"Now, my dear George! I do think I may claim at least that you should
remember I am your _mother_!"--the speaker raised a fan from her knee,
and used it with some vehemence. "Of course I can't help seeing that you
don't treat me as you ought to do. I don't want to complain of Letty--I
daresay she was taken by surprise--but all I can say as to her reception
of me last night is, that it wasn't pretty--that's all; it wasn't
_pretty_. My room felt like an ice-house--Justine tells me nobody has
slept there for months--and no fire until just the moment I arrived;
and--and no flowers on the dressing-table--no little _attentions_, in
fact. I can only say it was not what I am accustomed to. My feelings
overcame me; that poor dear Justine will tell you what a state she found
me in. She cried herself, to see me so upset."
Lady Tressady was sitting upright on the straight-backed sofa of
George's smoking-room. George, who was walking up and down the room,
thought, with discomfort, as he glanced at her from time to time, that
she looked curiously old and dishevelled. She had thrown a piece of
white lace round her head, in place of the more elaborate preparation
for the world's gaze that she was wont to make. Her dress--a study in
purples--had been a marvel, but was now old, and even tattered; the
ruffles at her wrist were tumbled; and the pencilling under her still
fine eyes had been neglected. George, between his wife's dumb anger and
his mother's folly, had passed through disagreeable times already since
Lady Tressady's arrival, and was now once more endeavouring to get to
the bottom of her affairs.
"You forget, mother," he said, in answer to Lady Tressady's complaint,
"that the house is not mounted for visitors, and that you gave us very
short notice."
Nevertheless he winced inwardly as he spoke at the thought of Letty's
behaviour the night before.
Lady Tressady bridled.
"We will not discuss it, if you please," she said, with an attempt at
dignity. "I should have thought that you and Letty might have known I
should not have broken in on your honeymoon without most _pressing_
reasons. George!"--her voice trembled, she put her lace handkerchief to
her eyes--"I am an unfortunate and miserable woman, and if you--my own
darling son--don't come to my rescue, I--I don't know what I may be
driven to do!"
George took the remark calmly, having probably heard it before. He went
on walking up and down.
"It's no good, mother, dealing in generalities, I am afraid. You promised
me this morning to come to business. If you will kindly tell me at once
what is the matter, and what is the _figure_, I shall be obliged to you."
Lady Tressady hesitated, the lace on her breast fluttering. Then, in
desperation, she confessed herself first reluctantly, then in a torrent.
During the last two years, then, she said, she had been trying her luck
for the first time in--well, in speculation!
"Speculation!" said George, looking at her in amazement. "In what?"
Lady Tressady tried again to preserve her dignity. She had been
investing, she said--trying to increase her income on the Stock Exchange.
She had done it quite as much for George's sake as her own, that she
might improve her position a little, and be less of a burden upon him.
Everybody did it! Several of her best women-friends were as clever at it
as any man, and often doubled their allowances for the year. She, of
course, had done it under the _best_ advice. George knew that she had
friends in the City who would do anything--positively _anything_--for
her. But somehow--
Then her tone dropped. Her foot in its French shoe began to fidget on the
stool before her.
Somehow, she had got into the hands of a reptile--there! No other word
described the creature in the least--a sort of financial agent, who had
treated her unspeakably, disgracefully. She had trusted him implicitly,
and the result was that she now owed the reptile who, on the strength of
her name, her son, and her aristocratic connections, had advanced her
money for these adventures, a sum--
"Well, the truth is I am afraid to say what it is," said Lady Tressady,
allowing herself for once a cry of nature, and again raising a shaky hand
to her eyes.
"How much?" said George, standing over her, cigarette in hand.
"Well--four thousand pounds!" said Lady Tressady, her eyes blinking
involuntarily as she looked up at him.
"_Four thousand pounds!_" exclaimed George. "Preposterous!"
And, raising his hand, he flung his cigarette violently into the fire and
resumed his walk, hands thrust into his pockets.
Lady Tressady looked tearfully at his long, slim figure as he walked
away, conscious, however, even at this agitated moment, of the quick
thought that he had inherited some of her elegance.
"George!"
"Yes--wait a moment--mother"--he faced round upon her decidedly. "Let me
tell you at once, that at the present moment it is quite impossible for
me to find that sum of money."
Lady Tressady flushed passionately like a thwarted child.
"Very well, then," she said--"very well. Then it will be bankruptcy--and
I hope you and Letty will like the scandal!"
"So he threatens bankruptcy?"
"Do you think I should have come down here except for something like
that?" she cried. "Look at his letters!"
And she took a tumbled roll out of the bag on her arm and gave it to him.
George threw himself into a chair, and tried to get some idea of the
correspondence; while Lady Tressady kept up a stream of plaintive chatter
he could only endeavour not to hear.
As far as he could judge on a first inspection, the papers concerned a
long series of risky transactions,--financial gambling of the most
pronounced sort,--whereof the few gains had been long since buried deep
in scandalous losses. The outrageous folly of some of the ventures and
the magnitude of the sums involved made him curse inwardly. It was the
first escapade of the kind he could remember in his mother's history,
and, given her character, he could only regard it as adding a new and
real danger to his life and Letty's.
Then another consideration struck him.
"How on earth did you come to know so much about the ins and outs of
Stock Exchange business," he asked her suddenly, with surprise, in the
midst of his reading. "You never confided in me. I never supposed you
took an interest in such things."
In truth, he would have supposed her mentally incapable of the kind of
gambling finance these papers bore witness of. She had never been known
to do a sum or present an account correctly in her life; and he had
often, in his own mind, accepted her density in these directions as a
certain excuse for her debts. Yet this correspondence showed here and
there a degree of financial legerdemain of which any City swindler
might have been proud--so far, at least, as he could judge from his
hasty survey.
Lady Tressady drew herself up sharply in answer to his remark, though not
without a flutter of the eyelids which caught his attention.
"Of course, my dear George, I always knew you thought your mother a
fool. As a matter of fact, all my friends tell me that I have a _very_
clear head."
George could not restrain, himself from laughing aloud.
"In face of this?" he said, holding up the final batch of letters, which
contained Mr. Shapetsky's last formidable account; various imperious
missives from a "sharp-practice" solicitor, whose name happened to be
disreputably known to George Tressady; together with repeated and most
explicit assurances on the part both of agent and lawyer, that if
arrangements were not made at once by Lady Tressady for meeting at least
half Mr. Shapetsky's bill--which had now been running some eighteen
months--and securing the other half, legal steps would be taken
immediately.
Lady Tressady at first met her son's sarcasm in angry silence, then broke
into shrill denunciation of Shapetsky's "villanies." How could decent
people, people in society, protect themselves against such creatures!
George walked to the window, and stood looking out into the April garden.
Presently he turned, and interrupted his mother.
"I notice, mother, that these transactions have been going on for nearly
two years. Do you remember, when I gave you that large sum at Christmas,
you said it would 'all but' clear you; and when I gave you another large
sum last month, you professed to be entirely cleared? Yet all the time
you were receiving these letters, and you owed this fellow almost as
much as you do now. Do you think it was worth while to mislead me in
that way?"
He stood leaning against the window, his fingers drumming on the sill.
The contrast between the youth of the figure and the absence of youth in
face and voice was curious. Perhaps Lady Tressady felt vaguely that he
looked like a boy and spoke like a master, for her pride rose.
"You have no right to speak to me like that, George! I did everything for
the best. I always do everything for the best. It is my misfortune to be
so--so confiding, so hopeful. I must always believe in someone--that's
what makes my friends so _extremely_ fond of me. You and your poor
darling father were never the least like me--" And she went off into a
tearful comparison between her own character and the characters of her
husband and son--in which of course it was not she that suffered.
George did not heed her. He was once more staring out of window, thinking
hard. So far as he could see, the money, or the greater part of it, would
have to be found. The man, of course, was a scoundrel, but of the sort
that keeps within the law; and Lady Tressady's monstrous folly had given
him an easy prey. When he thought of the many sacrifices he had made for
his mother, of her ample allowance, her incorrigible vanity and
greed--and then of the natural desires of his young wife--his heart
burned within him.
"Well, I can only tell you," he said at last, turning round upon her,
"that I see no way out. How is that man's claim to be met? I don't know.
Even if I _could_ meet it--which I see no chance of doing--by crippling
myself for some time, how should I be at liberty to do it? My wife and
her needs have now the first claim upon me."
"Very well," said Lady Tressady, proudly, raising her handkerchief,
however, to hide her trembling lips.
"Let me remind you," he continued, ceremoniously, "that the whole of this
place is in bad condition, except the few rooms we have just done up, and
that money _must_ be spent upon it--it is only fair to Letty that it
should be spent. Let me remind you also, that you are a good deal
responsible for this state of things."
Lady Tressady moved uneasily. George was now speaking in his usual
half-nonchalant tone, and he had provided himself with another cigarette.
But his eye held her.
"You will remember that you promised me while I was abroad to live here
and look after the house. I arranged money affairs with you, and other
affairs, upon that basis. But it appears that during the four years I was
away you were here altogether, at different times, about three months.
Yet you made me believe you were here; if I remember right, you dated
your letters from here. And of course, in four years, an old house that
is totally neglected goes to the bad."
"Who has been telling you such falsehoods?" cried Lady Tressady. "I was
here a great deal more than that--a great deal more!"
But the scarlet colour, do what she would, was dyeing her still delicate
skin, and her eyes alternately obstinate and shuffling, tried to take
themselves out of the range of George's.
As for George, as he stood there coolly smoking, he was struck--or,
rather, the critical mind in him was struck--by a sudden perception of
the meanness of aspect which sordid cares of the kind his mother was now
plunged in can give to the human face. He felt the rise of a familiar
disgust. How many scenes of ugly battle over money matters could he not
remember in his boyhood between his father and mother! And later--in
India--what things he had known women do for money or dress! He thought
scornfully of a certain intriguing lady of his acquaintance at
Madras--who had borrowed money of him--to whom he had given ball-dresses;
and of another, whose selfish extravagance had ruined one of the best of
men. Did all women tend to be of this make, however poetic might be their
outward seeming?
Aloud, he said quietly, in answer to his mother's protest:
"I think you will find that is about accurate. I mention it merely to
show you how it is that I find myself now plunged in so many expenses.
And, now, doesn't it strike you as a _little_ hard that I should be
called upon to strip and cripple myself still further--_not_ to give my
wife the comforts and conveniences I long to give her, but to pay such
debts as those?"
Involuntarily he struck his hand on the papers lying in the chair where
he had been sitting.
Lady Tressady, too, rose from her seat.
"George, if you are going to be _violent_ towards your mother, I had
better go," she said, with an attempt at dignity. "I suppose Letty has
been gossiping with her servants about me. Oh! I knew what to expect!"
cried Lady Tressady, gathering up fan and handkerchief from the sofa
behind her with a hand that shook. "I always said from the beginning that
she would set you against me! She has never treated me as--as a
daughter--never! And that is my weakness--I must be cared for--I must be
treated with--with tenderness."
"I wouldn't give way, mother, if I were you," said George, quite
unmoved by the show of tears. "I think, if you will reflect upon it,
that it is Letty and I who have the most cause to give way. If you will
allow me, I will go and have a talk with her. I believe she is sitting
in the garden."
His mother turned sullenly away from him, and he left the room.
* * * * *
As he passed through the long oak-panelled hall that led to the garden,
he was seized with an odd sense of pity for himself. This odious scene
behind him, and now this wrestle with Letty that must be gone
through--were these the joys of the honeymoon?
Letty was not in the garden. But as he passed into the wood on the
farther side of the hill he saw her sitting under a tree halfway down the
slope, with some embroidery in her hand. The April sun was shining into
the wood. A larch beyond Letty was already green, and the twigs of the
oak beneath which she sat made a reddish glow in the bright air. Patches
of primroses and anemones starred the ground about her, and trails of
periwinkle touched her dress. She was stooping, and her little hand went
rapidly--impatiently--to and fro.
The contrast between this fresh youth amid the spring and that unlovely,
reluctant age he had just left behind him in the smoking-room struck him
sharply. His brow cleared.
As she heard his step she looked round eagerly. "Well?" she said,
pushing aside her work.
He threw himself down beside her.
"Darling, I have had my talk. It is pretty bad--worse than we had even
imagined!"
Then he told her his mother's story. She could hardly contain herself, as
she listened, as he mentioned the total figure of the debts. It was
evidently with difficulty that she prevented herself from interrupting
him at every word. And when he had barely finished she broke out:
"And what did you say?"
George hesitated.
"I told her, of course, that it was monstrous and absurd to expect that
we could pay such a sum."
Letty's breath came fast. His voice and manner did not satisfy her at
all.
"Monstrous? I should think it was! Do you know how she has run up
this debt?"
George looked at her in surprise. Her little face was quivering under the
suppressed energy of what she was going to say.
"No!--do you?"
"Yes!--I know all about it. I said to my maid last night--I hope, George,
you won't mind, but you know Grier has been an age with me, and knows all
my secrets--I told her she must make friends with your mother's maid, and
see what she could find out. I felt we _must_, in self-defence. And of
course Grier got it all out of Justine. I knew she would! Justine is a
little fool; and she doesn't mean to stay much longer with Lady Tressady,
so she didn't mind speaking. It is exactly as I supposed! Lady Tressady
didn't begin speculating for herself at all--but for--somebody--else! Do
you remember that absurd-looking singer who gave a 'musical sketch' one
day that your mother gave a party in Eccleston Square--in February?"
She looked at him with eagerness, an ugly, half-shrinking innuendo in her
expression.
George had suddenly moved away, and was sitting now some little distance
from his wife, his eyes bent on the ground. However, at her question he
made a sign of assent.
"You do remember? Well," said Letty, triumphantly, "it is he who is at
the bottom of it all. I _knew_ there must be somebody. It appears that he
has been getting money out of her for years--that he used to come and
spend hours, when she had that little house in Bruton Street, when you
were away--I don't believe you ever heard of it--flattering her, and
toadying her, paying her compliments on her dress and her appearance,
fetching and carrying for her--and of course living upon her! He used to
arrange all her parties. Justine says that he used even to make her order
all his favourite wines--_such_ bills as there used to be for wine! He
has a wife and children somewhere, and of course the whole family lived
upon your mother. It was he made her begin speculating. Justine says he
has lost all he ever had himself that way, and your mother couldn't, in
fact, '_lend'_ him"--Letty laughed scornfully--"money fast enough. It was
he brought her across that odious creature Shapetsky--isn't that his
name? And that's the whole story. If there have been any gains, he has
made off with them--leaving her, of course, to get out of the rest.
Justine says that for months there was nothing but business, as she calls
it, talked in the house--and she knew, for she used to help wait at
dinner. And such a crew of people as used to be about the place!"
She looked at him, struck at last by his silence and his attitude, or
pausing for some comment, some appreciation of her cleverness in
ferreting it all out.
But he did not speak, and she was puzzled. The angry triumph in her eyes
faltered. She put out her hand and touched him on the arm.
"What is it, George? I thought--it would be more satisfactory to us both
to know the truth."
He looked up quickly.
"And all this your maid got out of Justine? You asked her?"
She was struck, offended, by his expression. It was so cool and
strange--even, she could have imagined, contemptuous.
"Yes, I did," she said passionately. "I thought I was quite justified. We
must protect ourselves."
He was silent again.
"I think," he said at last, drily, she watching him--"I think we will
keep Justine and Grier out of it, if you please."
She took her work, and laid it down again, her mouth trembling.
"So you had rather be deceived?"
"I had rather be deceived than listen behind doors," he said, beginning
in a light tone, which, however, passed immediately into one of
bitterness. "Besides, there is nothing new. For people like my mother
there is always some adventurer or adventuress in the background--there
always used to be in old days. She never meant any serious harm; she was
first plundered, then we. My father used to be for ever turning some
impostor or other out of doors. Now I suppose it is my turn."
This time it was Letty who kept silence. Her needle passed rapidly to and
fro. George glanced at her queerly. Then he rose and came to stand near
her, leaning against the tree.
"You know, Letty, we shall have to pay that money," he said suddenly,
pulling at his moustache.
Letty made an exclamation under her breath, but went on working faster
than before.
He slipped down to the moss beside her, and caught her hand.
"Are you angry with me?"
"If you insult me by accusing me of listening behind doors you can't
wonder," said Letty, snatching her hand away, her breast heaving.
He felt a bitter inclination to laugh, but he restrained it, and did
his best to make peace. In the midst of his propitiations Letty
turned upon him.
"Of course, I know you think I did it all for selfishness," she said,
half crying, "because I want new furniture and new dresses. I don't; I
want to protect you from being--being--plundered like this. How can you
do what you ought as a member of Parliament? how can we ever keep
ourselves out of debt if--if--? How _can_ you pay this money?" she wound
up, her eyes flaming.
"Well, you know," he said, hesitating--"you know I suggested yesterday
we should sell some land to do up the house. I am afraid we must sell the
laud, and pay this scoundrel--a proportion, at all events. Of course,
what I should _like_ to do would be to put him--and the other--to instant
death, with appropriate tortures! Short of that, I can only take the
matter out of my mother's hands, get a sharp solicitor on my side to
match _his_ rascal, and make the best bargain I can."
Letty rolled up her work with energy, two tears of anger on her cheeks.
"She _ought_ to suffer!" she cried, her voice trembling--"she _ought_
to suffer!"
"You mean that we ought to let her be made a bankrupt?" he said coolly.
"Well, no doubt it would be salutary. Only, I am afraid it would be
rather more disagreeable to us than to her. Suppose we consider the
situation. Two young married people--charming house--charming
wife--husband just beginning in politics--people inclined to be friends.
Then you go to dine with them in Brook Street--excellent little French
dinner--bride bewitching. Next morning you see the bankruptcy of the
host's mamma in the 'Times.' 'And he's the only son, isn't he?--he must
be well off. They say she's been dreadfully extravagant. But, hang it!
you know, a man's mother!--and a widow--no, I can't stand that. Sha'n't
dine with them again!' There! do you see, darling? Do you really want to
rub all the bloom off the peach?"
He had hardly finished his little speech before the odiousness of it
struck himself.
"Am I come to talking to her like _this_?" he asked himself in a kind of
astonishment.
But Letty, apparently, was not astonished.
"Everybody would understand if you refused to ruin yourself by going on
paying these frightful debts. I am sure _something_ could be done," she
said, half choked.
George shook his head.
"But everybody wouldn't want to understand. The dear world loves a
scandal--doesn't really _like_ being amiable to newcomers at all. You
would make a bad start, dear--and all the world would pity mamma."
"Oh! if you are only thinking what people would say," cried Letty.
"No," said George, reflectively, but with a mild change of tone. "Damn
people! I can pull myself to pieces so much better than they can. You
see, darling, you're such an optimist. Now, if you'd only just believe,
as I do, that the world is a radically bad place, you wouldn't be so
surprised when things of this sort happen. Eh, little person, has it been
a radically bad place this last fortnight?"
He laid his cheek against her shoulder, rubbing it gently up and down.
But something hard and scornful lay behind his caress--something he did
not mean to inquire into.
"Then you told your mother," said Letty, after a pause, still looking
straight before her, "that you would clear her?"
"Not at all. I said we could do nothing. I laid it on about the house.
And all the time I knew perfectly well in my protesting soul, that if
this man's claim is sustainable we should _have_ to pay up. And I imagine
that mamma knew it too. You can get out of anybody's debts but your
mother's--that's apparently what it comes to. Queer thing, civilisation!
Well now"--he sprang to his feet--"let's go and get it over."
Letty also rose.
"I can't see her again," she said quickly. "I sha'n't come down to lunch.
Will she go by the three-o'clock train?"
"I will arrange it," said George.
They walked through the wood together silently. As they came in sight of
the house Letty's face quivered again with restrained passion--or tears.
George, whose _sangfroid_ was never disturbed outwardly for long, had by
now resigned himself, and had, moreover, recovered that tolerance of
woman's various weaknesses which was in him the fruit of a wide, and at
bottom hostile, induction. He set himself to cheer her up. Perhaps, after
all, if he could sell a particular piece of land which he owned near a
neighbouring large town, and sell it well,--he had had offers for it
before,--he might be able to clear his mother, and still let Letty work
her will on the house. She mustn't take a gloomy view of things--he would
do his best. So that by the time they got into the drawing-room she had
let her hand slip doubtfully into his again for a moment.
But nothing would induce her to appear at lunch. Lady Tressady, having
handed over all Shapetsky's papers and all her responsibilities to
George, graciously told him that she could understand Letty's annoyance,
and didn't wish for a moment to intrude upon her. She then called on
Justine to curl her hair, put on a blue shot silk with marvellous pink
fronts just arrived from Paris, and came down to lunch with her son in
her most smiling mood. She took no notice of his monosyllables, and in
the hall, while the butler discreetly retired, she kissed him with tears,
saying that she had always known his generosity would come to the rescue
of his poor darling mamma.
"You will oblige me, mother, by not trying it again too soon," was
George's ironical reply as he put her into the carriage.
* * * * *
In the afternoon Letty was languid and depressed. She would not talk on
general topics, and George shrank in nervous disgust from reopening the
subjects of the morning. Finally, she chose to be tucked up on the sofa
with a novel, and gave George free leave to go out.
It surprised him to find as he walked quickly down the hill, delighting
in the April sun, that he was glad to be alone. But he did not in the
least try to fling the thought away from him, as many a lover would have
done. The events, the feelings of the day, had been alike jarring and
hateful; he meant to escape from them.
But he could not escape from them all at once. A fresh and unexpected
debt of somewhere about four thousand pounds does not sit lightly on a
comparatively poor man. In spite of his philosophy for Letty's benefit,
he must needs harass himself anew about his money affairs, planning and
reckoning. How many more such surprises would his mother spring upon
him--and how was he to control her? He realised now something of the
life-long burden his dull old father had borne--a burden which the
absences of school, college, and travel had hitherto spared himself. What
was he to appeal to in her? There seemed to be nothing--neither will nor
conscience. She was like the women without backs in the fairy-tale.
Then, with one breath he said to himself that he must kick out that
singer-fellow, and with the next, that he would not touch any of his
mother's crew with a barge-pole. Though he never pleaded ideals in
public, he had been all his life something of a moral epicure, taking
"moral" as relating rather to manners than to deeper things. He had done
his best not to soil himself by contact with certain types--among men
especially. Of women he was less critical and less observant.
As to this ugly feud opening between his mother and his wife, it had
quite ceased to amuse him. Now that his marriage was a reality, the daily
corrosion of such a thing was becoming plain. And who was there in the
world to bear the brunt of it but he? He saw himself between the
two--eternally trying to make peace--and his face lengthened.
And if Letty would only leave the thing to him!--would only keep her
little white self out of it! He wished he could get her to send away that
woman Grier--a forward second-rate creature, much too ready to meddle in
what did not concern her.
Then, with a shake of his thin shoulders, he passionately drove it all
out of his thoughts.
Let him go to the village, sound the feeling there if he could, and do
his employer's business. His troubles as a pit-owner seemed likely to be
bad enough, but they did not canker one like domestic miseries. They were
a man's natural affairs; to think of them came as a relief to him.
* * * * *
He had but a disappointing round, however.
In the first place he went to look up some of the older "hewers," men who
had been for years in the employ of the Tressadys. Two or three of them
had just come back from the early shift, and their wives, at any rate,
were pleased and flattered by George's call. But the men sat like stocks
and stones while he talked. Scarcely a word could be got out of them, and
George felt himself in an atmosphere of storm, guessing at dangers,
everywhere present, though not yet let loose--like the foul gases in the
pits under his feet.
He behaved with a good deal of dignity, stifling his pride here and there
sufficiently to talk simply and well of the general state of trade, the
conditions of the coal industry in the West Mercian district, the
position of the masters, the published accounts of one or two large
companies in the district, and so on. But in the end he only felt his own
auger rising in answer to the sullenness of the men. Their sallow faces
and eyes weakened by long years of the pit expressed little--but what
there was spelt war.
Nor did his visits to what might be called his own side give him much
more satisfaction.
One man, a brawny "fireman," whom George had been long taught to regard
as one of the props of law and order in the district, was effusively and
honestly glad to see his employer. His wife hurried the tea, and George
drank and ate as heartily as his own luncheon would let him in company
with Macgregor and his very neat and smiling family. Nothing could be
more satisfactory than Macgregor's general denunciations of the Union and
its agent. Burrows, in his opinion, was a "drunken, low-livin scoundrel,"
who got his bread by making mischief; the Union was entering upon a great
mistake in resisting the masters' proposals; and if it weren't for the
public-house and idleness there wasn't a man in Perth that couldn't live
_well_, ten per cent. reduction and all considered. Nevertheless, he did
not conceal his belief that battle was approaching, and would break out,
if not now, at any rate in the late summer or autumn. Times, too, were
going to be specially bad for the non-society men. The membership of the
Union had been running up fast; there had been a row that very morning at
the pit where he worked, the Union men refusing to go down in the same
cage with the blacklegs. He and his mates would have to put their backs
into it. Never fear but they would! Bullying might be trusted only to
make them the more "orkard."
Nothing could have been more soothing than such talk to the average
employer in search of congenial opinions. But George was not the average
employer, and the fastidious element in him began soon to make him
uncomfortable. Sobriety is, no doubt, admirable, but he had no sooner
detected a teetotal cant in his companion than that particular axiom
ceased to matter to him. And to think poorly of Burrows might be a
salutary feature in a man's character, but it should be for some
respectable reason. George fidgeted on his chair while Macgregor told
the usual cock-and-bull stories of monstrous hotel-bills seen sticking
out of Burrows's tail-pockets, and there deciphered by a gaping
populace; and his mental discomfort reached its climax when Macgregor
wound up with the remark:
"And _that_, Sir George, is where the money goes to!--not to the poor
starving women and children, I can tell yer, whose husbands are keepin
him in luxury. I've always said it. _Where's the accounts?_ I've never
seen no balance-sheet--_never!_" he repeated solemnly. They do say as
there's one to be seen at the 'lodge'--"
"Why, of course there is, Macgregor," said George, with a nervous laugh,
as he got up to depart; "all the big Unions publish their accounts."
The fireman's obstinate mouth and stubbly hair only expressed a more
pronounced scepticism.
"Well, I shouldn't believe in em," he said, "if they did. I've niver seen
a balance-sheet, and I don't suppose I ever shall. Well, good-bye to you,
Sir George, and thank you kindly. Yo take my word, sir, if it weren't for
the public-house the men could afford to lose a trifle now and again to
let the masters make their fair profit!"
And he looked behind him complacently at his neat cottage and
well-clothed children.
But George walked away, impatient.
"_His_ wages won't go down, anyway," he said to himself--for the wages of
the "firemen," whose work is of the nature of superintendence, hardly
vary with the state of trade. "And what suspicious idiocy about the
accounts!"
His last visit was the least fortunate of any. The fireman in question,
Mark Dowse, Macgregor's chief rival in the village, was a keen Radical,
and George found him chuckling over his newspaper, and the defeat of the
Tory candidate in a recently decided County Council election. He received
his visitor with a surprise which George thought not untinged with
insolence. Some political talk followed, in which Dowse's Yorkshire wit
scored more than once at his employer's expense. Dowse, indeed, let
himself go. He was on the point of taking the examination for an
under-manager's certificate and leaving the valley. Hence there were no
strong reasons for servility, and he might talk as he pleased to a young
"swell" who had sold himself to reaction. George lost his temper
somewhat, was furiously ashamed of himself, and could only think of
getting out of the man's company with dignity.
He was by no means clear, however, as he walked away from the cottage,
that he had succeeded in doing so. What was the good of trying to make
friends with these fellows? Neither in agreement nor in opposition had
he any common ground with them. Other people might have the gifts for
managing them; it seemed to him that it would be better for him to
take up the line at once that he had none. Fontenoy was right. Nothing
but a state of enmity was possible--veiled enmity at some times, open
at others.
What were those voices on the slope above him?
He was walking along a road which skirted his own group of pits. To his
left rose a long slope of refuse, partly grown over, ending in the "bank"
whereon stood the engine-house and winding-apparatus. A pathway climbed
the slope and made the natural ascent to the pit for people dwelling in
the scattered cottages on the farther side of it.
Two men, he saw, were standing high up on the pathway, violently
disputing. One was Madan, his own manager, an excellent man of business
and a bitter Tory. The other was Valentine Burrows.
As Tressady neared the road-entrance to the pathway the two men parted.
Madan climbed on towards the pit. Burrows ran down the path.
As he approached the gate, and saw Tressady passing on the road, the
agent called:
"Sir George Tressady!"
George stopped.
Burrows came quickly up to him, his face crimson.
"Is it by your orders, Sir George, that Mr. Madan insults and browbeats
me when he meets me on a perfectly harmless errand to one of the men in
your engine-house?"
"Perhaps Mr. Madan was not so sure as you were, Mr. Burrows, that the
errand _was_ a harmless one," said George, with a cool smile.
By this time, however, Burrows was biting his lip, and very conscious
that he had made an impulsive mistake.
"Don't imagine for a moment," he said hotly, "that Madan's opinion of
anything I may be doing matters one brass farthing to me! Only I give you
and him fair warning that if he blackguards me again in the way he has
done several times lately, I shall have him bound over."
"He might survive it," said George. "But how will you manage it? You have
had ill-luck, rather, with the magistrates--haven't you?"
He stood drawn up to his full height, thin, venomous, alert, rather
enjoying the encounter, which "let off the steam" of his previous
irritations.
Burrows threw him a furious look.
"You think that a damaging thing to say, do you, Sir George? Perhaps the
day will come--not so far off, neither--when the magistrates will be no
longer your creatures, but ours. Then we shall see!"
"Well, prophecy is cheap," said George. "Console yourself with it, by
all means."
The two men measured each other eye to eye.
Then, unexpectedly, after the relief of his outburst, the philosopher's
instincts which were so oddly interwoven with the rest of Tressady's
nature reasserted themselves.
"Look here," he said, in another manner, advancing a step. "I think this
is all great nonsense. If Madan has exceeded his duty, I will see to it.
And, meanwhile, don't you think it would be more worthy of us, as a
couple of rational beings, if, now we have met, we had a few serious
words on the state of things in this valley? You and I fought a square
fight at Malford--you at least said as much. Why can't we fight a square
fight here?"
Burrows eyed him doubtfully. He was leaning on his stick, recovering
breath and composure. George noticed that since the Malford election,
even he had lost youth and looks. He had the drunkard's skin and the
drunkard's eyes. Yet there were still the make and proportions of the
handsome athlete. He was now a man of about thirty-two; but in his first
youth he had carried the miner's pick for some four or five years, and
during the same period had been one of the most famous football-players
of the county. As George knew, he was still the idol of the local clubs,
and capable in his sober spells of amazing feats both of strength and
endurance.
"Well, I have no objection to some conversation with you," said Burrows,
at last, slowly.
"Let's walk on, then," said George.
And they walked past the gate of Ferth, towards the railway-station,
which was some two miles off.
About an hour later the two men returned along the same road. Both had an
air of tension; both were rather pale.
"Well, it comes to this," said George, as he stopped beside his own gate,
"you believe our case--the badness of trade, the disappearance of
profits, pressure of contracts, and all the rest of it--and you still
refuse on your part to bear the smallest fraction of the burden? You will
claim all you can get in good times--you will give back nothing in bad?"
"That is so," said Burrows, deliberately; "that is so, _precisely_. We
will take no risks; we give our labour and in return the workman must
live. Make the consumer pay, or pay yourselves out of your good
years"--he turned imperceptibly towards the barrack-like house on the
hill. "We don't care a ha'porth which it is!--only don't you come on
the man who risks his life, and works like a galley-slave five days a
week for a pittance of five-and-twenty shillings, or thereabouts, to
pay--for he _won't_. He's tired of it. Not till you starve him into it,
at any rate!"
George laughed.
"One of the best men in the village has been giving me his opinion this
afternoon that there isn't a man in that place"--he pointed to it--"that
couldn't live, and live well--aye, and take the masters' terms
to-morrow--but for the drink!"
His keen look ran over Burrows from head to foot.
"And I know who _that_ is," said Burrows, with a sneer. "Well, I can tell
you what the rest of the men in that place think, and it's this: that the
man in that village who _doesn't_ drink is a mean skunk, who's betraying
his own flesh and blood to the capitalists! Oh! you may preach at us till
you're black in the face, but drink we _shall_ till we get the control of
our own labour. For, look here! Directly we cease to drink--directly we
become good boys on your precious terms--the standard of life falls, down
come wages, and _you_ sweep off our beer-money to spend on your
champagne. Thank you, Sir George! but we're not such fools as we
look--and that don't suit us! Good-day to you."
And he haughtily touched his hat in response to George's movement, and
walked quickly away.
* * * * *
George slowly mounted his own hill. The chequered April day was
declining, and the dipping sun was flooding the western plain with quiet
light. Rooks were circling round the hill, filling the air with
long-drawn sound. A cuckoo was calling on a tree near at hand, and the
evening was charged with spring scents--scents of leaf and grass, of
earth and rain. Below, in an oak copse across the road, a stream rushed;
and from a distance came the familiar rattle and thud of the pits.
George stood still a moment under a ragged group of Scotch firs--one of
the few things at Ferth that he loved--and gazed across the Cheshire
border to the distant lines of Welsh hills. The excitement of his talk
with Burrows was subsiding, leaving behind it the obstinate resolve of
the natural man. He should tell his uncles there was nothing for it but
to fight it out. Some blood must be let; somebody must be master.
What poor limited fools, after all, were the best of the working men--how
incapable of working out any serious problem, of looking beyond their own
noses and the next meal! Was he to spend his life in chronic battle with
them--a set of semi-civilised barbarians--his countrymen in nothing but
the name? And for what cause--to what cry? That he might defend against
the toilers of this wide valley a certain elegant house in Brook Street,
and find the means to go on paying his mother's debts?--such debts as he
carried the evidence of, at that moment, in his pocket.
Suddenly there swept over his mind with pricking force the thought of
Mary Batchelor at her door, blind with weeping and pain--of the poor boy,
dead in his prime. Did those two figures stand for the _realities_ at
the base of things--the common labours, affections, agonies, which
uphold the world?
His own life looked somehow poor and mean to him as he turned back to it.
The Socialist of course--Burrows--would say that he and Letty and his
mother were merely living, and dressing, and enjoying themselves, paying
butlers, and starting carriages out of the labour and pain of
others--that Jamie Batchelor and his like risked and brutalised their
strong young lives that Lady Tressady and her like might "jig and amble"
through theirs.
Pure ignorant fanaticism, no doubt! But he was not so ready as usual to
shelter himself under the big words of controversy. Fontenoy's favourite
arguments had momentarily no savour for a kind of moral nausea.
"I begin to see it was a 'cursed spite' that drove me into the business
at all," he said to himself, as he stood under the trees.
What he was really suffering from was an impatience of new
conditions--perhaps surprise that he was not more equal to them. Till his
return home--till now, almost--he had been an employer and a coal-owner
by proxy. Other people had worked for him, had solved his problems for
him. Then a transient impulse had driven him home--made him accept
Fontenoy's offer--worse luck!--at least, Letty apart! The hopefulness and
elation about himself, his new activities, and his Parliamentary
prospects, that had been his predominant mood in London seemed to him at
this moment of depression mere folly. What he really felt, he declared to
himself, was a sort of cowardly shrinking from life and its tests--the
recognition that at bottom he was a weakling, without faiths, without
true identity.
Then the quick thought-process, as it flowed on, told him that there are
two things that protect men of his stamp from their own lack of moral
stamina: perpetual change of scene, that turns the world into a
spectacle--and love. He thought with hunger of his travel-years; holding
away from him, as it were, for a moment the thought of his marriage.
But only for a moment. It was but a few weeks since a woman's life had
given itself wholly into his hands. He was still thrilling under the
emotion and astonishment of it. Tender, melting thoughts flowed upon him.
His little Letty! Had he ever thought her perfect, free from natural
covetousness and weaknesses? What folly! _He_ to ask for the grand style
in character!
He looked at his watch. How long he had left her! Let him hurry, and make
his peace.
However, just as he was turning, his attention was caught by something
that was passing on the opposite hillside. The light from the west was
shining full on a white cottage with a sloping garden. The cottage
belonged to the Wesleyan minister of the place, and had been rented by
Burrows for the last six months. And just as George was turning away he
saw Burrows come out of the door with a burden--a child, or a woman
little larger than a child--in his arms. He carried her to an armchair
which had been placed on the little grass-plat. The figure was almost
lost in the chair, and sat motionless while Burrows brought cushions and
a stool. Then a baby came to play on the grass, and Burrows hung over the
back of the chair, bending so as to talk to the person in it.
"Dying?" said George to himself. "Poor devil! he must hate something."
* * * * *
He sped up the hill, and found Letty still on the sofa and in the last
pages of her novel. She did not resent his absence apparently,--a
freedom, so far, from small exaction for which he inwardly thanked her.
Still, from the moment that she raised her eyes as he came in, he saw
that if she was not angry with him for leaving her alone, her mind was
still as sore as ever against him and fortune on other accounts--and his
revived ardour drooped. He gave her an account of his adventures, but she
was neither inquiring nor sympathetic; and her manner all the evening had
a nervous dryness that took away the pleasure of their _tête-à-tête._ Any
old friend of Letty's, indeed, could hardly have failed to ask what had
become of that small tinkling charm of manner, that girlish flippancy and
repartee, that had counted for so much in George's first impressions of
her? They were no sooner engaged than it had begun to wane. Was it like
the bird or the flower, that adorns itself only for the wooing time, and
sinks into relative dinginess when the mating effort is over?
On this particular evening, indeed, she was really absorbed half the time
in gloomy thoughts of Lady Tressady's behaviour and the poorness of her
own prospects. She lay on the sofa again after dinner--her white slimness
and bright hair showing delicately against the cushions--playing still
with her novel, while George read the newspapers. Sometimes she glanced
at him unsteadily, with a pinching of the lips. But it was not her way to
invite a scene.
Late at night he went up to his dressing-room.
As he entered it Letty was talking to her maid. He stopped involuntarily
in the darkness of his own room, and listened. What a contrast between
this Letty and the Letty of the drawing-room! They were chattering fast,
discussing Lady Tressady, and Lady Tressady's gowns, and Lady Tressady's
affairs. What eagerness, what malice, what feminine subtlety and
acuteuess! After listening for a few seconds, it seemed to him as though
a score of new and ugly lights had been thrown alike upon his mother and
on human nature. He stole away again without revealing himself.
When he returned the room was nearly dark, and Letty was lying high
against her pillows, waiting for him. Suddenly, after she had sent her
maid away, she had felt depressed and miserable, and had begun to cry.
And for some reason hardly clear to herself she had lain pining for
George's footstep. When he came in she looked at him with eyes still
wet, reproaching him gently for being late.
In the dim light, surrounded with lace and whiteness, she was a pretty
vision; and George stood beside her, responding and caressing.
But that black depth in his nature, of which he had spoken to her--which
he had married to forget--was, none the less, all ruffled and vocal. For
the first time since Letty had consented to marry him he did not think or
say to himself, as he looked at her, that he was a lucky man, and had
done everything for the best.