A Modern Tragedy (31 page)

Arnold on his side, embittered by the total lack of sympathy for his situation betrayed by men whom he had employed for years, exerted all his stubborn Yorkshire will to carry his plan through.

After a night of frightful anxiety, during which the men discussed the question from every angle with their wives—Milner was out interviewing the president of the local branch of the union on the strike-pay question, so he missed what Mrs. Schofield had to say on the subject—they awoke to the conviction that Arnold meant what he said, and employment at Messrs. Lumb's would no longer be open to them after Wednesday evening.

When they reached Valley Mill, they read the same sombre
conviction on the faces of their companions, and this strengthened their own.

As it was Tuesday, Arnold was perforce away for part of the day in Leeds, visiting his customers. The feeling against him grew and grew in his absence; and at noon several of the men decided suddenly to form a deputation to wait on old Mr. Lumb during the dinner hour. This was mostly supported by the older men, but some of the younger ones too snatched at anything which offered a hope of postponing the termination of their employment. Milner angrily declined to do anything so degrading as make a personal appeal to an employer, and harangued his co-workers vehemently to that effect, but feeling ran so high that they disregarded his protests and set off to Beech Lea. They were particularly earnest that Harry should go with them, he being old Isaiah's son, and Harry agreed not only to go, but to act as their spokesman. Milner was deeply wounded by this defection on his brother's part, and while the deputation was absent sat apart in a burning silence, unable to eat, revolving fiery and passionate arguments in his mind.

Beech Lea was a solid detached house at the end of a highly respectable crescent erected in the seventies; it stood on rising ground, and had originally been approached at the front by a flight of six or seven steep stone steps. But when Arnold returned from the war with a wound in his thigh, Mr. Lumb had the steps removed, and replaced them by a smooth asphalt slope. A copper beech, of fine size considering the West Riding climate, stood by the solid wooden gate and gave the house its name; to the right there was a stretch of lawn, not quite large enough for tennis, edged by flower beds and bushes, with a swing at the far end, now decrepit, but once highly favoured by Reetha. The back door was approached round the corner of the crescent by another solid wooden gate of double width, and another asphalt slope, not quite so steep,
which branched off to the garage. At present the paths needed to be re-asphalted, and the gates needed a coat of paint, while the flower-beds, in former years the pride of Mr. Lumb's heart, ablaze in the spring with yellow and red tulips, and in the summer with geraniums and calceolarias, were empty—there was no money to spare for such frivolities.

The men from Valley Mill, in their overalls and workday coats, paused dubiously by the front gate, but without exactly discussing the matter, passed on, entered by the back, and knocked at the kitchen door.

It was opened to them by Mrs. Lumb, white-haired, plump, pink-cheeked, looking rather flushed in a crumpled cretonne cooking apron. She had now no maids, and was preparing the midday meal herself. Her agreeable grey eyes widened in surprise and some dismay at the sight of the group of men; and on their part, they felt subdued and awkward, and anxious not to cause her trouble.

“We want to see Mester Lumb for a minute, Mrs. Lumb,” began Harry in a mild tone.

“Just to have a few words with him,” put in somebody apologetically.

Mrs. Lumb looked distressed. “I don't think you can,” she said doubtfully in her warm cosy tones. “He's been rather poorly lately.” She looked at them questioningly, and they looked back at her, rather at a loss what to do next.

“What did you want to see him for? Are you one of Isaiah Schofield's sons?” she went on to Harry, light apparently breaking in on her as to their identity.

“Yes, I am, Mrs. Lumb,” said Harry. “I'm Harry Schofield. We just wanted to have a few words with Mester Lumb about the cuts in our wages.” His voice rose abruptly as he uttered the last words; and the others, recalling their grievance, muttered fierce agreement and shuffled their feet. The result was an angry hum; Mrs. Lumb looked alarmed.

“Well, I don't know—I'll just see,” she temporised, moving away towards the inner parts of the house. She had severe rheumatism in one knee, and limped as she walked, so that she did not move very quickly; and before she reached the house door she was met by Mr. Lumb, who had heard the noise and come to investigate.

It was evident that he had sprung up out of a sleep; his grizzled hair was tumbled, his drooping moustache rough, his eyeglasses askew on his prominent nose; a black shawl with which his wife had draped his knees had caught its fringe in one of his waistcoat buttons, and trailed after him about his feet.

To Harry and the rest, who were accustomed to regard their employer as a large, portly, well-dressed, well-fed, self-assured sort of man who stamped about the mill rather explosively but with good effect, Mr. Lumb looked shrunken and obviously ailing—and, indeed, he had not moved far from his armchair by the hearth since the posting of the fatal notice. On the first morning after that event, Arnold had brought the car round to the front door as usual; but his father had not, as usual, emerged, a sturdy figure, with his neat bowler hat and his strong silver-mounted stick. Arnold returned to the house, and found Mr. Lumb still sitting in his chair, apparently very much engrossed in his newspaper.

Arnold's heart sank, but he forced himself to ask: “Are you coming, father?” in an ordinary cheerful tone.

Mr. Lumb, without raising his eyes from the
Yorkshire Post
, almost imperceptibly shook his head; and Arnold felt it would be cruel to press him further.

“What's the matter? What's all this about?” demanded Mr. Lumb now irascibly.

“We've come about them wage cuts,” said Harry firmly.

A look of piteous distress appeared on the old man's face.
“You must ask my son—he sees to everything now,” he said quickly, stumbling a little over some of his words.

An angry murmur arose at his reply.

“That isn't good enough, Mr. Lumb,” objected Harry hotly. “Some of us reckon you don't know what Mester Arnold's letting us in for.”

“I signed the notice,” said the old man weakly.

“Aye—but we reckon you don't know how them rates work out,” persisted Harry.

Mr. Lumb moistened his lips in an anguish of indecision as to what to reply, when there came an interruption. Reetha, arriving home from school for her midday meal, and finding the front-door locked—as it often was now that her grandparents were in alone—came round the side of the house to enter by the kitchen. Her brown healthy face was sulky and discontented, as usual nowadays; she swung her school hat in one hand, and had thrown her standard navy blue coat open, revealing her gym costume beneath. As soon as she saw the group of men standing by the kitchen door, her face cleared into a look of hearty anger. She sprang forward, and said in a loud clear tone:

“What are you doing here, annoying my grandfather? Go away at once!”

“Reetha, be quiet, and go into the dining-room,” quavered Mr. Lumb.

For answer, Reetha sprang up the yellow-stoned kitchen steps, and pulled the kitchen door to with a bang, thus shutting her grandparents in, and herself out, of the house.

She then turned hotly on the men. She knew all about the disputed cuts, for Arnold had unbosomed himself to her, in default of a wife to confide in, on Sunday afternoon while they were out for a walk together. Reetha, as was natural, espoused her father's cause hotly, and put all the disagreeable economies recently necessary in the Lumb family down to the
unrest and discontent of the lower classes—this being the view generally held by the pupils at her boarding-school. She felt herself now to be a kind of Joan of Arc facing fearful odds; and though her heart beat fast, she held her head high and faced the men she regarded as enemies with native courage.

“What have you come for? Why are you worrying my grandfather?” she demanded angrily, her cheeks hot, her hazel eyes bright with rage. “You spoil everything. You make everybody miserable.”

“Some on us think that's what your lot does to us,” said Harry with sombre resentment.

“My father's the best man in the world, and you make him wretched!” cried Reetha. “You're so
selfish
—I hate the lot of you!”

“It's mutual,” replied Harry drily.

But at this the men in the group turned away in disgust. “Oh, come on! What's use o' chiding wi' a child? It's waste o' breath,” they said impatiently, and trooped off down the garden path. Harry followed reluctantly, in resentful silence. As soon as the gate was safely shut behind them, he remarked bitterly:

“And that's t' sort we spend our lives working for!”

“Aye—well—we'd best be getting back,” said the others drearily.

They had a confused sense of mingled guilt and resentment. They felt that they perhaps ought not to have taken mill troubles to the Lumbs' private house, and yet thought the way they had been received, unfair—they had not had a chance to put their case at all, as they constantly reminded each other. Everybody was against them, they felt bitterly. They returned to Valley Mill with a very hang-dog air, and Milner did not try to conceal his triumph, nor refrain from saying that he had told them so.

This incident contributed perhaps more than anything
else to consolidate the Lumbs' employees, so that they held to their course in a kind of resigned and stubborn despair. They felt that Milner was right, that there was no help to be found anywhere in the employing class, and they must stick together and fight it out.

On his side Arnold, when he returned home that night and received from his mother—Mr. Lumb would not mention it, and Reetha was debarred by her code from singing her own deeds—an account of the incident, felt both resentful and sick at heart. Was he to have no peace anywhere? Was poor old Mr. Lumb to be harried to death in his own home? The situation was intolerable; he was thankful that the morrow would see its ending. He was, however, a just man according to his lights, a man who did his duty as he saw it to the last; accordingly on the Wednesday afternoon he caused to be typed and posted in the mill a farewell to his work-people.

We much regret that many of our staff, whose interests have been bound up with ours for over twenty years, are unwilling to accept full Union time rates which are essential for the continuance of the firm
.

We feel that in doing so they are acting against their own interests, but we should not like them to leave without thanking them for past work, and wishing them the best of luck elsewhere
.

p.p. W. H. LUMB and CO
.

W. Arnold Lumb
.

The men, though they jeered at Arnold's good wishes—“the hell of a lot of luck he's given us,” they said—nevertheless, in spite of themselves, approved the notice; they felt that Arnold was doing things decently and in order. When the time came for the union to re-open negotiations with him on their behalf (under Milner's guidance they still clung to
the “dispute” view of the case), this farewell could be quoted as an evidence of mutual good feeling before the break; and meanwhile, it would be something to soothe their wives with when they went home.

They approved, too, of their own notice in that night's
Hudley News
, a copy of an early edition of which was obtained and passed round the mill. The notice, which occupied an inch of an advertisement column on the front page, requested all scourers and finishers to keep away from the Valley area of Hudley during the differences between “a firm” and the members of their union. The wording (not Milner's) was, they felt, good-tempered, firm and dignified.

The buzzer sounded, the machinery stilled, and the men went home.

Mrs. Schofield greeted her sons sardonically, “Well, you've getten what you'd a mind to, so I suppose you're set up wi' it,” she said. “It isn't my idea o' t' right way to go on, two grown men idling about th' house, eating their heads off; but you know best, I suppose.”

“Oh, give over, mother,” urged Jessie in her good humoured tones. “Lads can't help theirsen. If it's a strike, it's a strike; they've got to do what union tells them.”

“Aye—if union tells 'em, they have,” agreed Mrs. Schofield. “But this isn't a union strike, seemingly, it's one our Milner's got up for hissen like.”

She cackled sarcastically, and gave a shrewd look at her youngest son.

Next morning, under Milner's leadership, the former Valley Mill employees picketed on strike pay in the road outside the mill, while within Arnold strove to teach his new employees their work.

OF THOSE on whom the trade dispute at Valley Mills brought affliction, Harry Schofield was the first to suffer.

The anomalous situation at Valley Mill caused a vast amount of official correspondence. The union twice addressed letters to Arnold Lumb, urging him to enter negotiations for the termination of the dispute, but Arnold replied firmly that there was no dispute, and referred to his previous letters to prove it. The men were thereupon advised by their union to make a claim for unemployment insurance benefit; their case was sent up by the local Employment Exchange authority to the Headquarters Insurance Officer, and thence down to the local Court of Referees.

All this procedure, which Milner learned from the union secretary, and explained at home, induced in Harry a feeling of thwarted impotence and inability to understand what was being done to him, which fretted his robust and confident temper greatly.

The Court of Referees adjudged that the Lumb's men, having refused work at full union rates of pay, were disqualified for benefit for the maximum period of six weeks. “They're all in a band, them better people,” said Harry, with angry resentment, when he heard this.