Love and Money

by Phyllis Bentley

  After a few moments he returned, looking white but composed, and said to his wife:

  “I’d like to speak to you privately, Vinny.”

  Lavinia rose and followed him to the room he called his study.

  “Vinny,” said Walter quietly. “My dear. I regret the necessity deeply, but I’m afraid I must ask you for some help.”

  “Help? You’re ill?” cried Lavinia.

  “No. I am in financial difficulties,” said Walter.

  Lavinia’s eyes widened, and she gazed at him with incredulity.

  “Everyone in the West Riding is more or less in financial difficulties today,” said Walter. “I don’t think I am more to blame than the next man. However, that’s beside the point. The facts are——”

  He explained his situation in simple terms, and concluded by asking her to lend him the title-deeds of her row of houses, so that he could deposit them at the bank and receive the necessary additional overdraft on their security.

  “Will you do that for me, Vinny?”

  “Of course, Walter,” said Lavinia smoothly.

  She looked down at her hands and did not meet his grateful, loving gaze.

  3

  In Balzac’s novel La Cousine Bette there is a superb passage where Bette, the old maid “poor relation,” hitherto meekly devoted to the interests of the family, suddenly discovers that the affections of the young Polish sculptor she loves and has befriended have been stolen from her by her pretty niece Hortense. Suddenly, says Balzac, her nature, like a branch hitherto pegged down to earth, was released from its ties and flew up with terrible force to its true line.

  Something of this kind must have happened to Lavinia Egmont. Perhaps she had never really forgiven the Egmonts for that awful ballroom scene? Perhaps she had always at the bottom of her heart resented Walter’s chivalry, his continual giving? (Who after all wants to be the everlasting object of chivalry, the continual recipient in the human exchange?) At any rate, in that moment Lavinia’s whole aspect changed. Released from its obligations of gratitude, her nature flew up into its natural shape of domination.

  Walter first became aware of this on the following morning when he took Lavinia to the manager of his bank in Annotsfield to deposit the title-deeds of Irebridge Terrace. He removed the deeds from his safe at Mount Hall, where they has reposed since Councillor Crabtree’s death—in point of fact Walter had paid out as much to tidy up the Councillor’s affairs as would have bought the whole Terrace outright, but this thought did not occur to him—and put them with a grave smile into Lavinia’s hands, who took them firmly. Walter found himself a little surprised; he had somehow expected that his wife would return them to him. Of course Lavinia’s signature would be necessary at the bank and the transaction of depositing the deeds must be officially hers, but somehow Walter did not quite like her attitude of possession meanwhile. It would have been more graceful if she had quickly and as it were warmly and sympathetically returned the deeds, pressing them urgently upon him. Lavinia however held them firmly in her lap throughout their drive to the bank. Still—this was just one of those failures in Lavinia, due to her faulty upbringing, which excited Walter’s tenderest pity and love.

  The interview was extremely painful to Walter; so painful indeed that sweat not only stood on his forehead but actually rolled down to his cheek. The thought that he, Walter Egmont, should positively have to borrow his wife’s little property to extricate the great Egmont mills from a threat of bankruptcy, was terrible to him. He breathed quickly and felt choked in the manager’s snug sanctum; he moved his big body about restlessly; he spoke with feverish haste; his great desire—the only one left in his life, he felt at that moment—was to get out of the bank into the air. Sign the papers, leave the deeds, get out. But the bank manager felt it his duty to explain to Lavinia exactly what the deposit of her title-deeds as security implied, and from that point, in some way which Walter did not quite understand, the man was led to embark on a résumé of the whole Egmont mills situation. The bank manager—who of course was in an agony himself, on the one hand continually pressed by his Head Office to tidy up the bank’s quite frightful financial commitments in the West Riding and on the other seeing long-established businesses collapse at his mere word—concealed his trouble by an artificial smoothness, but his bland phrases dropped like some colourless but corrosive acid on Walter’s skin, till he felt raw and bleeding from top to toe.

  Lavinia on the other hand listened with keen attention. From the manager’s admirably clear exposition she fully grasped the essential fact that she, Lavinia Crabtree, could save or ruin the great Egmonts by merely saying yes or no. She looked down at her hands to conceal the triumph which shone in her eyes.

  “This is only a temporary measure—you’ll soon have your deeds back, Lavinia, I promise you,” said Walter hoarsely.

  “I shall be most happy to return them to Mrs. Egmont as soon as this portion of the overdraft is cleared,” said the bank manager, bowing gravely to Lavinia.

  At last the thing was done and they were outside.

  “Thank you, Vinny my dear,” said Walter heavily. “Now about the car—we must get you home again—I’ll get Brigg to drop me at the mill and——”

  He was about to make one of his usual courteous and generous arrangements for his wife’s comfort when Lavinia interrupted.

  “I’ve some shopping to do in Resmond Street; Brigg can drive me there,” she said.

  Walter, though astonished and disconcerted, did not realise that he was hearing Lavinia’s first assertion of power. The power of wealth. For all possession is wealth when others need it.

  4

  Lavinia’s metamorphosis was physical as well as spiritual. She held herself erect; her bust swelled; her dark eyes sharpened. Her thin mouth now often wore a sophisticated, almost a quietly merry little twist of triumph at its left corner—for example, when she was winning a skirmish against old Mrs. Crabtree, whom she defeated with increasing frequency these days. Lavinia now chose her clothes better and wore them with infinitely more assurance; she dressed her hair in clearer lines. Her speech became more resonant, more emphatic, more commanding; her vocabulary seemed to increase and her accent improve.

  Meanwhile, she “stood by” Walter in his troubles in a most staunch and wifely manner. She economised, she cut down staff, she undertook domestic duties herself and carried them out in a robustly cheerful and efficient way. It was largely due to Lavinia, said elderlyEgmont aunts and young Egmont cousins, whose living all depended upon the family business, that the mill pulled through the depression so well. Lavinia knew all its affairs, and questioned Walter every day to keep her knowledge up to date. Her judgment was shrewd. She harassed and harangued the easy-going Walter, she kept him up to the mark and would not allow him to be generous and foolish. If he showed a disposition to allow a merchant to cancel purchases or to purchase at a lower price than he had contracted for, Lavinia shut her mouth with a snap, gazed at Walter meaningly and was silent. Walter then remembered the houses in Irebridge Terrace and did as Lavinia wished.

  Indeed, the real reason why the Egmont mills survived the slump was probably because Walter gradually came to feel that Lavinia’s Irebridge Terrace houses must be retrieved if it was the last thing he did—he couldn’t even die till that damned terrace was redeemed. He stuck at the job, he declined to be defeated, he even learned to juggle bank accounts, and twice purposely missed the last post with cheques so as to give himself a few extra hours to ensure that they could be honoured. He rushed after business, he wrangled over details, he quite hounded his employees— who, terrified of being dismissed to join the ever-lengthening queue at the Labour Exchange, shared his anxiety to keep the mill afloat.

  Walter did all this, and it saved the Egmont mills. But it was against his nature and he loathed it, and strange uneasy feelings increasingly troubled his hitherto uncomplicated heart.

  England went off the gold standard. The slump slowly passed. The West Riding cl
imbed painfully to its knees, and though trailing about its body like heavy weeds innumerable debts, overdrafts, mortgage payments and obligations, eventually stood up and raised its head. The Irebridge Terrace deeds had once or twice almost emerged from the bank’s strong-room before but had been sucked back again by recurring emergencies. Now at last they could safely be released. Walter came home one evening with the long envelope in his hand and went into Lavinia’s bedroom, where he could hear her talking on the telephone—he had been sleeping in his dressing-room lately, for he was suffering from obstinate insomnia and did not wish to disturb his wife.

  Lavinia was laying down the law to the unfortunate secretary of some committee or other of which she was chairman, for she was chairman of many committees nowadays. In firm clear concise terms she informed the secretary of her duty and left her no alternative but to proceed with it promptly. As she nodded to her husband across the telephone, her eyes held that satisfied gleam which now so often brightened—and hardened—them. She finished the conversation and put the receiver down decisively.

  “Yes, Walter?” she said.

  “Here are the deeds of your Irebridge Terrace houses, Vinny,” said Walter, proffering the envelope. “I’m glad I can put them safely in your hands again at last.”

  He smiled, not without a touch of pride, and, simple loyal creature that he still was, expected a kiss, some thanks, a word of wifely praise. Instead he saw a strange expression cross his wife’s face. She looked quite disconcerted and vexed, he thought. In fact, she looked disappointed. She is disappointed, thought Walter, amazed. She liked me to be in her debt. She liked me to be under an obligation to her. All the vague distaste and revolt he had felt recently suddenly rose up in him like a flood of nausea. He choked it down, but when it had gone he knew he no longer loved his wife.

  “What shall we do about Janet?” said Lavinia crossly.

  She was thinking aloud. As long as Walter was in her debt for the loan of the houses, she did not mind that he should have to support her cousin. But now Walter was out of her debt and she did not wish to return to the old humiliating situation of being in his debt—certainly not on Janet’s account.

  “Janet?” said Walter, perplexed by this to him inexplicable transition. (To Walter obligations were not measured in cash.) He worked it out on his own lines, slowly. “You mean you think we ought to pay her, now that we can afford?”

  “Pay her?”

  “For looking after May, and being a kind of secretary to you, and so on.”

  “Janet has too great a sense of her obligation to me to think of such a thing,” said Lavinia stiffly.

  “What’s the problem then?”

  “Oh, never mind. You wouldn’t understand,” said Lavinia.

  “You say that rather too often to me nowadays, Vinny,” said Walter quietly.

  Lavinia gave a brittle laugh. “You used to say it to me.”

  “I never said it to you.”

  “Your mother did.”

  “That’s not the same thing, is it?”

  “Oh, well—never mind. We must change or we shall be late,” said Lavinia dismissively.

  She threw the packet of deeds carelessly down on the telephone table. They slipped off the edge and fell to the ground. Walter picked them up and replaced them on the table. He then without a word left his wife’s bedroom, to which he never returned.

  5

  For several years after this incident the Egmonts maintained a decent façade of happy married life. Lavinia snapped at Walter more than was pleasant to hear, but then Lavinia nowadays snapped at everybody, so snapping at Walter meant nothing serious; it was clear she still regarded her husband with possessive conjugal affection. To Walter’s friends it seemed that Walter’s heart was not now in his married life, but he maintained his courtesy towards his wife so steadily that Lavinia did not perceive his alienation. Until one summer Sunday evening. In family life Sunday evening is often a dangerous time. The tedium of Sunday has accumulated, the problems of Monday loom; between boredom and apprehension the spirit tosses uneasily, vulnerable to offence.

  Walter was sitting alone on the Mount Hall terrace, smoking a cigar. His large form overflowed the deck chair in which he lounged; one trouser leg, pulled up as he sat, revealed a cascading sock and an inch or two of ankle. Altogether he looked slack and dreamy and as if he were enjoying himself doing nothing, and this was irritating to the energetic Lavinia, who emerged from the french windows in a bad temper after a brush with her mother. The voices of May and Janet, who had been sent by Lavinia to water some prized antirrhinums at the side of the house, could be heard in the distance.

  “Walter, have you written to your cousin?” said Lavinia sharply, referring to a letter of condolence she had urged Walter to despatch that night.

  “No,” said Walter.

  “Really, Walter!”

  “I’m thinking what to say. I’ll do it after supper.” “Why not now?” said Lavinia with her infuriating smugness.

  “The post’s gone anyway.”

  “Not in Annotsfield. Janet could easily run it down to the G.P.O.”

  “I don’t want to write it now, Lavinia,” said Walter quietly.

  “No—you’d rather sit and do nothing. That’s you all over, Walter. Nobody would ever do anything in this house if I didn’t drive them to it.”

  Walter still saying nothing and making no move, Lavinia’s vexation mounted.

  “If you knew how slack and stupid you look lounging there, Walter,” she said angrily in her quick vehement tones. “You might be a young man in a dream of love.”

  She laughed contemptuously.

  Walter said nothing. Suddenly hot colour flooded Lavinia’s face, she rushed forward to confront her husband and shouted:

  “You are in love! You’re in love with another woman!”

  Walter slowly turned on her a strange deep look. Lavinia was used to seeing his brown eyes kind and attentive; tonight they appeared sardonic and cold.

  “I’m certainly not in love with you, Lavinia,” he said.

  Lavinia screamed abuse at him with all the fury of a woman quite unexpecting to be scorned.

  “You vile beast! How dare you treat me so! And what about May?”

  “Leave May out of this,” said Walter quickly.

  “How can you leave her out?” shouted Lavinia, perceiving her advantage. “If you don’t give me your word of honour to give this up, I’ll tell your daughter!”

  “Tell her what, for heaven’s sake?”

  “About this—this affair of yours,” said Lavinia, trembling with fury.

  “There’s no affair. I’ve never spoken a word of love to any woman but you.”

  “Give it up, or I’ll tell your daughter—May shall know what kind of a man her father is, I promise you!”

  “Lavinia, you’re a wicked woman,” said Walter.

  “Swear you’ll give her up.”

  “Give who up?”

  “This woman of yours. Don’t tell me you aren’t in love with some woman or other, for I shan’t believe you for a moment.”

  “Very well. I won’t tell you that. I will tell you that I’ve not the slightest intention of being unfaithful to my marriage vows—for May’s sake.”

  “You don’t deny you’re in love with someone?”

  “What’s the use, when you’re determined not to believe me?”

  “Did you call, mummy?” called May, limping round the side of the house.

  “No, dear, no! Go on with your watering,” cried Lavinia, waving the child away imperiously. “You had better keep your word, Walter,” she went on in a low savage tone, “or I’ll see to it that you never see May again. You’re entirely in my power, you see. Just as you were over the house deeds.”

  “Yes, I see that,” said Walter.

  6

  The Egmonts now gradually became known to their acquaintance as a typical example of the incompatible husband and wife who remain together only for the sake of t
heir child. Walter’s behaviour was courteous but cold and he avoided his wife’s company whenever possible. Lavinia maintained the outward decencies, and did not attempt to discover the identity of the woman who had aroused those “silly feelings” in Walter—she knew she could trust his word and unconsciously feared to rouse his anger by any such attempt, though to herself she said she could not “condescend” to it. But she often wore her smile of triumph when she spoke to him; she was reflecting with satisfaction: “Well, I nipped that in the bud.” People who first met Walter and Lavinia during this period could not believe that they had once been a mutually adoring couple. What had they ever had in common, enquired such new friends? Lavinia was widely detested for her intolerable bossiness, though almost as widely respected for her capacity to get public work done. Poor dear Walter was regarded as an absolute pet, but of course far too easy-going and slow. Where Lavinia’s friends and her enemies concurred was in regarding her treatment of May as a mistake—though they differed as to its motive, her friends saying uneasily that Lavinia’s devotion to the child led her astray, her enemies stating emphatically that Lavinia could not bear to let anyone in her power escape beyond its range.

  Certainly Lavinia kept May at home all through her teens, allowing her to receive education only at a private day-school in Annotsfield, to and from which that nice Janet drove her every day. May’s contemporaries, now that the slump was dissipating, went away to expensive boarding-schools—Roedean and Cheltenham and Wycombe or perhaps Harrogate; May would like to have followed their example and Walter was willing, but Lavinia scoffed the suggestion out of court. May, she said, was not strong enough yet to go away from home. May accepted this ruling dutifully, but listened to the school tales of returned cousins with such a wistful air that the hearts of mere friends quite ached for her, and even cross old Mrs. Crabtree put in a plea on her behalf. This last interference excited Lavinia to fury. Having humiliated her mother into a palsied fury by reminding her that she was eating the bread of Walter’s charity and had no right to a voice in any Egmont affairs, she swept off to the pleasant little room known as May’s study, where she found May and Janet together, and demanded in ringing tones: