A Modern Tragedy (22 page)

“I should have thought so,” agreed Tasker judicially. “It isn't as if it were my fault,” he went on in a more energetic tone: “I don't want to boast, but I do think I know my business as well as any man in the West Riding.”

“You do—you do,” said Walter with conviction. “Better.”

“It's not my fault there's been a slump,” went on Tasker with real resentment.

“No, no! Of course not,” agreed the wretched Walter.

“All we want is a little more capital, just to tide us over for a year or two; and then we should make profits again all right. I've made plenty in my time,” said Tasker with some pride.

This reference to profits reminded Walter of the satisfactory position of Heights in this respect, and he exclaimed: “Oh, what a pity I sold out of Heights Mill!”

Tasker gave him a curious look; then went on quickly: “That's just it, you see—it's really a shame to knock up a little business like Heights, that'll be a regular gold mine in a few years, just for the sake of a few thousand pounds. All we want is a little more capital, to see us through till the tide turns, and then we should be as right as rain, and Henry Clay Crosland would get every penny of his money. As it is, he'll be lucky if he gets ten per cent.” Walter, looking at him in horror, received the explanation: “There's no value in machinery and buildings these days.”

“It's too terrible; it's too awful for words!” said poor Walter, his young face white and haggard, his whole body quivering with pain. “I shan't have a penny, and I've lost my father's little investments. I shan't have a job. What will they do at home?” he wailed, thinking of Dyson, now without any income from the Lumbs, his mother, Rosamond—there was Rosamond's salary, of course; but his father's illness cost so much! And then Elaine! She was lost to him, hopelessly, eternally lost to him—Walter was under no illusions on that score. Oh, Elaine! Oh, my love, my sweet! Elaine!

“You might ask Arnold Lumb to take you back, perhaps,” suggested Tasker, watching him.

Walter jumped as if he had been struck. “Oh,
no!
” he cried. “You know I can't. I
can't.”

“Well, it would certainly be rather humiliating,” agreed Tasker, satisfied with the effect of his sneer. “Besides, from what I hear the Lumbs are pretty well near liquidation themselves.”

Walter gave a shuddering sigh. “I wish to God I'd never left them,” he muttered.

“I should be hurt if you meant that, Walter,” said Tasker kindly. “But you don't, you know.”

Walter, thinking of the bright, glittering months which had flown over his head since he had been associated with Tasker—months which in retrospect looked so joyous, so successful—thinking, too, of Elaine, felt that he really could not regret his desertion of the Lumbs. “No, I don't,” he said, despairingly honest. “I'm afraid I'm being very selfish altogether,” he went on miserably, turning his white strained face apologetically towards Tasker. “But it's been such a shock, you know.”

“It's perfectly natural,” said Tasker reasonably, “and nobody could accuse you of selfishness, Walter.”

Although this vague commendation had no bearing whatever on the situation in hand, Walter felt solaced.

“Isn't there something we can do?” he enquired, making an effort to gather his courage together. “Can't I go and see Mr. Crosland and put things before him? He always seems to like me.”

“It's no use your going
now,”
said Tasker, “but you might be of great use in that quarter later on.”

“How? How?” demanded Walter eagerly. “Do you mean there's something we can do?”

“Well, of course! Did you think I was going to sit down
and cry with my finger in my eye?” sneered Tasker, with some return of his usual roughness. “All we want is a little more capital, as I keep telling you.”

At this, the third repetition of the magic phrase, Walter's understanding received it. “But where should we get any capital?” he asked dubiously.

“We could float Leonard Tasker Limited 1929 as a new company,” explained Tasker—with an easy air, but glancing watchfully at the young man. “I'm sure the public have confidence in me and would subscribe. Then we can pay Henry Clay Crosland in the new shares, and he'll draw interest on them and be all right. And your shares and mine in the old company will be—well, we shall have some of the new ones allotted, you see. And your service agreement will hold-I'll see to that.”

“Yes—yes!” agreed Walter, his face radiant with hope. “I see, I see. But why don't you do it at once? Why did you give me such a fright just now?”

Tasker, who had depressed Walter's spirits to their nadir in order to put him in a state of mind where he would agree to any proposition which promised escape, replied soberly, “Henry Clay Crosland will be the snag. He's very old-fashioned, you know, and not really suited to be a business man, and he mayn't think it right to appeal to the public, considering our liabilities.”

“But it would be all right, wouldn't it?” said Walter eagerly.

“Perfectly,” said Tasker, congratulating himself—the form in which Walter put this query told him that he had passed the danger point. “You know perfectly well, Walter, that nobody in the West Riding can make cloth, or sell it, better than I can.”

“That's absolutely true,” affirmed Walter.

“The minute there's any trade to be had, I shall have it,”
emphasised Tasker. “The investors in Tasker 1929 couldn't have a better place for their money.”

“No. But how did you come to be so behind with Croslands'?” ventured Walter. “That seems strange.”

“Oh, that was during that first fearful fall in prices,” said Tasker vaguely—he did not wish Walter to be too much aware that the debt had been incurred before the lad's association with him. “It was so unexpected; the best business men in the world couldn't have helped losing money. Everyone lost money then. Well, it's too late to say any more to-night,” he diverged skilfully. “We'd better get home.”

He rose, and walked towards the entrance; Walter perforce followed. “I can take it, then,” said Tasker formally, as they threaded their way through the deserted marbletopped tables, “that as one of the principal shareholders in the present firm, you're agreeable to the reconstruction?”

“Yes,” said Walter, nodding gravely, rather struck with this new view of himself as an important shareholder.

“Good!” said Tasker. “Then I shall rely on you to help me to persuade Henry Clay Crosland and the other creditors. There'll have to be a meeting called—we may as well get the thing through as soon as we can. Your friendship with the Croslands may be of the greatest possible use. I was delighted when I heard you were going there to-night. Why didn't you tell me before you knew them so well?”

Walter blushed and held down his head. As he was just then being helped into his coat by an attendant, he hoped his confusion would pass unnoticed; but few things escaped Tasker's keen light eyes. He observed the young man's embarrassment, wondered as to its cause, suspected some girl or other, and stowed the matter away in his mind for future reference.

The pair made their way round the side of the hotel to the covered station entrance where their cars were parked. Walter
was now so used to tipping park attendants and extricating his car from a diagonal file that he had forgotten these actions were ever unknown to him, and performed them with complete assurance. Tasker, however, marked his worldly progress, and was amused and pleased. As he had arrived earlier, his own car was higher up the line, and he saw Walter depart before proceeding to it.

“Well, good-night, Walter,” he said in his kindest tone, leaning on the open window by the driver's seat. “I'll keep you informed of what goes on. Keep everything full speed ahead at Heights; it's important it should be showing good results. But you needn't worry about the other affair; I shan't let you down.” Suddenly and surprisingly he offered his hand. Walter, moved, shook it heartily, then drove away.

Tasker moved off to his own car. His chauffeur, descending, offered him the driver's seat, but Tasker, with a wave of his hand, rejected it.

“No! You drive,” he said in a tone of disgust. “I'm too tired.”

And, indeed, his head and his powerful body were bathed in sweat. The evening's interview, which he had visualised nearly a year ago as an integral part of his far-reaching scheme to pull his affairs out of the fire, had been hard work.

“You have to say everything three times to that boy before he takes it in,” mused Tasker, grumbling, “and once or twice it was touch and go.” Luckily Walter had never thought of accusing Tasker of mismanagement, of letting him down. What simplicity! Tasker liked him for it, but still, it was a pity he wasn't a little bit sharper. “Phew!” he thought: “I wish that creditors' meeting was over.”

But he smiled, for he was confident of his ability to twist that meeting to his will. Heights. His own textile skill, and Walter's, which had turned out greater even than he had
hoped—it had been a lucky chance, his meeting with that boy. The lad's honest look, his genuine belief in Tasker's powers. Henry Clay Crosland, a little deaf and rather superior in manner, so that Tasker's other creditors (who were not of the same standing, financial or social) could be made to feel flattered or annoyed by his presence, as best suited the turn of the game. Oh yes, thought Tasker with a grin, he should manage that meeting all right; he was glad he had decided to bring things to a head by withholding his cheque in settlement of the Crosland monthly account, after paying for several months correctly, last Friday.

The period which now elapsed, between Tasker's revelations and the creditors' meeting, was one of torment to Walter. Not only had he to bear the suspense and worry of the financial catastrophe which threatened himself and those dependent on him; he was left in a particularly cruel position as regarded Elaine.

It would have been natural, after the incident in the theatre—materially so slight, psychologically so inevitable and important, because it revealed to the pair their special interest in each other—for Walter to have pressed his suit, shown Elaine with increasing candour of action, and finally of word, that he loved her and sought her for his wife. But though the personable young manager of Heights, with a few thousand snugly invested, might in 1929 by some stretch of sympathy be regarded as a suitable candidate for the hand of Henry Clay Crosland's grand-daughter, Walter Haigh, penniless and jobless, with no family to vouch for him and the stigma of intimate connection with a bankruptcy upon him, could not possibly aspire to it. Especially was this the case when the bankruptcy in question involved Henry Clay Crosland in a very serious loss—a loss, indeed, which for any other firm, and perhaps even for his, might be considered crippling.

It added to Walter's discomfort that Mr. Crosland obviously did not yet realise Walter's connection with Tasker, which indeed had never been generally bruited; Walter felt that he ought to tell this, but hesitated to broach a matter so serious without Tasker's express instructions.

All this being constantly and harassingly present in Walter's mind, he decided a hundred times a day that unless Tasker's bankruptcy could be averted, Elaine was lost to him, probably for ever, and certainly for a considerable time, and that meanwhile he had a scruple about accepting invitations to Clay Hall till the affair should be settled. Yet at this crisis of his fortunes he longed above everything for his love's sympathy and support. He longed to pour out the whole tale to her; to hear her say that she respected his delicate scruples about her grandfather, and admired his honourable conduct towards herself. The result of these complex and divergent stresses was to make Walter's conduct towards Elaine forceful but contradictory. At one moment he would be cold, distant, repressive in look and word to her; the next he fixed upon her an anguished imploring gaze of love, and seemed to wish to confide something of vital importance to her, which however he never expressed.

At all times during this period of suspense he was so deeply occupied with his inward difficulties that he was unconscious of small details of modes and manners to which he had previously paid rather too much attention, and as also his anxieties gave him a stern and haggard look, he seemed much more of a man, a person of much more character, than Elaine had hitherto been inclined to believe him. On her side, she suffered a profound and lasting humiliation from his neglect of her after the definite overture of the theatre; a humiliation of the kind to which her nature was most prone, and from which it most suffered. “As though a touch of the hand mattered!” she exclaimed angrily to herself, many
times a day; nowadays embraces much more intimate counted for little; young Anstey, for instance, had thrown his arms about her a score of times, it meant nothing either to her or, she thought, to him. But unfortunately, though she denied it with increasing vehemence, it had meant something to her when Walter touched her hand. She had been prepared to love him a little, perhaps even a great deal. And then he withdrew, no longer wanted her; he seemed about to taste her sweets and then contemptuously passed them by. It was intolerable, it was suffocating; Elaine writhed in anguish at this confirming of her own notion of her unworthiness; she hated Walter for daring to despise her. Stupid, clumsy, brutal boor, who knew not the admirable when it was offered to him! Her tongue was bitter when she thought thus; she lashed out at her unhappy lover unmercifully. But at other times she would suddenly remember the look of his eyes, fixed upon her in a dumb agony, imploring she knew not what. When she remembered that yearning gaze, she felt an impulse to rush to him, to say: “Walter!” in the most consoling, loving tone imaginable; to draw his head to her breast and caress his crisp hair. Sometimes the lovers' impulses coincided; Elaine felt bitter while Walter was renouncing her, or loving while he longed for her love; and then for a few moments the strain of their relations would relax, and each would feel that, after all, nothing very dreadful was happening. But more often they were at variance, so that each, in turn, had the sensation of unwanted love. And always Walter's anxious scruples pulled him back; Elaine glanced up and found his mind slipped away from her, and resented his defections with all the eternal fury—eternal because based on the fundamental self-preserving egoism of the individual without means of redress—of the woman scorned.