THE STRIKE
In the weeks that followed, Wynnstay was galvanized into life through the
political and economic fray brought about by the discontent at Langton.
Sir John and Gilbert talked the thing out _ad nauseam_, for Sir John was
infuriated at what he termed the ingratitude of the mill employés whom
he had kept going for so many years. Had the Curreys even considered
another point of view than that of the capitalist it would not have been
uninteresting to Claudia to experience at close quarters one of the big
problems of the day. But all Sir John’s narrowness and bigotry came out
in the contest, so that even Gilbert had occasionally to tell him to
moderate a little. It was most important that the men at Langton should
be conciliated and kept on his side, in order that the seat should be
safe for Gilbert, but how to do that and at the same time enforce his
will upon the men was something of a difficulty.
On September the 20th practically the whole factory went out on strike,
and Sir John nearly had apoplexy in his wrath.
“My mills! The mills my father had before me! The men I’ve employed
regularly in good times and bad! It’s outrageous. Parliament ought to
deal with such things. The country is at the mercy of the Labour party.”
“I always was against this general education,” cried Lady Currey,
examining a new piece of Sèvres she had just acquired. “Why, one of
Robson’s children is a school-teacher.”
Robson was the ringleader in the strike, and a few months before
had come to loggerheads with Sir John. One of his daughters—not the
school-teacher—had gone away from the village some four years previously,
and had recently returned with two children and no husband, and Sir John
had refused her application for an empty cottage or to take her back
again in the mill. Sir John said, “One must uphold the principle of
the thing.” But as Claudia gradually learned, Sir John had never been
popular, and though Robson’s grievance had inflamed the workmen, they had
been in a state of ferment for some time—partly because they had become
infected with the strike fever, and partly because Sir John refused to
replace some old machinery with the modern which is used in most big
paper mills. He was a strictly just employer and landlord, but he did not
err on the side of leniency.
“I won’t give way. I won’t be intimidated by these scoundrels. You agree
with me, don’t you, Gilbert?”
“Yes.” Gilbert’s lower lip protruded pugnaciously. “Give way now, and
you’ll have no more peace. After all, you can afford to shut down for a
time; then they’ll come to their senses.”
This went on every day in different forms, explanations to visitors all
sympathetic to the Curreys, accounts in the daily papers, until Claudia
was glad to go over to Rockingham and see Fay and her strange guests.
For they were very strange, according to Rockingham ideas. Fay had asked
them indiscriminately, the only qualification being that they needed a
holiday and could not afford one. Old Joey Robins was there, watching
over Fay like a grotesque old clown in a wonderful medley of garments
that he imagined were suitable to the country. He had obtained from
somewhere a pair of white flannel trousers, very much shrunk and yellow
through washing, a brown velvet coat and a grey Trilby hat much too large
for him. There was often a little mishap with the glazed white front
which would pop out of the black waistcoat, but his celluloid collar
was always spotless. A girl who did sand-dancing and had broken down in
health, a once famous comedienne who had lost her popularity, an acrobat
who had injured his foot, and a woman with a young baby, who had been
deserted by her husband, were her other guests on this particular morning
when Claudia went over. Fay, who was getting very thin and hollow-eyed,
gave them of her best, for she had insisted on paying for the venture
herself, and had, for that purpose, sold all her much-loved jewellery. “I
shall never want it again,” she had said to Claudia, biting her lips to
keep back the tears.
Claudia had helped her to furnish the big old house with simple,
comfortable furniture, and had procured a staff of servants to run it.
And because of their liking and pity for their odd little mistress with
her extraordinary ideas the servants stayed, though the vagaries of the
guests, the conflicting orders of Polly—“head cook and bottle-washer,”
Fay called her—and the nurses nearly sent them distracted occasionally.
When things got in too much of a tangle Claudia’s presence was urgently
demanded.
On this particular morning Fay was lying out under one of the big trees,
the comedienne, a stout woman in her sixties, with the most obvious
toupée Claudia had ever seen, sitting beside her doing “a bit of crochy.”
A little way off was the dancer, a thin, white-cheeked girl, engaged in
making a pink muslin blouse from a pattern out of a penny journal, and
snipping the bits over the lawn. The acrobat, in full view of them all,
was doing amazing stunts on the grass for their amusement.
Claudia had met them all before. Behind her back she was voted “a perfect
lady, such high class, don’t you know.” More than that, they liked and
admired her.
“Madam, welcome!” cried the acrobat, coming towards her performing the
most extraordinary double-somersaults. “I bow to you! I go down on the
ground before you! Hail!”
There was a chorus of laughs from the group under the trees. Claudia
never failed to marvel at the ease with which they were amused.
“You’re too funny to live,” cried the dancer shrilly, who was by way of
having a flirtation with him. “I don’t believe you’re no man at all. Your
mother made a mistake. You’re a piece of indiarubber.”
“My mother was a highly respectable lady,” returned the acrobat, with his
hand on his heart, “and her portrait is here. It wasn’t her fault she had
a genius for a son. I say, is that a pocky-hanky for me you’re making?”
“No, silly, it ain’t. It’s a blawse. Do behave yourself while Mrs.
Currey’s here, or I don’t know what she’ll think of us.... Oh! there goes
the old muffin-bell for dinner. Funny how my pecker keeps up here. I get
a hole in my bread-basket long before it’s time to feed.”
“Well, my dear, you take all you want or can pocket,” called out Fay
hospitably. “No charge for a second helping here, and the meat isn’t
all gristle and bone, like the chops the landladies get you.” There was
a chorus of assent. “If there’s anything you want, you’ve only got to
mention it.”
“You’re an ainjool, that’s what you are,” said the girl emphatically.
“It’s like ’Eaven to be here. It ain’t ’alf doing me good, not much! I
can pinch a bit up on my arm now. Talk about State Insurance; you give me
Fay’s insurance.”
There was a general hearty murmur of agreement, and they all trooped off.
“I can see you didn’t have a good night,” said Claudia solicitously.
“No, I got the jim-jams a bit. How sweet you look in that frock; and yet,
really, it’s awfully plain, isn’t it? Hardly anything on it except the
lace collar. It’s only really handsome people who can wear them plain
things. I always have—had to have—lots of fluff.... I say, is it true
you’re going back to town next week?”
“Yes. My husband is so much better that he hopes to get back to his
chambers again.”
“Crikey! whatever will I do? I wish you could have stopped here.”
What a little face it was now under the big white chiffon hat that Madame
Rose had sent her as suitable for the country; her idea of country being
apparently drawn from the “sets” at the halls.
“I’ll come down quite often, dear. Then you think of stopping on here?”
It had only been started for the summer months.
“Well, it’s perfectly amazing what a lot of people want a holiday—no
bunkum either; and somehow”—she looked round the neglected old garden;
it had only been superficially tidied up, but it was full of flowers—“I
don’t want to leave here, now I’ve come. It’s awful sweet, isn’t it?
I used to think I hated the country and that it was beastly slow and
tame, but I like to smell the flowers—different somehow to those you
have in vases—and I like to see the birds jigging about so mighty busy
over nothing. Wouldn’t my old pals laugh at me! Fancy me watching the
birds! The only bird I ever thought of was the one the gallery gives
you sometimes. Not that the boys ever gave _me_ the bird. Once I had a
little trouble with some young fool that started to hiss in the middle of
my song. It made me that mad! I stopped right dead and I looked up and
said, ‘Well, come down here, my boy, and sing something better.’ Ah, I
got him! They started clapping me till you couldn’t hear yourself speak.
Ah, well!”
Claudia laid her hand on her sister-in-law’s, but Fay was quite cheerful
again when she spoke.
“And I think I’d like to be buried in the country; it’s so clean and
nice. Such a lot of smuts in town. Ever been in Kensal Green? My mother’s
there. They subscribed and bought her a grave. But I can’t stand Kensal
Green; gives you the bloomingest of humps. No, I’d like a nice, clean
tombstone with bits of ivy and things. It would be such a trouble to
bring me down from town.... I don’t feel I want to be moved much more,
only from the house to the garden while it’s summer.”
A rush of tears blinded Claudia, for Fay said it in such a natural,
unaffected way that it was inexpressibly pathetic.
“My dear! Don’t!”
“Oh! I am a beast to make you miserable. I didn’t mean to, darling.
Between ourselves, I shan’t be sorry when it’s finished now. I’m ashamed
of all the trouble I am to the nurses, though they don’t complain—me,
that used to be so nippy on my feet and do everything for myself. I’m
more trouble than a baby.... Well, you never know what you’ll come to, do
you? My mother used to say, ‘You’re born, but you’re not buried.’ She had
a bad time before she turned up her toes, poor old thing. I might be in a
worse place than this. I might have been in one of those hospitals. Got a
horror of hospitals myself.... I told them you’d have lunch out here with
me. Here it comes.”
She waited until the servant had gone, then she leaned towards Claudia
and said earnestly, “I want you to promise me something, Claudia.”
“Yes, Fay, what is it?”
“When I do the shuffle, you see that there are pars. in all the papers,
with my photograph. You’re soon forgotten, but that’ll wake ’em up. The
Girlie Girl’s got to have her farewell performance. I know I can trust
you. I say, these peas remind me that Polly wants to see you about the
kitchen-garden. She says the gardener is cheating us on the peas. Never
seen anyone as sharp as she is now. She’ll count the pods every day soon.
She loves it here.”
Claudia spent the day there, getting glimpses into strange ideas and
modes of living, and arrived back at Wynnstay about six. Directly she got
inside the house Lady Currey came out of the drawing-room in a very—for
her—excited state.
“Oh, Claudia! what do you think? We’ve just heard that the strikers have
become violent, and they are stoning the windows of the mills and the
police are powerless to keep order. Poor John is nearly beside himself. I
do hope he’ll take care, with the stones flying about.”
Claudia gave an exclamation of surprise.
“You don’t mean he has gone over to Langton?”
“Yes, he would go. He thought if he talked to them he might calm them.
I’m sure I don’t know. It’s all very dreadful, something like the French
Revolution. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”
Claudia from where she stood could see through the open door of the
library where Gilbert usually sat in one of the big chairs. But the room
was empty.
“Gilbert—where is he?”
“He’s gone too. He promised to look after John and keep him calm.”
“What! You ought not to have let him go. When did they start?”
“About four o’clock. I wanted them to wait for tea, but they wouldn’t.
It takes three-quarters of an hour to drive over. I don’t know what the
world is coming to. I’ve always sent them a lot of things for their
rummage sale, and last winter the blankets that I sent would——”
“Gilbert ought not to have gone. Why didn’t you stop him? You know what
Dr. Neeburg said. He isn’t fit to go into a scene of excitement like
that. He is just as furious about the whole thing as his father. He is
not strong yet. How could you let him go?”
“He says he feels quite well now,” stammered Lady Currey, not liking the
look in her daughter-in-law’s eye. “I told him _he_ wasn’t to try and
address the men.”
“I should think not.”
“They ought to be back soon,” concluded Lady Currey. “Oh, dear! I feel so
faint and queer.”
Claudia thought the situation over rapidly, but there was nothing she
could do. It would be no good going over to Langton. Probably they
would be returning by now. If only Gilbert would _believe_ other people
occasionally! Neeburg, when he had come down and given Gilbert permission
to go back to town, had told him emphatically that he would still have to
take things very quietly for another year or two. And he had gone with
his father to face an infuriated rabble of strikers!
“Stones are so dangerous,” feebly remarked Lady Currey, “but after all,
men know best. I’ve never interfered with my husband.”
Claudia said nothing more as she went to take off her hat. She wished she
had been at home. Yet, after all, if Gilbert had made up his mind to go,
would she have been able to prevent his going? The Curreys were not used
to women “interfering,” and he was not a child.
It was nearly seven when she went downstairs, but the carriage had not
returned. Sir John had refused to have the house put on the telephone,
so they could get no news. She and Billie went into the library, and she
tried to read, but it was only a pretence. Her ears were listening for
the sound of carriage-wheels. It was almost dark. Surely they ought to be
home by now. Still, a horse-brougham is not like a motor. The hills were
rather worse coming back.
At half-past seven Lady Currey came in, carefully arrayed for dinner.
“Claudia, aren’t you going to dress? You’ll be late.” Though the heavens
might fall, Lady Currey would punctually and carefully dress for dinner.
“I’m getting anxious,” said her daughter-in-law shortly. “They will be
late too.”
“Yes, I’m afraid so, and there’s a fish soufflé. John does so dislike a
heavy soufflé. But of course it can’t be helped. It _is_ late. You don’t
think any accident has happened?”
“I hope not.”
“Claudia, do you think it is healthy to nurse a dog on your lap? But
there, he’s your dog! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”
Another quarter of an hour elapsed, and Claudia was just getting up to
do something—she hardly knew what—when at last she heard the sound of
wheels. A growing sense of disaster lifted. The wheels had a homely,
encouraging sound. For once there was some irregularity in the Currey
_ménage_. Claudia rushed to the door herself and opened it.
She peered out into the sweet-scented darkness, but the brougham was
closed. That, at least, was wise of Gilbert, for the night was a little
chilly now.
“We were getting so anxious,” she called out to two white, blurred faces
she saw within. “What a long time you have been away.”
Then a figure, unfamiliar to her, alighted. Surely there were only two
people in the brougham. She heard Lady Currey behind her exclaim “Dr.
Green!” in tones of surprise.
The man turned again to the brougham, and helped out a very old man.
As Claudia saw the limpness and dejection of Sir John she turned sick.
Something had happened.
The coachman shut the door.
Dr. Green and her father-in-law came up the steps, the doctor supporting
the older man. Why did Sir John need support? He was usually quite hale
and hearty for his age.
The coachman was making ready to drive away. Where was Gilbert?
With fascinated, frightened eyes she watched the two mount almost abreast
of her.
Then the old man raised his eyes, as heavy and sombre as Gilbert’s and
now dark with suffering.
“Gil——” Claudia tried to articulate, but something choked her.
“Where’s Gilbert?” said his mother behind her.
The eyes of the old man told her nothing, but the eyes of the doctor
were full of pity for the two women. It was the same look as had been in
the doctor’s eyes the night of Fay’s accident. As she saw it, Claudia
instinctively put up her hand as if to ward off a blow.
The old man tried to explain.
“He _would_ speak ... they’ve killed him ... wouldn’t listen to me ...
thought he could.... God have mercy on us all!”
“Do you mean—he’s dead?” whispered Claudia.
The old man passed on heavily into the study. The doctor answered her
very gently.
“It was too late when I got there.... Heart failure.... I’m told he knew.
Mrs. Currey, I am dreadfully sorry.”
Claudia tried vainly to realize that what had been a few hours previously
was not. There was no such person as Gilbert Currey. She, Claudia, was a
widow.