A Modern Tragedy (8 page)

“Right! I'll see to it first thing to-morrow morning,” said Tasker, making a note. He reflected that in the early days
of his marriage to Marian, he would have taken off his coat, got out his tool box, and put a new washer on the tap inside ten minutes. Now he would have to pay a plumber to do the job less efficiently than he could do it himself. Tasker detested the class from which he had sprung, regarding them as enemies who would drag him down to their level again, the level from which he had had to struggle so fiercely to escape, if they got a chance; he therefore had no sympathies with their aspirations, and employed non-union labour whenever he could. As he paced up and down his wife's room, jingling the keys in his pockets, waiting impatiently for her to conclude her account of her sufferings through the day which was just over, he wondered what Walter's views were on the subject of labour. Could he handle men at all? It might be rather important. “But I shall be behind him,” thought Tasker, enjoying, as usual, the feeling of his own power, his own sufficiency. “It'll be doing the boy a good turn, too,” he mused, elaborating certain details of his scheme; and laughed a little.

“WALTER!” shouted Arnold Lumb from the inner office. “Here a minute!”

“Now it's come!” thought Walter. He threw down the paper of figures he was checking, and with beating heart went in.

It was about ten o'clock on the day after his interview with Tasker, and the usual morning rush was on at Messrs. Lumb's. Both telephones rang constantly, and men on numerous and varied errands continually put their heads in at the door and demanded Mr. Arnold. Old Mr. Lumb was down in the mill explosively tracking an urgently wanted piece. Walter usually enjoyed this hour of bustle and excitement, but this morning he felt gloomy, morose, as though everything in the world was spoiled; his last night's misery was still with him, and the heavy, sunless, sultry day did nothing to relieve it. Moreover, he was both afraid of Arnold's anger about the damaged piece, and ashamed of his fear.

He found his employer standing at the wall desk, surrounded by masses of letters, papers, ledgers and snippets of cloth. Arnold looked harassed and slightly impatient, as often at this hour of the day, but not as yet seriously annoyed.

“Now then,” he began in a good-humoured tone, “I've got a minute or two now, if that confounded telephone doesn't start again, to hear how you got on yesterday. I see your father's not here again. Pity! Still, it can't be helped, I suppose. Who did you see yesterday, eh?”

Walter gloomily mentioned a few names.

“Aye—but how did you get on at Tasker's?” demanded Arnold. “Did you see that piece?”

“Yes. There's no doubt we damaged it,” muttered Walter, looking aside, almost choking with fear and shame. “There's grease stains all over the place.”

Arnold Lumb gave an impatient exclamation. “That doesn't mean it's ‘necessarily our fault,” he said crossly. “There are dozens of ways it might have happened—but what did Tasker say?”

But at this something in Walter revolted; he simply could not bring himself to tell the abominable tale.

“I wrote it all down last night on a piece of paper,” he objected in a sulky, childish tone. “And left it on your desk for you to see.”

“Now don't be silly, Walter,” said Arnold irritably, nevertheless ruffling the papers on the desk in search of the missing memorandum. “I haven't got time for it this morning. You can't have forgotten what Tasker said so soon. You didn't tell him you thought it was our fault, did you?”

“Yes,” said the wretched Walter.

“Damn it!” exclaimed Arnold in extreme disgust. “Well, you
have
made a mess of it, Walter. You'll have to learn to do better than that, you know. I ought to have gone myself. But I can't be everywhere at once, dash it all! I thought you'd have had more sense, I did really.”

Walter, a closed look of fear and anguish on his candid young face, wished the ground would open and swallow him up. For he knew the worst was yet to come; the price of piece 28641 had yet to be mentioned. His heart thudded like hammer strokes as he waited for the inevitable question. He saw it framing in Arnold's mind; he saw Arnold's lips opening to speak it. He gasped as words fell on his ears.

“And what,” began Arnold, “did—”

At this moment the cashier put his head in at the door, and said that Mr. Tasker of Victory Mills was on the telephone for Mr. Walter Haigh.

A terrific relief coursed all through Walter's body, relaxed the tension of his muscles, left him trembling. The world suddenly brightened, as though the sun had parted the clouds; without a word to Arnold Lumb he fled in an ecstasy of hope to the telephone. Surely, surely Tasker had rung up to say he repented of that abominable price. He could easily say that he found there had been a mistake, thought Walter, joyously framing Tasker's gracious sentence; and, in reply, Walter would laugh cordially, and say in a jolly, hearty tone: “I thought there must be some mistake, Mr. Tasker. I felt that all the time; yes, I was certain!” Everything would be all right, and Walter would begin the whole story again with Arnold Lumb; tell it in a different manner, frankly, heartily, with the emphasis all properly arranged to show that Walter had conducted the negotiation with great skill. He clutched the receiver in a hand which perspired with eagerness, and said anxiously: “Hullo?”

“I want young Mr. Haigh,” said Tasker's gruff voice severely at the other end. “Mr. Walter.”

“I'm speaking,” said Walter, with a thumping heart.

“Oh, is that you, Haigh?” said Tasker in a hearty, cordial, man-to-man tone. The change in his voice was really very flattering. “Well, look here—I want you to come with me to look at a piece that's got damaged.”

“Oh?” said Walter, disappointed, and uncertain what this might portend.

“Not one of your doing,” Tasker reassured him. “It's not in Hudley at all. Or in Ashworth. I just thought I'd like you to see it—and there are one or two other things I'd like to have your opinion about.”

Walter was at once deliciously certain that the alleged damaged piece was a mere stalking-horse, and that Tasker didn't want him for that at all, but for something else. He felt suddenly very wise and experienced; he was no longer
a mere boy; he could take a hint as well as anybody, and have subtle conversations on the telephone and hold his own; people valued his opinion; he had obviously impressed Tasker by his shrewdness yesterday. The change, from his position of a moment ago as a subordinate getting a well-deserved scolding for a serious error, was gloriously chest-expanding. He leaned his elbow on the table with a careless, sophisticated air, and observed casually: “Well, I'm not sure if I can get off, Mr. Tasker. We're very busy here. I should like to oblige
you,
of course.”

“I'll pick you up at the Hudley G.P.O. in half an hour,” said Tasker.

“Where are you now?” demanded Walter.

“In half an hour,” repeated Tasker, “at the Hudley G.P.O.”

“Well, hold the line—perhaps I'd better—well, hold the line,” stuttered Walter confusedly, knowing that he ought to ask Arnold Lumb's permission, but reluctant to admit to a necessity so childish.

“See you in half an hour, then,” said Tasker's voice caressingly. There was a click, and the line went dead; he had rung off.

Walter rushed into Arnold's presence with a hot, happy, shining face, and cried rapturously that Mr. Tasker wanted his advice about a piece of his that some other finishing company had damaged. (He knew that this version was not quite accurate, but felt somehow that it was the one Tasker wanted him to give.)

“Really!” exclaimed Arnold Lumb, astonished. He was delighted too. Evidently the lad had not shown himself a noodle yesterday after all—of course Dyson's ability was well-known in the trade, and some people said that sort of thing was inherited. For a fleeting minute Arnold had a vision of himself happily married to Rosamond (whom in this moment of excitement Walter strongly resembled); Walter his skilful,
helpful partner; the slump over; everything in the garden lovely.

“You go ahead,” he said kindly as Walter confusedly asked his permission to take an hour off. “Stay out all day if you like. Tasker's a big man. If you could get all his trade for us, that would be something like a stroke of business. He's our biggest customer, anyhow; of course you must oblige him. I say!” he called, as Walter, in a rapture, was flying from the room: “You'd best get a pound or two from the petty cash. You might have to stand him a drink, or a lunch, you know.”

Walter, feeling more than ever a man of the world engaged on important affairs, joyously obeyed.

Half an hour later as he panted up to the Hudley General Post Office, beneath the lowering sky, with the usual youthful feelings of anxiety lest he had mistaken the time and place of the meeting, or, indeed, that there was to be a meeting at all, he saw Tasker's handsome and powerful saloon drawn up by the kerb awaiting him. Tasker himself was sitting in the rear, smoking a cigar, and looking over some papers. He was admirably dressed and groomed, as on the previous day; and looked powerful and important.

Walter approached. The chauffeur seemed to know by instinct that he was the person they were waiting for, descended smartly, and opened the door for him.

“Ah, there you are!” said Tasker cordially, smiling and throwing away his cigar. “Punctual to the minute.”

Walter, who had been youthfully uncertain whether to apologise for being late or for being early, smiled back in relief, and climbed in. The chauffeur, without further instructions from Tasker, drove off rapidly, and took the Ashworth road.

As they began to wind up the hill, Tasker chatted amicably about the mills which clustered in the valley and on the Hudley slopes. He knew them all, their owners, their credit,
their volume of trade, and usually one or two little cynical anecdotes to their discredit as well. Walter felt that he was being initiated into the secrets of West Riding big business; being taken behind the scenes. Once or twice, to keep his end up, he tried to cap Tasker's stories with some fact told him by Arnold Lumb. But Tasker did not seem interested in Arnold Lumb; seemed, indeed, disinclined to talk of him; and gradually his name slipped from the conversation and from Walter's mind.

It was agreeable to roll smoothly up the hill in the magnificent car, passing every other car on the way; the air current created by their progress blew freshly on Walter's hot cheek. They reached the top of the second hill; the car turned off to the left, bumped along a lane, and halted in a mill yard. Tasker, without speaking, threw open the door and descended; Walter followed meekly, and stood looking about him with eager interest.

From this height there was a view of the industrial slopes of Hudley at once terrible and magnificent; bristling with mill chimneys, black with buildings, they rolled down, folding in upon themselves, to the sombre valley, filled with slums and railway lines, which lay out of sight below Walter's feet. To-day the landscape looked particularly dark and menacing beneath a pall of sulphurous yellow, which seemed to close visibly upon the earth even as he looked. On the horizon a thick bank of indigo cloud, its curled edges tipped with livid white, slowly and ominously ascended the sky against the wind.

“Looks like thunder over there,” said Walter.

“Yes,” agreed Tasker indifferently.

It occurred to Walter that a thunderstorm, which to him was a highly inconvenient and uncomfortable affair, involving spoiled clothes and a risk of unpunctuality and bad colds, was to Tasker merely an occasion when the car would need
extra care in cleaning. The young man turned abruptly from the thunder-clouds and the spectacle of industrial Hudley, neither of which gave him any particular pleasure, to the view in the opposite direction, which offered rolling green fields, with a small church tower in the middle distance.

“Where's that?” he asked.

“Clay Green,” replied Tasker grimly.

Walter coloured, and turned towards the mill building. In a quick glance he took in that it was not large, but had a solid stone frontage, and a good firm chimney; a block of stone above the entrance was chiselled: HEIGHTS MILL 1879.

“Why, it's empty!” he exclaimed, gazing in surprise at the blank façade.

Tasker glanced at him in a surprise apparently equal to his own. “Of course it is—they failed and shut down three months ago,” he threw out gruffly, naming a firm of dyers and finishers vaguely known to Walter. As this information did not remove the young man's astonishment but rather increased it, his face remained blank and gaping; and Tasker continued with some impatience: “Oh, you're thinking of that damaged piece I mentioned.” He waved that peremptorily away with one hand. “We'll see it later,” he said.

Taking out a large bunch of keys, he unlocked the door of the empty mill, and admitted himself and the young man. A dank, heavy air arose to meet them, and a melancholy interior of dust and gloom was revealed. Walter hung back in distaste, but Tasker was already several yards in advance, talking eagerly. Walter perforce followed.

The next half hour was a curious one for the young man. The sullen sky without grew steadily darker, and the interior of the mill more gloomy. The silence within the building, where noise had been used to vibrate in every corner, was unnatural and therefore horrible, like the silence of death; the small cracks and jerks which startled their ears occasionally,
as wood continued the process of accommodating itself to the pressure of time, only intensified the atmosphere of decay. Stale airs wandered round corners and chilled their spines. The rows of machines, standing still and cold, had a pathetic air of weakness and desertion; the wheels and belts and pulleys looked ramshackle, forlorn, contorted, so that it seemed impossible to imagine that they had ever functioned usefully. Wherever there was iron, there was the red stain of rust; doors, wheels, rollers, plates were all vivid with it, and rough to the touch. The whitewash on the shed walls had peeled off in patches, revealing dingy pink brick beneath. The great sheets of brownish cardboard known as press-papers lay on the table sodden, and flecked with spots of mildew; the surface of a tankful of soap, which had been left to stand, was slimy, viscous, thickly mottled with dirt. Here and there an empty mug, a match-box—once, even, an old cloth cap—showed that life had gone briskly enough in this place once; in the mending room, an old kettle shared a window sill with a straggling withered plant.