are really necessary, we shall have to consider drawing up another Bill.”

“What? Another Parliamentary Bill?” cried some of the commissioners, aghast. “Never!”

“Nay, he's right.”

“What, all those lawyers' fees again?”

“If the embankment is to be repaired, we shall need more money. We must be empowered to borrow again, and to levy a higher water rate.”

“The Yarrow Valley manufacturers won't pay it, and so I tell you straight.”

“Do you propose to find the money yourselves, then?” said Mr. Beaumont stiffly. “For my part I am not prepared to make any further private investment.”

“Aye, that's right. Me neither.”

“Maybe, but we want no more Parliamentary Bills, choose how.”

“Where are we to find brass, without?”

“And who's to do the repairs? I make nowt of them engineers that built this wall and left a spring wandering about inside.”

“They did their best, I reckon,” said Mr. Booth mildly. “Maybe it's us backing up the two streams that started the spring, like.”

“Well, it's a poor do.”

“We must have a full meeting very soon,” said Mr. Beaumont impatiently. “Meanwhile, I suggest that we instruct John Booth to keep a close watch on the embankment and the spring, and report to us every week. We must prepare a strong case to state in the Bill.”

“No more Bills!” shouted several commissioners.

Mr. Beaumont walked away in a huff. His light springy step was always quick; now his daughter had to hurry to keep beside him. It was not because of this, however, that her cheek was hot and her breath quick.

“I should like to understand this matter thoroughly, father,” she panted when they had reached the lane.

“It is no concern of yours, my dear.”

“But what is
puddle?
I always thought the word signified a pool.”

“To puddle a wall or bank is to render it impervious to water. The word by a natural transition also means the material used in the process. The Ling embankment has a layer of puddle in its centre, along its whole length. If this puddle layer were to be broken, or removed, then the embankment would no longer be impervious to water. Water would seep through and weaken the whole structure.”

“And old Booth says that tiresome spring is washing away the puddle?”

“Exactly. It is an extremely vexatious and costly situation.”

“Father,” said Rosa in the sugary, deferential tone she knew well how to assume: “You are so good, so honourable yourself that I think there is a possibility which has not occurred to you. To
me
it appeared at once that the old man Booth held a brief for the former engineers—the firm who built the embankment in the first place. A contract for massive repairs would be worth several thousand pounds to them, would it not? It would be well worth their while to sweeten John Booth, I imagine?”

“If I thought
that
!” exclaimed Mr. Beaumont stopping abruptly. “But no—John and Joe Booth are both good workmen, very respectable. John worked for me for twenty years and Joe since he was a child—I've just made him foreman in the new dyehouse.”

“Ah! I am mistaken, then. It was just that, hearing John Booth praise the firm who built the wall, I was made suspicious.”

“He hardly
praised
them, my dear.”

“He exonerated them from blame with regard to the spring.”

“That's true,” said Mr. Beaumont uneasily.

“I don't see why you should incur all the odium of forcing a Parliamentary Bill on unwilling colleagues in order that John Booth may earn a few shillings by bribery.”

“They are very poor,” said the harassed Mr. Beaumont, walking on.

“There you are then!” said Rosa triumphantly.

“There are a good many young children, and John's hand was pierced by a flying shuttle, so he cannot weave now. Joe has them all to keep.”

“Is that why he isn't yet married to that lumpish girl?” said Rosa, her voice quivering with hate.

“Lizzie Lister? Yes, I imagine so. That's partly why I recommended old John for the drawer's job. Now he has that bit of money and Joe has a foreman's wage they ought to be better able to manage. But if I thought—it certainly does seem strange—it's absurd to think that a spring twenty yards away could damage the wall.”

“No one can possibly know what is happening inside the wall.”

“Unfortunately that is so,” said Mr. Beaumont with a sigh.

“To me the spring seemed to come from the direction of the hill slope above at the side,” said Rosa hastily, seeing that she had made a mistake.

“Did it indeed? I must examine it again later,” said Mr. Beaumont doubtfully.

“But not in John Booth's presence!” cried Rosa.

“No. No. Perhaps not. No,” agreed her father.

Shortly after this conversation John Booth was dismissed from the drawer's job. He was too old for it, said Mr. Beaumont; too old and feeble—with that maimed hand too!—to manipulate the valves which sent the Ling water flowing down the valley or withheld it in the reservoir. He regretted having recommended him.

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.

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.