Love and Money (28 page)

“No use throwing good money after bad,” said the West Riding textile trade sagely.

Walter Egmont did, however, take into his household Lavinia's youngest cousin Janet, a quiet, plain, good girl of seventeen or so, who made herself useful at Mount Hall— earned her keep, as it were—by helping to look after old Mrs. Crabtree and little lame May.

So far, so good, one might say. Walter and Lavinia have had their troubles, but only such as the usual chances and changes of this mortal life might bring upon them. Walter has been the source, the well-spring, of all wealth and comfort; Lavinia has gladly received wealth and comfort from him for herself and her relations.

But now a change seemed to come over Walter. He became absent-minded and irritable. He looked haggard. He slept ill. He scolded the gardener over some twopenny-ha'penny bill for bulbs—he who had so often gently led Lavinia along the paths of open-handed liberality. He drove off in the morning to the Egmont mills with a look on his face as if he were a Christian entering a lion-filled arena; he returned at night pale, without appetite, exhausted. When Lavinia urged him to see a doctor, he positively shouted at her.

“Nonsense! Don't talk such nonsense, Vinny! I'm perfectly well!”

His uneasy, angry tone alarmed his wife and frightened May, who burst into tears.

“Don't cry, my darling. Don't mind Daddy,” said
Walter, drawing the child to him and kissing her. Then he put her gently away, rose, pressed his wife's arm affectionately and left the room. Lavinia, May and Janet were left staring at each other in dismay.

The truth was very simple. It was now 1931, and the fearful business slump had reached even the Egmont mills. There were few customers for the Egmont cloth, and those there were wished to buy it at the current low price, whereas it had been made from yarn bought from the spinner at a much higher price a month or two ago. One could either give in and cease to make cloth, in which case one was irretrievably bankrupt and ruined; or one could struggle on making cloth for stock, hoping for better days, and finding the money for the wages bill and the spinner's monthly account by throwing into the battle all one's other resources. The bank in Annotsfield, where once the Egmont credit was immense, impregnable, had now advanced an overdraft of many thousands of pounds to Walter, and held as security against it all the scrip of his other investments, together with the title deeds of the mills fabric and the Mount Hall estate. The date of the month when the just-mentioned incident occurred was the twenty-third. At that time—it is altered now—by long tradition the spinner's monthly account must inexorably be paid on the twenty-fifth. In spite of all his efforts, Walter was some three thousand pounds short of the necessary amount, and ruin, as the phrase goes, stared him in the face.

After a few moments he returned, looking white but composed, and said to his wife:

“I'd like to speak to you privately, Vinny.”

Lavinia rose and followed him to the room he called his study.

“Vinny,” said Walter quietly. “My dear. I regret the necessity deeply, but I'm afraid I must ask you for some help.”

“Help? You're ill?” cried Lavinia.

“No. I am in financial difficulties,” said Walter.

Lavinia's eyes widened, and she gazed at him with incredulity.

“Everyone in the West Riding is more or less in financial difficulties today,” said Walter. “I don't think I am more to blame than the next man. However, that's beside the point. The facts are——”

He explained his situation in simple terms, and concluded by asking her to lend him the title-deeds of her row of houses, so that he could deposit them at the bank and receive the necessary additional overdraft on their security.

“Will you do that for me, Vinny?”

“Of course, Walter,” said Lavinia smoothly.

She looked down at her hands and did not meet his grateful, loving gaze.

In Balzac's novel
La Cousine Bette
there is a superb passage where Bette, the old maid “poor relation,” hitherto meekly devoted to the interests of the family, suddenly discovers that the affections of the young Polish sculptor she loves and has befriended have been stolen from her by her pretty niece Hortense. Suddenly, says Balzac, her nature, like a branch hitherto pegged down to earth, was released from its ties and flew up with terrible force to its true line.

Something of this kind must have happened to Lavinia Egmont. Perhaps she had never really forgiven the Egmonts for that awful ballroom scene? Perhaps she had always at the bottom of her heart resented Walter's chivalry, his continual giving? (Who after all wants to be the everlasting object of chivalry, the continual recipient in the human exchange?) At any rate, in that moment Lavinia's whole aspect changed. Released from its obligations of gratitude, her nature flew up into its natural shape of domination.

Walter first became aware of this on the following morning when he took Lavinia to the manager of his bank in Annotsfield to deposit the title-deeds of Irebridge Terrace. He removed the deeds from his safe at Mount Hall, where they has reposed since Councillor Crabtree's death—in point of fact Walter had paid out as much to tidy up the Councillor's affairs as would have bought the whole Terrace outright,
but this thought did not occur to him—and put them with a grave smile into Lavinia's hands, who took them firmly. Walter found himself a little surprised; he had somehow expected that his wife would return them to him. Of course Lavinia's signature would be necessary at the bank and the transaction of depositing the deeds must be officially hers, but somehow Walter did not quite like her attitude of possession meanwhile. It would have been more graceful if she had quickly and as it were warmly and sympathetically returned the deeds, pressing them urgently upon him. Lavinia however held them firmly in her lap throughout their drive to the bank. Still—this was just one of those failures in Lavinia, due to her faulty upbringing, which excited Walter's tenderest pity and love.

The interview was extremely painful to Walter; so painful indeed that sweat not only stood on his forehead but actually rolled down to his cheek. The thought that he, Walter Egmont, should positively have to borrow his wife's little property to extricate the great Egmont mills from a threat of bankruptcy, was terrible to him. He breathed quickly and felt choked in the manager's snug sanctum; he moved his big body about restlessly; he spoke with feverish haste; his great desire—the only one left in his life, he felt at that moment—was to get out of the bank into the air. Sign the papers, leave the deeds, get out. But the bank manager felt it his duty to explain to Lavinia exactly what the deposit of her title-deeds as security implied, and from that point, in some way which Walter did not quite understand, the man was led to embark on a résumé of the whole Egmont mills situation. The bank manager—who of course was in an agony himself, on the one hand continually pressed by his Head Office to tidy up the bank's quite frightful financial commitments in the West Riding and on the other seeing long-established businesses collapse at his mere word—concealed his trouble by an artificial smoothness, but his bland phrases dropped like some colourless but corrosive acid on Walter's skin, till he felt raw and bleeding from top to toe.

Lavinia on the other hand listened with keen attention.
From the manager's admirably clear exposition she fully grasped the essential fact that she, Lavinia Crabtree, could save or ruin the great Egmonts by merely saying yes or no. She looked down at her hands to conceal the triumph which shone in her eyes.

“This is only a temporary measure—you'll soon have your deeds back, Lavinia, I promise you,” said Walter hoarsely.

“I shall be most happy to return them to Mrs. Egmont as soon as this portion of the overdraft is cleared,” said the bank manager, bowing gravely to Lavinia.

At last the thing was done and they were outside.

“Thank you, Vinny my dear,” said Walter heavily. “Now about the car—we must get you home again—I'll get Brigg to drop me at the mill and——”

He was about to make one of his usual courteous and generous arrangements for his wife's comfort when Lavinia interrupted.

“I've some shopping to do in Resmond Street; Brigg can drive me there,” she said.

Walter, though astonished and disconcerted, did not realise that he was hearing Lavinia's first assertion of power. The power of wealth. For all possession is wealth when others need it.

Lavinia's metamorphosis was physical as well as spiritual. She held herself erect; her bust swelled; her dark eyes sharpened. Her thin mouth now often wore a sophisticated, almost a quietly merry little twist of triumph at its left corner—for example, when she was winning a skirmish against old Mrs. Crabtree, whom she defeated with increasing frequency these days. Lavinia now chose her clothes better and wore them with infinitely more assurance; she dressed her hair in clearer lines. Her speech became more resonant, more emphatic, more commanding; her vocabulary seemed to increase and her accent improve.

Meanwhile, she “stood by” Walter in his troubles in a most staunch and wifely manner. She economised, she cut
down staff, she undertook domestic duties herself and carried them out in a robustly cheerful and efficient way. It was largely due to Lavinia, said elderlyEgmont aunts and young Egmont cousins, whose living all depended upon the family business, that the mill pulled through the depression so well. Lavinia knew all its affairs, and questioned Walter every day to keep her knowledge up to date. Her judgment was shrewd. She harassed and harangued the easy-going Walter, she kept him up to the mark and would not allow him to be generous and foolish. If he showed a disposition to allow a merchant to cancel purchases or to purchase at a lower price than he had contracted for, Lavinia shut her mouth with a snap, gazed at Walter meaningly and was silent. Walter then remembered the houses in Irebridge Terrace and did as Lavinia wished.

Indeed, the real reason why the Egmont mills survived the slump was probably because Walter gradually came to feel that Lavinia's Irebridge Terrace houses must be retrieved if it was the last thing he did—he couldn't even die till that damned terrace was redeemed. He stuck at the job, he declined to be defeated, he even learned to juggle bank accounts, and twice purposely missed the last post with cheques so as to give himself a few extra hours to ensure that they could be honoured. He rushed after business, he wrangled over details, he quite hounded his employees— who, terrified of being dismissed to join the ever-lengthening queue at the Labour Exchange, shared his anxiety to keep the mill afloat.

Walter did all this, and it saved the Egmont mills. But it was against his nature and he loathed it, and strange uneasy feelings increasingly troubled his hitherto uncomplicated heart.

England went off the gold standard. The slump slowly passed. The West Riding climbed painfully to its knees, and though trailing about its body like heavy weeds innumerable debts, overdrafts, mortgage payments and obligations, eventually stood up and raised its head. The Irebridge Terrace deeds had once or twice almost emerged from the
bank's strong-room before but had been sucked back again by recurring emergencies. Now at last they could safely be released. Walter came home one evening with the long envelope in his hand and went into Lavinia's bedroom, where he could hear her talking on the telephone—he had been sleeping in his dressing-room lately, for he was suffering from obstinate insomnia and did not wish to disturb his wife.

Lavinia was laying down the law to the unfortunate secretary of some committee or other of which she was chairman, for she was chairman of many committees nowadays. In firm clear concise terms she informed the secretary of her duty and left her no alternative but to proceed with it promptly. As she nodded to her husband across the telephone, her eyes held that satisfied gleam which now so often brightened—and hardened—them. She finished the conversation and put the receiver down decisively.

“Yes, Walter?” she said.

“Here are the deeds of your Irebridge Terrace houses, Vinny,” said Walter, proffering the envelope. “I'm glad I can put them safely in your hands again at last.”

He smiled, not without a touch of pride, and, simple loyal creature that he still was, expected a kiss, some thanks, a word of wifely praise. Instead he saw a strange expression cross his wife's face. She looked quite disconcerted and vexed, he thought. In fact, she looked disappointed. She
is
disappointed, thought Walter, amazed. She liked me to be in her debt. She liked me to be under an obligation to her. All the vague distaste and revolt he had felt recently suddenly rose up in him like a flood of nausea. He choked it down, but when it had gone he knew he no longer loved his wife.

“What shall we do about Janet?” said Lavinia crossly.

She was thinking aloud. As long as Walter was in her debt for the loan of the houses, she did not mind that he should have to support her cousin. But now Walter was out of her debt and she did not wish to return to the old humiliating situation of being in his debt—certainly not on Janet's account.

“Janet?” said Walter, perplexed by this to him inexplicable transition. (To Walter obligations were not measured in cash.) He worked it out on his own lines, slowly. “You mean you think we ought to pay her, now that we can afford?”

“Pay
her?”

“For looking after May, and being a kind of secretary to you, and so on.”

“Janet has too great a sense of her obligation to me to think of such a thing,” said Lavinia stiffly.

“What's the problem then?”

“Oh, never mind. You wouldn't understand,” said Lavinia.

“You say that rather too often to me nowadays, Vinny,” said Walter quietly.

Lavinia gave a brittle laugh. “You used to say it to me.”

“I never said it to you.”