South Riding

by Winifred Holtby

  But the ghost was unresponsive; the man eluded her. She had never seen him since that night in the hotel. Midge was now boarding with the Beddows, so he no longer drove in his cart to fetch her. He had not come to the last governors’ meeting. His name was on every casual lip, because of his spectacular prelude to failure; but Sarah could not even speak to him.

  I have lost him, her heart cried. It is all my own fault. Oh, why, why, why?

  She could find no comfort, for she had thrown away the one chance she had ever had of being his friend.

  If only he were not menaced by death she could bear it better; but the thought that any hour might be his last tormented her. He will die, he will die, and I shall never see him.

  Twenty times she wrote notes to him; twenty times she tore them up again.

  If he would speak to me. If I could have him alone, only for five minutes. If I could see him, tell him just what I feel for him—that I am his friend, that I don’t care what he thinks of me, that I don’t even care if he dislikes me, so long as he knows that I stand by him, that I am here always, loving him, trusting him, caring for him.

  Christ, that my love were in my arms!

  The parlourmaid tapped at the door and entered. Sarah stood still, expecting Emily Teasdale.

  “Mr. Carne to see you. Mr. Carne of Maythorpe.”

  She heard his heavy tread along the passage. She dropped into her chair. Her knees were water.

  “Let him come in,” she said.

  He came in.

  Drums banged in her head. The walls of her room contracted, swelled, contracted. Disks of blackness floated before her eyes. I’m going to faint, she thought. That would be a judgment on me. She knew that he was standing in front of her desk waiting for her to speak. With an effort that seemed to tear her heart from her body, she raised her head and faced him.

  “Good-morning,” she said. She could hear her voice, dry and small. “You’re quite a stranger. Won’t you sit down?”

  With astonishment she thought: But he isn’t ill! I’ve never seen him look better. There was more grey in his hair, but his eyes were bright, his usually dead white skin bronzed a little by exposure to wind and rain, the lines round his mouth relaxed. She had been torturing herself because he was dying and he wasn’t ill at all. He had defrauded her. She remembered her wakeful nights, her suspense, her misery, and was suddenly very angry.

  He sat down and smiled at her—not intimately, but with a kind of liberation, as though he too were unexpectedly relieved of something.

  “Good-morning,” he said formally. “I couldn’t come to the last governors’ meeting.”

  “So I understood.”

  “But I’ve just got the minutes and I see that you’ve managed to persuade the other governors to promise you fresh buildings if the new housing estate goes through.”

  “I shall need them.”

  “It’s perfectly ridiculous.”

  “Don’t you realise that I shall probably double my numbers?”

  “Who’s going to pay for them?”

  “The rate-payers and the Board of Education.”

  “The rate-payers. Because the rates have gone up I suppose you think you can get anything?”

  “Not at all. I only ask for what is reasonable. I feel I may be more likely to get it now.”

  “Since the elections?”

  “Yes. The new county council seems quite sensible.”

  “Because people like me aren’t there any longer?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Her anger was fed by the flame which had consumed her since December. Lips tightly compressed, eyes bright, she faced him, small and furious, in arms against everything that he stood for. She could not believe that last time she had seen him he had tossed moaning upon her bed; she could not believe that she had lain weeping for him every night since then. She saw his solid body, his dark brown tweed suit, his bowler hat (who can feel romantic about a man who wears a bowler hat? she asked herself), the obstinate lines of his big handsome face. She thought, what a fool he is! She thought, he’s just like Mussolini.

  “I suppose you think that because I’ve been got rid of from the council I’m going to retire from all public work? You’re wrong.”

  “I hadn’t thought very much about it,” she lied.

  “You’re very thick just now with Snaith and Astell. Perhaps you don’t know that they have been organising one of the worst pieces of corruption that has been practised in the South Riding Council since it started?”

  “I’ve heard that you’ve been saying so, but it isn’t proved yet.”

  “Naturally you stick up for your friends.”

  “Naturally.”

  “You’re hoping that I shall resign from the Board of Governors and leave you a free hand.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Then I’m telling you.” He leant across the desk. He too was furious now. His eyes were blazing. Their faces almost touched in their burning rage. “I shall do nothing of the kind. I intend to stay as long as I can. I shall denounce your fine friends and do my utmost to keep down your mad extravagance.”

  “I warn you. You’re making a fool of yourself. You think you can stop progress and reason. You can’t, any more than you can make the moon stand still.”

  “Why should you think that your ways are progressive?”

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  “Do you?”

  She read into that question all his contempt for her self-betrayal. She had flung herself at his head and now he mocked her.

  She sprang up, so that even from her few inches she could look down on him.

  “I can’t understand why you let me have your daughter at my school if that’s what you think of me,” she cried, answering, not what he had said, but what her heart said. “But let me tell you it’s no privilege for us to keep her. She is without exception the most tiresome, hysterical, unwholesome, worst-mannered child I’ve ever had to deal with, and I shall be delighted if you take her away.”

  Then he got up too, and his control deserted him.

  “You are asking me to remove my daughter?”

  “I shall be delighted.”

  As he grew hot, she grew cold.

  They faced each other.

  “You may think that as a governor you confer an inestimable privilege on the school by leaving her here. I assure you that really we can do quite well without her. And without her father upon the board.”

  “The matter hardly rests in your choice.”

  He looked so comical, blazing down at her, his great jaw outthrust, his bowler hat in his hand, that she broke into a bubble of laughter.

  “Really, I do love your notion of governoratorial behaviour. You come bounding in here like a bucolic Mussolini and expect me to sit down meekly under your denunciations. And there’s a lady bird crawling up your collar. If you had the slightest notion how funny you looked!”

  “Damn and blast you, woman!”

  She thought that he was going to strike her and smiled up at him, receptive, mocking, inviting him to lay his hands on her, when she heard the parlourmaid’s shrill and childish voice announce “Miss Teasdale, ma’am, to see you.”

  She spun round as the urbane handsome school inspector entered.

  Carne’s reactions were less rapid.

  “Oh, Miss Teasdale, how are you?” cried Sarah, over-effusive, on the crest of a wave of hysteria yet unbroken, which never now would break. “It is nice to see you again. You found your way all right? Do come in. This is one of our governors, Mr. Carne, of Maythorpe.”

  She caught a glimpse of a huge dark lowering figure, Jove from the thunder cloud, heard a rumbling mutter, saw an inclination which might be a bow or a menace, and he was gone.

  “One of your local problems?” smiled Emily Teasdale, who liked Sarah.

  “One of my local problems,” agreed Sarah, and her high light laughter rang down the passage after him.

  She hoped he he
ard it.

  6

  Carne Rides South

  WHEN Carne strode out of Sarah Burton’s office, he was furious. He experienced all the physical symptoms of discordant passion. His pulses thumped in his temples, his throat was dry, his palms moist with perspiration, his breath rapid; but as he left the High School and walked rapidly down the street to his lawyer’s office, he was surprised to find how soon his rage diminished.

  For the fact was that part of him had really enjoyed the quarrel. He was the hot-tempered son of a hot-tempered father, and for many years he had suffered from the necessity of controlling his turbulent nature. The woman with whom he had been most closely associated, his mother, whom he had loved and who had died, Muriel whom he adored and feared, Midge for whom he felt troubled solicitude, Elsie who gave notice if even mildly rebuked, were not of the type to whom a man can let himself go. One of the attractive qualities about Sarah Burton was the sense of robust self-confidence which she gave him. A real red-head, a fighter; she could look after herself. He felt at home with her and had, though he hardly knew it, gone out of his way to pick a quarrel with her as a self-prescribed tonic for his over-strained, exhausted nerves.

  He had, indeed, a wretched day ahead of him. For the rest of the morning he sat closeted with Briggs, hearing exactly what kind of a fool his lawyer thought him. Within his heart he was almost growing sorry that he had ever called Snaith a thief and Huggins a cheating swindler. But since it seemed that he was beaten anyhow, he might just as well go down in a grand uproar as retire meekly from the South Riding. If he could expose this scandal before he went, he would at least leave his mark upon the county; he might not check corruption, but he would not be forgotten.

  So he spent his morning with Briggs and his afternoon with his bank manager. He had decided to sacrifice Maythorpe; that was clear. The bank must take it, and if it sold the place to the Public Health Committee, that was its own business. After all, Midge was provided for; Sedgmire would pay for Muriel; Carne could go to that riding school outside Manchester.

  It seemed odd to him that he was so indifferent. Perhaps when everything was lost, one cared no longer. Odd too that he could not see himself in Manchester. He did not really believe that he would ever lead out hacks for the fat wives of manufacturers, nor teach Lancashire schoolgirls how to groom their horses. Before the summer was over, he would have left the county; he would have begun a new life. But he just did not believe it.

  On his way from the bank he met Mrs. Beddows, walking.

  “Where are you off to?” she asked.

  “Home now. I’m just fetching my horse.”

  “And I’m just off to the High School. Sybil’s picking me up there and going to drive us home. They’ve had the inspector to-day.”

  “I know. I saw her.” Carne heard himself chuckle.

  “When did you see her?”

  “This morning. Fine big woman.”

  “What were you doing up there this morning?”

  He rubbed his chin with a shy boyish movement. Then he smiled at his friend.

  “Having a grand blow up with Sarah Burton. My word, she’s got a temper, hasn’t she?”

  “You mean you have. Whatever were you quarrelling over?”

  “Blest if I know now. Oh, yes. The new buildings. You know, really, she asks a bit too much. She practically told me to take Midge away.”

  “Robert! It’s not serious?”

  “Not on my part.”

  “Can I tell her so?”

  “If you want to.” His curious buoyancy took possession of him. Uncharacteristically he added, “Give her my love and tell her she’s a grand lass. I wouldn’t miss quarrelling with her for a great deal.”

  But when Mrs. Beddows reached the High School, Sybil and Wendy and Midge were already waiting, Sarah closeted with Miss Teasdale, and the message, which was no more than a joke at most, went undelivered.

  It was nearly six o’clock before Carne handed a shilling to the ostler and rode Black Hussar out of the inn yard.

  The evening was wild with wind and clear with the lucid radiance of a stormy sunset. The big black horse pounded heavily across the cobbles and out on to the smooth cemented road. It had been raining heavily, and the polished surface was wet with showers and silvered with opalescent oil.

  “Steady, boy, steady.” Carne reproved his horse. “You’re not in for the Grand National.” He did not want him slipping and straining his back again.

  He trotted briskly on to the esplanade. A heavy pall of cloud overhung the sea. Waves crashed in foam round the solid breakwaters. The gulls blew screaming about a livid sky, but to the west, over the level land, a glory of liquid gold flooded the fields.

  If I’m not back soon, I shall be caught in a storm, Carne told himself, and decided to take the short-cut along the cliffs.

  He passed Dr. Dale, cycling home from a missionary talk— he passed Astell, taking the air after work at his printing press—he saw Huggins swaggering cheerfully from Drew’s office. He buttoned his coat against the buffeting wind, and turned his horse towards the south cliff path.

  On his way home he had arranged to call on Dickson. He should catch him just before his evening round with the milk. Carne had given his three tenants notice, and had been arranging with the bank that they might buy their own land on easy terms. These were the men who could make modern farming pay, smallholders, milk-men, who asked only peasants’ incomes, and set all their families to work for them in the fields and buildings.

  Carne felt no enmity for his successors. He felt extraordinarily little enmity for any one, even for the defrauding councillors whom he fought. Though he attributed his failure to their malice, his loss of his seat on the council to their opposition, he was amazed at the lightness of his spirit.

  That young doctor in Manchester had cured him of all enduring bitterness or hatred.

  For Robert Carne was in his way a religious man. He worshipped the creator of earth and heaven, the Lord of Harvest, the Ancient of Days and Seasons, who had in his beneficent providence ordained that Yorkshire should be the greatest county in England, which was the grandest country in the world, the motherland of the widest empire, the undoubted moral leader of civilisation, the mistress of the globe. He worshipped the God of order who had created farmers lords, of their labourers, the county and the gentry lords over the farmers, and the King lord above all his subjects under God. He worshipped the contrast of power and humility implied in his religion, and on Sunday evenings, in the pew which was his property, sang that God had put down the mighty from their seat, and had exalted the humble and meek, with no effect upon his social principles.

  He had attended funerals and memorial services; he knew that man who is born of woman cometh up and is cut down, like a flower, fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. His mother had died when he was a boy; his father, a powerful and passionate man, during his son’s brief honeymoon with Muriel Sedgmire. ‘

  Carne knew all about death. He had seen it on the hunting field and on the race-course, he, had seen it during air-raids on the remount depot where he had served in France. He had himself risked death a hundred times as sportsman and as soldier.

  But he had never thought very much about it.

  And now he knew that he lived under a threat, and quite calmly, since as a farmer he was trained to accept what was inevitable, he had come to terms with life.

  Quietly and unobtrusively, on his return from Manchester, he had prepared himself for death, sitting up late at night in the small smoking-room, clipping elastic bands round rolls of paper, adding, subtracting, reckoning. His affairs were all in order.

  He was tired. Never in all his life, not after the longest day’s hunting, not after devastating scenes with Muriel, had he known such devitalising, such complete fatigue. His arms ached; a compression wound itself about his chest; he found himself muttering as he rode about the fields: I’m so tired. Oh, God—I’m so tired. Yet he was curiously little
troubled. A burden of responsibility had fallen from him. Always since he was a boy he had carried it. As eldest son, farmer, squire, husband, landlord, father, he had shouldered his obligations to other people.

  But now he had been released. He was going to die. Somebody else must assume that burden for him. Somebody else must mend the roof of Dickson’s cowshed. Somebody else must expose corruption on the council. Somebody else must restrain the High School governors from indulging in extravagant new buildings. Somebody else must buy party frocks for Midge, take her to the dentist, and decide whether she should have special drill for her round shoulders.

  It would have surprised Astell, meditating upon his own valediction to the South Riding, to realise how Carne, riding home along the cliffs to Maythorpe, thought with pride and anxiety of his own work on the council. He really believed that by fighting Socialism, expenditure and pauperism he was serving his generation and his people. So long as he lived he would strive for his principles, but death meant an easy surrender of his sword to any one wise enough to take and wield it.

  He feared no more. His worst moment had come and he had survived it. Sitting at his desk in the small smoking-room, using the last sheets of his handsome expensive notepaper, he had written his first and last letter to Lord Sedgmire. After that, no other ordeal was intolerable. He had met his father-in-law on two occasions. There had been the interview when he went to Shropshire to declare his love, and announce that he intended to marry Muriel. That had been a tremendous scene. Lord Sedgmire had stamped up and down the great gaunt silver gallery and finally ordered Carne out of his house for ever. Lady Sedgmire, in her winged satin chair, had cursed and wept until her companion—a trained mental nurse—had conducted her, wailing and prophesying, from the room.

  Carne had not gone home then. He had settled himself down at the local inn and waited till, on the following midnight, Muriel, superfluously dramatic, had climbed from her window and come to him, bright-eyed, furious, in a mackintosh, calling, “Take me in! Take me in! I cannot bear it!” So he had taken her—there—before the wedding, and married her three days later in London by special licence.