A Modern Tragedy (14 page)

“Neither of the Lumbs have been to see me this many a week,” he mourned. “I'm afraid Lumb's can't be doing so well.”

As Walter said nothing to this, he went on: “I reckon it's perhaps a good thing after all that you've gone to Heights, Walter.”

“I'm sure it is, father,” Walter replied firmly, and with that the old man seemed to rest content for a time.

“I shall come to see you often, you know,” said Walter, after a pause, in a comforting tone; and Dyson replied merely: “Aye—you must.”

Presently Dyson required the ministrations of his wife. Walter went downstairs to fetch her; and in her absence broke his news to Rosamond. She was frankly angry; and told her brother with emphasis that he was selfish, thoughtless and callous.

“Rosamond, don't you see I
must
make Heights Mill a success?” pleaded Walter. “I
must
be free for a month or two, I must really.”

Rosamond, about to make a bitter comment, was silenced, as her father had been, by the look of strain on her brother's face. “You must do what you think right, Walter,” she said at length in a gentler tone: “Only I ask you to remember how much we shall miss you. I'll tell mother, if you like,” she added; and Walter breathed a sigh of relief.

At tea, an hour later, when he saw that his mother had been weeping, though she made him no reproaches, he felt so wretched that he was nearer to abandoning the project than at any time before. But that evening he had to visit Heights Mill to inspect some repairs which were being effected over the week end; and when he saw the work which lay before him on the morrow, he hardened his heart and decided to move to the cottage (in reality a house almost as large as the Haighs', though differently arranged) before the week was out. When Heights was a tremendous success, Walter a rich man, and the certificates returned to Dyson's bank, Walter would return to Moorside Place in triumph, with a position about which he would not be ashamed to answer the family questions, because its price should have been honourably paid.

It was not surprising that Walter's face should wear a look of strain during the first month of Heights' running, for Tasker was a harsh taskmaster, and all the work at Heights had to satisfy Tasker. With cloths of the type which the Lumbs had previously finished for Tasker, Walter had little difficulty, but the others were at first a nightmare to him. Walter, indeed, positively dreaded the sound of the Heights telephone bell, because the moment after it rang his cashier was sure to put his head in and say: “Mr. Tasker, sir”—at least, he said that for the first week or two; after that he threw out only: “Ashworth,” and soon merely put his head in and jerked his head beckoningly without speaking; it was enough. And then Walter went to
the telephone with a sinking heart, and listened to a rapid and emphatic sketch, in Tasker's sardonic tones, of what was the matter with pieces so-and-so. “I'll send them round, and you can let me have them back right, by Friday,” Tasker usually concluded, naming an almost impossibly short period for the rectification he required; and rang off abruptly.

Presently the pieces arrived; there was an earnest consultation between Walter and his foreman; then Walter gave orders for the finish of the piece to be amended in such or such a way, and awaited the result in burning anxiety, for if it were not right this time, it would have to be done again. “You know what Mr. Tasker is,” he often said to one or another of his workmen; and they nodded emphatically; by this time they all knew Mr. Tasker well enough. Luckily Tasker had served Walter well in the matter of workmen. They were a mixed-looking set of men, of various age and standing, each of them being “non-union” for a different reason; but they were all capable and hard-working, and Walter got on well with them.

It was towards the end of October that Walter moved into Heights Cottage. The change was an immense relief to him; indeed, almost as soon as he left Moorside Place he began to discover that he managed Heights Mill rather well, and was not altogether a fool in the matter of textiles. Now that he had not to pass abruptly between two conflicting atmospheres, now that his family were not always awaiting him with the demand for answers to awkward questions, now that he was no longer compelled to think about Dyson's certificates and the Lumbs at set hours, but could think of them, or not, as he chose; now, in fact, that other people were not incessantly stimulating his conscience and obliging him to defend himself against it, he felt much lighter of heart, less worried about his work, and more tenderly towards the Moorside Place household.

He rang up Rosamond every day in the lunch hour to enquire after their father's health, and visited Dyson with what he considered admirable regularity—though Rosamond and Mrs. Haigh might have told a different tale.

In the mill, his work seemed to settle down into a reasonable compass; difficulties were overcome and a routine established. Walter bought a car on the terms he had envisaged, and ran about to some extent with Tasker in clubs and hotels, lunching and dining well, and learning to play bridge and snooker. He did not, however, at first spend much according to the standards of the men with whom he now associated, preferring to put by what he could towards the paying off of the bank's loan, and the redemption of his father's certificates. One day when this fact emerged in a conversation over dinner with Tasker, the older man laughed outright, and his blue eyes gleamed sardonically; at this Walter blushed, but decided staunchly that nothing should make him change his mind. Next week, however, his personal expenses seemed to increase a little—somehow or other; Walter was not quite sure how. In a word, Walter insensibly grew used to his new way of life, and enjoyed it; he felt important, necessary, useful; if only those certificates were replaced, he should be the happiest man in the world.

Meanwhile for Rosamond life was not so agreeable. Dyson sank slowly. The change in him was almost imperceptible to his wife, who was with him constantly, and went at his side up and down all the rallies and relapses of the sad landscape of decline; but Rosamond, absent for several hours each day on her professional duties, saw his state more clearly, and mourned over the gradual weakening of physical and mental faculties which was obviously taking place. Her father's thin and husky voice, for example, sounded sadly on her ears, for she remembered how heartily he used
to sing all the psalms in chapel in his strong tenor, “pointing” most punctiliously, while his little daughter looked up at him in fond admiration.

A night nurse was secured from time to time when Dyson had a particularly bad week, a luxury which without Walter's generous contributions could not have been afforded.

Rosamond went to the Harlequins little, and saw Arnold Lumb not at all. Nor did any of the Lumbs come to Moorside Place. Dyson's complaints on this point tried Rosamond severely; some little time after Walter's departure to Heights Cottage, indeed, she was actually driven by his unhappy laments to write a note to Arnold, begging him to persuade his father to visit his old traveller, and saying plainly that in doing so he need no longer run any risk of meeting Walter. She did not tell her mother of this step, and was glad of her silence when the Lumbs made no response.

Rosamond's friends were mostly among the Harlequin members, or her own colleagues. In neither group was she likely to hear much industrial gossip, and therefore she had no idea how the Lumbs were faring—until at the beginning of the second half of the term she suddenly discovered Reetha Lumb in one of her classes at school. This striking evidence of the need for economy on the Lumbs' part made Rosamond very unhappy; that Arnold should be obliged to remove his child from boarding school, because, or even partly because, of an act of Walter's, was a lasting grief to her. She tried to console herself by thinking bitterly that education was naturally the first thing on which Arnold would economise, he being so much too apt to place the material above the spiritual; but could not reconcile herself to the change on Reetha's account.

Reetha was a difficult young person; hot-tempered and impatient, vigorous and strongly individual; Rosamond did not think her home environment—two ageing grandparents
and a widowed father of middle age—the best for her; and regretted the wider world of her large school for her, almost as much as Reetha herself, who was obviously fretted and provoked by the change from her southern splendours to a Hudley day-school which she considered plebeian. Rosamond's colleagues complained of Reetha's sauciness in school, but with her the child was disdainfully aloof, contemptuously absent; her attempts at any written work set by Rosamond were always deliberately atrocious, and though she never caused her any trouble in class, neither did she ever pay what Rosamond said there the least attention. One day by chance Rosamond met her fiery hazel eyes, and surprised a look of hate in them; she saw in a flash that the child heard a good deal at home about the iniquities of the Haighs.

In moments of wretchedness, when she reflected on this situation, Rosamond was wont actually to wish that she had loved Arnold Lumb, so that she might at least have lost something too in the trouble which Walter, wittingly or otherwise, had brought upon the two families—it would have made her feel more generous, in a less detestable position towards the Lumbs, if she too had suffered. For a day or two, indeed, she even tried to persuade herself that she had loved Arnold; but the essential honesty of her nature revolted against the masochist pretence, and she returned resolutely to a drab world uncoloured even by the romance of frustrated passion.

One bitter night of November Rosamond was asleep in the room which had been Walter's—she had moved, with concealed reluctance, a storey lower to be near her parents now her brother was away—when she abruptly started up, thinking she heard a violent knocking. Concluding that the sound was a summons (only too familiar) from her mother, she put on the light, left her bed, and, still half asleep, had thrown a wrap about her in a moment, when she heard the knocking
again. But this time it seemed, surely, at the front door, thought Rosamond and in corroboration, the front-door bell now gave a loud persistent peal.

Rosamond, amazed, paused to consider, and looked at her watch, which showed an early hour in the morning. The knocking came again. “Walter!” thought Rosamond. “An accident!”

She flew down stairs barefoot, fumbled for the hall light switch in an agony of apprehension, slid back bolts, and flung the door wide. The light shone out on the massive figure of Tasker, who was standing turned from the door, gazing ahead into the night. He was admirably dressed in morning clothes; one hand jingled coins in his pocket, in the other he carelessly swung his hat. He looked, indeed, extraordinarily vigorous, powerful, reckless and alive against the background of the leaves of the rhododendron bush by the gate, which hung down motionless at curious angles, stiff with frost. At the noise of the opening door he turned quickly.

“I want to see Walter Haigh. My name's Tasker,” he threw out carelessly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to knock up a household at this hour of the night. His blue eyes casually rested on Rosamond, then slid off her with indifference as if they did not see her; and in that moment Rosamond knew him deeply for what he was, yet loved him.

“What do you want with my brother, Mr. Tasker?” she demanded in a proud, firm tone, holding herself erect and gazing at him steadily.

“Business,” said Tasker in his casual tone.

“It must be very strange business,” said Rosamond as before, “which has to be done before five o'clock in the morning.”

Tasker looked offended and astonished, as if she had committed an impertinence—as, indeed, in his eyes she had;
business to him was sacred, not to be bandied about on the lips of women.

“Will you tell Walter I'm here, please,” he said impatiently. “I'll wait out here in the car, if you don't want me to come in.” He turned as if to go, and Rosamond saw beyond him at the gate the gleam of metal and the glimpse of a face.

“My brother is not here, Mr. Tasker,” said Rosamond in her grave rich tones. She had already made up her mind that Walter should be rescued from this man at all costs, yet to pronounce his name gave her an exquisite pleasure, a sense of deep well-being.

Tasker exclaimed impatiently, and turned back to her. “Why didn't you say so before?” he said. “Where is he, then?” As Rosamond did not immediately reply, he went on in a tone of annoyance: “This is the address he gave at the bank, I know.”

Rosamond found time to marvel that Tasker and Walter recked so little of each other's private lives that neither knew the home of the other, before she replied: “Since he began to work at Heights Mill my brother has ceased to live at home.”

If she meant this as a reproach, it was wasted; for Tasker merely gave a short exasperated sigh, and said: “Well, where does he live, then?”

“I shan't tell you,” said Rosamond with fire, defying him.

Tasker now for the first time really looked at her; his eyes met hers, and tried to beat them down; she lifted her head and faced him steadily.

“But, my good girl!” he said at last in gruff contempt: “You must be mad. It's for business. I must find him.”

“Tell me what the business is?” suggested Rosamond ironically, smiling.

“Tcha!” exclaimed Tasker in uncontrollable irritation.

Without another word he turned and swung down the path, and leaving the gate open behind him, disappeared into the gloom without. A door slammed loudly, the engine started, and his car drove off.

Rosamond found herself alone, and victorious—the enemy had been repulsed. She smiled in triumph, threw up her head proudly, and discovered that she was trembling from head to foot, whether from cold, or from the strong emotion which the interview had released in her, she did not then pause to discover. She made the door secure again, and went quietly to her room, but once there, did not immediately put out the light and return to bed. Instead she stood erect and motionless, re-living the interview which was just over, experiencing again the proud rapture of defying Tasker, the humiliation of his glance which took no count of her personality or sex, the painful joy of his angry defeat and departure.