A Modern Tragedy

by Phyllis Bentley

  So quickly and so strongly did this hatred grow that when, on the morning of Dyson’s funeral, a colossal wreath, much be-ribboned, outshining all the rest, proved to bear the Tasker’s card, Walter’s face grew white, and he actually threw the offending flowers into the kitchen, so that they might be forgotten when the hearse left the house for the chapel where the service was to be held. At the last moment, however, his nerve failed him, and he directed one of the undertaker’s men into the kitchen on another errand, knowing that the wreath would thus be found and properly placed. He was glad he had done this when he perceived not only Tasker but Marian at the funeral; Tasker would slip away after the service, no doubt, but Marian would accompany the procession to the grave-side and nose about among the flowers until she found her own.

  A small cross of white flowers was sent from Beech Lea—this was carefully placed on Dyson’s coffin, by Rosamond’s instructions; Mrs. Haigh was still too sunk in grief to notice such external details, but presently, Rosamond felt, she would take comfort in learning that everything had been done in decent order—but none of the Lumbs were present at the funeral. Arnold had asked his father whether he wished to go, at the same time expressing his own intention not to do so. “I shan’t go where I’m likely to meet that jackanapes,” growled old Mr. Lumb, referring to Walter.

  Of the family at Beech Lea, it was at first Mrs. Lumb and Reetha who were the most conscious of the family’s connection with Dyson’s death. They talked about it to each other in horrified whispers, and Mrs. Lumb actually set out in secret to pay Mrs. Haigh a visit of regret and condolence. (But when she was halfway there the sudden realisation that their positions were terribly reversed nowadays, that Mrs. Haigh had a rich son, flying about all over the West Riding in an expensive-looking car and married to a Clay Crosland, while poor Arnold was bankrupt and they hadn’t a penny coming into the house, turned her poor old heart to stone, and she limped back to Beech Lea again with the visit still unpaid.) Old Mr. Lumb appeared to think that Dyson’s action in dying at the news of Lumbs’ bankruptcy was perfectly correct and natural, and only to be expected; while Arnold simply let the whole thing slide, and took no notice of the manner of Dyson’s death at all.

  Arnold indeed moved about this summer in a state of quiescence which, though it seemed strange and alarming to his mother, was really very natural; he was experiencing the natural reaction after a prolonged period of exhausting struggle, which had ended for him in the moment when he told the news of the firm’s bankruptcy to his father. In the last few terrible months of his losing struggle, the lines of his square plain face had broken, and his features, thus blurred, and pale from lack of sleep, had knotted themselves into an expression of permanent strain, while his hair thinned and grew grizzled; so that he appeared an ailing man, risen too soon from a bed of sickness and struggling to do things beyond his strength. This change in his looks had been painfully evident to his mother and Reetha, though he himself had been too preoccupied to notice it. Now his furrowed features relaxed; he no longer looked ailing and strained, but simply elderly and resigned. It was such an immense relief to him that it was all over, and he could rest. The. shifts, the tight places, the unceasing worry, of the last three years, were over at last. No longer need he interview bank managers, sweating with humiliation, imploring further overdraft, extracting—it seemed almost with physical effort, almost with his life-blood—the money which was necessary to carry on Valley Mill, extracting it scantily, from an only too obviously reluctant source. No longer need he watch the sickening spectacle of everything solid the Lumbs owned—their house, their insurance policies, his mother’s little dowry of houses and shares—sliding gradually, but relentlessly, into the bank’s insatiable maw. No longer need he scheme, plan, write letters, telephone, make personal calls, to ensure that there should be enough at the bank to cover his monthly coal bill or next Friday’s wages; no longer need he gulp with humiliating relief when some customer paid an overdue account at last; no longer need he send a messenger rushing to the bank with such remittances, so that he might safely draw a cheque to stave off some pressing creditor of his own. No longer need he approach his calculations each week in the sickening fear, increasingly realised, of finding the volume of work done yet further diminished; no longer need he wince when he chanced to see the Valley Mill lorry on the road, and observe its shrunken load of pieces. No longer need he feel the raging impotence, the burning resentment, of the just man confronted with injustice more powerful than he, when a former customer mumbled something evasively to him about cut prices, and he realised that yet another stream of work had been diverted from him—to flow, as like as not, towards Walter. (In the last terrible month he had actually foregone the beliefs of a lifetime, and in shame and humiliation begun to cut prices too; but the sacrifice came too late and served only to hasten his ruin.) No longer need he tag around in search of trade, meet everywhere gloomy faces, and come home to worry about his customers’ finances as well as about his own. Well, he had put up a good fight, he thought, had held on longer than most men would have done; it was three years since Walter Haigh had left him and started his monkey tricks, two years since he had had that trouble with his men. He couldn’t have carried on so long if he hadn’t taken that action and reduced his wages bill; and he thought the action thereby justified—for by it he had, at any rate, given employment for two whole years to several men. And heaven knew that was a matter of some importance nowadays, for the unemployment figures rose and rose—it was common knowledge in Hudley that summer that the dole was now being drawn in that town alone by more than ten thousand persons. He at any rate had done his best for them, thought Arnold; he had put all his strength, all his resources, into hanging on, carrying on Valley Mill in the hope of better times; now his resources were all gone, and his fighting strength had all gone too. And he was glad of it. He knew that this was a false gladness, that he was like a man lying wounded and stunned on the battlefield, who soon would recover consciousness and become terribly aware that the battle was lost and he and all he loved in peril of their lives; soon he must rise and struggle with his creditors, soon he must seek some other means of supporting his dependants; but meanwhile the abandoning of all effort, the cessation of strife, was sweet to him. He actually whistled about the house, and took Reetha to the pictures.

  At last one night, about a week after Dyson’s funeral, the announcement of the impending creditors’ meeting appeared in the Hudley News.

  “By gowl” exclaimed Harry Schofield, reading it. “Lumbs have banked!”

  The weather was hot, and the Schofields were seeking the air in front of their house in Thwaite Street after the day’s work; Mrs. Schofield had been accommodated with her rocking chair on the pavement, with Dorothy and Hal playing about her feet; Harry and Milner and Jessie were sitting on the yellow-stoned steps. Harry was in his shirtsleeves, but Milner, in spite of Jessie’s careful patching, had no shirt which would stand public exposure, so he retained his coat.

  There was an awkward silence after Harry’s words. Any reference to work, wages, the Lumbs, unemployment insurance or kindred subjects always created an awkward silence in the Schofield’s household nowadays, when it did not provoke caustic comment. For Milner, having now been out of work for more than two years, had long since exhausted his eligibility for standard unemployment benefit, and was drawing the lower “transitional” rate. This did not suffice for the ordinary weekly lodging payment he had formerly made to Jessie, much less leave anything over for smokes or clothes; the result was that he was a drag on the household, cramping their activities, exhausting their resources (already seriously diminished by the experiences of 1929), and gradually pulling them down towards debt. This situation was a constant nagging irritant for everyone concerned, and a bitter humiliation for Milner. Jessie was always kind to him, but then Milner did not stomach “kindness” easily; he almost preferred his mother’s taunts, though these were bitter enough. When Hal wanted a new cap or Doro
thy tore her coat, Mrs. Schofield would say to them with a sardonic cackle: “You can’t have another, lovey. Ask your uncle and he’ll tell you t’reason.” The children then turned in good faith to Milner, who defended himself hoarsely with the truth, saying: “I’m out of work, love, so we can’t afford.” At this point Harry usually intervened in an irritable tone. “Now, mother,” he said, “wi’ ten thousand out o’ work i’ Hudley, you be thankful you’ve got one in.” This, though a defence of his brother, was also a hit at Milner’s disapproval of Harry’s non-union job, and Milner felt it so. Hot words of resentment against blacklegs sprang to his lips, but then he remembered how he was really living on his brother, eating his children’s food, and how Harry never said a word in reproach to him on that subject; and he choked them back, and sat glowering in silence. Harry, however, saw his intention well enough, and resented it; secretly ashamed of his job, he pretended even to himself to be proud of his resource in securing it, and it seemed to him that when he was acting so kindly by his brother—not that he wanted to do anything else, but still, it was a misfortune for him to have to do it—Milner had no right to disapprove of what he did to earn the money that kept him. Accordingly Harry would address some cryptic remark to Nance about people who could neither speak up nor look civil, and Milner, his cup of bitterness full, would suddenly rise and rush from the house. As the brothers’ respective economic situations had remained the same now for eighteen months, this sort of scene, which they provoked, had been repeated in Thwaite Street ad nauseam, and a complex uneasiness and constraint had grown up between Harry and Milner. It formed a sore place in both their minds (but especially in Milner’s), which winced when anyone touched it, and while for Harry a reminder of it made him cross for an hour, it blackened Milner’s whole existence.

  So that now, when he heard of the Lumbs’ collapse, Milner’s heart leaped up in thankfulness. For now perhaps some of the uncomfortable feeling between himself and Harry would roll away. For now it would no longer be his fault that he was out of work and Harry in a non-union job; if they had stayed at Valley Mill (he thought) they would both be unemployed now. He was too proud to say this himself, but gazed earnestly up at Jessie—who was sitting on the top step so as to hear the baby if he cried—in the hope that she would say it for him. Jessie continued to read the headlines over Harry’s shoulder in silence, however; and it was Mrs. Schofield, from her chair below, who observed in her lively grating tones:

  “It’s a good thing you left Lumbs when you did, then, seemingly.”

  “Why?” said Harry sourly, colouring.

  “Because if you’d stayed, there’d be two on you out o’ work now instead o’ one, that’s why, lad,” explained his mother.

  “I suppose so,” said Harry. He looked up, caught his brother’s eye and looked down again. “Aye, I reckon that’s right,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Your father would have turned in his grave to hear Lumbs had banked, all t’ same,” continued Mrs. Schofield.

  “Aye—it’s a right pity,” agreed Harry without conviction. “But it’s a good thing I left when I did.”

  The Schofield family went to bed that night happier than they had been for a long time.

  The following morning, Walter was summoned from the Heights scouring-room with a message that Mr. Tasker wanted to speak to him urgently on the telephone. “I spend my whole life telephoning to Tasker,” thought Walter in a fury, as he hurried along to the office. “I’m sick of being at his beck and call.” He snatched up the receiver and said savagely:

  “If it’s those indigos you’re wanting, Leonard, you can’t have them. They’re not done, and they won’t be before Wakes. So now you know.”

  “It isn’t the indigos,” said Tasker in a tone of mild amusement. “You can throw them in Heights beck, for all I care. Listen—did you see in the papers that Lumbs are down at last?”

  “Yes—I knew a week ago,” said Walter sourly, wincing.

  “You knew and you didn’t tell me?” said Tasker in surprise. “That wasn’t very clever of you, Walter.”

  To cover his shrinking distaste for the subject Walter interrupted in a hard tone: “I’m surprised they’ve lasted so long.”

  “They wouldn’t have done if they’d had any sense,” said Tasker in a tone of genuine regret, as of an artist who sees the work of another marred by some avoidable flaw. “Arnold Lumb ought to have gone into liquidation last year, or even the year before, when he had something left, and could have bought back his business from the bank. Now the Lumbs have put in every penny they’ve got, and lost it all—they’ve nothing to start with again. But I say, Walter—who’s their landlord?”

  Walter said shortly that he did now know.

  “Well, do you know whether they own the building themselves, or not?” said Tasker.

  “No,” said Walter.

  “Well, is their machinery screwed down? Attached to the building, I mean?” continued Tasker.

  “How should I know?” snapped Walter.

  “Your father would have known,” said Tasker in a tone of reproach.

  “That’s not much help now, is it?” said Walter from the bitterness of his heart.

  “You’re in a very bad temper this morning, Walter,” said Tasker teasingly. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Oh, Leonard!” exclaimed Walter suddenly. “I believe I could find out for you about the Valley Mill machinery, if it’s important. Why do you want to know?”

  “Oh, I won’t keep you away from your pet indigos now,” said Tasker in a tone of affectionate mockery. “Meet me for lunch and I’ll tell you.” He named a time and place for Walter to meet him in Leeds, and rang off.

  Walter at once went in search of Harry Schofield, who was now on his proper work at a tentering machine, with a boy in attendance. He had some difficulty in making Harry understand what he wanted to know, and his own ignorance of why the information was wanted increased, though it failed to make him sympathetic to, Harry’s perplexity. “It’s a simple question,” thought Walter irritably. “Why doesn’t he just answer it?” Aloud he said to Harry: “Your father would have known.”

  “Aye—well—he would,” said Harry, and looked abashed. After prolonged thought he suddenly brightened. “I remember my father saying that when old Mr. Lumb bought the place,” he began, and narrated a complicated anecdote, full of names and dates and reasons for remembering it and lengthy side-issues—during the recital of which Walter positively scowled with impatience—from which at last emerged the indisputable fact that the machinery of Valley Mill was not attached to its fabric. Walter was pleased at having secured definite information, though uncertain whether Tasker wished for this answer or its reverse. He took the trouble to ascertain that the Heights machinery, unlike that of Valley Mill, was secured to the building, and felt more curious than ever as to Tasker’s motive for the enquiry.

  When, therefore, they met at lunch and Walter communicated Harry’s information, he watched Tasker with some interest to see how he received it. There was no doubting Tasker’s reaction; his hard face, which had become slightly worn during the incessant schemings and many narrow escapes of the past year, brightened at once, and his blue eyes positively sparkled with naughty glee.

  “Good!” he said.

  “Why did you want to know?” demanded Walter.

  “Lumbs’ bank are sure to have a first debenture on the business, you see,” explained Tasker: “against their over draft. So they’ll get the whole lot. But if the machinery had been screwed down, the landlord would have first claim on that, for the amount of rent owing, and that would have made it awkward.”

  “Made what awkward? Valley Mill belongs to the Lumbs, anyhow,” said Walter. “So their foreman’s son says.”

  “Oh, does it? Better and better,” said Tasker.

  “Why? But what an odd idea, that the landlord should have a lien on the machinery like that,” mused Walter.

  “Oh, it’s some lawyers’ nonsense or
other,” said Tasker contemptuously. “I don’t know how they make it out, I’m sure. But it is so, I happen to know.”

  “You know because that’s how you got hold of Heights,” sneered Walter, for the whole thing had become plain to him in a sudden flash. “You were the Heights landlord, or Dollam made out you were, and that’s how you got hold of the machinery. Wasn’t it?” He spoke in a tone of scornful challenge, looking Tasker angrily in the face.

  “Well, if I did, it was a good thing for you, wasn’t it?” retorted Tasker. “Don’t be so damned disagreeable, Walter—I don’t like the way you’re talking to-day, at all. If you want to quarrel with me, say so; I don’t give a damn what you do, one way or the other. Make up your mind, that’s all—and then go off and tell dear old Henry Clay about the company’s finances, and see what he says to you.”

  Walter, white to the lips and seething with hate, came to heel and observed smoothly that the idea of quarrelling had never entered his head—he was still upset about the loss of his father, he hinted.

  “Well, let’s get down to business now,” said Tasker, dismissing Walter’s private sentiments in a tone of disgust. “I think we’ll buy up Lumbs’ business cheap from the bank as a going concern,” he said, and having made this astonishing announcement began to eat heartily.

  “But what on earth for?” demanded the horrified Walter. “We don’t want another dyeing and finishing plant, surely? It takes me all my time to find enough work for Heights.”