A Modern Tragedy (45 page)

Milner too had found work which restored his self-respect, though it brought him no material gain. The day after the election, when the newspapers revealed that the results announced on the previous night were only too true, he had gone to the address of the unemployed workers' movement and given in his name, and thereafter spent most of his time there. His ability was soon discovered; he was put on the local committee, became its secretary, was elected to sit on the district committee in Bradford. In these positions he helped to organise flag days for the unemployed, made Christmas collections, investigated cases of deep poverty, distributed money and food, kept accounts, wrote letters, sold “literature,” brought in new members.

His family did not view his new activities with favour. Mrs. Schofield made many caustic remarks about the amount of shoe-leather some folks wore out on other people's business, and Harry thought the movement not respectable enough for a foreman's brother.

“Don't you go with him, lass,” he often said to Nance, when Milner took his coat of an evening to go to the movement's rooms. (Not that the dog ever showed any inclination to go with Milner; she sat in front of Harry on the hearthrug, her hindquarters dragging, and gazed up at him un-winkingly with adoring eyes.) “You wouldn't like your company there, love—gaolbirds and firebrands, that's what they are mostly; with a fool or two like Milner thrown in.”

“They're unemployed men, same as you was once,” threw out Milner fierily.

Any allusion to Harry's period of unemployment never failed to touch the springs of his anger. “And whose fault was that, I wonder?” he usually said with a sarcastic air.

But nowadays Milner was not wounded by this unfair taunt;
he threw it aside and did not care, now that he had the movement to work for. It was a fundamental need of Milner's nature to serve a cause which fought oppression, and he was fiercely, feverishly happy whenever he was busy on the movement's affairs.

But Walter, who had neither a character nor a cause to uphold him, spent a wretched winter.

With both Heights and Valley to manage, and his share of the company's complex financial trickery to maintain, he was desperately busy. All day long he telephoned, interviewed, rushed about from place to place by car.

“You don't look at all well, love,” said Mrs. Haigh sorrowfully—since his father's death Walter had visited Moorside Place much more regularly. “You're working too hard. You've worked too hard ever since you went to Heights.”

“Oh, surely not, mother!” laughed Walter, not denying, however, that he felt far from well.

But as he drove away he remembered that three years ago he had made his work the excuse for his removal to Heights Cottage, and was amazed. Had he really thought himself busy then? He would give much now to return to the comparative calm of those early days, he thought. If only he could get some rest, he would feel better, lose this sensation of constant strain and harassment; hit it off better with Elaine. But though he now longed increasingly to rest, he found it increasingly impossible to do so. Elaine and he were both always talking about the necessity for Walter to have a rest in the country; so when he had a few hours free, on Saturday or Sunday, he usually took the car out for a long run somewhere. But as soon as he got there, as soon as he had looked for a few minutes at the red autumn leaves, or the icicles on a wintry frozen waterfall, or the prancing spring lambs and the primroses, or whatever else it was in the year's progress they had come out to see, restlessness descended on
him, he began to fidget with the wheel, and drove on. Nor was Elaine reluctant to do so; she was increasingly willing, nowadays, to avoid, in hurrying action, close companionship with her haggard, nervous, irritable, peevish husband.

The only person in whose company Walter felt any ease was Ralph. The boy, who had been at his public school for a year and a half, had in that time shot up in height and grown thinner; and now began simultaneously to wear spectacles and to take himself very seriously. In spite, or perhaps because, of this latter attitude, a delicious freshness, a candid goodness—both qualities which Ralph at this stage would have repudiated indignantly—looked out always from his serious, preoccupied young face; and Walter felt better when with him than at any other time. Walter and Elaine spent the Christmas of this year at Clay Hall; Ralph was of course at home for the holidays, and he and Walter took long masculine walks together, or, on suitable days, played solemn rounds of golf. Walter talked to Ralph often about the economic situation, explaining currencies, the gold standard, production and distribution, and why it was that the price of yarn (which was again plunging downwards after a tiny autumn rise) was the crux of every affair in the West Riding. He compared the course of trade to that of a wheel which had been spinning violently in the wrong direction; now the election and the National government, said Walter, had given the wheel an impetus in the right direction, but time would be needed before this force overcame the speed of the wheel, stopped it and set it going the right way. “The question in business is,” said Walter solemnly, “who can hold out till the slump is over and who can't. A great many perfectly honest, sound business men won't be able to hold out, they'll have to go bankrupt, and their affairs will appear in a terrible mess; whereas if they could just hold out six months longer, they would be perfectly solvent and all right.” To all
this Ralph listened gravely, and with complete trust; he believed implicitly every word that Walter uttered, and felt flattered by his confidence. At first he could not understand how the affairs of perfectly honest men could ever look in a really terrible mess, if they were
perfectly
honest and had
really
never done anything wrong; but Walter explained all that—or rather, he told the boy so many complicated tales of banks and shares and balance sheets (remarkably like his own affairs, but in one or two important particulars differently arranged) that Ralph became bewildered; and, ashamed to admit that he could not understand, gave up trying to follow and simply believed what Walter said. The relief of all this to Walter was immense; to be able to talk, even if in a rather veiled way, to a listener who was absolutely safe, who believed in him absolutely and admired him enormously, a listener, moreover, who was completely honest and candid and gave Walter credit for having exactly the same feelings of honesty and candour himself—oh, it was delightful! Once or twice he even told Ralph actual details of actual transactions, in confidence, as a secret; it took part of the burden off Walter's mind.

And that burden was becoming an almost unbearably heavy one. The slump did not lighten, or lightened so imperceptibly as to affect the position of Tasker, Haigh and Co. very little; and even that position could now only be main. tained by an incessant and ever more falsifying re-arrangements of assets. The two men became increasingly entangled with each other in this feverish game. Shares, deeds, personal guarantees, agreements, were always being bandied about between them and the many banks through which Tasker operated; it became difficult to say at any given moment what belonged to one man as distinct from the other, and almost impossible to distinguish their private affairs from their company's. In the course of this complicated juggling the
deeds of Valley Mill, which, formerly the Lumbs' property, had passed to the bank and thence to Messrs. Tasker Haigh, came into Walter's possession—or rather, they were deposited at a bank as security in his name; if he could ever raise the amount they represented the building would be his. He showed such tenacity in clinging to these deeds during the operations which followed that Tasker was annoyed, and said so in his customary brutal way; whereupon Walter, colouring, mumbled that he wanted to settle them on Elaine. “You advised me yourself to settle something on her,” he concluded on a peevish note.

Tasker looked at him in surprise. “Haven't you anything settled on her but those?” he said. Walter thought sadly of Clough End, the payments on the purchase of which were not yet complete, and shook his head. “Oh well, keep them then by all means. But what have you been about, Walter?” went on Tasker reproachfully: “You ought to have managed better than that. I settled enough to keep us in comfort on
my
wife, long ago.”

“We can't all be as clever as you,” snapped Walter.

“If you'd try, it would be something,” riposted Tasker.

He promptly produced, however, a scheme by which the deeds could be released from the bank in question, just long enough for the building to be transferred to Elaine; and abstained later from further jugglings with the Valley Mill deeds for the schemes of Tasker, Haigh and Co.

In the course of this negotiation Elaine's signature was required, to signify her consent to the bank's holding the deeds as guarantee. When Walter offered her the papers, with a brief explanation, Elaine took them with a dubious air, and to Walter's annoyance read them all carefully through.

“Really, Elaine!” he said irritably. “You don't show much trust in me.”

Elaine, angry at being thus accused of a calculating spirit,
more angry because she feared she had really shown herself calculating, and most angry of all with Walter because his manner of presenting the papers had caused her genuine uneasiness, said bitterly:

“You don't inspire much trust in me now, Walter.”

“Why? In God's name, why?” cried the wretched Walter.

“I don't know,” said Elaine, her lovely mouth quivering: “You just don't.”

“I've done nothing to deserve that from you, Elaine,” protested Walter angrily, aggrieved. “I was trying to give you something.”

“I don't want you to give me anything,” said Elaine, exasperated. “I have plenty of money of my own in the Crosland Spinning Company, and grandfather will leave me more. If only you'd be your old self, Walter, and not bother so absurdly about money!”

Walter, almost distracted, flung himself from the room.

As the winter passed into spring, and the slump did not appreciably diminish, Walter was horrified to observe that Tasker himself seemed worried about their situation. The older man looked harassed; his face was much leaner, sallower, than of old; his blue eyes were never still, but darted from side to side.

“Isn't it time we were getting ready for our annual meeting?” said Walter uneasily to him one wild spring day.

“It's time all right,” replied Tasker grimly. “But I'm holding it off a bit. Our reserves are looking pretty sick, you know; I don't know how on earth we're going to manage the balance sheet this year. I work at it every night, but I don't see my way clear yet.”

Walter, frightened, said no more, because he wished to know no more. April passed, May came in; the balance sheet was not prepared, nor the annual meeting summoned. Then towards the end of the month Henry Clay Crosland was
advised by a specialist whom he had visited in connection with his increasing deafness to have a slight operation on his ear. When Walter mentioned this to Tasker, he was horrified to see his co-director's face brighten.

“We'll have the Board meeting to pass the balance sheet while he's in bed,” said Tasker gleefully, “and the annual meeting too, if we can. It'll work out much more easily with him away.”

Walter, though shocked, perforce consented; and the notice of the annual meeting of Messrs. Tasker, Haigh and Company, with the balance sheet attached, was posted to the shareholders on the morning after Henry Clay Crosland's operation.

A FEW MORNINGS later, while Arnold was in his employer's room talking over the day's work: “I'd no idea that Valley Mill stood you in for so much, Lumb,” said Mr. Stein in a sympathetic tone.

“It wouldn't seem much to you, I daresay, Mr. Stein,” said Arnold mildly.

“Oh, I assure you,” said Mr. Stein, making a polite little gesture of deprecation. “I had no idea till I saw the Tasker Haigh balance sheet this morning.” He opened one of the stiff printed sheets, which lay on his desk, and pointed to a figure on the expenditure side.

Arnold preferred not to be reminded of Valley Mill nowadays—bygones were bygones, and it was useless to upset oneself about them; but he valued his employer's friendly tone too much to disregard it, and accordingly leant over and examined the entry indicated.

“But it's impossible!” cried Arnold, crimson. He straightened up, in his agitation taking the sheet from Mr. Stein's hands without a word of apology, and held it in a better focus for his eyes—he had lately been compelled to wear glasses and was not yet thoroughly accustomed to them. “It's impossible! Good heavens! It's not worth a quarter of that! What are the valuers about?”

Mr. Stein looked at him with interest. “I see there's an item for re-conditioning,” he suggested.

“Re-conditioning!” exploded Arnold. “No re-conditioning was necessary. The place hadn't been unoccupied more than a month. Besides, even if they fitted the whole place out
afresh, they couldn't make it come up to that sum.” He went on in the same strain, enumerating details of machines and equipment in a manner which revealed his expert knowledge of Valley Mill and—though Mr. Stein was not deeply familiar with the processes which created the cloth he sold—was completely convincing to his employer. “There must be a mistake in the figures,” concluded Arnold, and began to add up the column in the expectation of discovering that the error was a mere matter of printing. It was not so, however. “But it's extraordinary!” he exclaimed. “Did the bank really make Tasker and Haigh pay as much as that for the business? If so, they've been done! If the bank thought their first debenture was worth anything like that,” he went on, his anger beginning to mount at the possibility of trickery: “they needn't have made me go into liquidation for a paltry eight thousand. It's extraordinary!” he repeated, fixing a choleric eye on his employer. “Upon my word I can't understand it!”