Sleep in Peace (24 page)

“What?” said Laura, returning.

“You'll have to go up to the mill with a message for Ludo,” said Gwen. “Tell him the tennis match that he was to umpire for to-night is off.”

“But won't it do when he comes home?” objected Laura.

“No, it won't,” said Gwen.

“Well, I think you might have gone yourself,” said Laura disagreeably.

“The walk will do you good,” said Gwen, serene.

Laura retired to the kitchen, where Mildred, with a smudged face and a cloth apron, was cleaning after the Tuesday's baking. The rugs were rolled up, the floor was damp, an immense collection of bowls and tins and spoons from the day's activities was piled in the sink; on the dresser stood, neatly covered by tea-cloths, some agreeable rows of pies and buns. Laura reflected with remorse that Gwen had made all these and was therefore probably tired—”but why couldn't she
say
so?” she wondered; she ate a bun or two and the blancmange, changed her frock and started off for Blackshaw Mills in a better temper. As she left the house she heard her sister's voice, which had been occupied in slow scales, begin a song, the tune of which she did not remember.

Ludo, in the office in his shirt-sleeves, seemed pleased to see Laura; he expressed approval of her brown check gingham dress with the glossy brown belt, and asked her if she would like to see round the mill.. Not to disappoint him, Laura said she would, though she remembered with a sigh the pile of homework awaiting her attention at Blackshaw House. Ludo put on his coat and took her through the weaving shed, where he smiled silently at her across the fearful din, then led her out at the far side into the mill yard. Laura walked to the edge of the boiler-pit and looked down at the red fires, which had a feeble and dusty air in the glaring
sunlight. Tom Byram the firer who as she knew had kept up steam in the Blackshaw Mills boiler since before she was born, shaded his eyes and looked up at her curiously; his assistant, a young strong lad with smoke-grimed fair hair, did the same.

“It's my sister, Tom,” explained Ludo.

“Aye, so it is. I didn't own you at first, Miss Laura,” said Tom, nodding recognition. “You've grown a bit sin' I last saw you.” He paused. “That's my youngest,” he said, jerking his head towards the dusty little staircase at the side of the pit. Laura, peering into the warm sepia shadows, saw a girl a little older than herself, wrapped in a mill-girl's shawl. Only her face was visible; a plump rosy face, with strong, full lips.

“Good afternoon, Eva,” said Ludo.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Ludo,” returned the girl.

Ludo had spoken rather coldly, Laura thought, and now he turned away abruptly towards the yard archway. He seemed to feel that Laura wondered, for he began to explain that Eva was Tom's daughter, and that she was an apprentice mender in Messrs. Hinchliffe.

“She oughtn't to be out there wasting her time,” he said. “Your Edward'll have something to say if he sees her.”

As usual when he spoke of Edward, his tone was grim. It was a little awkward in this instance, for there Edward was, not three yards away.

“Are you conducting an inspection of Blackshaw Mills, Laura?” he demanded in his cool drawl. “If so, I certainly think you should see our side of it.”

Between politeness, an agreeable sensation of flattery, a certain fear of Edward and a desire not to wound Ludo, Laura stuttered unconvincingly, and before she could produce a suitable refusal, found herself strolling through the premises of Messrs. Hinchliffe at Edward's side.

At first the position was embarrassing, for Edward talked and pointed eagerly, and Laura could not hear him very well, and
could not understand him at all. He indicated a new press, a new wuzzer, a new tentering machine, and sketched its abilities with enthusiasm; “Yes,” shouted Laura vaguely above the whirr, “yes, I see.” From time to time after one of these responses Edward gave her an odd look and fell silent for a moment; and Laura began increasingly to feel, and be ashamed of, the falsity of her pretended interest. At last, as they were passing through some department or other, housed downstairs in a kind of cellar, where the floor was thick in dark-coloured fluff whose origin and purpose (if any) was quite obscure to Laura, it suddenly struck her, for the first time in her life, that she, the daughter and grand-daughter of clothiers on both sides, had really no idea at all how cloth was made. Considering how devoted and patriotic about their native county all the Armisteads believed themselves, this was surely rather shocking.

“Edward,” she shouted impulsively in her companion's ear, “tell me all about cloth.” Edward laughed. “The processes, I mean.” Edward smiled, and held open a door for her to pass through. “I mean it,” urged Laura, dropping her voice abruptly in the middle of a word as they emerged into the cool whitewashed silence of a flight of stone steps.

Edward halted, and, not looking at Laura, speaking with his usual firm precision, gave a succinct account of the manufacture of cloth, from the sheep's fleece to the finished article. Laura listened with deep and astonished interest; his exposition made the affair seem scientific, logical, shapely, indeed quite like a lesson at school—one could enjoy it in the same way, as a satisfaction to one's thirst for knowledge. It was good, too, to be talking in this intimate fashion with Edward, who usually held himself so aloof. “Yes, I see,” she said from time to time, nodding thoughtfully. “I see.” But this time her words held the conviction of truth, and Edward seemed satisfied.

“So that's how it is, you see,” concluded Edward, and now he looked at her directly, and smiled. Laura gave him a warm,
admiring smile in return. “We may as well go in here,” said Edward in a deprecating tone, leading the way. “You may as well see it all while you're here.”

They were now in a long room on the top storey; through a row of windows in the sloping roof the afternoon sun poured down strongly. Laura raised her face to the light, and through the sloping panes caught an unexpected glimpse of the Blackshaw Mills chimney. Viewed from this odd angle, the great round column, truncated, fore-shortened, springing apparently from a nest of jutting corners and transverse slopes, made a singular design of planes and angles, and Laura could scarcely take her eyes from it; it gave her a curious pleasure, and she continued to gaze upwards, smiling. A giggle on her left brought her to earth; startled, she turned to see a small group of menders sitting at work, and standing behind them the firer's daughter, still in her shawl. It was she who had giggled, Laura felt sure; Laura gave her an embarrassed smile, and moved down the room.

“Why is that window covered with brown paper?” she asked, pointing.

Edward explained that the two men who were perching cloth by a huge window on the other side of the room must not have their eyes distracted by a cross light. He led the way towards these men; a piece of greyish cloth was draped across a high bar and hung down in front of them; they were examining it for defects of finish and dye. They greeted Edward with a friendly nod, and gave the piece a pull so as to expose a fresh length. Edward stepped up between them, gathered the cloth into five folds in one hand, and gave it a quick glance.

“Patchy,” he said.

“Aye, it is,” agreed both perchers disgustedly.

Laura, bending over Edward's bony wrist, screwed up her eyes and by dint of prolonged staring discerned a minute variation in shade between the outer and inner folds.

“Better send it back,” said Edward.

The men nodded.

Laura was silent, filled with awe at the standard which rejected on account of a deficiency so unnoticeable.

Edward seemed to hesitate, then led the way downstairs towards the office.

“Hullo, Laura!” said Frederick, emerging from behind a pile of pieces.

“Hullo, Frederick!” said Laura.

“I heard of your triumphal progress, and wondered whether you would condescend to visit me,” continued Frederick, “or whether the imperial votaress would pass on in maiden meditation, fancy-free.”

“And what are
you
busy with, if the imperial votaress may ask?” said Laura.

“Oh, I'm just checking the numbers of these pieces,” said Frederick, flipping the dangling tags beside him with a jocular air.

“I see,” said Laura.

She spoke faintly, for she was suffering a sharp pang. The spectacle of Frederick spouting Shakespeare among the pieces excited in her a passion of revolt. She had always known, of course, that Mr. Hinchliffe had made Frederick go into the mill and it was a shame, but to see him actually there, hot and dirty, with a pencil behind his ear and a ball of string in his hands, performing some stupid, mindless, trivial task, made her physically sick. She was not at all deceived by his jaunty manner, for it was just what she herself would have employed in similar circumstances, to conceal a profound discouragement. Her pleasure in Blackshaw Mills was completely spoiled; the place seemed suddenly dark and choking, full of imprisoned, beating wings.

“I think I'd better go now,” she said abruptly, and turned to the door.

Neither of the Hinchliffe brothers attempted to detain her.

“I'll come with you,” said Edward, as they passed the office door. “It's nearly time.”

He put his hand within and plucked his straw hat from a peg, and they went out and down Blackshaw Lane together.

They were both silent. Laura was still consumed with a choking rage against Mr. Hinchliffe, or the West Riding, or Life, or whatever it was that kept a scholar from his books to fiddle with some lumps of fabric and a ball of string. Something must be done about it. It couldn't be left like that. When they were opposite the Blackshaw House back gate she halted, and summoning all her courage, she looked Edward firmly in the eyes and said:

“Edward, Frederick shouldn't be in the mill.”

She trembled all over with the effort she had to make thus to reveal her inmost thought to another person, and set her will against his. “He
shouldn't
be
there,”
she repeated, her teeth chattering.

“I know,” said Edward soberly.

“Can't you do something about it?” pleaded Laura.

“He must do something himself,” said Edward. “Only ourselves can rescue ourselves, you know. Frederick would probably know a fine quotation expressing that sentiment, from Ibsen, wouldn't he. He works at night at a correspondence course—or, at least, he began to do so,” concluded Edward with a faint bitterness in his tone: “Of late his ambitions seem to have taken a new direction.”

“Well,” hesitated Laura. She looked about her, seeking for words to express her confused sense that to keep Frederick in the mill was a disgrace to the whole West Riding. Suddenly her startled eye rested upon a face at an upper window of Blackshaw House; it was Mildred's face, and it bore a friendly leer. The horrified Laura perceived that she, Laura Armistead, Papa's daughter, was actually standing at a back gate talking to a young man. (Port Erin.) Panic surged over her; she blushed to the ears. “I think I'd better go now!” she cried wildly, and fled. A confused impression of Edward raising his hat with a surprised and even disappointed air followed her up the drive.

Gwen objected on principle to any of the Armisteads using the back door of the house—“as though they were kitchen-maids”, she said scornfully—so to-day Laura, conscious of guilt in other respects, thought she had better avert wrath by conforming to this rule. She therefore went round the house and approached the front entrance. Scarcely had she set her foot on the rubber mat (engraved
Armistead)
in the porch when the door was flung open, and Gwen appeared within. To Laura's amazement Gwen's face wore a beaming, friendly smile—which, however, abruptly faded.

“Where is he?” demanded Gwen, looking over Laura's shoulder. As Laura merely gaped, she repeated sharply: “Where is Edward?”

“Edward? Oh, he's gone,” said Laura, dismayed but preserving an innocent air.

“He was with you at the gate,” said Gwen. “Where is he now?”

“He's gone,” Laura assured her. “Gone home.”

A gleam of fury flashed across Gwen's face. “Gone?” she cried. “You've let him go? Have you no sense at all? Really, Laura! What is the use of my toiling and moiling for you and Ludo all these years, if you haven't any more sense than this at the end of it?” She turned and rushed towards the drawing-room.

“But, Gwen, what ought I to have done?” said the bewildered Laura, following.

“You should have asked him in, of course, you little fool!” cried Gwen, storming up and down. “What will he think of us, letting him stand at the back gate and never asking him in?”

“Of course if I'd known you wanted to see him,” began Laura, weeping.

“I didn't want to see him!” cried Gwen at the top of her voice.. “How dare you say such a thing?”

The wretched Laura stared at her sister in terrified bewilderment, following her with timid eyes, like a scolded dog, as she swept about the room. Gwen passed by the piano; in a paroxysm
of rage she snatched up the music which rested there, closed it and slammed it back face downward. The sheet slipped; Laura stooped to retrieve it; on the greenish-white cover she read the word: BRAHMS.

Then Laura understood. The eyes of the sisters met; Laura's held horror and repulsion. She turned and fled away upstairs.

“Why need she have chosen
Edward?”
cried poor Laura, pacing up and down her bedroom, clenching and unclenching her hands. (“I suppose this is what is called
wringing her hands”
she could not help reflecting, observing with interest the blotched red and white, the violent tension of her fingers.) “Why need she have a
Hinchliffe?
Why one of
my
friends? Couldn't she leave me
one
place,
one
set of people, for my own? Am I to have
no
place on earth where I can be away from her and happy?”