A Modern Tragedy

by Phyllis Bentley

  Clough End was a seventeenth-century house lying on the brow midway between Clay Green and Heights, whose situation at the top of a deep wooded cleft gave it its name. It had lately suffered diminution from its original state and become two cottages, but both of these chanced to be empty when Walter and Elaine were seeking a house, and Mrs. Crosland suddenly saw what a charming place—so near to Clay Hall, too!—could be made of it, and urged Walter to its purchase. He bought it (with the aid of a Building Society) cheap, but the numerous alterations necessary, with the suitable “period” furnishings, ran up a sizable bill, and Walter was glad to reflect that his May dividend would be followed presently by a November one. But Clough End was a really delightful home; the thick grey walls in their mantle of ivy, the pointed gables, the arched porchway and mullioned windows, the beautiful unimpeded view of non-industrial West Riding hills—“not a mill chimney in sight,” as Elaine said proudly—from the rear, the small but sheltered and pretty garden, the gracious taste of Elaine and her mother, and the handsome wedding presents of the Croslands’ friends, combined to make it a highly agreeable resting-place for body and mind. All the young couple’s friends found it so, and it was rare that two or three cars did not stand in the little paved courtyard to the side, or at the white-painted front door. The price of yarn was plunging sharply down again, and all Walter’s customers seemed to be diminishing their output, so that Heights was by no means as busy as it had been before, but Walter, shaking cocktails for his guests or switching on the gramophone in the sunny Clough End garden, swam in a dream of young love, dazed with rapture; he had not seen Tasker since his wedding, and hardly noticed the outside world at all.

  Act Three

  Scene 1. Fraud on the Hearth

  BUT ONE day in September the Heights lorry brought in such an astonishingly small load from Ashworth that even Walter was startled. He thought there must be some mistake, and rang up Victory Mills in a flurry.

  “Oh, you’re alive, are you?” said Tasker in a tone of surprise. Walter, taken aback, gave a deprecating laugh, and said that he supposed he was. “It’s so long since we’ve heard anything of you—of either of you,” continued Tasker grimly, “that I’d begun to wonder.”

  Walter coloured in embarrassment at the implications of this last sentence, and stammered out the purpose for which he had rung up.

  “Oh, you’ve noticed it?” said Tasker in the same sardonic tone as before. “Well, it was about time you did. I must have a talk with you, Walter,” he went on more seriously. “Soon. November isn’t so far off, you know.”

  “November?” said Walter faintly.

  “Yes. You may remember, if you haven’t forgotten it honeymooning,” said Tasker, reverting to his sarcastic note, “that we’ve a half-yearly dividend to pay then. When can I see you privately? To-night? And where?”

  There was so much significance in the last query that Walter hurriedly said: “At Clough End, of course. Dine with us, won’t you? Elaine,” he went on at once without knowing why—“Elaine I believe will be over at Clay Hall. I’m not sure but I believe so. But that won’t prevent us from having a quiet chat, will it.”

  “I daresay not,” said Tasker as before.

  Walter, colouring again, strove to maintain his casual friendly tone as he told Tasker the hour at which they dined.

  “I’ll be there,” said Tasker grimly, and rang off.

  It was clear to Walter that Tasker was offended because he and his wife had not yet been invited to Clough End, and indeed when Walter considered the course of events which had landed him there as Elaine’s husband, he could not but feel that Tasker had a right to accuse him of gross ingratitude, indeed he marvelled himself at the shortness of his own memory for the events of the past two years. He felt wretchedly uncomfortable about it all morning, left the mill early at lunch time, drove much faster than usual to Clough End, rushed through the house into the garden, where Elaine was cutting chrysanthemums, and had hardly kissed his wife before he blurted:

  “Elaine—have you returned Mrs. Tasker’s wedding call?”

  “No, I haven’t,” replied Elaine rather crossly, feeling ruffled by his sudden indifference to her person—his greeting was usually much more lover-like.

  “Oh, Elaine!” said Walter reproachfully. “You ought to have done it before now. Why, it must be three months since. Really you ought, you know.”

  “My dear child,” said Elaine, still further ruffled: “There are still heaps of people whose calls I haven’t returned. I can’t get round three hundred people all in a moment.”

  “You ought to have gone to the Taskers among the first,” contended Walter.

  “Why?” said Elaine coolly. “They’re not particularly our friends, are they? They’re certainly not mine.”

  “Tasker has done a great deal for me,” said Walter, walking up and down in a turmoil of feeling and looking wretched. “I shouldn’t be here now, married to you, if it were not for Tasker.”

  Elaine did not like this; indeed it fretted the very foundations of her feeling for Walter. She thought Tasker sinister and his wife impossible; but as she had not the slightest intention of being drawn into an intimacy with them, this did not trouble her. What caused her real uneasiness was the suggestion that Walter’s rise from Moorside Place to Clough End was not due to his own efforts. She could admire Walter as a self-made man, love him for having made himself for her; but if he were merely the product of somebody else’s manufacture, there remained only his intrinsic qualities to admire and love, and plenty of other young men in Elaine’s circle had the same qualities as Walter, and had them in a higher state of polish.

  “Please call on Mrs. Tasker soon, Elaine,” urged Walter, stopping in front of her. “To please me, do.”

  “Oh, very well,” said Elaine in an airy tone, rather pleased by Walter’s male insistence, but angered by its object. “But I can’t go this afternoon, because I’ve got some people coming for tennis, and I can’t go to-morrow, because——” She embarked on an account of a long string of engagements, mostly real, but partially invented, which would prevent her going to Ashworth for another ten days at least. She watched Walter intently as she spoke, her brilliant eyes searching his face; unconsciously she hoped that he would put his foot down, assert his personality, become again the confident dominating young man whom she loved—she did not like him in this anxious, fearful mood. But Walter merely sighed and said nothing, and continued to wear a harassed air. He was discovering, as he listened to Elaine’s soft unconcerned little voice, gazed at her smooth delicious cheek, her clear eyes, that he hated the thought of Elaine coming into contact with the Taskers at all. That, he now found, was the reason for his quick lie to Tasker on the telephone about Elaine’s probable absence at Clay Hall that night. In the last few happy months he had forgotten the ambiguous foundations of his fortunes; prompted by Tasker he was now recalling them, and he found the reminder highly disagreeable. Elaine and Clough End—his wife and his home—were sacred to him, and he felt an odious incongruity, almost a sacrilege, in the juxtaposition of the best in his life with what he now remembered to be the worst. He was therefore secretly glad that Elaine should be kept remote from the Taskers yet a little while longer, and wished she could always be so, yet was troubled by the ingratitude of her unfriendliness, and what Tasker must think of it, and felt himself under an obligation to correct it. He detested the thought of Tasker coming to Clough End more every minute, but was obliged to implement his invitation; and in this serious trouble forgot any concern for Elaine’s surface sensibilities, and blurted crossly:

  “I’ve asked Tasker to dinner to-night.”

  “Really, Walter!” exclaimed Elaine, colouring. “I think you might have consulted me first. We have a telephone.”

  Walter, who had lately learned from her with some pains the aristocratic notion that one should always be ready to welcome guests, and that any other attitude was to be regarded as plebeian, was taken aback. “I thought it
would be all right,” he said timidly.

  “You know we’d promised to go to Clay Hall,” said Elaine, greatly vexed and therefore exaggerating this engagement, which was in reality a promise to call for a few minutes only.

  “Yes—I thought you might go without me?” suggested Walter, accepting this with great relief as a way out of his dilemma.

  “Really, Walter!” said Elaine again, enraged. “I don’t intend to forget my manners just because you have none.”

  Walter winced and looked chidden.

  “Of course if you’ve invited Mr. Tasker, I shall be here to receive him,” went on Elaine with her loftiest air. “And Mrs. Tasker? Is she coming too?”

  “No, no!” said Walter, irritated into remonstrance at last. “Don’t be so unreasonable, Elaine. It’s only a business affair—we’ve some business to talk over.”

  “Grandfather never brought business people to Clay Hall,” said Elaine haughtily, nevertheless somewhat mollified.

  “Oh, rubbish!” snapped Walter.

  His emphasis calmed Elaine’s uneasy nerves, and as their gong just then sounded and they had to make their way into the house for lunch, she gave him her gardening basket and her gloves to carry, with an air of restoring him to favour. Every object which belonged to her was dear to Walter, and he played with the dirty little gloves with a lover’s fondness. Elaine smiled at him, well pleased; Walter’s kind brown eyes smiled back at her; she took his arm, and they passed beneath the arched porchway, glowing with red Virginia creeper, with peace for the time restored.

  Accordingly that afternoon Elaine, feeling very wifely, took considerable pains to ensure that Tasker’s entertainment should be appropriate. Although her knowledge of housework, as Mrs. Haigh regarded housework, was almost nil, was confined indeed to the frying of bacon and eggs as breakfast for a previous night’s party—she had never prepared a meal or dusted a room in her life—yet as housewifery was understood at Clay Hall, she had considerable skill in the art; she was a born hostess, and understood how to give orders which resulted in admirable meals, charmingly served. She arranged the flowers for that night’s dinner-table with care, and saw to it that the Taskers’ china, and the best glass and silver, should be used. It was not by any means the first dinner party which the young Haighs had given at Clough End, but deep in Elaine’s heart was a core of resentment that her lovely house, her ménage of which she was so proud, should be used so soon for a mere business associate whom she despised. She persuaded herself loyally, however, that she liked being a help to Walter, and put on a very busy, grown-up air with the members of her afternoon’s tennis party. Owing to her preoccupation with the dinner arrangements, one or two of these arrived before she was dressed to receive them, and this indication of her responsibilities as a wife was rather flattering and enjoyable.

  She was disappointed when Walter returned from the mill in a gloomy and nervous mood, and showed only a negligent and artificial interest in her preparations. He wandered about the house, too, while they were waiting for their guest, in a manner very trying to a young wife’s nerves and upsetting to the maids; it was only the merest chance, as Elaine told herself with a sigh of exasperation, that he was at hand to receive Tasker when he appeared. In reality the moment when Tasker entered his home and took Elaine’s hand was a moment of bitter anguish to Walter, and his trouble showed itself on his too candid face. “What children men are!” thought Elaine, observing him; and feeling very wise and experienced, she at once took the whole entertainment of Tasker on her own shoulders, sat down near him and began to talk to him in her most charming and fashionable style. Tasker, however, as Walter saw, surveyed her with a grim and reserved eye; he spoke little, did not give himself away, and to Walter’s mind had an infuriating air of being in complete command of the situation—as well he might have, reflected the young husband bitterly, considering that the very cushions owed their existence, one might say, to him. Elaine had dreaded the actual meal, but when they were summoned to the table she was agreeably surprised by her guest’s casual manners—Tasker had eaten too many dinners in public places, under too many agitating circumstances, to be upset by anything in the Clough End service—while Tasker, on his side, showed, in a quick flash of his blue eyes, that he had observed the compliment of the table china, and became rather more affable in consequence. He and Walter had scarcely exchanged a word, however, when Elaine, having settled them in the drawing-room and given them coffee, excused herself on the score of a previous engagement and slipped away to Clay Hall.

  The silence between the two men continued till the sound of Elaine’s car had died away in the distance, while Tasker puffed thoughtfully at the admirable cigar which Walter had driven into Hudley that afternoon to secure for him; then he said, looking about him at the cream-coloured walls, the dark oak pieces, the cushions in soft pastel blue, the graceful groups of wine-red chrysanthemums:

  “You’ve a nice little place here, Walter.”

  “I’m glad you like it,” said Walter from a dry throat. He forced himself to add: “I hope you’ll bring Mrs. Tasker and come and see us properly, before long.”

  He was conscious that this was not very tactfully expressed; but Tasker waved it negligently away, and went on:

  “But I should think it costs you a pretty penny to keep up.”

  “Does he mean to suggest reducing my salary?” thought Walter swiftly. He nerved himself for a battle—for life as Elaine lived it was expensive, and there were the payments on Clough End to keep up—and remained deliberately silent, waiting to see what inference Tasker meant to draw from his remark.

  “I wish to God this slump would take a turn!” burst out Tasker suddenly. “I do indeed. It’s been awful lately. I’ve never known business so bad as it’s been this last year. If it goes on like this I don’t know what’s going to happen to the West Riding.” His voice was really troubled. Walter looked at him in surprise, and saw that his partner’s hard face had fallen into haggard lines, and that there were marks of fatigue beneath his eyes. Walter’s heart quickened its beat, and he knew alarm. “What we’re going to do about this November dividend I’m sure I don’t know,” went on Tasker with an air of lassitude. “I had the dickens of a job finding the money for the May one, I can tell you. The annual balance-sheet, you know—I didn’t worry you about it, you were so busy getting married, but it would have looked pretty sick as it really stood. I had to doctor things up a bit to make them fit for publication.”

  “You had to what?” cried Walter, sitting erect, scarlet and gasping.

  “I overrated the Victory Mills stock a bit,” said Tasker, speaking with more zest.

  “But—but the auditor?” gasped Walter.

  “What a young ignorant you are, Walter,” said Tasker cheerfully: “Don’t you know the auditor never values the stock? He hasn’t the technical knowledge. Haven’t you seen the sort of certificate an auditor gives?” He read his answer in Walter’s face, and went on: “You haven’t. Didn’t read your own balance sheet, I suppose. Well—that’s how I managed it. But where we’re going to find the November dividend from, heaven knows. I don’t. Perhaps you’ve some ideas?” he suggested on his customary sardonic note. At the look of consternation on Walter’s face he added, with real reproach: “I think you ought to take your share a bit more now, Walter, you know; not leave it all to me.”

  “We shall have to pass the November dividend if we can’t pay one,” gasped Walter, mentally visualising all the bills he was relying on that November dividend to pay.

  “Pass it? Within eighteen months of flotation? No fear!” exclaimed Tasker energetically, throwing himself forward in his chair. “It would bring the whole thing down on our heads. There’d be no end of a fuss next annual meeting—shareholders proposing investigations and goodness knows what else. We can’t do with them getting on the track of the stock business last May, you know—and then there’s the Heights affairs too. Not to mention,” he went on with a sly look: “What your respe
cted grandfather-in-law would have to say about it.”

  Walter groaned, and buried his face in his hands.

  “Still,” he said presently, looking up: “I don’t see what else we can do but miss the dividend.”

  “You’ll put this place on the market at once, then?” said Tasker in a mild conversational tone, looking about him again at the charming and gracious interior. “Pity.”