A Modern Tragedy (50 page)

“It is true that I want you to return chiefly for Walter's sake, Mr. Tasker; but partly for your own sake too. What you are doing is too vile, too abominable; it's a piece of cowardice I should never have expected of you.”

“Cowardice!” exclaimed Tasker.

“Well—you're running away, I believe?” said Rosamond.

“Don't say that sort of thing to me,” cried Tasker, his blue eyes flashing.

“You're running away like a beaten dog, with its tail between its heels,” said Rosamond contemptuously. “I had a different idea of you, but it seems I was wrong.”

“Look here,” said Tasker in a low tone of fury, his face congested: “I don't allow anybody to say that sort of thing to me, do you hear?”

“But everybody will say it!” cried Rosamond with a large condescending air, “What else do you expect? It's true!”

A tremendous blast now boomed out from the siren above their heads; prolonged, penetrating, persistent. “That's the last signal,” said Rosamond, panting a little.

She fixed her eyes on Tasker's, putting into her gaze everything of faith and courage she possessed. There was a long moment of awful suspense; then his glance fell before hers.

“Well, get along, for God's sake,” he urged irritably, snatching up his case and pushing her roughly out of the door, “or we shall both get carried off to South America.”

The decks were so crowded with passengers in the throes of farewell that it was difficult to force a passage, and Rosamond faltered and stumbled; Tasker seized her by the arm in a powerful grip, and steered her swiftly down the gangway to the quay. There they were met by the chauffeur, who, with a cigarette depending from his lip, was lounging with his foot on a chain, enjoying the spectacle of the boat's embarkation. After one mutual stare of incredulity, which in the chauffeur's case was mingled with a kind of horror, both men accepted the situation and fell into their customary attitudes towards each other; the chauffeur seized Tasker's case, and observing in a strictly professional tone: “The car's at the top of the slope, sir,” led them in the direction specified. Tasker put Rosamond in the back seat, and entered the front himself. “Go to the nearest post office,” he commanded: “I must send a telegram to the Ashworth police to say I'm coming—I may as well have the credit of giving myself up.”

In the process of finding a post office—where Rosamond also telegraphed reassuringly to her mother—and returning to their main road, they made by chance a slight unnecessary détour, from one angle of which the departing liner again became visible. She had now left the dock, and was swimming majestically up the Mersey in the wake of her tug; a crowd
still watched her from the quay to wave good-bye, and her decks were thronged. The chauffeur slowed the car, so that they might watch her departure, and Tasker made no objection. The ship described a magnificent sweep round another large steamer which lay in the middle of the river, and finding her head now turned towards the ocean, gave a prolonged triumphant blast from her siren in farewell, and suddenly began to move very rapidly. Her white sides glittered, her coloured flags waved; altogether she made a superb exhibition of wealth and speed and power; and Rosamond found it in her heart to regret the ship for Tasker—they suited each other, they were alike—and to rate his sacrifice in returning, highly.
“Say that I might have slipt past misery,”
she mused,
“By delicate dishonour and loosening ease…”

The chauffeur turned the car uphill, and drove it swiftly towards Yorkshire.

All three were silent. Rosamond, who had eaten nothing since early morning, and during the day had experienced some of the most violent emotions of her life, felt sick and faint; she trembled with fatigue as she lay back in her corner, and hoped that nothing more would happen to demand courage and initiative from her, for she would certainly not be able to provide them. At first she wondered greatly what was passing in Tasker's mind, as he sat there, silent and impassive, while the car ate up the miles between himself and prison; she perceived from the route they were taking that he intended to put her down in Hudley before proceeding to Ashworth, but he gave her no word of explanation. The car rose gradually and entered the passes of the Pennine Chain. The moors—for which Rosamond had a deep native passion—now swept all about them in massive interlocking curves. Even on this evening of high summer the landscape had a bleak, wild, grim, relentless aspect. The nearer slopes were sombre with huge rough stretches of bracken in its heavy
mid-season green, and patches of peat in tones of sepia; on the distant heights of rock and heather lay a dark cold bloom. The sky was pale, high, austere; a chill wind rattled the car windows menacingly. Altogether the scene was as little like the interior of the luxury liner as could well be imagined, and Rosamond felt profoundly in her element. It struck her that, had some well-disposed fairy asked her wish before to-day, she might easily have replied:
To cross the moors at dusk with Leonard Tasker,
for that would have given her the time and the place and the loved one all together; now she had just that, and she was wretched. The car topped the pass and began to descend; rough black stone walls now edged the lonely road; the moorland softened into rough pasture; they passed a couple of solid grey cottages, marked, by their line of windows in the second storey, as the dwellings of the handloom weavers of old; now a mill chimney rose out of the green valley below; the car with its load had entered the West Riding of Yorkshire. Rosamond's faculties of perception and feeling, worn out by the events of the day, ceased to work; she lay back, closed her eyes, and fell into a heavy doze.

She was awakened by Tasker's voice saying urgently: “You'll be all right here.” Looking out, she perceived that the car had halted in a remote suburb of Hudley, and that Tasker was standing impatiently by the open door. “I don't want to go through Hudley,” he was explaining: “I don't want to be caught, I want to reach Ashworth and give myself up. We can strike across the moors from here. You can take a bus.”

“Oh, certainly,” said Rosamond, with an ironic inflexion. She climbed out of the car; Tasker at once closed the door behind her and reentered the front seat. The chauffeur let in the clutch. “Good-bye,” faltered Rosamond, taking a few steps beside them.

“Good evening,” said Tasker in an indifferent tone, not
looking at her. He touched his hat carelessly, and the car wheeled swiftly to the left and disappeared.

Rosamond could not make up her mind whether she was too tired to be angry or too angry to be tired, and she hovered distressfully between these states until at last a bus came, and swept her away to Hudley. Then, in the physical relief of being seated and at ease, her mind cleared, and she knew that whatever Tasker did she would, not forgive—that implied a superiority which she did not feel—but love, him. She made her way to Moorside Place, let herself into the house quietly with her latchkey, and entered the dining-room.

Mrs. Haigh was there awaiting her; her face bore traces of tears, but she sat erect and composed, as indeed Rosamond, who knew her mother's character, had expected; she would be strong to succour her son in his trouble, to comfort him, to endure for him; in defensive action she might fail through timidity and lack of experience, but in protective love, never. Arnold was still with her; the pair sat on opposite sides of the hearth, in which burned a small fire. Mrs. Haigh was mending a table-cloth, Arnold smoking a pipe; the scene looked comfortable, domesticated, and boring.

Arnold was angry about Rosamond's journey. He thought it highly unsuitable for a woman to go tearing about the country chasing a man like that; and when he heard that she had commandeered Tasker's car to go in, and had actually returned with the villain himself, he did not attempt to conceal his vexation—which sprang, in part, from an unconscious jealousy. It was a preposterous thing to do; Rosamond ought not to have mixed herself up in the affair at all, he said; if she had told him what she was going to do he would never have allowed it; in any case her pursuit was quite unnecessary, for the police would certainly have caught Tasker, if not on this side of the Atlantic, then on the other.

“I thought it would look better if he returned voluntarily,” faltered Rosamond.

“The worse it looks for Tasker, the better for Walter,” replied Arnold crossly.

Rosamond sighed. She certainly did not share Arnold's view of her journey, but it is never agreeable to be scolded, and now that the excitements of the day, and Tasker's presence, were over, she had time to realise in full the misery of Walter's situation. A copy of that evening's
Hudley News
lay on the table, folded; opening it casually, her eye was shocked by glaring headlines which, though plentifully sprinkled with the protective “alleged,” held her brother up to the eyes of his native town as a criminal. It appeared too that Arnold had reached the Haighs' house a few minutes before the police officer who bore a message from Walter announcing his arrest; Arnold's purpose in going to Moorside Place, the breaking of the news gently to Mrs. Haigh, had thus been achieved, and he recounted this with pleasure. But to Rosamond it was less the forestalling of the police message, than the message itself, which now loomed large. A police message! A message from Walter in a cell! She thought of Walter in a cell, and her heart ached; she thought of Tasker in a cell, and felt sick with longing. Faint with fatigue, wretched for Walter, aware that her love for Tasker was stronger than ever and less likely than ever to achieve fruition, Rosamond longed to abandon herself to her misery and weep; but she would not give Arnold the satisfaction of seeing her in tears, and instead went about with a rather grim and sulky air, preparing herself a meal.

“She's wild and strange,” thought Arnold, watching her disapprovingly. “These teachers nowadays, really! She'd never get on with Reetha. I don't wonder Reetha doesn't like her.”

MEANWHILE Harry Schofield, the corners of his mouth dragged down, his forehead furrowed with anxiety, was saying for the twentieth time in a heartsick tone:

“I'm feared they'll close Valley and I shall be out. Aye! I'm feared they will.”

“Well, we shall manage somehow, I suppose,” said Jessie heavily. She remembered how quickly Harry had sunk into despair the last time he was unemployed, and in spite of herself felt fearful.

Mrs. Schofield rocked herself back and forth for some time in a menacing silence. At last she spoke.

“Aye—we shall be seeing you tek up wi' Milner's unemployed chaps soon, I daresay,” she said.

“Mother!” exclaimed Harry angrily, colouring.

THE AMOUNT of bail demanded for Tasker was so huge that nobody could be found willing to become his surety, and as his own recognisances were by no means acceptable alone, he remained in prison on remand; but the sum required for Walter was less exorbitant, and Mr. Anstey came to his rescue—not because there was any mutual increase of kindness between himself and Walter, indeed rather the reverse, for each thought the other guilty of Henry Clay Crosland's death; but Mr. Anstey was sole executor of Mr. Crosland's will, and Walter's help was very necessary in clearing up the estate.

So, on the second day after Henry Clay Crosland's death, Walter drove away from the police headquarters with Mr. Anstey, who accompanied him to Clay Hall. They were admitted by a scared-looking maid, who seemed unable to raise her eyes to Walter's, and put to wait in the drawing-room, where the blinds were drawn. Almost immediately Elaine came to them. In this first awful moment of meeting her, coming to her straight from a cell, with the taint, the very smell as it seemed, of prison upon him, seeing her thus, in a darkened room, dressed in black, her face chalk-white, her lovely eyes dry, red-rimmed and burning—in this first awful moment Walter felt so guilty before her that he would gladly have died to avoid meeting his wife's eyes. But there was no escape; he must look at her and speak to her; Mr. Anstey stood sneering (as Walter feverishly imagined) at his side; and of the various defensive suggestions which rose to his mind, he must make choice at once. It was all Tasker's fault, thought Walter as usual in a sudden bitter flood of
resentment; he himself was a victim, an innocent exploited victim; it was all Tasker's fault! So aloud he said hoarsely:

“I'm innocent, Elaine, I swear to you I'm as innocent as your grandfather.”

“I know you are, Walter,” replied Elaine steadily. “You have no need to tell me that.”

She stepped forward and kissed him. But immediately the hearts of husband and wife sank still further into wretchedness, for each felt in the other something false, something wrong.

In the first dreadful hours after Henry Clay Crosland's death, when the news came of Walter's arrest, and the Ansteys, hastily summoned, revealed the dreadful connection between the two events, Elaine had had to make a swift decision about her husband. Should she abandon him, as the cause of her grandfather's ruin and death, to scorn and obloquy? Cut herself off from him, admit him guilty, regret that she had ever known him? Appear as the martyred wife of a villain who had ruined her family? Or take her stand firmly by his side? It was partly love—or rather the grateful remembrance of times when their love had been an ecstasy to her—but mainly pride and the fear which is born of pride, which kept Elaine loyal to her husband. To be a martyr was agreeable only so long as one's own pity alone was involved; to be pitied by others would be intolerable, indeed it was what she had dreaded all her life. To go about the world in sackcloth and ashes, admit that she had made a mistake and chosen the wrong man, buy complaisance at the cost of loyalty, whine up and down about its being such a shame, become known as “poor Elaine Haigh”—no! That was not in Elaine's character at all. Far better to take her stand firmly by Walter's side, hold up her head and announce, with an air of surprised contempt for anyone who thought otherwise, her complete belief in her husband. Besides, she really believed in Walter's innocence. His essential innocence, that is; she was prepared to find that when things
began to go wrong, he had taken some mistaken or foolish step to right them which could be morally, but not legally, justified. She was prepared for this, prepared to reassure Walter and console him for the failure of measures undertaken in good faith; what she was not prepared for was the look of peevish shrinking, the timid resentment, on Walter's face. The moment she saw that look—which above all others she despised, for it was what she most dreaded to feel herself—her heart turned cold, and her faith in Walter dimmed. She fought the disloyal feeling down, spoke in a firm assured tone, and kissed him as a loving wife should, in the presence of Mr. Anstey; but a sort of doubt crept into the dark places of her heart and writhed there; her caress was acted and not real, and Walter felt it so. Her flesh crawled when she heard Walter compare himself to her grandfather, and when they were alone she could not give him the unquestioning look of loving trust he craved, but turned on him instead an anguished uncertain sidelong glance.