A Modern Tragedy (11 page)

“What nonsense, father,” said Walter in a warm, loving tone. He laid a hand on Dyson's thin arm caressingly. “You'll soon be about again,” he said.

“Has Mester Arnold ever said anything to you about leaving?” persisted Dyson, disregarding this. “They'll be having to make economies, you know, with that overdraft. And what shall we do then?” His poor thin old voice rose into a wail.

“As a matter of fact, father,” said Walter in a rush, forgetting everything but the desire to relieve his father's distress, “I've got another job already.”

But at this Dyson opened his eyes so wide, and stared so terribly, that Walter was alarmed. He went on hastily: “Mr. Arnold knows about it. I've begun to-day. It's a good post, better than with the Lumbs.”

“Where is it?” gasped Dyson, still staring wildly.

“At Heights Mill,” replied the wretched Walter, cursing himself for his clumsiness as he saw in what he had involved himself and poor Dyson. His father would be sure to know that Heights Mill had a dyeing and finishing plant; a man of his experience could not be deceived as to that.

“Heights Mill,” murmured Dyson, closing his eyes, “That's Dollam's place, isn't it?”

“Yes, it's his place,” agreed Walter, breaking into a sweat of relief as he realised that his father's illness had made him either ignorant or forgetful of the fact that Dollam's firm had failed three months ago.

Dyson promptly dropped off into one of the short but deep dozes which were a symptom of his disease.

Walter, sitting on beside him with a heavy heart, perceived suddenly, with a pang, that without consciously meaning to do so, he had presented to Arnold Lumb, and to his father, separate and incomplete versions of his new position which in each case contained the elements least likely to irritate its recipient.

His father thought him employed, with Arnold's consent and perhaps his help, in a subordinate position in a finishing works at Heights Mill, and considering his training found it natural; where a mention of Tasker, a manufacturer, would have excited him to question. Arnold Lumb, on the other hand, who might justly have been irritated by Walter's voluntary departure to any competing firm, and who knew that Heights Mill was vacant unless a fresh competitor had occupied it, thought him only an employee in Tasker's manufacturing establishment. Well, no doubt their pieces of knowledge would be put together some time, and then there would be an explosion highly disagreeable to Walter. But meanwhile the arrangement was a lucky one for him, and in any case there was nothing to be done about it. As long as his father was too ill to go to work, thought Walter, there was no danger, and he need not worry. He caught himself thinking thus, and blushed, ashamed.

IT WAS the Monday of Hudley's annual week of holiday, and a large proportion of its inhabitants were disporting themselves by the sea at Blackpool, in company with the operatives of many other northern industrial towns.

Walter and Rosamond Haigh were helping to swell the huge crowd at the favourite northern resort that day. The Haighs usually sought their pleasure in places quieter and more genteel; but this year, with Dyson ill, there was no possibility of the family leaving home together for a holiday, and Mrs. Haigh had urged her children to take a day trip by char-à-banc, in search of sea air and sunshine, and come back with roses in their cheeks if they could. Rosamond always experienced a natural fatigue after the strain of the midsummer examinations and reports, and this year nursing had been added to her other duties; while Walter, said his mother, had been working much too hard ever since he went to Heights, and was looking quite pale and worn; so Mrs. Haigh had made up her mind to send them out for the day every fine day this week, while Walter had holiday. Walter knew that Tasker would not expect him to take the whole week off, but dared not say too much in protest to his mother, lest some awkward revelations might occur, so he acquiesced when she insisted on his booking seats for this trip—she had an immense and touching faith in the efficacy of the air at Blackpool. So brother and sister were now making their way slowly along the packed promenade, jostled every moment by the thousands of their fellow northerners who were doing the same.

The sun shone so strongly that the tar melted beneath
their feet, and their skins tanned almost perceptibly from minute to minute. The sea was a deep rich blue, flecked by the white sails of pleasure yachts, and edged by a paler band where some thousands of bathers were jumping and splashing. The miles of golden sands were scarcely visible, so thronged were they by holiday-makers of every age in bright summer clothes, all laughing and chattering at the top of their vigorous northern voices, so that a loud, strident roar constantly filled the air. Children, looking very slim in bathing suits, or bunchy in waders, shrieked pleasurably as they dipped their toes into the gentle, pearly surf, or rushed screaming up the sands to announce some discovery of their own, or delinquency of their brothers, to their parents. Dogs of every breed known in England barked with persistent glee, and ran off with balls in their mouths, pursued by the indignant young cricketers whose game was thus impaired. Young persons in diaphanous garments bounced along the sands on the backs of grey donkeys, a look of alarmed ecstasy on their hot little faces, which deepened with every thwack administered by the donkey-boy to the posteriors of their steeds. Sand castles of every size and shape were in process of erection and destruction by buckets and spades of every colour and quality. Ices, shell-fish and soft drinks were consumed in millions. Far aloft, against the clear blue sky, the lacy ironwork of the Tower, and the superb curves of the Wheel, gazed down benevolently upon the spectacle of the north taking its rare pleasure in wild exhilaration.

The brother and sister came to the Pleasure Beach, and, holding tightly to each other lest the pressure of the crowd force them apart, passed in between rows of stalls urging them to throw wooden balls, or brightly coloured darts, at a variety of targets, in the hope of winning a prize. They were also asked to guess their weight, have their name engraved, shoot at artificial ducks (which as Walter found to
his cost lived up to their names by ducking when this might have been least expected), take an under-ground journey through river caves, inspect a full-size Noah's Ark, and descend towers rapidly by the aid of a fibre mat. Each of these amusements was thronged by a great hot crowd, jostling and pushing and shouting broad jokes in broad dialect—“The number of jokes made in Blackpool
per diem
must be enormous,” shouted Rosamond in Walter's ear. She was obliged to shout, for the noise, a compound of the human and the mechanical, was deafening. Above their heads the white cars of the giant dipper hurtled madly through the air, accompanied by screams of delighted horror from their passengers. Walter showed a desire to try this violent switchback, and accordingly Rosamond and he pushed their way into the marble hall, beneath the immense pagoda with its gilded dome, where the white cars received their jesting, shouting load. But when the pair saw the length of the queue awaiting entrance, they decided to postpone the experience.

“Let's go over there,” shouted Walter, pointing to a side show on the left.

Rosamond agreed, and the pair made their way in that direction. Walter had boyishly chosen the stall they were making for, without being able to see what was going on there, because it was surrounded by a large and increasing crowd, from which bursts of laughter, of a heartiness remarkable even for Blackpool, frequently arose. Holiday-makers constantly ran up and joined the fringe of the crowd, crying “What is it? What's up here?” and nosed their way in excitedly. The Haighs followed their example, and presently found themselves at the edge of a circular steel floor, on which half a hundred tiny motor cars were violently careering with a heavy grinding noise. The cars had a trolley which touched a metal roof, thus completing the circuit
made by the contact of their wheels with the floor, and they were set in motion by electricity. They had steering wheels, and their occupants made frantic attempts to avoid clashes with other cars by this means; clashes, however, occurred every moment in unexpected directions. Some of the cars were for single occupants only, but most of them held a couple, and these were naturally the most popular, since the banging and jerking and clashing which the cars constantly sustained inevitably threw their occupants into each other's arms, and made them hold tightly to each other in enjoyable panic. At every collision the couples laughed, and the crowd laughed with them.

“Eh, look at yon woman in t'blue hat!”

“She'll lose it afore she's done, she will that!”

“Aye, I reckon that won't stay on so long.”

“If it were a bit bigger, it'd 'ave a better chance.”

“Ah!” shouted the crowd suddenly in one delighted roar. “Look at your hat, missis! It's on t'floor!”

The lady with the large blue hat was fortunately the most amused of them all. She laughed loudly and heartily at her mishap, and in looking into her escort's eyes for sympathy, lost her balance and fell across his bosom. Beneath her impact he very naturally lost his grip of the steering wheel, and the car careered hither and thither, cannoning off one car after another in a quite unprecedentedly comic series of collisions; the watching crowd doubled up, rolled, dug each other in the ribs in uncontrollable mirth, while the couple in the car were helpless with laughter. Rosamond laughed too, enjoying the scene as a complete, and therefore artistic, expression of the robust humour of the north. Turning to Walter to see how he was enjoying the rough but hearty horseplay, she found to her surprise that he was looking glum.

“Let's go back to the promenade,” he shouted.

“Well—very well,” said Rosamond, disappointed, but yielding as she would have yielded to a child.

They turned and began to battle their way from the crowd. This was not easy, for though the electric floor had now temporarily ceased to revolve, and the cars were changing their occupants, there was a confused movement both towards and away from the scene of the spectacle, which made it difficult to proceed in either direction. The attendant, a solid fellow in chauffeur's uniform, had rescued the blue hat, which its flushed and panting owner was now replacing on her head, amid the friendly comments of the crowd, as she struggled outward. Her escort was wiping his crimson face and laughing.

“You got your money's worth that time, lad,” someone exhorted him cheerfully.

“Aye, it seems so,” he agreed. “Good afternoon, Mester Walter. Fancy seeing you here!”

“Afternoon, Harry,” said Walter in an uneasy tone. “You here for Wakes week?”

“Aye,” said Harry Schofield. “There's a lot from Hudley here this week, I reckon.

“I daresay,” agreed Walter, nodding without enthusiasm. He plucked Rosamond's sleeve sharply and drew her away in another direction, and the couples parted.

“That was young Walter Haigh,” explained Harry to Jessie, when they at last emerged from the crowd. “He didn't look so cheerful-like, did he?”

“Happen he doesn't like his new work,” suggested Jessie, who naturally knew all the Valley Mill gossip.

“Happen not. Lumbs is pretty fair, as bosses go,” said Harry cheerfully. “I've allus heard Tasker's a bit of a cufter to deal with.”

“Was that his young lady with him?” enquired Jessie, still tucking wisps of hair beneath her regained hat.

“No, I reckon that'll be his sister, Rosamond. I remember Mrs. Haigh bringing her when she come to see mother after my father died,” explained Harry. “Aye, I didn't own her at first, but that'll be Rosamond. She's got a look of Walter. But, come on, lass, let's try this.”

He pushed his wife towards a car painted to resemble a cotton reel, which took a zig-zag and revolving course round an alarming spiral at top speed. Milner was attending a political school in the south of England; Mrs. Schofield had been left at home in charge of Dorothy and the baby, who was now weaned; and Harry was determined that Jessie and he should make the most of their holiday together. “Aye, we'll try this,” repeated Harry, watching the violent and unexpected jerks of the reel with great satisfaction. “Two, please, miss,” he said at the pay-box, and he and his wife passed the turnstile and entered.

Meanwhile Walter and Rosamond had reached the comparative quiet of the sea-front.

“Was that one of your new men, or one of the Lumbs', Walter?” enquired Rosamond, troubled by the moody look on her brother's face, and by his unusual curtness to Harry.

“One of Lumbs',” mumbled Walter. “One of old Isaiah Schofield's sons.”

“Oh, really?” said Rosamond. She spoke with interest, for Isaiah had been the Lumbs' foreman for an almost legendary period, and Dyson still sometimes lamented his death, and told anecdotes of his humorous shrewdness. And she looked at Walter sympathetically, thinking: “One of Arnold's men. Walter hasn't liked leaving Valley Mill, really, though he hides it from us; and meeting Isaiah's son has brought it all back to him.” She was sorry that her brother's outing should have been thus spoiled; spoke to him very gently, and fell in with his wishes very promptly, all day, as if he were a child which had fallen and hurt itself.

For Walter the incident was one of many; one of a series in which his secret was in danger, but escaped. Each time this happened he felt more secure for the future; each time it happened it put a securer lock on the past.

“Light small pretty voice, accent and articulation distinctly good, blank verse weak, no dialect,”
wrote the secretary of the Hudley Harlequins, reading the words aloud as he wrote them. The committee appointed for the purpose was conducting the first audition of the autumn season that evening, and these remarks, inscribed in the society's casting records, were the collective wisdom of its members upon a young girl who had just undergone the ordeal and departed.
“Experience: very slight, at school and in amateur theatrical type of show locally; no training; no idea of movement, but facial mobility promising,”
continued the secretary:
“Speaks French well, sings, plays the piano, modern dancing; prefers modern comedy
. Anything else?”