A Modern Tragedy (51 page)

“You do believe I'm innocent, don't you, Elaine?” pressed Walter hoarsely.

“Of course I do,” said Elaine in a pettish tone. “It's not kind of you to doubt me, Walter.”

“I'm quite innocent,” repeated Walter.

Elaine felt that she already hated the word, hated to hear Walter so pitifully justifying himself.

In the months that followed, she heard what she hated, only too often. Walter was free, on bail, throughout the wretched summer; free to straighten his private affairs, if he could; free to arrange the lapse of Clough End to the Building Society and live at Clay Hall with the stricken Croslands; free to arrange his case with his solicitor and counsel; free to feel his social ostracism, his lack of work (all Tasker's enterprises had at once collapsed and Valley, Heights and Victory Mills were closed); free to protest his innocence
if he chose. And he did so choose. He gladly seized the opportunity to express the hatred for Tasker which seethed in his brain, and protested his innocence always and everywhere. He was a dupe, he said, a victim; he had been lead into devious ways without his knowledge and against his will; he was innocent—as innocent as Henry Clay Crosland. He protested his innocence over and over again to his lawyer and Tasker's, in the long hours of consultation while their case was being prepared; and Tasker did not contradict him, always admitting in his gruff but composed tones that yes, the scheme under consideration had been his idea; at the time he had thought it for the good of the company, however, and was able now to advance excellent reasons why he should have thought so. Ralph came home for his grandfather's funeral, and as it was so near the end of the term remained at Clay Hall; it was doubtful in any case whether there would be any money to pay his school fees next term, though Mr. Anstey put up a strong fight to separate Mr. Crosland's private affairs from the company's. To Ralph, too, then, all through the long summer holidays, Walter protested his innocence; he took the boy for long lonely walks, and talked to him all the time about his own freedom from guilt, though with him he took rather a different line. His head down, his eyes fixed, not seeing any of his surroundings, he stumbled along, talking, talking.

“I may have committed some technical errors, you know, Ralph,” he told the boy earnestly, “but I've never done anything deliberately wrong. The law's so full of red tape, you know, so many silly little regulations. It catches a man out when he really hasn't done anything wrong. In business you have to be bold, or you can't get on at all; and sometimes the law just trips you up in the middle of a forward stride, and brings you down. Hundreds of men are living in the West Riding to-day, rich and respected, who've done ten times
worse things than I'm accused of. You have to deceive people a bit for their own good in business sometimes; they're too cowardly to take a risk if they know it's there, so you have to keep it from them, and take it yourself. It's perfectly honest, really, only it goes against a few silly little legal regulations. It's almost impossible to carry on a business at all, if you keep absolutely strictly to every silly little bit of the law. In England ordinary people don't bother about every little detail of the law; we aren't like the Germans, who are such sticklers for everything, you know; I mean, look how people walk on the grass in parks, and bring brandy through the Customs! Well, there are lots of things just like that in business, and nobody bothers about them; and then when something goes wrong, of course they bring up all these little things and make it sound as though you're guilty of every crime in the calendar, when really you haven't done anything really wrong. That's what makes me so angry with Mr. Anstey; why on earth he should take it upon himself to come and tell your grandfather all sorts of preposterous things about me, I'm sure I don't know. Interfering old humbug! There wasn't the least need for your grandfather to commit suicide, Ralph; not the least.”

“Shall we turn down here?” suggested Ralph at this point, wincing.

“What? Oh, yes; I hadn't noticed where we were,” said Walter, looking up, startled. They made the turning in the direction of Clay Green; Walter's head went down again, and he began again to talk. “Where was I? Oh, yes. There wasn't the least need for Mr. Crosland to commit suicide, Ralph,” he repeated earnestly. “If only I could have had an half hour with him! I may have committed some technical errors, you see; but I've never done anything deliberately wrong….”

Ralph, pale and unhappy and rather shabby—he had
scruples, which Walter thought ridiculous, about buying new clothes till it was seen whether the Croslands had any money to buy them with—listened thoughtfully.

And all this Elaine heard echoes of, and despised increasingly. Walter, unlike his wife, had no scruples, it seemed, about appearing publicly as a martyr; he shirked his own share of the blame, whined about compulsion, begged for pity on the score of being misled. For such craven conduct Elaine had nothing but contempt. Once or twice she tried to hint to her husband that a stiffer pride would become him better, saying disdainfully: “If it's all Tasker's fault, as you say, why need you worry?” But Walter naturally read into these hints another meaning, and thought that they implied a doubt: “I swear to you, Elaine,” he said at once, white-faced and tragic, “that I'm as innocent as Mr. Crosland.”

“I'm not
doubting
your innocence, Walter!” cried the exasperated Elaine. “I do truly believe that it's not your fault that grandfather's dead and we are all ruined.” (Here the wretched Walter winced.) “But why can't you stand up to it like a man, and take your share?”

“I'm taking more than my share,” protested Walter. “It was all Tasker's fault. I myself am as innocent as your grandfather.”

Elaine sighed in exasperation and turned away, unable to understand why everything he said in his defence made scorn and hatred grow in her heart. In reality it was not her faith in his innocence, that wavered, but her faith in Walter; it really did not occur to her that her kind affectionate rather simple husband could be a deliberate swindler, but he seemed to her weak and contemptible, utterly unable to give her the strong support she craved, unworthy of her love.

As for Walter, everything Elaine said seemed to him to imply a doubt of his innocence, and because Elaine was the most precious thing on earth to him, he fought this doubt
with all the reassurances at his command. His phrase about being as innocent as Henry Clay Crosland made him feel sick every time he uttered it, but he measured her reaction to it by the degree of his own, and thought it must sound very sacred and convincing. The look in Elaine's lovely eyes—a look part scorn, part piteous appeal, part angry question—haunted him; he could not forget it, and was always mentally arguing and justifying before that brilliant glance. The only ease he had, all the long five months before the trial, came when he visited Moorside Place; for he knew his mother and Rosamond both believed him guilty. Their eyes held no question, no doubt, but only sad knowledge and resignation. “I didn't see how you could get so rich so soon, Walter love,” said his mother in her low tones to him, the first time he visited her after his arrest: “Without…” She never finished the sentence, but Walter knew its ending, and did not attempt to contradict her view. It was peace to be in her quiet company—Rosamond, who had her own resentments about her brother's freedom while Tasker was in custody, often left them alone—and to feel her all-forgiving love enfolding him. To leave her and return to Clay Hall was to awake from a narcotic to the pain it had been given to lull; Elaine's eyes greeted him, burning as Walter thought with accusation, and soon he was defending himself as usual, saying it was all Tasker's fault, swearing that he himself was as innocent as her grandfather. This phrase occurred with increasing frequency in his conversation, and each time it came it made husband and wife recoil, and widened the gap between them.

At last the slow months passed and the day set for the trial, which was to take place at the West Riding autumn assizes, arrived. Elaine insisted on being present at the trial, and had arranged to attend with her mother and Rosamond; she dreaded it unspeakably, for she was sure that Walter would not quit himself like a man, yet felt she owed so much in loyalty
to her husband. Walter on the other hand felt it would be an almost intolerable torment to him to see her in court while question after question extracted from witnesses the facts which proved his complicity in Tasker's guilt; but since she expected, on his word, to hear him triumphantly proved innocent, how, without shaking her belief in him, could he beg her not to go? Marian Tasker was not to be present, but that was hardly an argument Walter could use to a wife who believed him Tasker's dupe. It had been arranged that Walter should proceed to the court with his solicitor in one car, the three women in another; the husband and wife therefore had to part at Clay Hall, knowing that when they next saw each other, Walter would be in the dock. Both felt that it was a momentous parting; Walter strained his wife to him, pressed his lips to her cheek as though he could never drink enough of its lovely bloom; Elaine was melting into tenderness when he murmured in her ear:

“I'm innocent, darling, innocent as your grandfather!”

The phrase had become to Elaine an obscene mockery. She shuddered slightly in her husband's arms, and though she kissed him and wished him luck, her farewell was artificial and her kisses cold.

An hour later Elaine, her mother, and Rosamond, entered the building where the assizes were being held, together.

“The stage and the cinema have much to answer for,” thought Rosamond, as they walked along the echoing corridors, which were lined with tip-up red velvet seats, as though arranged as sitting-out places for one of the dances Walter and Elaine had loved. “Nowadays real events seem just like pre-arranged spectacles, and we expect them to be well rehearsed and staged.”

Although it was her own brother, and the man she loved, who were on trial, and the day was one of bitter humiliation and anguish to her, she could not quite disabuse her mind
of an agreeable sensation of excitement, as though she were present at some theatrical performance; her teeth chattered, and she felt an inclination to giggle; of these reactions she was ashamed. It was the more difficult for her to feel the reality of the occasion and the majesty of the law because the Tasker-Haigh case was a “notorious” one, exciting, on account of the many firms and large sums of money involved, immense interest throughout the West Riding; although they entered the building by a back entrance a large crowd of spectators was gathered there to see the personages of the drama arrive, three press photographers took pictures of Elaine as she mounted the steps, backing and dipping in the slightly ridiculous manner of their kind, and the high bright court—painted in blue and gold and decked in red baize, with the autumn sun glittering on the Royal Arms—was full of people. Elaine, in charmingly austere black with white at wrist and throat, a small fashionable hat and a short dark rich fur coat, looked, as usual, exquisitely lovely; and Rosamond admired her composure—she occasionally drew a sudden deep breath, and her eyes were almost unbearably brilliant; but she held herself erect and still, and looked ahead without seeing anything she wished not to see, with matchless dignity. The judge's scarlet and miniver, the wigs of the barristers crowding the court, the legal phraseology and antiquarian ceremonial, did nothing to remove from a mind naturally unsusceptible to pomp the impression of assisting at some histrionic representation; but Rosamond was reminded that all this was truth and not theatre in the terrible moment when the accused were brought in, from a staircase beneath the court, and placed at the bar. The dock was surrounded by spikes, as though the men on trial were dangerous animals; it was horrible. Walter looked, thought Rosamond in her grief, exactly what the word
accused
connotes in most people's minds; to her it seemed that guilt was written on every line of
his ghastly and despairing countenance. Tasker on the contrary looked spruce and jaunty; his blue eyes roved about the court, he made a slight cheerful signal to an old couple whom Rosamond saw sitting near by in the shelter of a pillar, and really looked as though he were enjoying the occasion. The two men had been charged, and other formalities observed, on the previous afternoon, so that it was not long before the counsel for the prosecution began his speech.

At first this was such an anguish to both Rosamond and Elaine that they held down their heads, suffering almost too intensely to hear; but it was not long before the sheer interest of his narrative so won upon them that they forgot their shame and listened spellbound. For there emerged from his narrative Tasker's infinite capacity for affairs. The shifts, the devices, the complex and subtle operations, the courage, the resource, the initiative, the ingenuity, the leadership, which he had employed to revive and maintain his sinking credit during the past four years, were made clear in all their astounding and far-reaching ramifications. It was revealed, for example, that he had raised money on the Heights business the very morning he bought it from Walter, negotiating the matter the instant the banks opened, to cover a cheque posted in part settlement of a spinning account the day before. The risks he had run, the daring and reckless coups he had brought off with triumphant assurance, had all the ring of romance. “What a man!” thought Rosamond, unable to withhold some measure of admiration; and it was evident that the spectators thought the same, for at some instance of the continued credulity of one of Tasker's dupes—it concerned the falsification of a minute book beneath the secretary's very nose—there was an irrepressible titter from all sides of the court. At this Tasker looked up and smiled, well pleased, his blue eyes flashing; but the judge rebuked the unseemly merriment caustically, and Rosamond remembered Henry Clay Crosland,
and blushed, ashamed. As the trial went on she was more and more struck out of her initial prejudice against the pomp of the judge and into admiration for his stern integrity and consummate ability; never having attended a court of law before, she was constantly surprised by his interventions in the handling of the case, and his exchanges with the various barristers concerned; and noted how some doubtful point, the existence of which she herself had perhaps not even suspected, was always elucidated by his action. Regarding his stern aloof expression, hearing his penetrating comment, Rosamond felt a repeated qualm of fear; with such a judge she felt there was no chance that Walter should escape punishment and, having learned his lesson, live a humble honest life, which was what she hoped for him. By comparison with the judge the jury seemed muddled and insignificant; the verdict was in their hands, she knew, but the moulding of it lay surely with the bench.