A Modern Tragedy (20 page)

“I hope you'll get that meeting with your union representative fixed up pretty sharp, Milner.”

Milner's pale nostrils dilated, and his black eyes flashed. He muttered beneath his breath: “We shall fix it when we've a mind.”

For a long moment the two men glared at each other in hate, each maddeningly conscious that he was in the other's power.

At length Arnold, his muscles twitching with rage, turned aside on the pretext of examining a piece of cloth that lay near by, and presently stamped heavily back to the office. The men, marking the distortion of his usually pleasant face, his flushed forehead and bloodshot eyes, raised their eyebrows at each other in astonishment, drew down the corners of their mouths, and whistled softly.

In the office Mr. Lumb was waiting impatiently for his son. He had found Mrs. Haigh's letter and pieced it together, and worked himself into such a frenzy that his heavy eyebrows were positively bristling with resentment. Now as his son came in he thumped the torn pieces with an angry hand.

“What's all this, Arnold? What right have
you
to turn away
a man who worked for me before you were born?” he demanded hotly.

“Nay, father; you've got your dates a bit mixed there, I think,” said Arnold, trying to maintain his usual air of cheerful respect. But as Mr. Lumb began to scold and argue and draw distinctions between Dyson and Walter, he could no longer keep it up.

“You shouldn't have done that without consulting me, Arnold,” repeated Mr. Lumb for the twentieth time.

“Now that's enough, father,” broke in Arnold sharply. “The thing had to be done, and it is done, and it's no use kicking up a fuss about it now. I don't want to hear any more about the Haighs, ever. I've enough to bother me without them.”

His tone was so bitter that Mr. Lumb was disconcerted. To cover his confusion he took off the old-fashioned gold-rimmed pince-nez which sat crookedly on his large nose, and snapped them into their case, before observing, much more mildly, that he saw his son had been writing to the union.

“Aye,” said Arnold. “That'll have to be done, too; and as sharp as we can.”

“What will you do if they don't agree?” demanded Mr. Lumb in a disapproving tone.

“Sack the lot and take on fresh men at time rates,” snapped Arnold.

“If you do that, Arnold, to men I've had here twenty years, I walk out of this mill and never enter it again!” exclaimed Mr. Lumb vehemently.

“If I don't do it, you soon won't have a mill to enter,” replied Arnold grimly.

Mr. Lumb looked so utterly taken aback that his son felt sorry for him. “Of course I shan't do it unless all else fails,” he explained in a milder tone.

“No—of course not,” agreed Mr. Lumb with a wistful air
of wanting to be reassured. “I know I can rely on you, Arnold.”

Arnold sighed. “I expect so,” he said glumly.

The driving blizzards of January modulated into the heavy straight-down rains of February; the cold blustering winds of March gave place to the soft sudden showers of April; spring in its progress northwards at length reached the West Riding. But Arnold hardly noticed the changing year. He was too busy searching for trade to replace the loss of Tasker's, pacifying the bank, and fighting his way with dogged tenacity through the protracted negotiation with his men's union.

WALTER HAIGH speaking,” said Walter down the receiver, drawing a pad towards him on which to record his employer's requirements.

“I want you to have dinner with me to-night, Walter,” came Tasker's voice. “There's some business I must talk over with you. Where shall we meet?”

“To-night! But I can't,” objected Walter, uneasily conscious that he had never refused a command of Tasker's before. But why should he always be at Tasker's beck and call, he thought with irritation; his evenings were his own, after all. “I'm dining at the Croslands',” he explained firmly: “And going on to the theatre at Leeds with them afterwards. It's Ralph's birthday. Or rather, it was his birthday last week, but he was at his prep. school then, so it's being celebrated to-night.”

“You're dining
where?
” demanded Tasker.

He sounded bewildered, and Walter shouted: “At Henry Clay Crosland's,” loudly.

“Oh,” said Tasker.

There was a pause. Walter, who had expected to be scolded, was disconcerted by Tasker's silence; he mused on it uncomfortably, realised suddenly that Tasker had never been asked to Clay Hall, and probably never would be asked in his life, wondered whether the tone of his exclamation had not perhaps been rather wistful, felt immensely sorry for him, and cried loyally: “Well, all right; I'll get out of it somehow, and come.”

Immediately he had suggested this sacrifice he regretted it
profoundly—an evening with Tasker which he might have spent gazing at Elaine!—but was ashamed to withdraw his offer.

“No, never mind,” said Tasker in a mildly sarcastic tone. “You go and dine with dear old Henry. Enjoy yourself while you can. It's the best thing you can do, anyway.”

“How do you mean—enjoy myself while I can?” demanded Walter quickly, his heart thudding with a sudden sense of disaster. “Is there anything wrong?”

“Well, yes, there is,” said Tasker in the same ominously mild tone. “I must see you to-night, I can't very well leave it any longer; but after the theatre will do. Where did you say you were going?”

“Leeds,” said Walter unhappily. “But, look here, Tasker, what's wrong?”

“You get about, don't you!” said Tasker smoothly, disregarding his question. “Eleven o'clock, then.” He named the hotel where he and Walter had lunched together on the day Walter first saw Heights, as their meeting place, and rang off.

Walter was left to endure the misery of suspense all day. Like a school-boy summoned unexpectedly to the presence of his master, he racked his brains to think what crime he might have been committing. Tasker could hardly take such a serious tone about a mere damaged piece or two, thought Walter; a whole consignment must have gone wrong. But which? And how? Walter, rapidly reviewing all the work done for Tasker in the last few months, decided that he was not guilty, and prepared to defend that position tooth and nail. Nor had any catastrophic damage occurred in the cloth of other customers. But perhaps the trouble was financial? In that respect too Walter felt he had nothing with which to blame himself. The accounts of Heights showed a steady profit since the beginning of the year; he went over them
again to make sure. Oh well! It was no use worrying; he would know all about it to-night at eleven.

He worried, nevertheless, all day; it was not until he turned into the long winding drive which led to Clay Hall, that evening, that he forgot Tasker completely. At the first sight of the grey stone balls on the old gateposts, the flowering rhododendrons which lined the drive, he fell at once into a state of joyous if apprehensive excitement, in which he sang to himself, and amused himself by driving for short stretches with his hands off the wheel. And when he came out into the gravel sweep in front of the Croslands' home, his spirits leaped up still further, and he had a sense of being at the very hub of the world, at the place where everything interesting went on.

Walter had a very proper admiration for the fabric of Clay Hall, which was unrestored Jacobean; the mullioned windows and tall chimneys, the date above the door, the huge square galleried hall, with ancient flags depending on each side the hearthstones, the uneven wooden floors and panelled walls, impressed him as Elaine's beauty did, as something on a higher plane, far beyond his reach.

So ignorant was he of the history of his native Riding, and so vague in mental habit, that, although he was vaguely familiar with the early days of the Crosland Spinning Company, he yet could believe, side by side with the story of the eighteenth century Crosland and his pair of boots, that the Clay Croslands had built Clay Hall in 1628, and lived in it ever since. But in this he was no stupider than Elaine, who without going into the matter imagined pretty much the same thing; indeed Henry Clay Crosland was probably the only member of the household who had a clear idea of the house's history, and knew the date when it passed to industry from land-owning. But however long or short a time the Clay Hall estate had been in the hands of the Croslands,
it was a highly agreeable place to be in, with its wide lawns and banks of flowering bushes and brilliant beds, especially on a spring evening, clear after rain, when the orange wallflowers scented the air and one was going to dine with the girl one loved.

For in the months which had elapsed since Walter's first meeting with Elaine Crosland at the Clay Green bazaar, his passion for her had grown till everything in his life was focused on her; he worked for her, played for her, drove and danced and dressed for her, and was always mentally conducting long arguments with her, in which he explained his life-story and the terrible intensity of his love. He was besotted with her beauty; his pulses leaped at the merest glimpse of her lovely head, the merest turn of her soft white throat. But Walter was not a man of sensual nature, and though every slight curve of his love's slender restless little body was impressed indelibly on his consciousness for ever, it was Elaine herself, not merely her exquisite flesh, he loved. He wanted her approval; he wanted those brilliant eyes to shed soft beams of liking on him, that delicious mouth to smile in friendly understanding, more than anything else on earth.

This part of his love was sometimes wounded almost to death by her cruelties. The product of a civilisation keyed to the highest pitch of sensibility yet known in the history of the world, and of an individual sensitiveness so great that her mind almost visibly palpitated as it took in each fresh impression, in spite of the surface hardness she used to conceal its too great vulnerability, Elaine at once knew, by his reactions, Walter's sore places; and she would contrive to remind him of his plebeian descent, his rough accent and clumsy looks, his lack of skill and knowledge in some essential game or piece of etiquette, half a dozen times in an evening, if he had chanced to say something which her uneasy spirit referred to its own deficiencies. Of late her taunts were rather
changing their targets, for three months in the Croslands' company had polished Walter wonderfully, and his love gave him manliness. But Elaine was still able to imply that he was stupid and insensitive, limited and uninteresting; and poor Walter—who had always been rather conscious that he had not fought in the War like Bob, and was not as clever as Rosamond—quivered beneath her wounding implications. He winced, and thus gave her power over him, because he was ashamed of the part life had assigned to him and was pretending to play another; while because he loved Elaine, he could not bear to wound her in return, and thus stood as it were bound and defenceless before her. He often returned home, after an evening in her company, trembling with anguish, swearing to himself that he hated Elaine, that she was altogether and only hateable, that he would love her no more. But the mere tinkle of her soft provoking voice on the telephone next day brought all his love back in a hot tormenting flood. If he rang her up, she was almost always cross when she replied, and Walter suffered; but sometimes she sounded sweetly reasonable, and then the sun shone all day for him.

On one or two occasions Elaine had herself telephoned him with a message from her mother for Mrs. Lewry. These were the peaks of Walter's happiness so far, for Elaine was essentially proud and fastidious, and asked Walter this small service with as much recognition of his courtesy in doing it as a coarser nature would have shown in requesting him to drive fifty miles.

Walter was ushered now into the low panelled drawing-room, where Elaine and Ralph and their mother, with a few guests, stood about listening to the wireless, and Henry Clay Crosland sat apart, lost in a reverie of a disagreeable kind, to judge from his fine face, which was haggard and lined.

Walter, who if not yet quite at home in these surroundings, now knew his way about them fairly well, made his greetings
and accepted his cocktail. His hand shook, his face flushed, as he approached Elaine, who was looking particularly young and lovely in a long high-waisted frock of pale flowered silk—the first of this shape Walter had seen—for he always began to live with greater intensity the moment he entered her presence. Indeed, his heart was even apt to quicken its beat when he saw places and objects associated with Elaine. Sometimes in these restless spring evenings, when he chanced to have seen nothing connected with her all day and had no engagement in her company at night, he had positively taken out his car and driven round to Clay Green, gazing wistfully at the Hall and hoping against all probability for a meeting.

On one such occasion he was seen by a member of Elaine's social group, who laughingly teased him about it next time she saw him. Walter, in an anguish lest Elaine should find him out, lied and lied; Elaine, fixing her brilliant eyes upon him and discovering at once that he was seriously disturbed, pressed questions upon him with such obvious malice that Walter thought his secret discovered, and could hardly restrain himself from rushing from her presence. But indeed Elaine had no notion of it, and thought him guilty merely of some vulgar stupidity which he was ashamed to confess.

Walter was an object of interest to Elaine because he was different from the circle which surrounded her, and this difference both attracted and provoked her; she often as it were stuck pins into Walter, not with intent to wound, but just to see what he would do. That Walter admired her seemed possible to Elaine, because everybody constantly told her that he did; but then a great many people admired her, too, or at any rate, said so; it was the fashion in her circle to admire Elaine Crosland, and in Elaine's opinion such admiration did not amount to much. Secretly Elaine longed for somebody to have a great and terrific passion for her, because such a passion would convince her once and for all, she thought, of
her own desirability; and she looked wistfully at every man she met who seemed “different” from her usual friends, in case he might be the one to love her thus. But at the bottom of her heart she was fundamentally uncertain whether she deserved such a passion, fundamentally uncertain of her own worth. And this uncertainty poisoned her life. The suggestion that Walter loved the very plants on the Clay Hall estate, for her sake, would have made her laugh—shrilly and bitterly, for she would be laughing at, in order to defend, her own deep desire that someone should love her so.