So ignorant was he of the history of his native Riding, and so vague in mental habit, that, although he was vaguely familiar with the early days of the Crosland Spinning Company, he yet could believe, side by side with the story of the eighteenth century Crosland and his pair of boots, that the Clay Croslands had built Clay Hall in 1628, and lived in it ever since. But in this he was no stupider than Elaine, who without going into the matter imagined pretty much the same thing; indeed Henry Clay Crosland was probably the only member of the household who had a clear idea of the house’s history, and knew the date when it passed to industry from land-owning. But however long or short a time the Clay Hall estate had been in the hands of the Croslands, it was a highly agreeable place to be in, with its wide lawns and banks of flowering bushes and brilliant beds, especially on a spring evening, clear after rain, when the orange wallflowers scented the air and one was going to dine with the girl one loved.
For in the months which had elapsed since Walter’s first meeting with Elaine Crosland at the Clay Green bazaar, his passion for her had grown till everything in his life was focused on her; he worked for her, played for her, drove and danced and dressed for her, and was always mentally conducting long arguments with her, in which he explained his life-story and the terrible intensity of his love. He was besotted with her beauty; his pulses leaped at the merest glimpse of her lovely head, the merest turn of her soft white throat. But Walter was not a man of sensual nature, and though every slight curve of his love’s slender restless little body was impressed indelibly on his consciousness for ever, it was Elaine herself, not merely her exquisite flesh, he loved. He wanted her approval; he wanted those brilliant eyes to shed soft beams of liking on him, that delicious mouth to smile in friendly understanding, more than anything else on earth.
This part of his love was sometimes wounded almost to death by her cruelties. The product of a civilisation keyed to the highest pitch of sensibility yet known in the history of the world, and of an individual sensitiveness so great that her mind almost visibly palpitated as it took in each fresh impression, in spite of the surface hardness she used to conceal its too great vulnerability, Elaine at once knew, by his reactions, Walter’s sore places; and she would contrive to remind him of his plebeian descent, his rough accent and clumsy looks, his lack of skill and knowledge in some essential game or piece of etiquette, half a dozen times in an evening, if he had chanced to say something which her uneasy spirit referred to its own deficiencies. Of late her taunts were rather changing their targets, for three months in the Croslands’ company had polished Walter wonderfully, and his love gave him manliness. But Elaine was still able to imply that he was stupid and insensitive, limited and uninteresting; and poor Walter—who had always been rather conscious that he had not fought in the War like Bob, and was not as clever as Rosamond—quivered beneath her wounding implications. He winced, and thus gave her power over him, because he was ashamed of the part life had assigned to him and was pretending to play another; while because he loved Elaine, he could not bear to wound her in return, and thus stood as it were bound and defenceless before her. He often returned home, after an evening in her company, trembling with anguish, swearing to himself that he hated Elaine, that she was altogether and only hateable, that he would love her no more. But the mere tinkle of her soft provoking voice on the telephone next day brought all his love back in a hot tormenting flood. If he rang her up, she was almost always cross when she replied, and Walter suffered; but sometimes she sounded sweetly reasonable, and then the sun shone all day for him.
On one or two occasions Elaine had herself telephoned him with a message from her mother for Mrs. Lewry. These were the peaks of Walter’s happiness so far, for Elaine was essentially proud and fastidious, and asked Walter this small service with as much recognition of his courtesy in doing it as a coarser nature would have shown in requesting him to drive fifty miles.
Walter was ushered now into the low panelled drawing-room, where Elaine and Ralph and their mother, with a few guests, stood about listening to the wireless, and Henry Clay Crosland sat apart, lost in a reverie of a disagreeable kind, to judge from his fine face, which was haggard and lined.
Walter, who if not yet quite at home in these surroundings, now knew his way about them fairly well, made his greetings and accepted his cocktail. His hand shook, his face flushed, as he approached Elaine, who was looking particularly young and lovely in a long high-waisted frock of pale flowered silk—the first of this shape Walter had seen—for he always began to live with greater intensity the moment he entered her presence. Indeed, his heart was even apt to quicken its beat when he saw places and objects associated with Elaine. Sometimes in these restless spring evenings, when he chanced to have seen nothing connected with her all day and had no engagement in her company at night, he had positively taken out his car and driven round to Clay Green, gazing wistfully at the Hall and hoping against all probability for a meeting.
On one such occasion he was seen by a member of Elaine’s social group, who laughingly teased him about it next time she saw him. Walter, in an anguish lest Elaine should find him out, lied and lied; Elaine, fixing her brilliant eyes upon him and discovering at once that he was seriously disturbed, pressed questions upon him with such obvious malice that Walter thought his secret discovered, and could hardly restrain himself from rushing from her presence. But indeed Elaine had no notion of it, and thought him guilty merely of some vulgar stupidity which he was ashamed to confess.
Walter was an object of interest to Elaine because he was different from the circle which surrounded her, and this difference both attracted and provoked her; she often as it were stuck pins into Walter, not with intent to wound, but just to see what he would do. That Walter admired her seemed possible to Elaine, because everybody constantly told her that he did; but then a great many people admired her, too, or at any rate, said so; it was the fashion in her circle to admire Elaine Crosland, and in Elaine’s opinion such admiration did not amount to much. Secretly Elaine longed for somebody to have a great and terrific passion for her, because such a passion would convince her once and for all, she thought, of her own desirability; and she looked wistfully at every man she met who seemed “different” from her usual friends, in case he might be the one to love her thus. But at the bottom of her heart she was fundamentally uncertain whether she deserved such a passion, fundamentally uncertain of her own worth. And this uncertainty poisoned her life. The suggestion that Walter loved the very plants on the Clay Hall estate, for her sake, would have made her laugh—shrilly and bitterly, for she would be laughing at, in order to defend, her own deep desire that someone should love her so.
She greeted Walter now with a cool indifference, which arose partly from an unconscious sexual nervousness in his presence, partly from a cruel curiosity to see what he would make of it; and continued to talk to young Anstey, who was her distant cousin, about a Hunt Ball to which Walter was not invited. Walter, with a pang, felt himself rebuffed, and retired to discuss radio technicalities with Ralph, to whom he suspected (not altogether correctly) that he owed his to-night’s invitation.
Indeed from Walter’s point of view the evening went, at first, much the same as several similar evenings during the past few months; that is, it alternated violently between joy and anguish. Sometimes with a burning heart Walter watched Elaine and her friends chattering and laughing like a cageful of bright fluttering birds, while he in the background felt relegated to Ralph and one or two of the boy’s young school friends, whose occasion the dinner was really supposed to be; sometimes he was drawn into the conversation by Elaine’s group—who, to do them justice, had no idea that he felt out of it—and had the delicious sensation of being in mid-stream, of succeeding in the thing he cared for most. But whether joy or anguish seized his heart, he would not have exchanged his place for any other in the world; to be near Elaine was his overriding passion.
As usual in Elaine’s circle the party was late in starting for th
e theatre; some members pronouncing themselves unready, and rushing back into the house, as fast as others came out to the steps and urged departure. In one of these intervals of waiting, Walter found himself next to Elaine, who was announcing that the piece they were booked for was quite too terrible to be seen.
“Revolver shots all over the place, my dear,” she said: “And three bodies in the last act. It’s for Ralph, of course; he loves murders. Do you think you can bear it?”
“Most boys of his age like that sort of thing,” said someone wisely; but Walter, always anxious to please his love, observed that he had heard the play was good of its kind. Everybody at once clustered around him eagerly, and asked for the source of his information; Walter, who had heard it in the course of his Tuesday’s rounds in Leeds, was able to produce some reputable names in its support. Everybody at once turned to everybody else, crying: “Walter says the play’s quite good!” in a tone of joyous astonishment; and everybody else replied heartily: “Splendid!”
Elaine looked softly pleased, and Ralph beamed. Walter became quite the hero of the hour, and drove off to Leeds in his happiest mood. (A place had been arranged for him in someone else’s car, but in view of his appointment with Tasker, he had brought his own. So far was Tasker from his mind now, however, that he was surprised to discover his car standing in the drive, and stared at it reproachfully.)
The party, putting on speed, arrived at the theatre with a minute to spare, and threw themselves into their seats efficiently. Walter now began to feel highly nervous lest the play should disappoint expectation, after being recommended by himself, but luckily he had not been misinformed as to its merits, and various members of the party took the trouble to tell him so.
Walter and Mrs. Crosland sat with Ralph and his friends in the front row—Henry Clay Crosland himself had remained at home. Elaine and her group, behind them, by a natural impulse often bent forward to express their views. Elaine’s silky hair, her brilliant pointed little face and exquisite throat, were often near to Walter’s lips; her subtle perfume enveloped him. The warm dark of the theatre, the startling brightness of the stage, the scenes of love and violence there enacted; the swooning music in the intervals, the rich voluptuous colours of gilt and red velvet which bloomed abruptly, striking almost with the effect of a blow upon his eyes, when the house lights rose; the quick chatter in the corridors, the feeling that their party was the centre of attention—all these acted as aphrodisiacs upon Walter. He felt Elaine’s proximity in every fibre of his being, and indulged the sensation rapturously.
Suddenly, without warning, the memory of his appointment with Tasker flashed across his mind. He started in his chair, and a sharp uneasiness invaded his heart. What was the time? It must be late, for according to the programme the play had reached the middle of the last act. There was no illuminated clock in the building, such as was to be found in cinemas, and Walter thought angrily of the causes of the decay of the commercial theatre as pronounced by Rosamond—he had not thought of Rosamond for weeks, and dismissed her promptly enough now—as he bent forward to focus his watch into such light as was available. The hands stood slightly beyond half past ten. Walter sighed with relief, sat back and surrendered himself again to the enjoyable suspense of the action on the stage. When yet another body had joined those already discovered in cupboards and walls, Walter, with a start, remembered the time again, and from then onwards he consulted his watch rather frequently. At last the curtain came down, but the house remained in darkness, for there was yet another scene to be played.
Walter turned to Mrs. Crosland, about to explain his unavoidable departure, and leave, when Elaine bent forward to him, and said:
“Why do you keep looking at your watch so often, Walter? It’s most distracting.”
“I’m awfully sorry,” said Walter, with an apologetic blush. “I was just going to make my excuses to your mother—I’m afraid I must go. I have an important business appointment at eleven.”
Mrs. Crosland murmured a courteous sentence of regret, and began to gather her cloak about her to assist Walter’s exit. But Elaine interrupted in her sweet cross little voice: “But how silly, Walter! How can you have a business appointment at this hour? Besides, we’re going to have supper in Leeds—of course you mustn’t leave.”
“If you tell me to stay,” said Walter, suddenly reckless: “I’ll stay, and let the appointment go hang.”
His face was very near to hers, and his warm brown eyes were fixed upon hers in a compelling look of love. A delicious gleam of triumph stole across Elaine’s lovely little face; she veiled her eyes, glancing down, and enquired in a soft, quick tone: “Is it a very important appointment?”
“Very,” said Walter emphatically, visualising Tasker kept waiting by a man whose wage he paid—his rage would be unbounded.
“Stay, then,” said Elaine, her voice trembling between a passionate desire to test her power over this young man, and a naughty childish glee.
“Very well,” said Walter, folding his arms.
Elaine gave a soft laugh of delight, and leaned back as the curtain went up and disclosed the final scene.
The next half hour Walter enjoyed, and suffered, with extraordinary violence. Defiance and love mingled intoxicatingly in the cup the night offered him; he drank deep of the heady mixture, and was excited to a pitch of acute, of throbbing, sensibility. His heart beat hard and fast, the blood throbbed in his temples, he felt as though he were delirious or in a dream. Every action on the stage seemed intensified a hundred-fold; the words spoken nearly deafened him, a mere knock reverberated along his every nerve, an arm lifted to strike seemed to take years to descend, to fall with terrific force. He started in horror at the heroine’s scream, panted as though he himself, and not the varnished hero, were struggling to reach and rescue her, trembled with love at her ecstatic welcoming embrace. In the distance the Town Hall clock struck eleven; he heard its muffled booming, defied it, and rejoiced.
Suddenly he felt a hand on his sleeve.
“Walter,” whispered Elaine softly in his ear: “You ought to go.”
He bent back his head and looked at her, and instantly was in an ecstasy; for what he had desired was come to pass. For this one moment, if for no other in life, her eyes beamed softly, lovingly upon him, her lovely mouth smiled approval and admiration. He whispered: “No.”
“Yes, Walter, you must. You must go,” breathed Elaine.
Walter shook his head. “I shan’t,” he muttered softly.
He gazed with rapture into her star-like eyes, at the exquisite pure curve of her young cheek. Her small hand still lay upon his shoulder; on a sudden impulse he covered it with his own, and lightly, gently, with a lover’s tenderness, caressed its fingers once. Elaine’s breast fluttered in a sigh; she withdrew herself from his touch, but so gently that it was more a caress than a withdrawal. Walter shot a burning glance at her to see if she were angered by his presumption. She was sitting erect, her head thrown proudly upward, her eyes starry, her delicate nostrils dilated, her mouth smiling: exalted, though Walter did not guess this, in a delicious triumph.
The final curtain at last descended. Walter’s eyes sought Elaine’s at once, but she held her head down and would not look at him. The lovely child-like smile was still on her mouth, however. Walter felt that to wait longer would be an anti-climax; he took a brief leave of his hostess, and fled towards Tasker.
He found him sitting in a corner of the half-empty lounge, in morning clothes, hunched-up, disconsolate, before an empty glass, not even smoking his customary cigar. His face was heavy, lined, brooding; only his light blue eyes had their usual sardonic and indomitable air. Walter swung in smiling, in all the triumph of young love declared; a very personable young man, erect and gallant. For a moment the wish hovered in Tasker’s mind that the lad was his son. He repelled it at once as a piece of stupid sentimentality, but decided that he liked Walter all the same; there was some quality in the lad which made association with him agreea
ble; he wasn’t always thinking of his own advantage, perhaps.
“I’m exceedingly sorry to have kept you waiting,” said Walter in his best Clay Hall style.
“Well, it’s not very lively here after licensing hours, and that’s a fact,” said Tasker.
His voice held no resentment, however, and Walter was reassured. Feeling in command of this, and indeed any, situation, he offered Tasker a cigarette (which the older man took with a sardonic glance), lighted it for him, and began briskly:
“Well, what is it that’s wrong? If it’s those greys it’s their own mender’s needle that did the damage, not ours. We don’t use that pattern of needle—I can show him his own needle that we found in the cloth; I’ve kept it, I’ve got it in the office.”
“It isn’t the greys,” said Tasker, puffing quietly at his cigarette.
Walter waited for him to continue, but as he remained silent, demanded impatiently, thinking to himself that with luck he might return to Elaine’s party, catch them all at supper: “Well, what is it, then?”
After another pause Tasker, observing him watchfully from the corner of his eye, said suddenly: “Henry Clay Crosland is determined to make me a bankrupt.”
“What?” said Walter irritably, not in the least taking this in. “What did you say?”
“I owe money to Henry Clay Crosland,” repeated Tasker patiently: “And he’s determined to call it in.”
“Oh,” said Walter vaguely, still at sea. “And can’t you pay it?”
Tasker permitted himself to smile.
“It’s about a hundred thousand pounds, you know,” he remarked mildly.
“Oh,” said Walter, considerably startled, “I see.” He thought a moment, and then said: “You mean your firm owes it to his firm for yarn?”
Tasker nodded. He seemed to have lost interest in the subject, and sat looking calmly ahead of him, an easy smile on his lips, inhaling smoke and expelling it from his large nostrils slowly and with great apparent enjoyment.
A Modern Tragedy Page 16