In the process of finding a post office—where Rosamond also telegraphed reassuringly to her mother—and returning to their main road, they made by chance a slight unnecessary détour, from one angle of which the departing liner again became visible. She had now left the dock, and was swimming majestically up the Mersey in the wake of her tug; a crowd still watched her from the quay to wave good-bye, and her decks were thronged. The chauffeur slowed the car, so that they might watch her departure, and Tasker made no objection. The ship described a magnificent sweep round another large steamer which lay in the middle of the river, and finding her head now turned towards the ocean, gave a prolonged triumphant blast from her siren in farewell, and suddenly began to move very rapidly. Her white sides glittered, her coloured flags waved; altogether she made a superb exhibition of wealth and speed and power; and Rosamond found it in her heart to regret the ship for Tasker—they suited each other, they were alike—and to rate his sacrifice in returning, highly. “Say that I might have slipt past misery,” she mused, “By delicate dishonour and loosening ease…”
The chauffeur turned the car uphill, and drove it swiftly towards Yorkshire.
All three were silent. Rosamond, who had eaten nothing since early morning, and during the day had experienced some of the most violent emotions of her life, felt sick and faint; she trembled with fatigue as she lay back in her corner, and hoped that nothing more would happen to demand courage and initiative from her, for she would certainly not be able to provide them. At first she wondered greatly what was passing in Tasker’s mind, as he sat there, silent and impassive, while the car ate up the miles between himself and prison; she perceived from the route they were taking that he intended to put her down in Hudley before proceeding to Ashworth, but he gave her no word of explanation. The car rose gradually and entered the passes of the Pennine Chain. The moors—for which Rosamond had a deep native passion—now swept all about them in massive interlocking curves. Even on this evening of high summer the landscape had a bleak, wild, grim, relentless aspect. The nearer slopes were sombre with huge rough stretches of bracken in its heavy mid-season green, and patches of peat in tones of sepia; on the distant heights of rock and heather lay a dark cold bloom. The sky was pale, high, austere; a chill wind rattled the car windows menacingly. Altogether the scene was as little like the interior of the luxury liner as could well be imagined, and Rosamond felt profoundly in her element. It struck her that, had some well-disposed fairy asked her wish before to-day, she might easily have replied: To cross the moors at dusk with Leonard Tasker, for that would have given her the time and the place and the loved one all together; now she had just that, and she was wretched. The car topped the pass and began to descend; rough black stone walls now edged the lonely road; the moorland softened into rough pasture; they passed a couple of solid grey cottages, marked, by their line of windows in the second storey, as the dwellings of the handloom weavers of old; now a mill chimney rose out of the green valley below; the car with its load had entered the West Riding of Yorkshire. Rosamond’s faculties of perception and feeling, worn out by the events of the day, ceased to work; she lay back, closed her eyes, and fell into a heavy doze.
She was awakened by Tasker’s voice saying urgently: “You’ll be all right here.” Looking out, she perceived that the car had halted in a remote suburb of Hudley, and that Tasker was standing impatiently by the open door. “I don’t want to go through Hudley,” he was explaining: “I don’t want to be caught, I want to reach Ashworth and give myself up. We can strike across the moors from here. You can take a bus.”
“Oh, certainly,” said Rosamond, with an ironic inflexion. She climbed out of the car; Tasker at once closed the door behind her and reentered the front seat. The chauffeur let in the clutch. “Good-bye,” faltered Rosamond, taking a few steps beside them.
“Good evening,” said Tasker in an indifferent tone, not looking at her. He touched his hat carelessly, and the car wheeled swiftly to the left and disappeared.
Rosamond could not make up her mind whether she was too tired to be angry or too angry to be tired, and she hovered distressfully between these states until at last a bus came, and swept her away to Hudley. Then, in the physical relief of being seated and at ease, her mind cleared, and she knew that whatever Tasker did she would, not forgive—that implied a superiority which she did not feel—but love, him. She made her way to Moorside Place, let herself into the house quietly with her latchkey, and entered the dining-room.
Mrs. Haigh was there awaiting her; her face bore traces of tears, but she sat erect and composed, as indeed Rosamond, who knew her mother’s character, had expected; she would be strong to succour her son in his trouble, to comfort him, to endure for him; in defensive action she might fail through timidity and lack of experience, but in protective love, never. Arnold was still with her; the pair sat on opposite sides of the hearth, in which burned a small fire. Mrs. Haigh was mending a table-cloth, Arnold smoking a pipe; the scene looked comfortable, domesticated, and boring.
Arnold was angry about Rosamond’s journey. He thought it highly unsuitable for a woman to go tearing about the country chasing a man like that; and when he heard that she had commandeered Tasker’s car to go in, and had actually returned with the villain himself, he did not attempt to conceal his vexation—which sprang, in part, from an unconscious jealousy. It was a preposterous thing to do; Rosamond ought not to have mixed herself up in the affair at all, he said; if she had told him what she was going to do he would never have allowed it; in any case her pursuit was quite unnecessary, for the police would certainly have caught Tasker, if not on this side of the Atlantic, then on the other.
“I thought it would look better if he returned voluntarily,” faltered Rosamond.
“The worse it looks for Tasker, the better for Walter,” replied Arnold crossly.
Rosamond sighed. She certainly did not share Arnold’s view of her journey, but it is never agreeable to be scolded, and now that the excitements of the day, and Tasker’s presence, were over, she had time to realise in full the misery of Walter’s situation. A copy of that evening’s Hudley News lay on the table, folded; opening it casually, her eye was shocked by glaring headlines which, though plentifully sprinkled with the protective “alleged,” held her brother up to the eyes of his native town as a criminal. It appeared too that Arnold had reached the Haighs’ house a few minutes before the police officer who bore a message from Walter announcing his arrest; Arnold’s purpose in going to Moorside Place, the breaking of the news gently to Mrs. Haigh, had thus been achieved, and he recounted this with pleasure. But to Rosamond it was less the forestalling of the police message, than the message itself, which now loomed large. A police message! A message from Walter in a cell! She thought of Walter in a cell, and her heart ached; she thought of Tasker in a cell, and felt sick with longing. Faint with fatigue, wretched for Walter, aware that her love for Tasker was stronger than ever and less likely than ever to achieve fruition, Rosamond longed to abandon herself to her misery and weep; but she would not give Arnold the satisfaction of seeing her in tears, and instead went about with a rather grim and sulky air, preparing herself a meal.
“She’s wild and strange,” thought Arnold, watching her disapprovingly. “These teachers nowadays, really! She’d never get on with Reetha. I don’t wonder Reetha doesn’t like her.”
Scene 10. Another Part of the Town
MEANWHILE Harry Schofield, the corners of his mouth dragged down, his forehead furrowed with anxiety, was saying for the twentieth time in a heartsick tone:
“I’m feared they’ll close Valley and I shall be out. Aye! I’m feared they will.”
“Well, we shall manage somehow, I suppose,” said Jessie heavily. She remembered how quickly Harry had sunk into despair the last time he was unemployed, and in spite of herself felt fearful.
Mrs. Schofield rocked herself back and forth for some time in a menacing silence. At last she spoke.
“Aye—we shall be s
eeing you tek up wi’ Milner’s unemployed chaps soon, I daresay,” she said.
“Mother!” exclaimed Harry angrily, colouring.
Scene 11. Trial
THE AMOUNT of bail demanded for Tasker was so huge that nobody could be found willing to become his surety, and as his own recognisances were by no means acceptable alone, he remained in prison on remand; but the sum required for Walter was less exorbitant, and Mr. Anstey came to his rescue—not because there was any mutual increase of kindness between himself and Walter, indeed rather the reverse, for each thought the other guilty of Henry Clay Crosland’s death; but Mr. Anstey was sole executor of Mr. Crosland’s will, and Walter’s help was very necessary in clearing up the estate.
So, on the second day after Henry Clay Crosland’s death, Walter drove away from the police headquarters with Mr. Anstey, who accompanied him to Clay Hall. They were admitted by a scared-looking maid, who seemed unable to raise her eyes to Walter’s, and put to wait in the drawing-room, where the blinds were drawn. Almost immediately Elaine came to them. In this first awful moment of meeting her, coming to her straight from a cell, with the taint, the very smell as it seemed, of prison upon him, seeing her thus, in a darkened room, dressed in black, her face chalk-white, her lovely eyes dry, red-rimmed and burning—in this first awful moment Walter felt so guilty before her that he would gladly have died to avoid meeting his wife’s eyes. But there was no escape; he must look at her and speak to her; Mr. Anstey stood sneering (as Walter feverishly imagined) at his side; and of the various defensive suggestions which rose to his mind, he must make choice at once. It was all Tasker’s fault, thought Walter as usual in a sudden bitter flood of resentment; he himself was a victim, an innocent exploited victim; it was all Tasker’s fault! So aloud he said hoarsely:
“I’m innocent, Elaine, I swear to you I’m as innocent as your grandfather.”
“I know you are, Walter,” replied Elaine steadily. “You have no need to tell me that.”
She stepped forward and kissed him. But immediately the hearts of husband and wife sank still further into wretchedness, for each felt in the other something false, something wrong.
In the first dreadful hours after Henry Clay Crosland’s death, when the news came of Walter’s arrest, and the Ansteys, hastily summoned, revealed the dreadful connection between the two events, Elaine had had to make a swift decision about her husband. Should she abandon him, as the cause of her grandfather’s ruin and death, to scorn and obloquy? Cut herself off from him, admit him guilty, regret that she had ever known him? Appear as the martyred wife of a villain who had ruined her family? Or take her stand firmly by his side? It was partly love—or rather the grateful remembrance of times when their love had been an ecstasy to her—but mainly pride and the fear which is born of pride, which kept Elaine loyal to her husband. To be a martyr was agreeable only so long as one’s own pity alone was involved; to be pitied by others would be intolerable, indeed it was what she had dreaded all her life. To go about the world in sackcloth and ashes, admit that she had made a mistake and chosen the wrong man, buy complaisance at the cost of loyalty, whine up and down about its being such a shame, become known as “poor Elaine Haigh”—no! That was not in Elaine’s character at all. Far better to take her stand firmly by Walter’s side, hold up her head and announce, with an air of surprised contempt for anyone who thought otherwise, her complete belief in her husband. Besides, she really believed in Walter’s innocence. His essential innocence, that is; she was prepared to find that when things began to go wrong, he had taken some mistaken or foolish step to right them which could be morally, but not legally, justified. She was prepared for this, prepared to reassure Walter and console him for the failure of measures undertaken in good faith; what she was not prepared for was the look of peevish shrinking, the timid resentment, on Walter’s face. The moment she saw that look—which above all others she despised, for it was what she most dreaded to feel herself—her heart turned cold, and her faith in Walter dimmed. She fought the disloyal feeling down, spoke in a firm assured tone, and kissed him as a loving wife should, in the presence of Mr. Anstey; but a sort of doubt crept into the dark places of her heart and writhed there; her caress was acted and not real, and Walter felt it so. Her flesh crawled when she heard Walter compare himself to her grandfather, and when they were alone she could not give him the unquestioning look of loving trust he craved, but turned on him instead an anguished uncertain sidelong glance.
“You do believe I’m innocent, don’t you, Elaine?” pressed Walter hoarsely.
“Of course I do,” said Elaine in a pettish tone. “It’s not kind of you to doubt me, Walter.”
“I’m quite innocent,” repeated Walter.
Elaine felt that she already hated the word, hated to hear Walter so pitifully justifying himself.
In the months that followed, she heard what she hated, only too often. Walter was free, on bail, throughout the wretched summer; free to straighten his private affairs, if he could; free to arrange the lapse of Clough End to the Building Society and live at Clay Hall with the stricken Croslands; free to arrange his case with his solicitor and counsel; free to feel his social ostracism, his lack of work (all Tasker’s enterprises had at once collapsed and Valley, Heights and Victory Mills were closed); free to protest his innocence if he chose. And he did so choose. He gladly seized the opportunity to express the hatred for Tasker which seethed in his brain, and protested his innocence always and everywhere. He was a dupe, he said, a victim; he had been lead into devious ways without his knowledge and against his will; he was innocent—as innocent as Henry Clay Crosland. He protested his innocence over and over again to his lawyer and Tasker’s, in the long hours of consultation while their case was being prepared; and Tasker did not contradict him, always admitting in his gruff but composed tones that yes, the scheme under consideration had been his idea; at the time he had thought it for the good of the company, however, and was able now to advance excellent reasons why he should have thought so. Ralph came home for his grandfather’s funeral, and as it was so near the end of the term remained at Clay Hall; it was doubtful in any case whether there would be any money to pay his school fees next term, though Mr. Anstey put up a strong fight to separate Mr. Crosland’s private affairs from the company’s. To Ralph, too, then, all through the long summer holidays, Walter protested his innocence; he took the boy for long lonely walks, and talked to him all the time about his own freedom from guilt, though with him he took rather a different line. His head down, his eyes fixed, not seeing any of his surroundings, he stumbled along, talking, talking.
“I may have committed some technical errors, you know, Ralph,” he told the boy earnestly, “but I’ve never done anything deliberately wrong. The law’s so full of red tape, you know, so many silly little regulations. It catches a man out when he really hasn’t done anything wrong. In business you have to be bold, or you can’t get on at all; and sometimes the law just trips you up in the middle of a forward stride, and brings you down. Hundreds of men are living in the West Riding to-day, rich and respected, who’ve done ten times worse things than I’m accused of. You have to deceive people a bit for their own good in business sometimes; they’re too cowardly to take a risk if they know it’s there, so you have to keep it from them, and take it yourself. It’s perfectly honest, really, only it goes against a few silly little legal regulations. It’s almost impossible to carry on a business at all, if you keep absolutely strictly to every silly little bit of the law. In England ordinary people don’t bother about every little detail of the law; we aren’t like the Germans, who are such sticklers for everything, you know; I mean, look how people walk on the grass in parks, and bring brandy through the Customs! Well, there are lots of things just like that in business, and nobody bothers about them; and then when something goes wrong, of course they bring up all these little things and make it sound as though you’re guilty of every crime in the calendar, when really you haven’t done anything really wrong.
That’s what makes me so angry with Mr. Anstey; why on earth he should take it upon himself to come and tell your grandfather all sorts of preposterous things about me, I’m sure I don’t know. Interfering old humbug! There wasn’t the least need for your grandfather to commit suicide, Ralph; not the least.”
“Shall we turn down here?” suggested Ralph at this point, wincing.
“What? Oh, yes; I hadn’t noticed where we were,” said Walter, looking up, startled. They made the turning in the direction of Clay Green; Walter’s head went down again, and he began again to talk. “Where was I? Oh, yes. There wasn’t the least need for Mr. Crosland to commit suicide, Ralph,” he repeated earnestly. “If only I could have had an half hour with him! I may have committed some technical errors, you see; but I’ve never done anything deliberately wrong….”
Ralph, pale and unhappy and rather shabby—he had scruples, which Walter thought ridiculous, about buying new clothes till it was seen whether the Croslands had any money to buy them with—listened thoughtfully.
And all this Elaine heard echoes of, and despised increasingly. Walter, unlike his wife, had no scruples, it seemed, about appearing publicly as a martyr; he shirked his own share of the blame, whined about compulsion, begged for pity on the score of being misled. For such craven conduct Elaine had nothing but contempt. Once or twice she tried to hint to her husband that a stiffer pride would become him better, saying disdainfully: “If it’s all Tasker’s fault, as you say, why need you worry?” But Walter naturally read into these hints another meaning, and thought that they implied a doubt: “I swear to you, Elaine,” he said at once, white-faced and tragic, “that I’m as innocent as Mr. Crosland.”
“I’m not doubting your innocence, Walter!” cried the exasperated Elaine. “I do truly believe that it’s not your fault that grandfather’s dead and we are all ruined.” (Here the wretched Walter winced.) “But why can’t you stand up to it like a man, and take your share?”
A Modern Tragedy Page 39