A Modern Tragedy

by Phyllis Bentley

  “You’ll find it a bit of a job,” replied Arnold with some heat, vexed to the heart by her rebuff of his tenderness, her misjudgment of his bitter grievance against Walter. “She’ll see things differently when we’re ruined, and her father has no income coming in,” he thought angrily; but could not bring himself to utter a sentiment so histrionic.

  “It’s no use discussing it any further now,” said Rosamond, lowering her voice. “We shall disturb my father.”

  “I’ll just wait and see you safely in,” said Arnold obstinately, from the gate.

  Rosamond sighed in irritation. An independent person, well used to taking care of herself, she did not relish the process of finding the key-hole and inserting her key in the dark, with Arnold watching her from behind, as though she were incapable of the action, and would shortly require his help; and when she had succeeded in admitting herself, she closed the door behind her without another word. Arnold thereupon exclaimed angrily, and drove off in a steady rage.

  From various domestic details Rosamond deduced that her brother was not yet in. She now suddenly chanced to remember Walter’s dismay at the encounter with Harry Schofield during Wakes Week, and uneasiness grew in her heart. Troubled and perplexed, she sat down to work, but left the door of the room ajar, so that she could be sure to hear her brother when he came.

  Walter, arriving half an hour later, was vexed when he saw the beam of light shining across the dark hall. As it chanced, that day was the first on which Heights Mill had actually handled pieces, and he and Tasker had dined together in Bradford to celebrate the occasion, and then visited one of the new talking-pictures. So Walter was now feeling tired, both physically and mentally; and as he knew he had another long and harassing day before him, he thought for a moment of trying to steal upstairs unheard, but rejected this, as being both cowardly and unkind to Rosamond, just as Rosamond came to the door and spoke to him.

  “I thought I heard you, Walter,” she said. “Will you come in here for a minute? I want to speak to you.”

  Her voice held a vibrant unrest which disturbed her brother; but he decided that he was really too tired that night to care whether Rosamond threatened anything or not. Moreover, he had experienced scenes during the last few months which he thought would make anything Rosamond had to say seem mild and unalarming; so he followed her into the room with a nonchalant air, which, to some extent, expressed what he really felt. His vexation at being detained from sleep vented itself, however, as he saw the piles of exercise books spread over the table, in the remark: “You shouldn’t sit up working so late, Rosamond. Why don’t you do your work earlier in the evening?”

  “I’ve been to the Harlequins’,” explained his sister, seating herself.

  “More rehearsals?” said Walter in a light disagreeable tone. In times past he had been used to view his sister’s theatrical activities with a kind of wistful respect, as something above his head, but doubtless very clever—Rosamond was older than he, more experienced, earned so much more—but now, considering the Harlequins afresh, after his months of association with Tasker, it struck him that they were naïve and silly. He recalled that the last time he had seen Rosamond act she had been clad in something like a tablecloth, which looked as though it needed washing; and he felt a sudden inclination to sneer. Rosamond, who thought he was reproaching her for deserting their parents too often in the evening, whereas one night each week at the Harlequins’ was the only recreation she allowed herself, disdained to defend her action, but flashed him a look of some fire; and Walter, repenting of the disloyalty of his thoughts, tried to atone by saying on a note of affection: “You’ll tire yourself out, child.”

  “I feel as fit as a lord,” replied Rosamond in her soft rich tones, arching her fine body proudly.

  “Why a lord?” said Walter, for something agreeable to say.

  “Why, indeed!” agreed Rosamond in a musing tone. “A vulgar proverb merely. I expect when it was coined lords were habitually fitter than other people, because they had more to eat.”

  Walter moved his shoulders irritably at this economic generalisation. He had remained standing, not wishing to prolong the interview; now he turned as if to leave the room.

  “Walter!” exclaimed Rosamond at this: “Please don’t go. I’ve been hearing such distressing things about you—about your new work.”

  Walter turned back to her quickly.

  “From Arnold Lumb,” said Rosamond, before he had time to put his question. She looked up at her brother, her rich lips quivering, her dark eyes filled with tears, and explained the conclusions Arnold had reached about his turpitude. “But I know you haven’t done wrong, Walter,” she said: “It isn’t your fault, is it?”

  “Of course it’s not my fault if Tasker wants me to manage his new place,” said Walter crossly, instinctively offering this suitable version of his work.

  “To manage it!” cried Rosamond. “You’re actually managing it!”

  “Yes; I’m at the head,” Walter told her, not without pride. He hesitated, then decided she might as well know a further detail, lest she should chance to see the Heights Mill lorry about the roads and receive a shock. “In fact,” he added: “It’s being run under my name.”

  “Walter!” said Rosamond, aghast.

  There was a pause. Brother and sister gazed at each other, and Walter felt something within him wince and tremble.

  “Then everything Arnold Lumb said about you was true?” Rosamond demanded, in a harder tone.

  “It was such a chance for me, Rosamond!” pleaded Walter. “Did you want me to stay on at Lumb’s in a subordinate position all my life? Do you expect me not to have any ambition?”

  “I certainly don’t wish you to achieve your ambitions at other people’s expense,” said Rosamond, “especially people who have been as kind to us as the Lumbs.”

  “How, kind? They’ve had good value out of father,” said Walter roughly. “The Lumbs are done for anyhow,” he went on, quoting Tasker. “It’s only a matter of time, with that overdraft, and trade so bad.”

  “But listen, Walter,” objected Rosamond. “Quite apart from the moral aspect of the matter, for the moment—if trade is as bad as you say, so bad that an old established firm, like Lumb’s, can’t survive it, how can you, or Mr. Tasker, or whoever it is, start a new business with any hope of success?”

  “Because I shall have all Tasker’s trade to work on,” explained Walter peevishly.

  “But who did it all before? The Lumbs?” said Rosamond with irony.

  “The Lumbs, and three or four other dyers and finishers,” said Walter.

  “Then several firms are going to suffer on your account?” said Rosamond, who was accustomed to pursue an enquiry to its logical end.

  “Oh, don’t be silly, Rosamond,” said Walter angrily. “Business is always like that. You people who teach in schools under the Government, with a safe job and a fixed salary and a pension, know nothing about business.”

  “I’m glad if I don’t, if it’s like that,” retorted Rosamond hotly. “But I don’t believe it is, necessarily. I don’t believe the Lumbs would do a thing like—like the thing you have done. At any rate, not without telling their employer.”

  “Oh, don’t be elder-sisterly, Rosamond,” said Walter wearily.

  Rosamond blushed scarlet, and became abruptly and horribly aware of the fearful force of economic facts. Walter now earned more, contributed more to the household, than she did; and seemed to have earned the right to call her “elder-sisterly,” by that one economic accident. That Walter should speak so to her! Rosamond eyed her brother closely—Walter’s preoccupation with his work, and her own with school and her ailing father, had kept them apart of late; it was some time since she had given Walter a really objective glance. Now that she did so, she noticed a considerable change in him. He was much thinner than of old; he had lost that plumpness of cheek and limb which for so long made him seem younger than his years, and caused women to feel motherly towards h
im; his colour was not so high, his hair, much closer cut and groomed than formerly, showed much less curl; in a word, he looked a grown man, not a lad, and a man with responsibilities. He was dressed in a dark suit which Rosamond did not remember to have seen before, a striped shirt and a sombre expensive-looking tie—all in excellent taste, imitated, if Rosamond had known it, from those of Tasker. Rosamond began to wonder, self-reproachfully, if she had misjudged Walter. It was natural enough, after all, that he should have ambitions, and wish to achieve them; natural enough that he should grow up, and resent her guidance. Indeed, her brother’s immaturity had been one of Rosamond’s secret concerns in the past; Walter was a dear—good, honest, full of generous impulses, intensely lovable—but he was not adult, and Rosamond thought that men and women should be men and women, not children, however charming.

  Since Dyson’s illness the family decisions had all been made by Rosamond; and though she was perfectly capable of making them, and ready to do her share, it had troubled her somewhat, for Walter’s sake, to find her brother not quite so ready. Her father’s decision to give Walter his power of attorney had, indeed, somewhat depressed Rosamond, though she was much too proud to suggest to Dyson that it would be safer in his daughter’s hands. And now here was Walter looking mature, manly, responsible. He seemed perfectly able to take his stand by her side, and naturally resented any assumption that his sister was in advance of him. Indeed, any such assumption on her part, thought Rosamond quickly, would be most ungenerous; she put it away from her at once.

  “Walter,” she began, in a changed tone of warm affection, mentally dismissing Arnold Lumb as cantankerous, old-fashioned, and mistaken: “As you say, I don’t understand business, and the whole affair seems very strange to me. But if you assure me you’ve done nothing wrong, of course I believe you.”

  Walter, with a mental reservation about his father’s certificates, muttered the required assurance, crossly.

  “But why didn’t you tell us all about it frankly?” said Rosamond, still perplexed. “That seems so strange, Walter.”

  “Because I was afraid of upsetting father,” explained Walter with peevish emphasis. “You mustn’t tell him on any account, Rosamond.”

  “Very well,” agreed Rosamond. But at this hint of secrecy, so opposed to the candour of her own nature, and, she had thought, of Walter’s, her uneasiness rose again; and after a pause she asked thoughtfully: “What sort of a man is this Mr. Tasker, Walter?”

  “Tasker? Oh, he’s a magnificent business man,” began Walter eagerly, and developed this theme with enthusiasm.

  “But where does he live? What sort of a home has he? What is he like as a man—not merely as an economic unit?” persisted Rosamond. “Have you ever been to his private house?”

  “No. I never thought of him as having a home, somehow,” said Walter doubtfully. “He isn’t that kind of man. He’s always with other business men in hotels, you know.”

  Rosamond sighed, dissatisfied; and at the tacit criticism of her sigh Walter’s irritation returned.

  “I’m going to bed,” he announced, and left his sister abruptly.

  As he climbed the stairs, and undressed, quietly, so as not to disturb his father, his thoughts were various, but all tending to one point. He thought with pride of Tasker’s cloth in the Heights Mill dye-pans; with anxiety of the work which lay ahead of him on the morrow; with relief of the end of the secrecy about the management of Heights—which Tasker had desired until Heights should open, as much, it had turned out, as he. (Walter had heard rumours that Tasker was quarrelling with the dyers and finishers he had hitherto employed, all round, accusing them wholesale of bad work; and permitted himself to wonder, with a cynical little smile, just how far Tasker meant to turn this to his advantage, if it were true. But then probably it wasn’t true; there were always rumours afloat concerning Tasker; his astonishing projects were the theme of endless conversations in the West Riding.) But as Walter’s thoughts ran thus, some points in each subject considered urged him in the same direction.

  As he mused on how much work lay ahead of him, he knew that all his energies, all his thoughts, all his time must be devoted to it for months to come, and he must be free thus to devote himself. When he considered the events of the day, he remembered how Tasker had desired him to run over to Ash-worth that noon to see the finish of a certain type of piece which Walter would shortly have to tackle; and when Walter had answered that he could not reach Victory Mills till three, the departure times of trains and buses being unfavourable, Tasker had asked him with considerable irritation when he was going to get himself a car—he himself was sick and tired, said Tasker flatly, of giving Walter lifts all over the West Riding; besides, it looked so bad for Heights Mill not to be able to run a car.

  Walter was now sufficiently sophisticated to know that by urgent representations to his Leeds bank, and a little skill in handling a motor salesman, he could possess a car (of which the price, unpaid by Walter, would really be shared by bank and salesman till Walter found the money) tomorrow; and considering the terrific amount of work and worry which lay in front of him, he really needed one—it was absurd for him to waste time catching buses between Moorside Place and Heights, and Heights and Ashworth. But where was he to put a car in Moorside Place? How conceal it from his father? How explain it to Rosamond? And why should he have to resort to strategy to soothe his family? Why must he be thus subject to their criticism? It was a damned nuisance, coming in late at night, tired out, to face criticism, objection, misunderstanding, and have to waste energy in smoothing it all down. It was a nuisance to be obliged to explain all his movements. Why should he have to be bothered with all that, submit himself to the ordeal of family questions every night? After to-night’s explosion, and the discovery of, at any rate, the major part of the truth by Rosamond and Arnold, it would really be better for all concerned if Walter kept away from Moorside Place for a while, out of reach of his sister and the Lumbs. His presence was really an embarrassment to his father. There was the question of the telephone, for example. It was preposterous for the manager of Heights Mill to lack a telephone in his home—all sorts of emergencies might arise because of it; indeed, one or two had arisen already. Yet if Walter received his telephone calls within Dyson’s hearing—and in a small house everything was within everyone’s hearing—how protect his father from dangerously agitating knowledge? Yes, Walter decided as he climbed into bed; he didn’t see just how it could be done, but he wished he could manage to leave Moorside Place for a time. He should supply the household with money, of course—with any luck, he should be able to supply them with a good deal of money, more than poor Dyson had ever had in his life; Walter’s heart warmed as he thought of the many little comforts he should be able to provide for his parents—and, of course, he would come and see them almost every day; but he himself needed a wider scope, a freer air; after all, he wasn’t a child any longer; he had a right to order his life to please himself. Yes, he really thought he should try to escape from the restraints of his parents’ home as soon as he saw an opportunity—just for a time, till the work at Heights Mill settled down.

  Scene 2. Something is Given and Something Sold

  DURING the next few weeks Walter made enquiries from those of his workpeople who were of local origin concerning suitable lodgings for himself in the neighbourhood of Heights Mill, and systematically visited those suggested.

  The place he eventually chose was a bright windy little house down a side lane, a mere few minutes away. It was called Heights Cottage, and inhabited by the widow of a former vicar of Clay Green, who took a paying guest to supplement her meagre income. Mrs. Lewry was mild, elderly, a South-country-woman of gracious manner, and Walter with a little effort was soon on good though not intimate terms with her; on her side, she took a fancy to the handsome young fellow, and viewed his irregular hours, when their cause was explained, with sympathetic tolerance. His non-attendance at Church seemed natural, though a pity, to her when he expla
ined that he had been brought up a Wesleyan; and Walter was glad to escape from religious duties which had begun to irk him, though he admitted their theoretical correctness—Rosamond had, on the other hand, candidly abandoned the faith of her fathers long ago.

  There were uncomfortable scenes to be gone through before the transfer to Heights Cottage could be managed, however. One Sunday afternoon, when Walter was sitting at Dyson’s bedside, to give his mother some relief from her constant nursing, he thought the opportunity suitable, and mentioned the proposed change to his father. Dyson at once cried out unhappily in his thin tones: “But I can’t be left alone with nothing but womenfolk, Walter!” And for a moment Walter felt inclined to throw the project up, and stay with the old man. But he rallied himself, and drew a glowing picture of the trade which Heights Mill was doing, and how rapidly he himself was advancing in the general estimation there.

  “Mester Dollam’s pleased with ye, then, is he?” said Dyson, nodding his head feebly. Walter remembered to keep up the fiction that the Dollams still owned Heights.

  “It’s only for a time, father,” he said, “I shall be coming back again when this rush is over. I can’t do with the long journey every day—it wastes so much time,” he went on impatiently; and his young face was, indeed, so haggard with exasperation that Dyson, looking at him timidly, perceived that his need to go was real, and said no more. Instead, he turned to his favourite complaint:

  “Neither of the Lumbs have been to see me this many a week,” he mourned. “I’m afraid Lumb’s can’t be doing so well.”

  As Walter said nothing to this, he went on: “I reckon it’s perhaps a good thing after all that you’ve gone to Heights, Walter.”