A Modern Tragedy

by Phyllis Bentley

  At the close of the case for the defence the proceedings were adjourned for the day. It was expected that the trial would occupy two more days; one for the final speeches of counsel, one for the judge’s summing-up and the jury’s verdict. Little could be done now in consultation, and it was not long before Walter entered the drawing-room of Clay Hall, where Mrs. Crosland, Elaine, Rosamond and Ralph (who was having lessons at home with the Clay Green vicar at present) were at tea. Ralph, who sat uncomfortably in a chair too small for him which he had taken out of courtesy, balancing a plate awkwardly on his thin young knees, looked up as Walter came into the room—a look of trusting, sorrowing affection. And immediately Walter knew what it was he had been trying all afternoon to see.

  “Elaine,” he said in a quiet grave tone: “Would you mind coming to another room with me for a moment? I want to speak to you alone.”

  “Now?” said Elaine in a cross little tone, surprised and alarmed.

  “Now, please,” said Walter.

  Elaine rose and went to him. “What is it, Walter?” she demanded.

  Walter made no reply, but led the way to their bedroom. A private interview with her husband at this point was the last thing Elaine desired, but she followed him upstairs staunchly. Walter switched on a lamp, closed the door and came towards her with burning eyes; he took her arms in a strong grasp and turned her to face him.

  “Listen, Elaine,” he said. “I’ve often told you that I’m innocent in this case, haven’t I?”

  “Yes,” said Elaine, wincing.

  “Well, it’s not true,” said Walter firmly. He released her arms and stood erect before her. “I’m guilty—I’m as guilty as hell. I did it all for you, and I knew what I was doing. Part of it was being afraid, of course; that first day when Tasker tricked me about the cloth, I was frightened of losing his custom and frightened of him and frightened of what Arnold Lumb would say—times were so bad, and I was afraid. Partly it was Tasker who was too clever for me, yes; and partly it was being afraid; but chiefly it was because I wanted you, and didn’t care what I did to get you. I fell in love with you that day outside Victory Mills, and I felt so poor and insignificant—I wanted to be rich and powerful so that I could have you, and I wasn’t particular whether I won you by fair means or foul. And after all that’s what being unscrupulous means. That’s what Tasker does; he wants something, and he isn’t scrupulous about how he gets it. I’m just like Tasker. Oh, yes, I am,” he went on as Elaine made a movement of pitying protest: “I expect Tasker was just like me when he was young. I’m sure he was. I knew it as soon as I saw those old people in court to-day; his father and mother, you know—they were so respectable, just like my father and mother; he started out good and happy, just like me. He corrupted me; yes, he did; well, I was beginning to corrupt Ralph. I see it now. I was justifying myself to him, making dishonesty appear clever and natural, you know; I was beginning to corrupt Ralph. I even said some of the same things to him that Tasker did to me! It’s terrible to think of. You must be sure to tell Ralph, Elaine—I’d like you to wait till I’m in prison, if you don’t mind; but be sure to tell him—tell him I was as guilty as hell.”

  “Walter, Walter!” cried Elaine, weeping. “My poor boy!” She threw her arms round him and laid her head on his breast. Walter held her close, but kissed her abstractedly, his brown eyes staring.

  “I told you I never did anything deliberately wrong,” he went on in the same calm firm tone. “Well, it’s a lie. I’ve known lots of things that Tasker intended to do, and agreed to them willingly, so that we could go on living in the way you liked. And I fastened down the Heights machinery deliberately, knowing the game was up, so that it might be saved for you, you being the landlord, you know, and help to make a fresh start for me. I was deliberately swindling the shareholders, then. Nobody knows that except Harry Schofield and me, but it’s true. You mustn’t claim for the rent, Elaine. But I don’t care so much about that. It’s Ralph that worries me. I was beginning to corrupt Ralph. You must be sure to tell Ralph, Elaine, that I was as guilty as hell.”

  “Oh, my dear, my dear!” sobbed Elaine, kissing him passionately. “Why didn’t you tell me before? How you must have suffered! How could you bear it all, alone? My poor, poor Walter!”

  “It’s all my fault—your grandfather’s death, and everything,” said Walter heavily. “And I’m sorry.”

  He sank down limply on the edge of the bed, his strength exhausted by his confession. Elaine knelt beside him, drew his head to her breast and began to caress his crisp dark hair, in which there had appeared, during the past week, some threads of grey. Somehow this detail seemed to her infinitely pathetic, and she began to weep as though her heart would break, rocking him gently on her breast and murmuring lovingly in his ear. “My poor, poor Walter!” she whispered. “Why didn’t you tell me, love, before? I should have understood! You did it all for me. You didn’t mean to do wrong, did you?”

  “I did wrong, though,” whispered Walter, his head bowed against her breast, “and I’m very sorry.”

  “Never mind, love,” wept Elaine. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll face it together. I love you, Walter!”

  That night she gave herself to him with rapture, and prayed that she might conceive.

  Scene 12. Waste

  IT WAS THE last day of the trial, and Rosamond was journeying to the court alone.

  Walter had visited his mother on the previous evening to say farewell to her; he was sure the verdict would go against him, and indeed admitted to Mrs. Haigh that he was guilty, but could not now change his legal plea without prejudice to Tasker. His bearing during this painful interview had excited Rosamond’s admiration; he looked old, but no longer wore the glib sophisticated air which had spoiled him of late; instead his behaviour was mature and experienced, that of a man who has suffered and learned from his suffering. Before leaving Moorside Place, Walter had asked Rosamond not to attend the court for the final day, telling her that Elaine too had agreed to remain at home. He felt it would be easier for him to go through the ordeal of the judge’s summing-up and probable sentence, alone. Rosamond allowed him to suppose that she would not be present, for she could not add to the heavy load of misery he was bearing by opposing him; but secretly she resolved to go, deciding to submerge herself in the general public in the gallery of the court, where he would not think of looking for her, for she could not bear to think that she had looked on Tasker for the last time. Accordingly this chill grey autumn morning Rosamond was travelling to the city of the assizes, by bus.

  At one of the intervening towns the bus was timed to halt for a few minutes. There seemed to be some excitement in the neighbourhood of the station; driver and conductor both wandered away down a side street, and after some lively dialogue, a few of the passengers did the same. They all seemed to be gazing eagerly in one direction; Rosamond, thankful for anything which might distract her from the pain she bore in head and heart, descended too, and followed them. “What’s going on here?” she asked the conductor. “It’s the unemployed having a meeting; they’re hunger-marching to London to present a petition,” replied the man. Rosamond exclaimed, and withdrew to one side of the group, so that she might see what passed more clearly.

  It was a dreary and tragic spectacle which met her eyes.

  Across the road an open space lay before her, covered with ashes and rubble; from the sign Cloth Hall Garage on a neighbouring building, Rosamond surmised that the waste was the site of the former cloth market of the town, long fallen into desuetude and disrepair from its eighteenth-century splendours, and lately, to the horror of antiquarians, pulled down by local authorities. This had happened to too many West Riding piece halls for Rosamond to doubt the accuracy of her guess, and an enquiry from a neighbour in the gathering group confirmed it. Against the side wall of the garage planks had been arranged on chairs and barrels to form a rough platform, and around this were gathered a few hundred men. They were of various ages and types, but all bore the piti
ful marks of poverty and wretchedness. The older men had cracked boots and patched trousers and old stained cloth caps, and wore mufflers round their necks to conceal their lack of collar. The faces of these were grey and weary, and had a hopeless, beaten look which wrung Rosamond’s heart. The younger men had at a distance a much more cheerful air; they wore coloured knitted pullovers and shirts open at the throat, and were bare-headed. When they were viewed more closely, however, it was to be seen that their faces were sallow, yellow and pinched, and their flesh, long inadequately fed and clothed, prickled with gooseflesh in the chill autumn breeze. Their eyes had a reckless, determined, undaunted air, however; Rosamond found something within her respond fiercely to that look. Banners wavered about aloft among the crowd, and were presently deposited in a row beside the platform—red banners which cried: Organise! Organise! and Better Fight than Starve; a large white banner on which was crudely painted a picture of a mother holding a young child, with the inscription below: 2/—a week to feed me. “Modern version of the Madonna-and-child theme,” thought Rosamond sardonically; her heart was beginning to beat with passionate sympathy.

  A young man, tall and dark and sallow, with round fiery eyes, now climbed to the platform and began to address the meeting through a megaphone, which gleamed silver against the dingy background. “Come over here, Comrades!” he shouted, and after a moment’s hesitation a few men broke sheepishly from the group round Rosamond, crossed the road between and added themselves to the meeting. “You all know why we are here, Comrades,” shouted the man with the megaphone slowly. “We are on our way to join other comrades, to form part of the great Hunger-March to London, to present a petition to the House of Commons, against the government’s attack on the unemployed.” At this point Milner tired of the restraint imposed by the megaphone, suddenly threw it down with a reckless gesture, and began to speak rapidly without its aid. Rosamond was thus deprived of much of his speech, but found him more effective and appealing as a spectacle; his gestures told their story more powerfully than words—he raised his clenched fist above his head, brought it down thunderously in his palm; flung his arms wide in appeal, threw out an accusing forefinger. While he spoke his face worked convulsively; he was an impassioned and heroic figure. The men near him listened to him with upturned faces, open-mouthed, and applauded his periods heartily; a group of the younger fellows, who had seated themselves on the ground with their backs against the brick wall of the garage, and were accepting cigarettes from the bystanders, exchanging cheerful badinage with some girls who evidently belonged to the party, and not listening to the speech at all, cheered louder than any, with a kind of cynical jollity which Rosamond found disheartening. Marchers wearing red armlets and red rosettes in their buttonholes moved through the gathering crowd, shaking collecting tins hopefully; and a little tailless black dog ran in and out, its small nose trembling, its beady eyes bright, with anxiety, though everyone seemed to know it and patted its head in a friendly and encouraging fashion.

  “Now, then, lads, all together three times!” shouted Milner. “We refuse to starve in silence—all together!”

  He conducted his audience as though it were a band; the first utterance of the slogan was timid, the second was a mournful plaint, the third rolled passionately up towards the grey autumn sky and shook the windows of the Cloth Hall garage. Milner looked delighted; springing from the platform he pushed his way (rather roughly, Rosamond thought) through the crowd into the road, and began to marshal the hunger-marchers in a pre-arranged order, with considerable ability. He himself led the van, holding the banner which urged men to fight rather than starve; then came a group carrying drums, mouth organs and concertinas; then a few women wearing rosettes, and the rank and file of the column. The little black dog scurried out of the crowd, and watched the men form into rows with piteous anxiety; one paw upraised, barking confusedly. Rosamond felt its distress somehow quite intolerable, and was intensely relieved when one of the men picked it up and tucked it into his coat with an accustomed movement. He was a man she had noticed before as one of the most poverty-stricken and disheartened in appearance; he was short, and carried his meagre shoulders hunched together; his clothes were neatly patched, and the clogs he wore were in fairly good condition, but he was dirty and unshaven, and the fair hair beneath his old cloth cap looked matted and unkempt. He was so self-conscious that he could not raise his eyes, but slouched along with his head down, an attitude which gave him a sullen, despairing, hangdog air.

  “He’s lost his self-respect,” thought Rosamond wretchedly, wincing as she imagined the wife, the home, the children, he had perhaps left behind him to come on this desperate errand. Suddenly there was a loud beat from the drum; the leader jumped on a doorstep to shout some final instructions; the man with the dog looked up, and Rosamond recognised him. It was the man whom Rosamond and Walter had seen at Blackpool four years ago, fresh and merry, with his wife in an immense blue hat hanging on his arm, coming away from those jolly careering motors—old Isaiah’s son, Harry Schofield.

  “Oh!” exclaimed Rosamond in horror. “One of the Valley men! One that Walter …”

  The procession now began to move, gathered speed, and swung down the street in fine style; drums beating, banners blowing. Rosamond watched it in horrified fascination. Harry slouched past, his head down, his expression sullen, Nance’s black nose quivering anxiously out of his coat. Milner, supporting the Better Fight than Starve banner at the full stretch of his arm, strode forward with his head in the air, a proud smile curving his lips, his eyes fixed and wild, his whole person expressing a tense and burning determination.

  “A fanatic,” thought Rosamond soberly. “He’s ready to die for his cause. A good organiser. Eloquent. A born leader. And all the era can find him to do is to head a hunger-march.”

  The pitiful procession turned the corner of the street and disappeared, and the sound of the drums gradually died away in the distance.

  Rosamond, trembling with compassion, her mind full of whirling thoughts which she could not settle into a coherent chain, resumed her journey.

  The bus in which she had entered the town had left without her, and she had to wait for another; then when at last she was on her way again, her vehicle overtook the hunger-marchers on the road, and had to proceed slowly past them. All this made her late at the court; but this was no great disadvantage to her purpose, for she was able to slip into the gallery with a party of women, and found it already sufficiently full to conceal her from Walter’s unexpectant eyes. It was some time before she could gather her thoughts to the business in hand, so powerful had been the impression made upon her by the spectacle of the march; but gradually the judge’s words began to penetrate her mind, and she realised afresh the sadness of her errand.

  The judge’s summing-up lasted for some three hours. It was an incisive, cold, logical statement which destroyed, as it seemed to Rosamond, every possibility of a favourable verdict. The judge implied that though it might be possible to believe that at the outset the two men had honourable intentions towards their shareholders, inasmuch as by their questionable methods they paid the dividends and hoped that times might change; yet it was difficult to reconcile the false statements on the prospectus—admitted by one defendant to be false—with any integrity of intention of any kind. Each detail of each of Tasker’s innumerable and complicated proceedings was set forward judicially in perfect order, supported by the testimony of witnesses on either side; Rosamond, who now that she was present as it were unofficially felt able to divide her interest as it was really divided, watched Tasker during all this, and observed a glint of admiration in his eyes. The judge was particularly merciless upon Walter’s attempt at justification, showing it to be what it in fact was: a tissue of lies. Walter neither moved nor changed colour under this attack; he sat erect, with his arms folded, wearing a grave but steady expression, throughout the day; and Rosamond felt that from being a pathetic, he had become a tragic, figure; for the first time in the tria
l he appeared to equal, if not to surpass, Tasker in strength and courage.

  At length the long summing-up was over, and the jury retired.

  Rosamond did not leave the court, not wishing to risk being absent when they returned—the general expectation being that their decision would not be long in coming. She faced the high windows as she sat, and now had time to notice that the grey day had turned to wind and driving rain; for the sake of the hunger-marchers she grieved; and wondered, with an ache in her heart, where they were now. There was some connection between the hunger-marchers and the trial, she felt, if she could only see it; a deep organic connection, not just the surface link of Harry Schofield. Outside, hungry and desperate men paraded; within, the men who had most experience in organising their industry were being tried for a crime of personal greed. But it was not fair to accuse Tasker and Walter of that column of wretched men, thought Rosamond; if they had been as honest as the day, that column would yet have existed. Still, they had added units to its ranks. Which of the main personages in this drama in which Harry Schofield was concerned, she wondered, had ever thought of him, ever considered the result their actions might have upon his fate? Henry Clay Crosland had thought of his work-people, Rosamond felt sure. Arnold? Perhaps. But Tasker? And Walter? And I myself, thought Rosamond with shame; did I give a thought to the work-people concerned? When I saw Harry Schofield holidaying at Blackpool, did it occur to me to think that his life was linked with Arnold’s and so with ours? That we were part of the same scheme, the same action? I admit to my shame that I regarded him as a spectacle alone. And did Harry Schofield on his part consider the result his actions might have on his employers? Had the leader of the hunger-marchers considered anyone but his own class? Rosamond thought not; fearful of losing his footing on the economic battlefield, eager to gain safety and ease and power, each fought for his own hand. And she began to think that it was this universal limitation of vision which had caused the frightful, the altogether terrible, the tragic, waste represented by that column of marchers outside and the men on trial within.