A Modern Tragedy (21 page)

She greeted Walter now with a cool indifference, which arose partly from an unconscious sexual nervousness in his presence, partly from a cruel curiosity to see what he would make of it; and continued to talk to young Anstey, who was her distant cousin, about a Hunt Ball to which Walter was not invited. Walter, with a pang, felt himself rebuffed, and retired to discuss radio technicalities with Ralph, to whom he suspected (not altogether correctly) that he owed his to-night's invitation.

Indeed from Walter's point of view the evening went, at first, much the same as several similar evenings during the past few months; that is, it alternated violently between joy and anguish. Sometimes with a burning heart Walter watched Elaine and her friends chattering and laughing like a cageful of bright fluttering birds, while he in the background felt relegated to Ralph and one or two of the boy's young school friends, whose occasion the dinner was really supposed to be; sometimes he was drawn into the conversation by Elaine's group—who, to do them justice, had no idea that he felt out of it—and had the delicious sensation of being in mid-stream, of succeeding in the thing he cared for most. But whether joy or anguish seized his heart, he would not have exchanged his place for any other in the world; to be near Elaine was his overriding passion.

As usual in Elaine's circle the party was late in starting for the theatre; some members pronouncing themselves unready, and rushing back into the house, as fast as others came out to the steps and urged departure. In one of these intervals of waiting, Walter found himself next to Elaine, who was announcing that the piece they were booked for was quite too terrible to be seen.

“Revolver shots all over the place, my dear,” she said: “And three bodies in the last act. It's for Ralph, of course; he
loves
murders. Do you think you can bear it?”

“Most boys of his age like that sort of thing,” said someone wisely; but Walter, always anxious to please his love, observed that he had heard the play was good of its kind. Everybody at once clustered around him eagerly, and asked for the source of his information; Walter, who had heard it in the course of his Tuesday's rounds in Leeds, was able to produce some reputable names in its support. Everybody at once turned to everybody else, crying: “Walter says the play's quite good!” in a tone of joyous astonishment; and everybody else replied heartily: “Splendid!”

Elaine looked softly pleased, and Ralph beamed. Walter became quite the hero of the hour, and drove off to Leeds in his happiest mood. (A place had been arranged for him in someone else's car, but in view of his appointment with Tasker, he had brought his own. So far was Tasker from his mind now, however, that he was surprised to discover his car standing in the drive, and stared at it reproachfully.)

The party, putting on speed, arrived at the theatre with a minute to spare, and threw themselves into their seats efficiently. Walter now began to feel highly nervous lest the play should disappoint expectation, after being recommended by himself, but luckily he had not been misinformed as to its merits, and various members of the party took the trouble to tell him so.

Walter and Mrs. Crosland sat with Ralph and his friends in the front row—Henry Clay Crosland himself had remained at home. Elaine and her group, behind them, by a natural impulse often bent forward to express their views. Elaine's silky hair, her brilliant pointed little face and exquisite throat, were often near to Walter's lips; her subtle perfume enveloped him. The warm dark of the theatre, the startling brightness of the stage, the scenes of love and violence there enacted; the swooning music in the intervals, the rich voluptuous colours of gilt and red velvet which bloomed abruptly, striking almost with the effect of a blow upon his eyes, when the house lights rose; the quick chatter in the corridors, the feeling that their party was the centre of attention—all these acted as aphrodisiacs upon Walter. He felt Elaine's proximity in every fibre of his being, and indulged the sensation rapturously.

Suddenly, without warning, the memory of his appointment with Tasker flashed across his mind. He started in his chair, and a sharp uneasiness invaded his heart. What was the time? It must be late, for according to the programme the play had reached the middle of the last act. There was no illuminated clock in the building, such as was to be found in cinemas, and Walter thought angrily of the causes of the decay of the commercial theatre as pronounced by Rosamond—he had not thought of Rosamond for weeks, and dismissed her promptly enough now—as he bent forward to focus his watch into such light as was available. The hands stood slightly beyond half past ten. Walter sighed with relief, sat back and surrendered himself again to the enjoyable suspense of the action on the stage. When yet another body had joined those already discovered in cupboards and walls, Walter, with a start, remembered the time again, and from then onwards he consulted his watch rather frequently. At last the curtain came down, but the house remained in darkness, for there was yet another scene to be played.

Walter turned to Mrs. Crosland, about to explain his unavoidable departure, and leave, when Elaine bent forward to him, and said:

“Why do you keep looking at your watch so often, Walter? It's most distracting.”

“I'm awfully sorry,” said Walter, with an apologetic blush. “I was just going to make my excuses to your mother—I'm afraid I must go. I have an important business appointment at eleven.”

Mrs. Crosland murmured a courteous sentence of regret, and began to gather her cloak about her to assist Walter's exit. But Elaine interrupted in her sweet cross little voice: “But how silly, Walter! How can you have a business appointment at this hour? Besides, we're going to have supper in Leeds—of course you mustn't leave.”

“If you tell me to stay,” said Walter, suddenly reckless: “I'll stay, and let the appointment go hang.”

His face was very near to hers, and his warm brown eyes were fixed upon hers in a compelling look of love. A delicious gleam of triumph stole across Elaine's lovely little face; she veiled her eyes, glancing down, and enquired in a soft, quick tone: “Is it a very important appointment?”

“Very,” said Walter emphatically, visualising Tasker kept waiting by a man whose wage he paid—his rage would be unbounded.

“Stay, then,” said Elaine, her voice trembling between a passionate desire to test her power over this young man, and a naughty childish glee.

“Very well,” said Walter, folding his arms.

Elaine gave a soft laugh of delight, and leaned back as the curtain went up and disclosed the final scene.

The next half hour Walter enjoyed, and suffered, with extraordinary violence. Defiance and love mingled intoxicatingly in the cup the night offered him; he drank deep of the heady mixture, and was excited to a pitch of acute, of
throbbing, sensibility. His heart beat hard and fast, the blood throbbed in his temples, he felt as though he were delirious or in a dream. Every action on the stage seemed intensified a hundred-fold; the words spoken nearly deafened him, a mere knock reverberated along his every nerve, an arm lifted to strike seemed to take years to descend, to fall with terrific force. He started in horror at the heroine's scream, panted as though he himself, and not the varnished hero, were struggling to reach and rescue her, trembled with love at her ecstatic welcoming embrace. In the distance the Town Hall clock struck eleven; he heard its muffled booming, defied it, and rejoiced.

Suddenly he felt a hand on his sleeve.

“Walter,” whispered Elaine softly in his ear: “You ought to go.”

He bent back his head and looked at her, and instantly was in an ecstasy; for what he had desired was come to pass. For this one moment, if for no other in life, her eyes beamed softly, lovingly upon him, her lovely mouth smiled approval and admiration. He whispered: “No.”

“Yes, Walter, you must. You must go,” breathed Elaine.

Walter shook his head. “I shan't,” he muttered softly.

He gazed with rapture into her star-like eyes, at the exquisite pure curve of her young cheek. Her small hand still lay upon his shoulder; on a sudden impulse he covered it with his own, and lightly, gently, with a lover's tenderness, caressed its fingers once. Elaine's breast fluttered in a sigh; she withdrew herself from his touch, but so gently that it was more a caress than a withdrawal. Walter shot a burning glance at her to see if she were angered by his presumption. She was sitting erect, her head thrown proudly upward, her eyes starry, her delicate nostrils dilated, her mouth smiling: exalted, though Walter did not guess this, in a delicious triumph.

The final curtain at last descended. Walter's eyes sought
Elaine's at once, but she held her head down and would not look at him. The lovely child-like smile was still on her mouth, however. Walter felt that to wait longer would be an anti-climax; he took a brief leave of his hostess, and fled towards Tasker.

He found him sitting in a corner of the half-empty lounge, in morning clothes, hunched-up, disconsolate, before an empty glass, not even smoking his customary cigar. His face was heavy, lined, brooding; only his light blue eyes had their usual sardonic and indomitable air. Walter swung in smiling, in all the triumph of young love declared; a very personable young man, erect and gallant. For a moment the wish hovered in Tasker's mind that the lad was his son. He repelled it at once as a piece of stupid sentimentality, but decided that he liked Walter all the same; there was some quality in the lad which made association with him agreeable; he wasn't always thinking of his own advantage, perhaps.

“I'm exceedingly sorry to have kept you waiting,” said Walter in his best Clay Hall style.

“Well, it's not very lively here after licensing hours, and that's a fact,” said Tasker.

His voice held no resentment, however, and Walter was reassured. Feeling in command of this, and indeed any, situation, he offered Tasker a cigarette (which the older man took with a sardonic glance), lighted it for him, and began briskly:

“Well, what is it that's wrong? If it's those greys it's their own mender's needle that did the damage, not ours. We don't use that pattern of needle—I can show him his own needle that we found in the cloth; I've kept it, I've got it in the office.”

“It isn't the greys,” said Tasker, puffing quietly at his cigarette.

Walter waited for him to continue, but as he remained silent, demanded impatiently, thinking to himself that with luck he might return to Elaine's party, catch them all at supper: “Well, what is it, then?”

After another pause Tasker, observing him watchfully from the corner of his eye, said suddenly: “Henry Clay Crosland is determined to make me a bankrupt.”

“What?” said Walter irritably, not in the least taking this in. “What did you say?”

“I owe money to Henry Clay Crosland,” repeated Tasker patiently: “And he's determined to call it in.”

“Oh,” said Walter vaguely, still at sea. “And can't you pay it?”

Tasker permitted himself to smile.

“It's about a hundred thousand pounds, you know,” he remarked mildly.

“Oh,” said Walter, considerably startled, “I see.” He thought a moment, and then said: “You mean your firm owes it to his firm for yarn?”

Tasker nodded. He seemed to have lost interest in the subject, and sat looking calmly ahead of him, an easy smile on his lips, inhaling smoke and expelling it from his large nostrils slowly and with great apparent enjoyment.

Walter was really puzzled and at a loss—after his experiences of the evening, he was not in the best state of mind to study a financial proposition, even had its expounder not been intent to deceive—and wanted to ask how, if at all, this bankruptcy business concerned him, and why Tasker had told him of it; but judging such a question too callous, murmured instead:

“I appreciate your telling me about it very much, I'm sure.”

“You're one of the main shareholders,” observed Tasker at this, his smile a little more pronounced. “After myself and
my wife, you're the person chiefly concerned. If Leonard Tasker 1925 has to go bankrupt, your shares won't be worth the paper they're written on.”

“Good God!” cried Walter, blenching.

“And of course Heights would come in with Victory Mills—it's the firm's property,” continued Tasker smoothly. “It'll be sold up, I expect, for what the machinery will fetch.”

Walter, white as his own shirt-front, stared at him in horror. “You mean,” he cried hoarsely, “that I shan't have either a job, or a penny to my name?”

“That's about it, I'm afraid,” confirmed Tasker, nodding.

“But, good God! It's too awful—it's impossible!” cried Walter wildly. Elaine! All his wealth, his new importance, stripped away! Elaine! To return to the second-rate unimportant unnecessary young man he once had been; the young man whose hair was not well cut, whose shirts were the wrong colour. Elaine! No money! No car! No income coming in! No dividends! No Tasker shares!

“But, Mr. Tasker,” he cried suddenly, turning a terrible face of anguish to his former partner: “My father's War Loan!”

“I know,” said Tasker sympathetically. “I'm very sorry for you, Walter. You know,” he went on, after a pause, eyeing Walter shrewdly: “Henry Clay Crosland's so damned relentless. You wouldn't think it to look at him, would you?”

“No, indeed you wouldn't,” said Walter. “He always seems so kind. Couldn't you persuade him, tell him, ask him, to put it off, to give you time, or something?”

Tasker shook his head regretfully. “I'm afraid I've tried all that already,” he said soberly. “The trouble's been going on for some time now, but I didn't want to worry you with it till there was no hope.”

The words “no hope” struck like a knell on poor Walter's ear. “Oh, but it isn't fair!” he exclaimed in anguish: “The Croslands are so rich—they can easily afford to wait.”