The Partnership (2 page)

Shortly after this Charles Mellor accepted a call in Darlington, and left Hudley; his undesired
wife, Wilfred's second name, and the interest on Charles's money, which he duly remitted quarterly, remained Dyson's only tangible mementoes of the Mellors. Nobody ever found any serious fault with Wilfred, and Dyson's business prospered exceedingly; but unfortunately the match arranged by Charles in the interests of morality was very far from being a happy one. Mrs. Dyson had inherited certain unfortunate maternal traits, which her husband's dislike and neglect intensified; so that towards the end of their brief married life it was rare for him to find her sober when he came home. When Wilfred was four years old she died, of pneumonia made fatal by her alcoholic excesses. In these four years old Mrs. Tolefree Mellor had died, and Charles had married the daughter of a highly respected art-master at Darlington. Fanny was thus left without any real home, and it was comparatively easy for Dyson to persuade her brother to allow an early marriage. As for Fanny herself, she had pined for her lover so consistently that she had fallen into what the previous generation would have called a decline; an access of spirit seemed to come to her with her marriage and installation in the neat newly furnished house which the prospering Dyson was able to provide; but this could not carry her through the perils of child-bearing, and at Eric's birth she died.

Dyson, thus for the second time embittered by the failure of his hopes, engaged a working housekeeper to look after the two children, and
devoted himself to his business, which, thanks to his ruthless determination, was quite extraordinarily successful. The Reverend Charles's loan, added to from time to time, became a very profitable investment, and the relations between the two families were happy, the two Dyson children making frequent visits to the Mellor household wherever the exigencies of a popular minister's life happened at the time to place it. Lydia—whose second name, following the tradition of the Mellor family, was also Tolefree—and Wilfred had played together all over the map of northern England; Eric, being so much younger, sometimes remained at home on the plea of delicacy, the truth being that his father doted on him and could not bear him out of his sight. Wilfred admired all the Mellors immensely, and had been shaped by his uncle Charles's advice into a total abstainer and a very kindly, steady, decent and likeable young man; so that while the fact that Wilfred, and not Eric, bore Fanny's name was now an intense exasperation to their father, to the Reverend Charles, who thought he saw an attachment growing between the holder of the name and his own only child, it seemed an instance where the mills of God had ground exceeding small. The attachment was not, certainly, as visible to Lydia and Wilfred themselves as it was to the Reverend Charles; but if it was no bigger than a man's hand as yet, it was almost certainly on the horizon. When, therefore, a year or two ago, Mr. Mellor had had
a serious illness due to overwork, everything—his dividends, Dyson's urgings, Lydia's future, his brother-in-law's ownership of a vacant house in Cromwell Place adjoining his own newly built residence, Charles's own inclination—seemed to point to a retirement from active ministry, to a settlement in Hudley and a comparatively leisured life of lecturing, coaching backward youths for examinations, and taking occasional Sunday duty for his brother ministers in the neighbourhood. He had taken this step, and had not so far regretted it; Lydia had been fortunate in securing a post as secretary to the Principal of a neighbouring theological college; and the Mellors had by now settled down into their usual busy, well-regulated life of meetings, lectures, social work, and general usefulness. Needless to say, their elders' pasts were sealed books to the three members of the younger generation; Wilfred was a particularly loyal son and brother, and if Lydia occasionally ventured to criticize her uncle to herself, it was on the score of present roughnesses which offended her fastidious taste, rather than of past misdeeds.

“And what's all this mean, Lydia?” he was asking her now, indicating, with the hand which held his cigar, the straps and badges of her uniform.

Lydia explained her official position in relation to her troop of “Brownies.”

At this her uncle said nothing, but the reflection
could be read in his face that in his heyday young women had had something better to think about than Brownies—or worse, as his brother-in-law would probably put it. He smiled a rather cynical smile which Lydia knew and disliked, and remained silent for a while, finishing his cigar. Mr. Dyson did not, as a matter of fact, admire his niece. Her figure seemed to him angular and bad, and she walked in quick short steps, which, when she was in a hurry—and she was almost always in a hurry—became a ridiculous fussy pattering which Mr. Dyson particularly detested in a woman. Then there was a deplorable absence of style in her toilets—her skirts were always too short or too long, too wide or too narrow, for the prevailing fashion—and what was worse, she seemed unconscious of it. She dressed her abundant dark hair badly, too, and the rather simple and conscientious expression of her face annoyed Mr. Dyson, while, like her father's, it commanded his unwilling respect. Various personal mannerisms of hers, too—her superior little smile, her soft careful enunciation, her silly habit of calling her mother by her Christian name—irritated the robust realism of Mr. Dyson's character. In a word, he thought Lydia old-maidish, and put it down to her unsuitable upbringing by her father, that absurdly inexperienced and unpractical, though lovable, Charles—Louise, of course, in Mr. Dyson's view, was a mere looker-on at life's game, a spectator who did not count. It was always a marvel to him that
Louise had surrendered her detachment sufficiently to marry and bear a child; and it corroborated his view of her that she seemed to have left no traces of herself in her daughter.

“It's a pity you don't smoke, Charles,” he observed after these reflections, throwing the stub of his cigar into the glowing fire.

“It's a pity you do,” riposted his brother-in-law immediately.

The two had sparred together thus for thirty years, and to do so now gave them a pleasant feeling of youth renewed and old times restored. The Reverend Charles laughed heartily, throwing back his silvery head; Mr. Dyson emitted a single sharp bark; Eric sniggered in his corner; the gentle Louise looked up from her knitting with an air of dreamy pleasure; and Lydia, not to be out of key with the rest, forced her lips into a prim little smile, though she felt obscurely irritated. Her uncle's attitude to life combined with that of the spectators by the schoolyard wall to wound and depress her; she remembered that she was tired and had a host of small duties to perform before she could leave early in the morning. Her face brightened, however, as she heard sounds of the Dyson car approaching the back gate and coming to rest in the garage.

“Ah, there's Wilfred,” said her father comfortably. His gaze wandered to the table. “Now he can have his supper.”

Eric, spurred to action, rose and recommenced his struggles with the joint. The back gate
clanged, there was a sound of whistling, and shortly afterwards Wilfred entered the room.

Neither of Herbert Dyson's sons had the forceful and determined personality which characterized their father, and though Wilfred had many good features and was a young man for whose moral energy it was impossible to feel anything but respect, he was neither handsome nor distinguished in appearance. His dark hair and fine dark eyes, his well-marked eyebrows and olive skin, his white teeth and well-knit figure, were suitable ingredients for a hero of romance; but they were irretrievably spoiled for that rôle by an expression of invincible homeliness and sound common sense. He had a wide but pleasing smile, which showed his gums too much but made one like the fellow, and he spoke in kindly, downright but decidedly Yorkshire tones. (Eric's accent was equally broad; it was in both cases the fruit of an upbringing conducted by housekeepers.)

“Good evening, everybody,” he announced in an imitation of the wireless tone.

“Good evening, Wilfred,” responded the Reverend Charles with sonorous urbanity.

“You've been a long time, Wilfred,” said Mrs. Mellor with a self-accusing inflexion.

“That's all right, Aunt Louise,” replied Wilfred cheerfully. “It's given me an appetite. I had to take her to Mirfield to get the connection—we'd missed it here.”

“Did ye catch it?” asked his father in the detached tone he was wont to use to his elder son.

“Oh yes, easily,” replied Wilfred. “Here! Get out of the way!” he pursued in a jovial brotherly tone to Eric, elbowing him aside and taking up the carving-knife. “I shall get nothing to eat till breakfast-time if you go on at that rate. What about Lydia? Some more, Lydia? Let me cut you just a little bit? There's a nice bit here.”

Lydia, somewhat to her own surprise, discovered an appetite and accepted; and the two settled down to a cheerful meal.

“You haven't got the wireless on, father,” commented Wilfred, passing Lydia the butter.

His father, who was no great lover of that form of entertainment, grunted non-committally.

“There's nothing special on to-night, is there?” he inquired sourly.

“Oh, I don't know,” said Wilfred. “There's always something. Look at the programme, Eric. Would you like to have it on, Uncle Charles?”

“I should indeed,” boomed Mr. Mellor with childish pleasure. His eyes sparkled, and he sat up eagerly. “Read out what it says in the book of words, Eric.”

As Eric seemed to have difficulty in finding the proper page, his brother made a long arm and took the booklet from him.

“Don't let's have anything gloomy, Wilfred, even if it
is
a long way off,” put in Mr. Dyson dryly.

“Now, father!” protested Wilfred between mouthfuls, turning over the pages. “You know
you're as keen as anybody about trying new stations.”

His father exclaimed “Ha! Am I?” with an ironic intention, but offered no further protest as Wilfred, having selected a programme, made the necessary adjustments and flooded the room with sound.

“Splendid! Splendid!” cried the Reverend Charles enthusiastically, trying to beat time with one plump white hand. “Pity we didn't think of having it sooner, Herbert.”

“Oh, we always need Wilfred to set us right,” observed his father in a peculiar tone.

Mr. Mellor gave him a flashing look, but decided, as he had so often decided before, to ignore a sarcasm of which its victim seemed unconscious. He continued to smile benignly. Meanwhile Wilfred remarked to Lydia:

“In uniform, I see.”

“Yes,” said Lydia. Soothed by the appreciation in his tone, she described her evening's activities.

“And I hear you're off on holiday to-morrow,” pursued Wilfred.

A little frown of worry appeared on Lydia's smooth brow, and she remarked that the maid's enforced departure was most inopportune at this particular moment. To leave her mother without help in the house was not by any means satisfactory to her, yet she saw no alternative.

“Couldn't you put off going for a day or two, till you've found someone else for Aunt Louise?” suggested Wilfred helpfully.

Lydia frowned a little more, and explained that the place she was going to made a very definite rule that visitors should arrive on Fridays only. Seeing the astonishment on Wilfred's face, she added hastily: “It's a kind of holiday home, you know.”

“A holiday home!” exclaimed Wilfred in capital letters. “What are you going to a place like that for?”

He so obviously regarded holiday homes as the refuge of the indigent that Lydia blushed and explained that she was going there to help—in the organization of games and other such sociable activities, she supposed. She gave him further details of the place and described how it had come to her notice.

“It doesn't sound much like a holiday for you, to me,” objected Wilfred. “You're too good, Lydia; always doing something for somebody else.”

“Oh, I shall enjoy it thoroughly,” protested the earnest Lydia. “I'm sure it's a splendid institution, and very well run.”

Wilfred grunted incredulously. “What time do you leave in the morning?” he inquired.

“Seven fifteen,” replied Lydia. “I have to leave early, you see, to catch a good train from London.”

“I'll take you down to the station in the car,” volunteered Wilfred.

“Oh, please don't bother,” protested Lydia, distressed at the idea of anyone taking so much
trouble for her. “I can manage quite well in the tram.”

“It's no bother,” affirmed Wilfred with his usual matter-of-fact air. “I'll call for you at seven.”

The Reverend Charles had not overheard this simple conversation, for an Italian tenor's palpitating declaration of some passion or other was now throbbing on the air; but to see Lydia and Wilfred talking so intimately together was highly pleasurable to him. His glance noted with satisfaction Wilfred's downright and candid, if homely, air, and then softened into tenderness as it rested on his daughter's earnest brown eyes and the serious little pucker on her broad young brow. She wore her looped hat too far back on her head, and this somehow intensified the naïve simplicity and purity of her face. Mr. Mellor smiled benevolently, and his face took on exactly the same expression as the one he was admiring in his daughter. How nice, he thought, that they were both called Tolefree! Well, he had done his duty faithfully, at considerable cost to him and his, in that wretched business of Herbert's all those years ago, and now everything was working together for good. The quarterly cheque which his brother-in-law had given him shortly before Lydia's appearance crackled in his pocket, and he gazed upon the future with an eye of eager hopefulness.

The dusk had now completely fallen; and as the curtains were still undrawn and the lights within the room blazing, the night outside had
assumed a deep, romantic, glowing shade of blue, which seemed to press tangibly against the windows and beckon those within to come out and share all the most alluring and dramatic possibilities of life. The effect was rather as if a transformation scene had taken the company unawares and they had been transported
en bloc
into an enchanted land without their knowing anything about it; for none of the party had noticed the magic backcloth except Louise, whose mild gaze rested upon its splendour with that speculative appreciation so characteristic of her attitude to life. The rest of the party were too busy with their various schemes of life to observe it. If their thoughts could have been laid bare for inspection, it would have appeared as an interesting coincidence that while Dyson was thinking about his mill and Eric about his supper, those who bore the name of Tolefree were all concerned with the destinies of others. Charles was making plans for Lydia; Wilfred was arranging how to fit in that early train with a job at the mill he had promised his father to do first thing in the morning; while Lydia's thoughts were a mixture of Louise and the holiday home. Meanwhile the deepening night outside was leading them on to another day.