“The malice of the soul,” wrote John Trevisa in the fourteenth century—though I believe he translated the passage from an earlier writer in Latin—“the malice of the soul is more in a woman than in a man.” I do not like to think that this is true, but certainly the story of Rosa Beaumont and Joe Booth seems at first sight to be an illustration of the statement. Although Rosa spoke to Booth only three times from their meeting till the day of her death, she ruined his life, made it continually bitter to him; it is possible too that in some small measure she was responsible for the disaster which presently overtook the whole Yarrow valley.
It all began one pleasant summer Sunday afternoon in the mid-eighteen-forties. A great many people from down the valley were standing along the hillsides gazing across the calm sunny waters of the Ling reservoir. Water—soft, limeless water—is an absolute essential for textile processes, and the hills and moors of the millstone grit Pennines with their heavy rainfall are admirable gathering grounds. Accordingly a few years earlier all the Yarrow Valley millowners had eagerly supported this big reservoir project. To build an embankment across the narrow head of the steep valley, just below the confluence of two strongly tumbling streams, with two culverts and a wooden channel to carry the outward flow straight down the valley, seemed a simple way of securing for them the regular and powerful water supply they all required for their cloth manufacture. A bill for the construction of eight reservoirs was presented in Parliament and passed; commissioners were elected, land acquired, the embankment constructed; a “drawer” appointed to regulate the outward flow of water by appropriately placed valves.
The area and content of this Ling reservoir were found to be so satisfactorily large that the building of any further reservoirs was dispensed with; Ling was enough. The manufacturers whose mills were strung down the long valley towards the neighbouring town of Annotsfield paid rates to the Commissioners for the use of the water and were well pleased with their bargain.
Recently, however, the great containing embankment had been behaving ill. Steep and stone-faced within, on the outer side this wall was covered in grass and earth and sloped more mildly down to the fields far below. Its top, eight feet broad, formed an agreeable promenade this sunny afternoon, except that here and there the surface had sunk a little—in one place indeed it had sunk a good deal. On this promenade were walking at present a good many of the original commissioners with their wives and families; they paused, prodded the earth with their walking sticks, and pointed to a tiresome small stream emerging, on the left as one looked down the valley, fifteen or twenty yards below the foot of the embankment. This stream, it appeared, was alleged by the drawers of the reservoir to be the cause of the subsidence in the embankment. It was evident that workers from Yarrow, Yarrowfirth and Yarrowfield, the villages down the valley, had heard rumours of defects in the embankment, for there they all were in their Sunday clothes, standing on the steep slopes whose bases formed the sides of the reservoir, their children scrambling and screaming along the rough paths, threatening at any moment to fall into the water but somehow always being hauled back to safety at the last moment by irate mothers.
Among the commissioners on the embankment stood Rosa Beaumont and her father. Most of the men came and had a word with them, not only because Thomas Beaumont owned the largest mill in the valley, was a magistrate and an influential member of the reservoir commission, but because of Rosa's outstanding attractions. A tall, finely made girl, with a brilliantly pale complexion, glorious blue eyes and a mass of vivid red-gold hair—it was said, in the phraseology of the day, that her hair was so long, so abundant, that she could easily sit on it, and this was in fact true—Rosa was also agreeably social; she had a witty tongue, talked well, and knew how to flatter the opposite sex by deferential agreement at the right moment. She dressed in good taste, had a ringing laugh, enjoyed superb health and had been well educated (for a girl of that period) in a very expensive boarding-school in London. It was a downright shame, said the men, that such a handsome, lively girl should be tied to her mother's bedside. Mrs. Beaumont, a plain large-boned woman with fine eyes, of a good East Yorkshire family, had done something to her spine as she slipped on the steep steps from the hillside down to Mill House, returning probably from one of her errands of charity. So there she lay, had lain these last many years, on bed or couch, with her daughter and a maid to look after her. (Not that these filial duties seemed to keep Rosa away from many social enjoyments, however, observed the women acidly.) The women indeed generally liked Mrs. Beaumont; the men thought her rather dreary, and commended her husband's decorous fidelity, with their tongue perhaps a little in their cheek.
For as regards Thomas Beaumont, they did not much care for him—short and bald and pompous and thinking rather more of himself than was necessary even if his family had lived in the valley for two or three generations and owned land. (They privately jeered a little at his finicky way of speaking.) At the same time they had to admit that he was a shrewd man of business, he'd enlarged Beaumont Mill, built a new dyehouse across the river, and a row of cottages halfway down the hillside just beyond his own mansion, for his workers. Yes, there was more in Thomas Beaumont than met the eye; must be. His gold watch chain had cost a pound a link. Pity he had no son to carry on the name and the business. He'd be marrying off his daughter to some suitable up-and-coming young manufacturer, no doubt, said the Yarrow Valley men, directing their sons' attention to Rosa. Not that it needed much directing; her looks and her tongue drew plenty of young men around her. But to please Rosa and her father both, a young man would need to have all his wits about him; Rosa was no fool and her father doted on his daughter.
Now as the commissioners talking to her father, growing heated in argument, began to use technical phraseology incomprehensible to Rosa, her attention strayed, and glancing around for somebody more interesting she saw two persons standing near as if wishing to join the conversation. “Persons” was the suitable word—suitable, that is, for the use of Rosa, who had all the class feeling of the period—for they were obviously working men, dressed in their pathetic Sunday best. One was old, bent, grey, gnarled, weatherbeaten; the other, by his likeness obviously the son of the first, a tall strong young man. They had no business to be standing on the embankment, of course, thought Rosa, slightly tossing her head.
“Father,” she said in a low tone, touching his arm.
Not averse to leaving the argument, for like everything else connected with Ling, he thought crossly, it had become irritating, Mr. Beaumont turned to her. Rosa with a glance indicated the father and son. To her surprise, Mr. Beaumont brightened, and took a step towards them.
“Well, John! Well, Joe!” he said.
“My father would like to have a word with you about this here wall,” said the young man. “To tell you what he thinks, like.”
“Well, he should know better than anyone else, I suppose,” said Mr. Beaumont. “Come on now, John; let’s have it. What’s making the wall sink, eh?”
“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.
“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.”
“There’s other reservoir commissioners besides Mester Beaumont,” reflected Joe.
“Nearest is three miles away. Sit thee down, Joe. Drawer will find it out in t’morning, when he goes to let watter flow down for t’mills. News’ll be all over valley by noon.”
In this forecast at least the old man was correct, and the news of the Ling danger spread rapidly up and down the valley. The next couple of days, though not to be called dry, for mist and drizzle prevailed, were not as wet as Sunday, and quite a few Yarrow men walked or rode up to the reservoir, and stood gazing at it with mixed alarm and fascination. They could not help feeling a certain enjoyable interest in the reservoir, which was certainly very full; waves, driven by one of the westerly breezes so frequent in the Pennines, slapped sharply against the embankment only a few feet from the top. Here and there, indeed, the surface of the water was less than a yard from the top; the embankment had certainly sunk in an uneven and untidy fashion. Criticism of the reservoir commissioners was severe. They should never have let it get into this state—it’s disgraceful—well, they’ve no money—Lords wouldn’t pass the Bill—I don’t care; they should have repaired it, choose how. Mr. Beaumont, riding up on Tuesday morning, gave orders that the valves regulating the flow of water down the river were to be opened wide. With one culvert, this was immediately effected; the other valve for some reason stuck; a bush or tree had become lodged against the opening, perhaps; such a temporary closure had happened before. In this case, however, the closure proved not to be temporary, for the combined efforts of the drawer and several men borrowed from the upper mill where Joe now worked failed to open the valve.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning the weather changed. The drizzle gave way to pouring rain. A westerly breeze sprang up, became a wind, became a storm. All through the day the rain deluged the hills, the wind howled down the narrow valley. It was later estimated—perhaps erroneously—that during the afternoon the Ling reservoir was filling at the rate of eighteen inches an hour, while the strong wind drove all this vast volume of water against the embankment.
In the evening the rain suddenly stopped; the clouds cleared, the moon came out. The wind, however, still howled, and the air was biting as Joe made his way up the valley after work. A group of men, similarly drawn by curiosity, were standing on the hillside gazing down at the reservoir. Among them were the drawer, and Joe’s father.
“Well, rain’s stopped at last,” said the drawer in a tone of relief.
“Aye, but watter hasn’t stopped coming in,” said John Booth. “Look at those becks up yonder.”
He pointed to the hills which rose to the west. In the moonlight the streams on their sides showed white and swollen, leaping and foaming down the steep slopes into the Ling reservoir.
“She’ll brim,” he said in a gloating tone.
“I reckon she will,” said the drawer. “But the fields below will sop it all up, surely.”
“If they don’t it’ll be a poor do for the mills along the river side,” said John Booth.
After a time Joe, hungry and tired, began to think of home and tea. His father, however, declined to budge.
“Don’t stop too late, now, father,” urged Joe.
“I shall stay till she brims,” replied his father.
Joe was by now so tired of this expression, which had become a byeword in the valley, that without any further attempts at persuasion he left the hillside.
In the silver light of the full moon every wall and building, every field and lane in the Valley lay clear to his sight as he hurried down, driven on by the strong cold wind at his back. Remembering what his father had said, he eyed the mills on the banks of the river apprehensively and thought it was lucky that the overflow would occur—if it occurred at all—during the night when the mills were closed. Now that the rain had ceased, the peak of the water intake would be past in a few hours; if nothing happened before dawn, the reservoir would be safe for this time. Luckily Beaumont’s Row stood halfway up the hillside, where surely the overflow would not reach. Beaumont House, however, stood on the level of the mill yard, tucked into the side of the hill. Joe hesitated. Pride made him exceedingly reluctant to approach the Beaumonts, yet it seemed to him mean, ignoble, not to give them warning. At length his natural goodness triumphed; he entered the massive front portico and pulled the bell. The maid who opened the door started back in alarm as she recognised him, and this angered Joe.
“Please tell Mester Beaumont as the Ling is still filling and there’s like to be an overflow,” he said drily.
“Shall I say who brought the message?”
“No. It’s no matter. Well, say it came from the drawer—that’s true enough,” said Joe.
“We’ve heard about Ling before,” said the maid pertly, “from your family.”
Joe shrugged his shoulders and turned away.
He went home, ate his tea, talked with his wife and mother about the Ling and went to bed.
It was ten o’clock that night when the water in the reservoir, driven hard by the strong wind, began to flow over the top of the embankment. By midnight torrents of water were cascading down the outer surface at many points, and soon this grass-grown surface, not being faced with stone, began to crumble. Tons of loose earth and rubble were swiftly carried away. Hardly had the alarmed watchers become accustomed to this spectacle than the whole outer surface of the bank disappeared, leaving exposed the inner layer of clay. At one point near the north side of the reservoir there now became visible a gap in the clay.
“That’s where the spring came through,” said old Booth pointing. “I told ’em so. I told ’em. There was clay in the watter, could only have come from the puddle in the wall.”
His hearers murmured agreement.
“I was right, I believe?” went on old Booth fiercely. “Weren’t I right? Eh?”
“Right enough,” murmured his hearers, uneasily shuffling their feet.
Water now began to pour through the gap. The clay around it bulged, cracked, split; the split became fissures and ran along the whole length of the embankment; the clay bank began to slide and in a moment, it seemed, had totally disintegrated.
“This is more than brimming, John,” said one man sardonically.
“It is that,” replied old Booth gravely.
“But if that inner wall doesn’t hold, what then?”
“God knows.”
“It’s stone, think on,” said the drawer in the high quavering tones of fear.
At that moment, with a noise like a rolling peal of thunder, the whole mass of earthwork gave way, and three hundred thousand tons of water were released to rush down with fearful velocity upon the narrow valley through the gap thus made. For a moment the watchers stood stupefied, awestruck by the magnitude of the calamity and the fearfully grand spectacle of the huge waves billowing white beneath the moon. Then with incoherent cries of panic they turned and ran for their homes.
“Wakken up, Joe!” said his wife, shaking him.
“What’s wrong?” said Joe, starting up.
“Thi father’s not home yet, and thi mother’s right upset.”
His mother stood in the door of the tiny loft, wrapped in a shawl, a lighted candle in her hand.
“It’s so fearfully wild, Joe,” she murmured. “The wind’s howling like a mad dog.” (Indeed a thunderous roar filled the air.) “Thi father’ll catch his death o’cold.”
“He won’t come home till Ling has brimmed,” said Joe irritably. “It’s no use to expect him.”
His mother gazed at him piteously.
“Oh, very well,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll go.”
He dressed rapidly and went out into the moonlight night. The wind, though keen and strong, was not as wild as he had expected from the sound, and he kept a good pace up the valley.
Suddenly round a distant turn in the lane he saw his father, running madly towards him. Whether from the moonlight or some other cause, John Booth’s face looked blanched; his mouth was wide; he tossed his arms wildly in the air and shouted. His words came in snatches down the wind.
“Flood! Flood! It’s coming, Joe, it’s coming!”
Joe stood still. “She’s brimmed all right and it’s worse than father thought,” he reflected.
“Quick, quick!” shouted his father, waving his arms frantically. “Go! Warn! Flood coming!”
Joe turned and ran as fast as he could down the valley.
Awakened by the wild banging on his front door, Mr. Beaumont got out of bed and threw up the window.
“What’s to do?” he cried.
“Flood, Mester Beaumont!” shouted Joe. “Ling’s brimmed heavily. You mun get your wife out quick.”
“Come in and help me,” cried Mr. Beaumont. He ran downstairs and opened the door. “By God, it’s here already,” he said in a hushed tone of awe, for the water was indeed swirling round Joe’s ankles.
“Aye, and I guess there’s more to come,” said Joe uneasily, looking back over his shoulder.
“We can’t get my wife out now, we can’t get her out through this. She’ll catch her death. The wind’s strong too. It roars like thunder.”
“Aye, if it is wind,” said Joe. “We mun be quick. We can take her out straight to the steps through one of the bedroom side-windows.”
“Nay, Joe!” Mr. Beaumont began to remonstrate, but broke off abruptly, for the water suddenly rushed round Joe’s knees. “Come on!” he shouted, rushing for the stairs. “Rosa! Jane! Ellen!”
“Have you a ladder?” cried Joe.
“Aye! Round the back.”
By the time Joe fought his way back to the front door with the ladder the water was up to his waist and pouring into the hall. He tried to close the door behind him against the tide but could not, and was thankful to get the ladder to the stairway in the dark.
“Be quick, Joe, be quick!” cried Mr. Beaumont impatiently.
He had opened the bedroom window wide and was shouting “Help! Help!” to some figures on the hill. They came clambering down the steps, faces white in the moonlight.
“Take this,” said Joe, pushing the ladder across to them. “Hold it tight down against steps, now. We’ve got to get Mrs. Beaumont out.”
They nodded and seemed to understand, though words were blown away in the thunderous roar which filled the air. Beaumont ran back to the bed, where Rosa was wrapping her mother tightly in a blanket. Hester lay still and quiet, her great eyes beaming; as her husband picked her up, she clasped her arms about his neck.
“Can you manage, Mester Beaumont?”
“Aye, aye—she’s not much weight.”
Nevertheless when he reached the window he was crimson and gasping. Joe took the invalid in his arms. Released from his grasp, the ladder end shook on the sill.
“Hold the ladder tight,” he commanded Rosa. “You, mester, get out on the ladder.”
They obeyed. Joe lifted the woman through the window. Beaumont on the ladder slowly drew his wife towards him, and presently the men on the hillside steps reached out and were able to grasp his arms. After a long silent moment of infinite peril—the swirling water was now but a few feet below the ladder—man and wife were drawn to safety.
With a sudden scream the two maids rushed for the window and climbed out, banging their heads and bruising their elbows as they scrambled through. They were of course in their nightgear, and the men on the steps could not but grin as they hauled them across.
“Now then, love, don’t take on! Tha’s safe enough, now!” they said, laughing, as they pushed the girls up the steps towards the lane.
“Now, Miss Rosa,” said Joe. “Be quick now. Your mother’ll be missing you.”
Rosa stood gazing at him, her head thrown back, a look of scorn and anger on her beautiful face. Her glorious hair had come loose from its plait, and hung in rich abundance over her shoulders.
“Nay, you go first. Go to your wife, Joe Booth,” she taunted him.
“Go! Go!” shouted Joe.
Rosa slowly shook her head. In a fury Joe grasped her by the wrist and tried to urge her to the window, but she resisted. For a moment they stood there together, their bodies close, a fierce hatred on each face, while the men on the hillside shouted warnings.
Then the great wave struck the house. The water which had previously come down was merely the overflow which preceded the burst; now the whole content of the reservoir flung itself against the Yarrow buildings in a towering mass. These solid structures of native millstone grit appeared to hesitate, then quivered in the wave—“wobbled a bit like on top of the water” as one of the appalled spectators later recorded—and abruptly disintegrated. Mill House and Beaumont Mills disappeared; Beaumont Row followed. Houses, mills, sheds, bridges; chairs, tables, sofas, gates; cows, horses, sheep, carts; haystacks, boulders, bales of cloth, machinery; all were swept away in the white roaring flood. The huge mill boiler, some thirty feet long, bobbed on the surface, as it swam down the valley, as if it were no weightier than a tea-kettle.
In twenty minutes the roaring waters ceased to flow; the reservoir had emptied itself. Where there had been grass, was now sand and boulders; where there had been thriving villages, tumbled heaps of stone and silence.
The awful calamity, the appalling loss of life, the fearful devastation in the Yarrow Valley, aroused the sympathy, not only of the West Riding and of Yorkshire, but of the whole nation. Relief funds were set on foot and capably administered; a competent engineering expert was sent down from London to attend the inquest, which was adjourned for a fortnight to give him time for the preparation of a full report. Meanwhile the sad tasks of retrieving the bodies of those who had perished, burying the drowned animals, clothing and feeding those who had survived but lost all their possessions, and collecting any small pieces of property which might have been left behind when the flood passed by, were pursued with great energy, chiefly by the constabulary of the down-valley town of Annotsfield, for the Yarrow Valley inhabitants were mostly too stunned to take an active part.
Annotsfield journalists wrote down the tales of the survivors—some strange, some pitiable, most tragic. In Beaumont’s Row only eight inhabitants survived from the ten houses. Of these Joe’s father and Lizzie’s brother were the only two remaining of their families. Lizzie’s brother, asleep in bed then suddenly lost in a waste of tossing waters, was struck by a roof-beam, and being a strong determined youth managed at last to seat himself astride it. The end of the beam presently caught in a pile of stones and the waves threw him to dry land. The bodies of the drowned were so widely scattered that for convenience they were deposited in the nearest public house; any property which was found was taken to the Yarrow Bridge Town Hall. Thus sad groups collected at every inn door seeking for lost relations, and Mr. Beaumont rode frantically up and down the valley looking for his daughter.
“Have you ony here?” asked Charlie Lister at an inn far down the valley—almost, indeed, in Annotsfield.
“Aye, we’ve two. Young uns. Husband and wife,” said the landlord.
“That might be my sister and her husband,” said Charlie, stepping in.
“They’re all entwined, like,” said the landlord sympathetically. “Very sad to see ’em.”
He led the young man into the inn parlour, and threw back the coverlet from the table.
The two bodies which lay there were, as the landlord said, entwined. Joe, who had been fully dressed at the moment of disaster, still retained a few tattered rags about him, but the woman locked in his arms was naked. Even in death her body had great beauty; her face was peaceful, her eyes closed. Joe’s throat was entangled in her long hair. Charlie looked down at them in silence.
“Well? Is it them, eh?”
“That’s my brother-in-law, Joe Booth, all right,” said Charlie.
“Sad. He’s been a handsome lad, you can see,” said the landlord.
“But that isn’t his wife.”
“What?” exclaimed the landlord, startled.
“That’s not my sister,” said Charlie.
“Who is it then?”
“It’s Miss Rosa Beaumont of Mill House.”
“What, Tom Beaumont’s daughter?”
“Aye. You’d best send a message to the Town Hall for him,” said Charlie hardly. “He’s offering a reward for the recovery of her body, I hear.”
“Your Joe was trying to save her, no doubt,” said the landlord in an apologetic tone.
“Maybe.”
“We’d best separate them,” said the landlord, looking aside. Charlie was silent. “What dost think, eh?”
Charlie did not speak. “Come, lad,” said the landlord, laying his hand on Charlie’s sleeve: “It’s no use carrying it beyond the grave.”
“Well,” began Charlie, and paused. “Well, come on then,” he said roughly, seizing one of the livid marble arms. “We’d best get started.”
So perhaps after all Rosa was not an example of Trevisa’s malice of the soul. Perhaps what she had felt for Joe was simply love. Yes; perhaps, when she first saw him, that Sunday afternoon on the embankment, it was the strange sweet thrill of sexual love which coursed swiftly through her veins. Love—with all its natural accompaniments: jealousy; fury when scorned; manoeuvres, of the delicate feminine kind, to attract the loved one’s attention. Perhaps, too, she had felt entitled to love Joe because deep in her heart she knew he loved her. Did he? Did she? Perhaps. Who knows? Not Trevisa, certainly.