Sleep in Peace (12 page)

“Your father's waiting for you, Edward,” he said stiffly.

Edward moved his head sideways in acknowledgment, and went out. His father was not, strictly speaking, waiting for him; he was bending over some ledgers in the outer office, perched on a high stool beside the cashier. He looked troubled and pushed up his moustache thoughtfully.

“Ah, there you are,” he said, dismounting, in his grave, benevolent tones.

Father and son left the mill together, descended the hill and strode along towards Cromwell Place, side by side. Or rather, Edward strode; his father jerked and waddled. For some time they did not speak; each was occupied by private perplexities. The busy traffic of Prince's Road, the main thoroughfare from Hudley out towards Lancashire, seethed about them.

“Father,” burst out Edward suddenly as they turned into Cromwell Place: “Doesn't it strike you that Mr. Armistead is speculating?”

“What?” shouted Mr. Hinchliffe. He stood still and glared at his son, his broad face crimson with amazement and shock. “What nonsense is this, Edward?” he went on, recovering himself.

“Those circulars—they seem to come rather often—it's not the first time I've seen you tear them up,” said Edward. “And,” he added drily, “I've perhaps had more chance than you of observing Mr. Armistead's face while you tore them.”

“Good God!” exclaimed Mr. Hinchliffe.

“There's that young fathead Ludovic at Shrewsbury,” pursued Edward. “That must come in pretty heavy, I should think.”

“Ludovic had some money left him by his mother,” said Mr. Hinchliffe.

“How much? A few hundreds? How far would that go? I only ask for information,” remarked Edward sardonically. “I may be wrong about Mr. Armistead's financial operations, of course, but I'm inclined to think I'm right.”

“If I thought it were true, I should break off the partnership,” stated Mr. Hinchliffe with solemn emphasis.

“Father!” cried Edward, aghast. The colour rushed to his pale face. “Father, you can't give up Blackshaw Mills!”

“I both can and will, if it proves to be necessary,” said Mr. Hinchliffe sternly. “It would be intolerable to me to be associated with a gambler. It would be wrong.” He turned from his son and stalked between the iron gates of Cromwell Place. “I shall demand an explanation from Alfred Armistead this afternoon,” he said. “You had better not come to the mill this afternoon, Edward. I can't do with you hanging round the office.”

“Very well, Father,” said Edward.

“The deed of partnership will have to be annulled,” considered Mr. Hinchliffe. He cleared his throat. “You may think I am prejudging this matter, Edward,” he said. “But the fact is, what you suggest would, I regret to say, explain many matters which have recently perplexed me.”

“Some people don't think gambling wrong,” mumbled Edward, following his father up the steps of Number Eleven.

“They don't think it wrong as long as it's successful,” countered Mr. Hinchliffe over his shoulder. “Believe me, Edward, no reliance can be placed on any man's honesty, once he begins to play the market.”

“Is anything wrong?” enquired Mrs. Hinchliffe at the dinner-table, glancing with apprehension from her husband's gloomy
brow to the flushed face of Edward, who looked most unusually disturbed and crestfallen.

“Not yet,” replied Mr. Hinchliffe firmly. “But I fear I may have painful news for you at tea-time, Alice.”

Edward sat silent, considering. He found he had an urgent desire to talk over the affair with someone, in order to clear his own mind. It chanced to be Wednesday, Frederick's half-holiday, so when the meal was over Edward invited his younger brother to go for a walk with him. Frederick hesitated, but seeing from Edward's look that the matter was serious, consented. The two lads decided upon Ellistone Edge as their destination, and strode out steadily up stony by-lanes and moorland paths until they reached the high black rock towering out of the heather, which they loved because it commanded a view of so many of the tumbled peaks of the Pennine range. It was a harsh grey day of a kind very familiar to them; the green of the lower slopes was dull, the peaty summits looked chilly, sombre and menacing; the wind blew strongly through the black stems of the heather, the clouds rolled relentlessly across the colourless sky. The lads, who felt inspirited by this West Riding weather, identified all the visible summits, inspected one or two names newly carved upon the Ellistone, then squatted down on a sheltered ledge and were ready for the business which had brought them out. Edward, his eyes resting steadily on the intricate and smoky slopes, away in the distance beyond several intervening valleys, where Hudley lay sprawled with an effect of grim tenacity, expounded the events of the morning in a plain, dry but precise narrative. Frederick's fair cheeks, already coloured by the wind, flushed a deeper crimson.

“What a nauseating mixture of piety and calculation!” he exclaimed.

Edward was surprised.

“On Father's part? Surely it's not calculation—it's all sacrifice to withdraw from Blackshaw Mills,” he said. “I honour him fork.”

“But
Edward
, don't you
see,”
began Frederick, dropping into his occasional exasperating trick of over-emphasis, “he withdraws not
only
because speculation is
wrong, but
because you can't place any reliance on the
honesty
of a
speculator.”

“Fear God and keep your powder dry,”
suggested Edward.

“Hypocrisie anglicaine,”
contended Frederick. “The English always put their hand in their pocket to find their religion.”

“I don't agree,” said Edward coldly.

“Because you don't want to leave Blackshaw Mills,” said Frederick.

“That's a completely illogical remark,” objected Edward.

“Not at all,” said Frederick. “It merely skips a few steps in the argument.”

“You're not fair to Father,” said Edward.

“Very likely not,” agreed Frederick cheerfully. “He's not fair to me.”

“You don't realise what this will mean to the family fortunes,” said Edward, frowning.

“Listen, Edward,” said Frederick, rolling over on his stomach so that he could see his brother, who sat above him: “Whatever the cause and whatever, the immediate effect, it's good that the Armisteads and the Hinchliffes should part company. They are unequal yokefellows, and would never have any comfort together.”

“Comfort isn't what I'm aiming at in life,” said Edward. “You might do me the justice to believe that.”

“Alfred Armistead is a charlatan,” pronounced Frederick.

“Perhaps. But he has something, a style or something, that Father hasn't and I haven't,” said Edward.

“But you can learn it, Edward,” urged Frederick consolingly.
“You
can
learn
it.”

Edward, sitting hunched up, his thin arms and legs tensely contorted, surveyed him gloomily. “I might, but you couldn't,” he
thought, and sighed. “Well, come on, we'd best go home,” he said roughly, rising.

When they reached Cromwell Place, Grace ran down from the study to let them in, having seen them approaching from the window; with rolling eyes and finger on lip she seemed to indicate some warning.

“What mean these nods and becks and wreathèd smiles?” asked Frederick.

He spoke in a low tone, but Frederick's voice had resonance, and Mr. Hinchliffe at once called out from the dining-room: “Edward! Are you there?”

“Yes, Father,” replied Edward. He threw his cap down on the bamboo stand, and, looking paler and bonier than ever, went in.

His parents were seated on either side of the hearth, most unusually doing nothing. One glance at their faces told Edward that the blow had fallen.

Life at Blackshaw House now became wretchedly uncomfortable.

It appeared that that smug hypocrite Henry Hinchliffe had suddenly decided to dissolve partnership, for some preposterous reason which Laura could never accurately ascertain, and that nothing would induce him to change his mind. It was an abominable way to treat poor Papa, who had to find the money to pay him out at a simply impossible moment. Every resource had to be strained; the bank was constantly visited; Papa looked so harassed and worn that Laura's heart bled for him. At the same time she was not as sure as Gwen of the merits of the case; she had an uneasy feeling that Mr. Hinchliffe's decision was not sudden, but the climax of a cumulative irritation; and she could not understand why, if Mr. Hinchliffe had put money into the
business when the Mills were built, it was not still there to be taken out.

“It's been turned into machinery and things, Laura,” explained Gwen irritably.

“Then let Mr. Hinchliffe take the machines,” suggested Laura.

But payment in kind was exactly what Mr. Hinchliffe refused to consider. Mr. Armistead commanded, urged, finally implored him to accept part of the fabric of Blackshaw Mills, at his own surveyor's valuation, in lieu of actual cash, but Mr. Hinchliffe declined it firmly. An exhausting wrangle began between the two men which continued for more than six months; accountants were summoned on either side, the bank, which was not too happy about the affairs of Blackshaw Mills in any case, had a word to say and said it with increasing bitterness. Meanwhile the business decreased daily owing to the partners' preoccupation, for which each blamed the other; yet the men's wages, and the amount of material consumed, seemed to go on as usual. The crisis rose to a height each month with the approach of the twenty-fifth, the spinners' settling day, and died down somewhat as soon as that fatal date was safely past and Mr. Armistead had once more found the money to pay for the month's yarn. He had always conducted the financial operations of the firm alone in times past, so Mr. Hinchliffe naturally continued to expect him to conduct them now; equally naturally, however, Mr. Armistead complained bitterly because he received no help whatever from the very man who had plunged the firm into its present difficult position.

Gwen at first tended to minimise the situation, saying to Laura that in her experience the cloth trade was always bad and business always full of difficulties, and it did not do to believe too much what men said about these matters; one simply pretended to sympathise, spoke soothingly, and in a day or two they had forgotten all about it. But as the days went on and the situation not only remained but deteriorated, her attitude changed, and she
grew very bitter and partisan, speaking quite outrageously about Henry Hinchliffe. Gwen was now seventeen and looked quite grown-up, though still very slender, with her straight ash-blonde hair carefully tied back in a neat piece of handsome black silk ribbon; without consulting Papa she suddenly left school and gave all the maids notice. Mildred was deeply distressed by this move and begged to be allowed to stay on; after a week of tears, recriminations and general discomfort it was arranged that she should remain alone, and do all the work of the house for the same wage as before. Gwen also gave in notice at Shrewsbury for Ludo, to expire at the end of the summer term. Mr. Armistead wanted him to leave at once, now, in the middle of the spring term, but Gwen fought hard for an extra term.

“He'll have had two years, then,” she explained to Laura. “It should be enough to give him some idea.”

She did not say of what the idea consisted, but Laura understood well enough that it was the idea of how to behave like a gentleman. Laura worried about the necessity for Ludo's leaving school for three days and two nights, and in the middle of the third night rose up out of bed, her decision taken. With tears in her eyes, her voice shaking, a feeling of heroic noble martyrdom clashing painfully in her heart with despair at what was involved in the proffered sacrifice, she crept across the chilly landing to her sister's bedroom, twitched the nuns veiling sleeve till Gwen started awake, and whispered hoarsely:

“Gwen, let me leave school instead of Ludo.”

“Don't be silly, Laura,” said Gwen crossly. “Your school bills are a mere nothing—barely a tenth of Ludo's. Ludo's fifteen now,” she added in a virtuous tone. “It won't do him any harm to leave school, it's quite time he went out into the world and learned to be a man.”

Laura sighed. She knew she was defeated, but could not abandon Ludo's cause so easily, and continued to sit on her sister's bed, shivering.

“Laura,” said Gwen suddenly out of the darkness, “don't tell Ludo that he has to leave in the summer. Let him have his last term happy.”

Laura at once felt doubtful of the wisdom of this plan—and then felt doubtful of her doubts. Surely it would be better to let Ludo know what he had to face! Or did she think that merely because it was Gwen who suggested concealment? If she had thought of it herself, considered Laura, she might have believed the plan one of the highest tact and delicacy. Perplexed by these thoughts, she made no reply; and Gwen added, in a persuasive tone which revealed that she interpreted Laura's silence rightly as opposition:

“You see, things might change and Ludo not have to leave after all.”

Laura's heart lightened; on these grounds concealment was, of course, the only sensible plan.

“Very well,” she agreed.

But alas, things did not change; and indeed the very day before Ludo came home for the summer holidays a frightful crisis occurred. It was Mildred's night out, and Gwen and Laura were in the kitchen, Gwen bending over a pan on the fire, Laura putting silver and cutlery on a tray from which to set the table. They heard the front door open and close. (Though the back door was five hundred yards nearer than the front to Blackshaw Mills, Mr. Armistead would never use it, and Laura applauded this decision.) Then Mr. Armistead called:

“Gwen! Gwen!”

His voice was unlike itself, loud and harsh; Gwen set the pan aside and hurried out to him. Laura followed, clutching a handful of forks. Their father's expressive face was contorted, his round eyes staring.