A Modern Tragedy (24 page)

He timidly offered Mr. Crosland a cigarette—which Tasker, in a sideways glance from beneath his bushy eyebrows, was
pleased to observe accepted—and sat down meekly at a seat which he hoped was unimportant, midway between Tasker and Crosland, who occupied opposite ends of the long table.

Walter was surprised, and Henry Clay Crosland dissatisfied, by the company in which they found themselves. Among the men present was Dollam, the former owner of Heights; this Walter found distinctly odd. He knew few of the other men, but put this down to his own inexperience; Henry Clay Crosland, on the other hand, who knew most of them by name, had no desire whatever to know them in person, and felt a steady anger against himself for having allowed the firm of Crosland to become mixed up with such a collection of new, shaky and under-capitalised firms. “Just the sort of people one would expect Tasker to have dealings with,” he thought with bitterness. “They've no reserves and enormous overdrafts, every man-jack of them. No doubt many of his customers are the same, and that's why he's in this difficulty.”

The proceedings began with a dry statement from Tasker to the effect that this informal meeting had been called to discuss the financial position of Leonard Tasker 1925 Limited, and to see what steps could be taken to satisfy that firm's creditors.

Everybody but Henry Clay Crosland immediately began to speak at once, to make claims, and to explain what was owed to them. The words “informal meeting” were reiterated so often that they began to make Walter feel quite sick; he imagined that they were repeated so that these proceedings might be disowned later if necessary.

Walter could not take his eyes from Tasker, who seemed to him like a bear attacked by numerous dogs. The young man's neck muscles ached from the strain of keeping his head motionless so long in one position, and he was drenched in sweat.

The tone of the meeting was decidedly unfavourable to
Tasker; accusations were freely brought against him that his assets were exhausted and he ought to have gone bankrupt long ago; voices were raised in anger; men threw out, hotly, remarks so insulting that Walter simply had never imagined them possible, while the sums mentioned seemed to him so huge as to be terrifying.

Through all this Tasker sat unmoved, lounging in his chair with a careless smile on his lips, his eyes fixed on a pencil which he slowly and casually tapped on the table. Walter could not but strongly admire his control, and in a burst of loyalty he cried out suddenly in his clear young voice:

“You talk as if the slump were Mr. Tasker's fault!”

The men fell silent, looking at him with curiosity and amusement, and one observed in a patronising tone:

“I don't quite know what your interest here is, Mr.—er——?”

“Mr. Walter Haigh, who is son to Mr. Dyson Haigh, is one of the largest shareholders in Messrs. Tasker, and the manager of one of the firm's properties,” said Tasker swiftly. “A very able manager I think you'll agree, gentlemen, when you see the figures for the last three months.”

Walter blushed with pleasure, and the others, looking at him with more consideration, sized him up rapidly as honest and able, and thought the better of Tasker for employing him.

Henry Clay Crosland, who was listening with one hand to his ear, sighed deeply.

The meeting had now been going on for nearly two hours, and the first virulence of attack was exhausted.

“Well, look here, Tasker,” said one of the creditors wearily: “It's no use going on like this any more. We've all said what we think. Now what's your side? Have you any alternative to liquidation? If you have, now's the time to put it forward.”

“I should first like to hear what Mr. Crosland has to say,” said Tasker, looking down the table into Henry Clay Crosland's eyes. “He's the principal creditor.”

Mr. Crosland, sighing, observed in his quiet sad tones: “I regret the necessity greatly, but I see no other alternative but to apply for a receiving order.”

“If you do that, Mr. Crosland,” said Tasker with sudden emphasis, “you won't get ten per cent. None of you will,” he continued, glaring round the table.

Henry Clay Crosland blenched, and from the others came outcries of protest.

“Well, you won't,” said Tasker roughly. He now sat erect, his blue eyes gleaming. With a tingle of his nerves Walter realised that he was at last coming into action.

“You know perfectly well the prices machinery and buildings are going at to-day. If you close me down, you won't get ten per cent, and you won't get that for months, perhaps years. And even when you do get it, when all's said and done, your best customer's gone.”

“There's no need to close Messrs. Tasker down, as you put it,” contended Henry Clay Crosland in his tired voice. “We can continue to run it, but for the benefit of the creditors.”

“And do you imagine that any man in the West Riding can run my business better than I can?” demanded Tasker with flashing eyes. “If you do, you're mistaken.”

“I wasn't suggesting that any other man should run it, Mr. Tasker,” said Henry Clay Crosland courteously. “I imagined you still there, acting as manager, on our behalf.”

“You won't catch me doing that,” muttered Tasker defiantly.

Mr. Crosland did not hear this. He looked about the table to see if he could gather the purport of the remark from his associates' faces, and seeing there doubt and hesitation,
imagined that Tasker had produced some cogent argument against the course he proposed.

“Nobody is less anxious than I am to force liquidation on any man,” said Henry Clay Crosland gravely. “And the prospect of receiving a mere ten per cent of what is justly owed me, fills me with dismay. We have all suffered from the unhappy depression of our industry, gentlemen,” he continued in his stately, Victorian, rather prosy and public-meeting style, looking about him: “And we know how undeserved some of the resulting bankruptcies have been. Indeed, one may almost say that no stigma attaches to the textile bankrupt to-day. But the facts of this position must be faced. Even laying the previous liability on one side—which naturally I am by no means prepared to do—I cannot continue to supply yarn to Messrs. Tasker without reasonable expectation of being paid for it, and I imagine that every other spinner in the West Riding will take the same view. No firm can continue to pay for wool and labour, without receiving an adequate return or security for such return, indefinitely. A firm with smaller reserves than the Crosland Spinning Company would, I submit, have taken that view earlier. Therefore, Messrs. Tasker, who have, as I understand, exhausted the limit of overdraft set by their bankers, can no longer continue to manufacture. Bankruptcy is inevitable, and in my opinion, the petition should have been filed much earlier.”

His clear exposition over, Mr. Crosland ceased to speak, and sat back in his chair. Around the table there was a depressed silence; Walter, who had listened to him with the utmost respect and admiration, now turned quickly back to Tasker, and fixed him with an imploring gaze. “Do begin!” his eyes begged; Tasker smiled slightly in reply, and laying down his pencil, opened his campaign.

“May I first just thank Mr. Crosland,” he said in a quiet
respectful tone, “for his admirable explanation of the position? It is a great help to us all, I feel sure, to have the whole thing put before us in such a clear and concise way. Mr. Crosland has referred to the unhappy depression from which the textile industry is now suffering. In his position as head of one of the largest firms of spinners in the West Riding, nobody has better opportunities of observing it than he. This depression has gone on a long time now, and there are signs everywhere that it is coming to an end. Oh, not to-day or to-morrow,” he conceded quickly, seeing signs of disagreement on some of the faces about him, “but soon. Now as soon as the depression is over, Messrs. Tasker will begin to make money. The firm has made money in the past, and will do so again. I don't want to boast, gentlemen, but I think most of you know my abilities. I know how to make cloth, and what is more important nowadays, I know how to sell it. I do things on a large scale, and as soon as there's any trade to have I shall have it. I have customers all over the world now. If each of them increased his orders by ten yards of cloth only, Victory Mills, and the subsidiary businesses which form part of Messrs. Tasker, would be working overtime for months. The ordinary shares in this concern have often paid in the past a dividend of fifteen, and sometimes as much as twenty-two per cent; and they'll do it again as soon as there's a general trade revival. Would it not seem better, then, to try to hang on through the remainder of this period of depression in the confidence that, as soon as it is over, the firm will make money hand over foot, and every creditor will be paid in full? Instead of stopping me now, and only getting ten per cent?”

“But how can you continue, Mr. Tasker?” said Henry Clay Crosland irritably—he had been listening with the greatest attention, bending forward and holding his hand to his ear. “Your spinner and your coal-merchant, and the rest, can't
continue to supply you with commodities on credit for ever—they have their own bills to pay, their wages to find.”

“We shall have to secure a little more capital, that's all,” replied Tasker negligently, as if the securing of capital by a firm which owed several hundred thousand pounds was in 1929 a perfectly simple proposition.

“And from whom are you proposing to secure it?” demanded Mr. Crosland with contempt.

“From the public,” said Tasker boldly.

There was a chorus of protest and enquiry from round the table. “Float a new company, you mean?” “It can't be done!” They all looked expectantly at Tasker, who, with a gleam of triumph in his eyes, said cheerfully:

“You've said it, Mr. Dollam. Float a new company.”

“Impossible!” cried Henry Clay Crosland. “I won't be a party to it. Why, you've no assets, man. You've nothing to go to the public with!”

“I think I can show you you're mistaken there,” said Tasker.

“I won't be a party to it, sir!” repeated Henry Clay Crosland, his fine face flushed with indignation. “It would be altogether unprecedented.”

“We're not in the nineteenth century now,” said Tasker at this, in a low contemptuous tone. “What's the use of precedents when the conditions are so changed? We are fighting a life and death struggle, and you talk about precedents!”

He was heard, as he intended, by everyone except Mr. Crosland, and conveyed the impression that Henry Clay Crosland was old-fashioned, arrogant, supercilious and a ninny in business affairs.

“And,” continued Henry Clay Crosland sternly, “it would be wrong. Indeed, I might find a very harsh name for it, Mr. Tasker. I will be no party to such proceedings.” He pushed back his chair and got to his feet, staggering slightly.

“How can you say that till you know what Messrs. Tasker's
assets are?” said Dollam quickly, rising also, so that in effect he intercepted the old spinner's retreat. “That seems hardly fair, Mr. Crosland.”

“No, we ought to give the scheme full consideration before turning it down,” said one or two others, who were by no means anxious to receive only ten per cent of what Tasker owed them.

Tasker glanced quickly at Walter, who had been listening to all this with growing anguish. With a jerk of his head and a movement of the eyebrows Tasker seemed to encourage the young man to speak, and Walter, feeling that his whole future depended on his present powers of persuasion, said with decision:

“In my opinion it's only fair to hear Mr. Tasker's suggestion in full, gentlemen.”

They all, including Henry Clay Crosland, turned their eyes on him, and decided again that he looked honest, and that he couldn't be a fool or Tasker wouldn't employ him—he was Dyson Haigh's son, too.

Gathering confidence from their attention, Walter went on firmly: “Of course my stake isn't as large as some of yours, gentlemen, but it's quite considerable and it's all I have, and so it's important to me. And I'm more than ready to trust Mr. Tasker's judgment in this matter. I've been working for him for some time now, and I know his abilities.” He added from the anguish of his heart, without quite meaning to, his young face suddenly haggard: “I don't know what I shall do if Messrs. Tasker have to go bankrupt, I'm sure.”

“You can always blow your brains out,” suggested Tasker savagely. “I'll lend you a revolver.”

There were cries of “Shamel” at this, and Henry Clay Crosland said sternly: “That remark is unreasonable and quite uncalled-for, Mr. Tasker.”

“Is it?” said Tasker in a tone of despair. “No more unreasonable
than your action in declining to hear any proposals but your own, Mr. Crosland.”

Henry Clay Crosland hesitated, and a great many complex and conflicting ideas thronged his mind. There was the ninety-seven thousand pounds which Tasker owed him, which his firm could ill-afford to lose. There was Tasker's textile ability, which neither he, nor any other man in that room, really doubted. There was his own responsibility to all these other men, the recovery of whose money largely depended on him, who were now pressing him to consider a scheme for regaining it. There were all the work-people concerned. It went against the principles of this old Liberal, too, to decline to hear the other man's side; Tasker's thrust here had wounded him severely. Then again there was that nice lad, Walter Haigh, who if Tasker went bankrupt would be left ruined, embittered, and probably workless, with an ailing father and an elderly mother to support, and Tasker talking about revolvers in the background. All Mr. Crosland's nerves shrank at the thought of any scandal about suicide touching his name. If, on the contrary, the flotation scheme went through and proved successful, Walter might easily marry Elaine, and keep an affectionate and watchful eye on the proceedings of Ralph in the firm of Crosland, during those awkward years after Henry Clay Crosland's death when Ralph was still young and gullible. Henry Clay Crosland had seen, in the course of his long and wide experience, too many young men cheated out of their ancestral businesses after their father's early death, by unscrupulous “managers,” not to dread this danger for Ralph. There was such a gap of years between himself and Ralph; he could hardly hope that the boy would reach years of real discretion before he had to leave him. (Alas, alas, for Richard! One missed one's son at every turn.) Now, Ralph liked Walter. Or would it, on the other hand, be better to extricate Walter from Tasker's
schemes? Find him a place in the Crosland business? But then, if Elaine did not care for him after all, married somebody else equally suitable for the position of Ralph's business guardian? Well! It all depended, really, on what Tasker had to offer. Henry Clay Crosland was willing enough, he decided, to consider a sound flotation scheme; but if Tasker's assets did not represent a considerable amount above the present liability—and how could they? he would insist on the filing of a bankruptcy petition at once, and see afterwards what, if anything, could be done for Walter. All this flashed through his mind in a mere minute, and he said firmly: