A Modern Tragedy (15 page)

After a time, the cold, striking up through her bare feet, forced itself upon her attention. She shivered and stirred, and happening to glance towards the mirror, saw herself reflected there tense and emotional, with eyes large and brilliant, cheeks flushed, breast tremulous. “My good girl,” Rosamond admonished herself sarcastically—was not that how Tasker had contemptuously addressed her? Yes, surely—“My good girl! Why become histrionic like this about a petty rogue? It's simply vulgar, besides being singularly useless.”

In some self-disgust, she threw herself into bed, but for long was unable to sleep, and sat up, her hands clasped about her knees, staring out into the darkness. She had known intuitively, the minute she laid her eyes on him, that Tasker was a dishonest man, ruthless, reckless, unscrupulous, who would inevitably bring dishonour and loss upon any simple good soul associated with him. She now decided to rise early,
visit Heights Cottage before she went to school, before Walter should leave for the mill and come within Tasker's range again, and warn him in the most emphatic terms, exercise all her strong influence upon him, against agreeing to anything further which Tasker might propose. Had he not done enough harm, tempting Walter—as she now saw he had—away from the Lumbs? No honest business, she would argue to Walter, required to be done in the middle of the night, and the man who proposed so to do it was by that fact condemned. He came at this hour to confuse Walter, hurry him so that his faculty of judgment should be suspended. She longed to have her arms about Walter now, holding him back from Tasker, drawing him back to safety and to honour. Her young brother should not have anything further to do with that abominable and ruthless man. Yet what energy, what bold decision, what skill and knowledge and resource, seemed implicit in every word that Tasker had uttered! How did men of that type feel, wondered Rosamond; how had they reached the state of mind in which they could perform such baseness? She invented a score of early histories for Tasker. But into each of them crept elements which might excuse his fall; and soon Rosamond was strongly imagining scenes where Tasker confided these histories to her, speaking in gruff, but no longer sardonic, tones, looking powerful and purposeful as she had seen him look to-night—only that his blue eyes, when he turned them upon her, were no longer indifferent, but asked her sympathy, held friendship, admiration, love. Rosamond exclaimed, and bowed her head in self-contempt upon her knees, so that her dark curls fell over her face. But presently she raised herself. “Why shouldn't I admit it?” she said aloud proudly. “I could love that man.”

She lay down, strong in her determination to warn Walter before Tasker could get hold of him, deeply anxious about
her brother's future; yet experiencing a delicious pleasure, a pleasure which she admitted to herself was physical, in the thought of again crossing Tasker's path.

“Well,” said Rosamond to herself, too proudly candid to deny the workings of her mind: “If I enjoy meeting him, I enjoy it. My joy need bring no harm either to myself or him, provided that I always enter his life to bring his evil purposes defeat. As I did to-night,” she added, glowing; and forthwith slept, content with her triumph.

But Tasker was not so easily defeated; indeed, the thought of defeat had never entered his head in this interview with Rosamond—it was merely the delay, and the opposition to his will, which had annoyed him. Before he had closed the door of his car a dozen simple methods of getting hold of Walter had crossed his mind, and he was hardly out of Rosamond's sight round the corner before he put one into operation.

Heights Mill had no night watchman. Tasker therefore entered a telephone box, and asked the Hudley police station with what address they were supposed to communicate if anything untoward were observed at the mill by night. Within five minutes he knew Walter's address; within twenty his car stood at the Heights Cottage door. Tasker disturbed a second household, and brought Mrs. Lewry from her bed, without any hesitation; and soon Walter, half-clothed and drowsed with sleep, stumbled downstairs to him in Mrs. Lewry's bleak little front room. This was furnished with the relics of her husband's study; a roll-top desk, a pivot chair, a small harmonium laden with hymnals, several sacred pictures, and a book-case full of the volumes of a religious history, were witnesses to the meeting.

“What's the matter?” mumbled Walter anxiously. “Is the mill on fire?”

“I'm sorry to knock you up like this, but it can't be helped.
We've got to go to Manchester on business,” said Tasker.

“To Manchester? On business?” repeated Walter stupidly. “What for?”

“Now see here, Walter,” said Tasker in his kindest tone: “I've done pretty well by you, haven't I? You only had five hundred pounds in the world—” (at this Walter winced) “—and a rotten little job in a small firm, and I've made you head of Heights Mill, with a good screw and your own car and everything, haven't I?”

“Yes,” agreed Walter unhappily, wondering what all this was leading up to.

“You agree I haven't done badly by you?” insisted Tasker.

“Of course I do,” said Walter in a peevish tone.

“Well, I want you to do something for me, now,” said Tasker with grave dignity. “Will you?”

“Of course, if I can,” said Walter, feeling wretchedly uncomfortable. He instinctively suspected a trap, and his heart began to beat unpleasantly fast. “What is it you want me to do?” he asked sulkily.

“I want you,” said Tasker in a level tone, “to sell me Heights Mill as a going concern.”

“Sell you Heights Mill!” cried Walter, suddenly wide awake, and very much upset: “Oh, but I can't do that!”

“Why not?” said Tasker. “It's only part yours, anyway.”

“Oh, no,” said Walter in a tone of anguish: “Oh, no! I couldn't part with the Heights Mill business; I couldn't really—with my share of it, I mean.” He thought of the Heights Mill note-paper, which bore his name, of the lorry—“Oh, no,” he repeated. “No. I couldn't do that, Tasker. I couldn't, indeed.”

“Why couldn't you?” demanded Tasker again, his blue eyes flashing.

“I like having it,” mumbled Walter. “And then there's the money—oh, no, I can't sell out.”

“But, my dear fellow,” said Tasker, obviously subduing his impatience with an effort, and speaking as if to a child: “Do you suppose I'm proposing to chuck you out of Heights Mill? Of course you'll remain there to manage it. I'll give you a service agreement. For several years. And I shall give you a good price for the business. I'll give ten thousand for it as a going concern—and, of course, you'll have your share in proportion. If that isn't a good return for your five hundred, I don't know what is. You'll be quit of your commitments to the bank, of course. It's a good price for the business, too, in these hard times—ask anybody in the West Riding, I don't care who it is, and they'll tell you the same. Don't you consider it a fair price? Come now, be fair! Don't you?”

“Yes,” agreed Walter with reluctance. “Of course it is. It's a fair price all right. In fact, it's a very good one. But I don't want to sell.”

Tasker looked at him hardly, and there was a pause.

“This is my reward for picking you up almost out of the gutter, and putting you at the head of a splendid little business,” said Tasker presently, with bitterness.

At this accusation of ingratitude, of “using” somebody else for his own advantage, Walter turned scarlet with mortification. “I'm sure I've worked hard to get Heights going,” he defended himself anxiously.

“You have,” agreed Tasker, changing at once to a hearty tone. “You've worked splendidly. That's why I'm offering you such a good price. A lot of fellows would just give you your five hundred back, with a bit on top, and think you'd got your share. But you've worked well, and I want you to go on managing Heights, and I don't want you to feel aggrieved or badly treated. So I'm offering you more than Heights is really worth to me.”

“What do you want it for?” demanded Walter, genuinely
puzzled. “If you're satisfied with the way I manage it, I don't see …”

“Well, that's not your business, is it?” said Tasker loftily.

“No, of course not,” agreed Walter, blushing again. “But it does seem odd. And honestly I don't want to sell. I like having Heights Mill,” he repeated pathetically.

“I shall go on running it under your name, at any rate for a time,” said Tasker, watching him.

But at this, which showed so clearly Tasker's future ownership, Walter cried out, stung: “I won't sell!”

“Very well, my dear fellow!” exclaimed Tasker, apparently at the end of his patience. “You'll do as you like, of course—I can't force you to sell to me if you don't want to.” He picked up his hat, and swung away towards the door. “You mustn't blame me if I take my trade away from Heights, that's all.”

“What—what?” cried Walter, horrified. He pursued the manufacturer in consternation. “What's that you say? You don't mean you won't send cloth to Heights to finish any more?”

Tasker turned to face him, and in his sardonic countenance, his grim smile, Walter read his answer.

“But we've done no other work but yours!” cried Walter. “You've always discouraged me from looking for other orders—said I had enough to do with yours. If you don't send us work, Heights may as well close down.”

Tasker continued to smile at him hardly.

“Look here,” said Walter, panting: “Let's get this clear. You want me to sell Heights to you as a going concern, and if I don't, you mean to ruin me by withholding your work. You'll say the finish doesn't satisfy you, perhaps? Is that it?”

“I think you'd better sell out to me, Haigh,” said Tasker smoothly.

“Damn it! I'll sell,” exploded Walter in a fury of disappointment. “I've got to sell; you know I have—you've got me in a band. But if you think I like you for it, I don't! I shall hate you for it all the days of my life.”

“I don't see what you've got to grumble at, Walter,” said Tasker consolingly: “I don't indeed. Ten thousand pounds and a service agreement for three years, for the same amount you're drawing now—why, you're on velvet.”

As Walter showed no signs of being mollified Tasker went on impatiently: “Well—go and get dressed, anyway. We've got to go to Manchester, and be back in Leeds before ten o'clock.”

“Why should we go to Manchester?” demanded Walter in a stubborn tone.

“My solicitor's there,” said Tasker easily. “We've got to get the deed drawn up.”

“It seems funny to me to have to go to Manchester to sell a property in Hudley to a man from Ashworth,” objected Walter in a disagreeable tone, wishing he had a solicitor of his own whom he could urge upon his partner. “And why such a hurry?”

“Very knowing all of a sudden, aren't you?” sneered Tasker. “Go on—get dressed. I must be back in Leeds by ten.”

“Why?” said Walter.

“By God, Haigh!” shouted Tasker in a terrible burst of rage: “If you nag at me any more about my private affairs I'll neither give you the chance of selling, nor send you my work; do you hear? Go on and get dressed. Don't stand gaping there like a fool!”

Walter glared at him, panting; he knew he should be obliged to go, but hated to give in, to be obliged to obey Tasker's behests; pride kept him rooted. There was a pause in which hatred pulsed between the two men.

“I don't know what we're quarrelling about, I'm sure,”
said Tasker suddenly, very amicably. “Come along, Walter; do this for me. You shan't suffer for it, I promise you.” He gave the young man his caressing smile.

Intensely relieved to be able to yield to persuasion, not to force, Walter forced a smile to his own quivering lips, muttered: “All right,” and left the room.

Tasker drew out his silk handkerchief and roughly mopped his forehead, which was thick with sweat. That was a near thing, he thought, smiling grimly to himself as he recalled the scene and his own success; who would have thought young Haigh had so much spunk in him? He laughed, and mused in genuine admiration of Walter; he thought better of the lad for standing up for himself like that, by God he did. And Tasker congratulated himself that Walter had moved from Moorside Place. “If I had had that virago of a sister to tackle at the same time,” he reflected, “God knows what might have happened! She might have turned the scale. I'll bet Walter thinks she's an angel; believes every word she says. It was a near thing, anyhow. And it's going to be a near thing for time,” he exclaimed aloud, jumping up, and looking at his watch.

He went out into the hall, and gazed anxiously up the stairs, but on hearing a movement above, withdrew, quickly and silently, like a huge cat; it would not do to let Walter guess the extent of his anxiety.

Presently Walter came downstairs, ready to depart.

Tasker was struck by the change in his appearance. Perhaps it was because he was now shaved and neatly dressed that he seemed to have grown from a sulky child to a composed man, in half an hour; at any rate, he looked years older than when he had first entered the room that night, and the manufacturer thought with pleasure of the day when Walter would really be of use to him, when he could confide in him all his plans. He dare not risk it yet, however.

The two men went out to the car.

“Look here, Tasker,” began Walter with decision, holding him back by the arm from entering: “When are you going to pay me for Heights?”

“As soon as the sale agreement is signed,” replied Tasker cheerfully. “In about two hours, I should think, or perhaps three.”

“In money?”

“No—in shares from my Ashworth business,” said Tasker coolly. “It's a limited company, you know.”