South Riding

by Winifred Holtby

  “To stop him spoiling it all,” Huggins explained eagerly, sure here at least that he was on safe ground. “If he came in with us, he wouldn’t fight us on the council. That’s the way to get a man, you know. Make it worth his while to be on your side.”

  “But what if you can’t? In this case, you see, it didn’t quite come off, did it? He demanded an inquiry into land purchase and libelled me.”

  “That can’t hurt you much since he’s dead,” said Huggins brutally.

  “No. Perhaps not. But I dislike imputations of corruption.”

  “Well, it was you that put us on to it. It was your idea. You said . . .”

  “Nothing at all about a conspiracy to force up land prices, I think. Really, you are even more stupid than I imagined. Didn’t you realise that this kind of thing can’t be done in the dark? Real estate can’t change hands and no one be any the wiser. There is such a thing as conveyancing; then there have to be leases and documents. I should have thought that a child in arms would know enough to steer clear of that kind of folly.”

  “Every one does it.”

  “Every one? Not in the South Riding. Nor in many other county councils, I think. Oh, I realise it has been done by certain members of town corporations, but sooner or later it usually comes out. And not very prettily, either.”

  But Huggins had had enough of Snaith’s schoolmasterish superiority. He leant across the desk dark and menacing.

  “Then why the hell did you put me on to it? What did you invest your five hundred for? Don’t tell me it was charity.”

  “I shouldn’t dream of being so stupid as to call it charity.”

  “I suppose you meant to have a gamble, and then got scared by Carne, and went doubling back.”

  “To have a gamble. Yes. But not quite in the way you mean.”

  “Then will you please tell me what you do mean. Because I give it up.”

  “My dear Huggins, has it never occurred to you that there are more ways than one of gambling? Some people prefer horses, some cards; others go in for the stock exchange. Now I prefer to lose money on human nature. I pride myself on knowing it, and I like to back my fancy. Now there were several ways I could have spent that five hundred pounds— bought another motor-car, though I already have one, invited a number of people whom I dislike to share meals, which would give me indigestion, in my house which I prefer to have to myself. Travelled to America, which I have no desire to revisit. Added another wing to my house—which is already large enough. But no. On the whole I decided to expend it upon my hobby. That would give me more pleasure. So I handed it over to you, to see what you would make of it. After all, I had admirable Biblical precedent. Would you spend it on your family, your women, your social reputation—or would you put it into a napkin and bury it in the earth? Apparently you used it, very properly, to buy off Bessy Warbuckle’s blackmail, and then, fascinated by the ease of the game, tried to turn speculator. But it’s no good, you know. It doesn’t suit your naturally open, simple and sentimental nature.”

  “You mean—you just lent me that money to see how I’d act?”

  “Certainly, and allow me to assure you that it was worth it.”

  Slowly Hugging rose. He towered over the little alderman.

  “You did this to amuse yourself, did you? For fun, eh? You’ve not just made a fool of me. You’ve made me sin. For fun. Not for gain, not to get yourself out of a scrape, not to beat an enemy. Just for fun. Gambling with human nature— for your hobby. Because you’re rich and clever and know a thing or two we poor chaps don’t, eh?”

  Huggins was a preacher. Eloquence and moral indignation were his forte. His training and experience came now to his aid. He never paused for words.

  “All right. I’m not complaining. I shall take my medicine, don’t you fret, and face my colleagues and tell them we’ve been fooled and we shall have to stand the racket. But just understand this, please. I’m a sinner. I confess it. And I’ve caused others to sin. And I shall bear whatever just penalty God exacts of me. But you, you, you!” The great raw-beef fist shot out. “You, who gamble with human souls for your amusement—who tempt others to fall into traps that don’t happen to threaten you. You, who go creeping and crawling along the earth on your belly like the snake you are, seeking what Christian’s soul you can send to perdition, with your little loan here, and your little job there, and your hints and your tips and your insinuations, pushing others over the brink of hell and holding back yourself! Always on the right side of the law while you hurl others to destruction. You— you—you!”

  Words at last failed him. Striding round the desk he took the little alderman by the shoulders, lifted him clean out of his chair, and shook him—shook him till his eyes protruded, his lips turned blue, and his teeth rattled and finally stuck sideways on their loosened plate half-way out of his mouth in an extraordinary independent grin. Then he dropped him, like a broken doll, into his seat and stood contemplating his handiwork.

  Snaith slid forward, only half conscious, incapable of movement.

  Huggins fell to his knees.

  “Oh, God,” he prayed, “behold us sinners. Look down upon us in Thy everlasting mercy. Thou knowest our inmost thoughts, whatever they be, righteous or unholy. Do judgment, Oh, God, according to Thine infinite pity. Oh, Lord, I have been Thy servant Let me never be confounded. Amen, Amen.”

  He rose. He strode out of the office and down the ringing stone corridor. He knew that he was a ruined man. He would retire from the council. He had thrown away his savings. His reputation was at a man’s mercy.

  But he breathed great draughts of air into his lungs. Triumph exalted him. He had told Snaith what he thought of him. He was triumphantly free. He had spoken his heart before God in admonition.

  He was due to give an address at the Davis Street Methodist Church at half-past five. He kept his appointment. He took as his text: “The sixth chapter of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians, tenth verse: Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armour of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

  It was the sermon of his life.

  Anthony Snaith, whom he thus accused of spiritual wickedness and identified with the powers of darkness, took longer to recover. He rose stiffly, pulled out his teeth and found the plate cracked, put them in again regretfully and began to straighten his hair.

  He was trembling violently. Since his oppressed and bullied boyhood he had retained a horror of physical violence. What Huggins had done to him had affected him more profoundly than in its immediate consequences.

  There was a carafe with water and a tumbler balanced upon it on the side table. Snaith groped his way towards this, gulped down a long drink of the tepid and dusty fluid, and felt rather better. He sat down and tried to come to terms with himself. His pulses were leaping, his head ached, his whole body trembled in an ague.

  Yet his collapse was wholly corporeal. Already his quick mind was analysing the experience, already his thin lips twitched to a doubtful smile.

  For Huggins was wrong. Snaith did not wish men to do evil. He was only torn between two principles of desire. Sometimes he wished to frustrate and thwart men’s natures, so that they might all be as he was, impotent of passion. In that desire lay negation and lethargy and death.

  But sometimes he wished them to fulfil their natures. He remembered very well his desire for Huggins. That five hundred pounds had been the price of life, of vitality, of fulfilment. Tempestuous, lustful, violent, whatever the preachers was by nature, that he should be. Poverty should not frustrate him. Fear should not hold him back.

  And he had run true to type. On the whole, that was very satisfactory. Even this ridiculous business of buying up the Wastes had a crude liveliness and initiative about it. Snaith could imagine
those earnest Kiplington tradesmen cherishing their dreams of enrichment in their crochet-decorated parlours. Well, well, well. Not entirely wasted money.

  Not entirely wasted because even his bruised body and aching head reminded him that he had not, after all, that day been quite without experience of passion. He had been literally swept off his feet by an orgasm of fury. He had been, as they say, shaken well out of himself. And there was an odd masochistic pleasure to be found in this contact with energy, even though the energy itself were hostile—a sort of vicarious satisfaction, a novel response to unfamiliar stimuli.

  He retied his tie in front of the little mirror, observing with critical attention the pale secret face reflected back at him.

  It had done him no harm, and it would do Huggins good. Huggins would be a wiser, more honest man for that day’s work. For after the storm, Snaith reflected, came the whirlwind, and after the whirlwind (seeing that he was as good a Methodist as Huggins and knew his Bible), after the whirlwind, he thought, the still small voice.

  4

  Midge Decides to Go Home

  TOM SAWDON was cleaning the petrol pumps in the Nag’s Head yard when the Cold Harbour bus stopped and a stranger alighted and stood looking up and down the level road. He was a tall slouching old fellow with a tweed deerstalker cap and long grey moustaches that blew in the brisk May wind.

  “Hi, you!” he shouted. “Which way to Maythorpe Hall?”

  “Straight along and it’s on your right. Big stone gate-posts among trees, with eagles on them.”

  “How far?”

  “Matter of a mile and a half to the gate. Half a mile up the drive.”

  “Humph! Puff!” The old man had a chortling irritable cough. “They told me the buses passed the gate.”

  “So they do if you stay in them long enough. You got out too soon, sir.”

  “Fellow shouted ‘Maythorpe’!”

  “That’s right. This is Maythorpe village.”

  “What time’s the next bus?”

  “About half-past five.”

  “Damnation!”

  A lively old fellow, a gentleman, Tom decided. Also a possible fare. He wrang out his cloth.

  “Any taxis round here?”

  “I have one, sir.”

  “You have, have you? How much d’you charge to drive me to the Hall—and back?”

  “Five shillings fare, sir. But I charge for waiting.”

  He wished he dared trust Hicks to drive the car yet; but Geordie, though willing, was a slow learner. He had been too long with horses to acquire rapidly the mechanical sense desirable in chauffeurs.

  The old chap was chuffing and hemming. Finally he decided to take the car. Tom pulled on his coat and shouted to Hicks. Odd that though Lily had been in hospital for nearly four months, and dead for nearly three weeks, he still looked for her as he passed by the kitchen window.

  The Sunbeam was running well. Tom knew how to drive her. Steel and wire wore better than flesh and blood; they were more easily repaired.

  Smoothly they swooped round the illogical turnings of the road; they swung into the drive of Maythorpe Hall. The hedges were bare as broomsticks. A cock pheasant whirred clucking from the thick bramble-bound undergrowth; trailing its splendid tail like a comet, it sailed overhead.

  “Preserve game here?” asked the passenger.

  “They say the late Mr. Carne was a grand shot.”

  The drive needed weeding; hedge parsley and dead nettle frilled its deep ditches; fallen trees drew acute angles among the vertical lines of beech, ash and birch. Suddenly the road turned and widened; Tom brought the Sunbeam round with a sweep in front of the pillared porch.

  The old man climbed out stiffly. He saw the crumbling steps, the gaping blank oblongs of window, the flowering currant bush that dropped its bright pink blossoms like bunches of exotic grapes on to the lichen-covered tiles.

  “Is this the place?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Looks empty.”

  “They left the maid as caretaker, I think, sir.”

  The stranger mounted the steps; a squatting toad flopped down from one of the cracks and stared up at him, bright jewel-eyed.

  “Cheerful,” muttered the old man.

  He put out his hand and tugged at an iron knob beside the door. It pulled outward, screeching hideously. Far away, a bell tinkled through empty passages. There was no reply.

  He pulled again.

  “Humph, humph,” he grumbled.

  “It’s not the slightest use,” said a clear high voice above their heads, “pulling that bell, because they can’t hear you upstairs, and the front door won’t open.”

  At the sound, the old man started back, and both he and Tom saw, hanging over the stone balustrade above the porch, outlined against the white racing clouds of the turquoise sky, a child’s thin face and slender shoulders. Her straight hair fell in elf-locks beside her cheeks; her wide brown eyes were scornful.

  “What the devil!” gasped the old man.

  “Hallo, Sawdon,” said the girl. “If it’s a reporter you’ve brought, you can take him away again. If it’s an agent, it’s no use, ’cause the lawyers are settling everything and we’re probably sold already to the county council. And if it’s someone who wants Mrs. Beddows she’s upstairs and this door’s jammed. You have to get in through the drawing-room window.”

  “And who the devil are you?” roared the old man.

  “Miss Carne of Maythorpe,” replied the girl, with hauteur. “Who the devil are you?”

  He started, staring at her, but pulled himself together.

  “That’s my business. I want to see Mrs. Beddows.

  “Is she expecting you?”

  “She wrote to me.”

  “All right. I’ll come down and let you in.”

  With a whisk of brown tunic and grubby white blouse, she was gone. The old man stood rubbing his nose with his finger. He turned to Tom.

  “Do you know that young woman?”

  “Oh yes, sir.”

  “Is that true? She’s Miss Carne?”

  “That’s right. Every one round here knows her.”

  “What sort of child is she?”

  “All right, sir. A bit wild.”

  Tom thought he heard a kind of wintry chuckle; but Midge had reappeared round the corner of the house.

  “I’ve told granny. She said you were to come in. This way.”

  She led him round the south face of the Hall. To their left was a flowering wilderness, sheltered by old brick walls on which fruit trees straddled. There had been lawns here, and beds and borders. Now daffodils waved among the unmown grass and primulas grew below the tangle of unpruned roses. Over a weed-grown rockery splashed white arabus and tiny saxifrage.

  A french window opened on to the broad flagged path.

  “This way. This was the drawing-room,” said Midge proudly.

  She led him into the empty sun-washed shell of a room. Painted cupids flaked petals of gilt and pink from the ceiling; the candelabra had been torn from the elegant panelled walls. In one corner lay a broken harp, its strings coiling out from its ruined frame.

  The old man gave a sort of gasp as though he recognised something.

  Midge led him through the door into the dark hall. Its dim rich illumination came through the drawing-room and the stained glass of the front door; it danced on a delicate golden sea of dust. Piles of packing cases, bundles and picture frames obstructed all free passage. The old man stood blinking, like a grand yet mangy eagle among the debris.

  He was watching Mrs. Beddows descend the stairs. Her round face was red with exertion. She wore a white apron, none too clean; but the brooch Carne gave her sparkled and glowed at her throat.

  “I am Mrs. Beddows,” she said in her cordial Yorkshire voice. “Did you want to see me?”

  “Yes. I did.”

  “Who are you, please?”

  “My name’s Sedgmire.”

  She did not at first catch
it.

  He handed her a card. She had to pull down the pince-nez pinned to her dress and stare at it, puckering her face. Midge stood gaping, the colour ebbing and flowing under her transparent skin.

  “Lord Sedgmire?” faltered Mrs. Beddows, frowning.

  “Grandfather!” screamed Midge.

  “That remains to be seen,” growled the old man. “I want to talk to you.” He turned to Mrs. Beddows.

  “Of course. Come into the dining-room. This is Midge Carne.”

  “So I see. So I see. And you’re her guardian. I got your letter.”

  “I didn’t expect you here.”

  “I thought I’d better come and see for myself, eh?”

  They went into the dining-room. It still bore its air of shabby grandeur. The crimson curtains had gone, but the big oak table, where twenty guests could sit without any crowding, lay with a bloom of dust on its polished surface. The silver cups had gone, but the armchairs still stood on the threadbare carpet before the fire. The painted terra-cotta walls showed darker squares where the family portraits had hung; but from above the mantelpiece there still looked down with wonder and pride and scorn, as though she had preserved those emotions through twenty-five years since she last saw her father, the wild strange loveliness of Muriel Carne.

  “Ah,” breathed the old man, and stood still, facing it.

  “A good likeness?” he inquired at length.

  “Yes. Robert had it done five years after their marriage.”

  He looked at it, nodding his head several times, then glanced from the portrait to Midge. The resemblance was unmistakable.

  “Wouldn’t you like some tea? How did you get here?” asked Mrs. Beddows nervously, rubbing her plump, work-soiled hands.

  “Bus to Maythorpe. Had to take a taxi. Oh, there’s a man outside.”

  “Midge, go to Elsie and tell her to get us some tea, will you?”

  “The man’s Sawdon,” said Midge.

  “Well. Give him some too. He’s a great friend of ours,” explained Mrs. Beddows. “Poor fellow. Just lost his wife. We all like him. Go along, Midge. Your grandfather wants to talk to me.”