The Partnership (21 page)

By the time next Wednesday came, however, suspense and anxiety had so worn upon Lydia that her common sense was in abeyance, and she entertained the wildest schemes for the relief of
her present trouble. Things could not very well be worse than they were at present, she thought, for her whole world was coloured with pain, her body felt feverish and restless, her eyes were sore, and her head ached throbbingly with her constant efforts to find a solution to the enigma with which Annice had presented her. It was in this state of mind that she conceived the idea of seeing Evan and trying whether she could not influence
him
in the proper direction. She waited till the afternoon post on Wednesday to see whether any word of invitation or repentance should arrive from Annice, but when none came set off for Hudley, telling Louise with assumed blitheness that she might be late, but that Louise was not in any case to worry—Wilfred would see her safely to the tram.

When she reached Hudley her feverish decision to see Evan still held good; and she made her way down beneath railway bridges and along dirty streets lined with mills, whose long chimneys of varying heights made a grotesquely uneven sky-line, towards the premises of Messrs. Herbert Dyson. The roar of machinery was in her ears; lorries thudded past; men in blue overalls went in and out of gateways and shouted at each other in cheerful unintelligible speech. Lydia enjoyed this plunge into the man's world; she had always regretted her own separation from the industrial life amongst which she lived; and she reflected with pleasure that when she was married to Wilfred she would be in the thick of the industrial
fray—or at any rate would catch a very much more distinct echo of it than she could do as the Reverend Charles Mellor's daughter. She reached Boothroyd Mills and, avoiding the steps leading to the office door, passed through the archway into the mill-yard.

Here she at once perceived the foolishness of her scheme, for she came face to face with Eric, who, with a paper in his hand, was crossing the yard towards the office. He was looking rather cheerful, but when he saw Lydia his expression changed into one of absolute horror. His jaw dropped, he stood still and gazed at her dumbfounded.

“Lydia!” he exclaimed hoarsely. Lydia, making up her mind to carry the thing off boldly, advanced towards him and forced a smile. “What do you want?” continued Eric in a timid tone. “You'd better go up home to Annice.”

“Oh!” said Lydia jauntily, “I've just come to see what you and Wilfred do when you're pretending to work.”

Eric gave a kind of groan. “Come into the office,” he said, pushing her in that direction.

“Is that where you keep the lorry?” inquired Lydia pleasantly, pointing to a shed at the back of which some men were vaguely visible beside a pile of pieces. (She did not imagine that it was so, but wanted to know where Evan was likely to be found.)

“Yes. Come along,” Eric exhorted her in his high, shrill tones. At the foot of the stairs he
paused again. “Hadn't you better go up home and see Annice?” he suggested again weakly. “She'll tell you.”

“Tell me what?” said Lydia, alarmed.

“Oh, nothing,” said Eric helplessly. “You go up and have tea with Annice.”

“Aren't you going to let me see Wilfred before I go?” demanded Lydia, with the nearest attempt to a pout ever seen on her lips.

“Wilfred isn't here,” replied Eric unhappily.

“Not here?” said Lydia, surprised. “I didn't know he went anywhere particular on Wednesdays.” She hesitated, then inquired: “Will he be up at Boothroyd House for supper as usual?”

“No!” shouted Eric suddenly. “He won't! He's gone away.”

“Gone away!” cried Lydia, staggering back against the banisters. “What do you mean?”

“He's gone away for good,” said Eric, a tinge of triumph in his tone. “I went round to see him that night, you know, after seeing you at the theatre, and told him what I thought of him carrying on like that with Annice. He lost his temper completely, and said it was a wretched mistake his coming to Hudley at all, and he wished he never had done; and I told him he could go and welcome, and he said he washed his hands of the whole boiling of us, and we should never any of us see him again.”

“Oh, God!” cried Lydia from her breaking heart.

“He said he was going to Australia,” concluded
Eric with some satisfaction. “And I haven't seen him since. He's gone.”

“But didn't he mention
me
?” gasped Lydia. “Didn't he mention me
at all
?”

“Oh!” said Eric. “Yes. I told him you'd seen him with Annice, you know. He said it was a damned lie, and he was sure you didn't believe anything of the kind, but I told him you did—I told him you'd seen her with him. Annice said,” he concluded regretfully, “that you'd be upset.”

“You fool!” screamed Lydia at the top of her voice. “It wasn't Wilfred who was with Annice; it was Evan, it was your own lorry-driver! She knew him before she married you—she was in love with him before she ever saw you. She's been meeting him secretly for months. And you've sent Wilfred away—my Wilfred! I shall never see him again.” She burst into hysterical sobs and covered her face with her hands.

“What—what?” stammered Eric, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other. “Evan? What are you talking about?”

“She knew him when he was a soldier,” explained Lydia bitterly. “I saw them together at the seaside.” She added with venom: “They were lovers then.”

As the full force of the blow penetrated Eric's understanding he staggered back and turned pale, regarding Lydia from staring and dilated eyes. Suddenly, with an incoherent exclamation, he turned and rushed away. Lydia, scarcely knowing what she was doing, followed him. Shouting
wildly and waving his arms about, Eric ran across the yard to the shed and demanded of the startled men there: “Evan! Where's Evan?”

His speech was so thick and blurred as to be almost unintelligible, but after exchanging glances one or two of the men replied that Evan wasn't back yet—they were expecting him any minute.

“I'll wait for him!” snarled Eric. “Yes, I'll wait for him.”

He looked altogether so wild and abnormal as he stood there, his pale eyes rolling, his lips drawn back across his bared teeth, his breath coming in great gasping sobs, that Lydia was alarmed, and her instinct for service reasserted itself.

“You'd better come home with me, Eric,” she said in as firm a voice as she could command, laying a hand on his arm. “My cousin isn't very well,” she explained to the men.

Eric shook his head violently. “No!” he said in a sombre tone, not moving. “I'll wait for him.”

A sense of the utter despair and sickness he must be feeling suddenly invaded Lydia's heart, and she felt an awful qualm as she remembered her own responsibility. Why had she been so despicable as to tell him? Poor Eric! He was a victim of Annice's insatiable thirst for life, just as was Lydia.

“Come away, Eric dear,” she said soothingly. “Come home with me. You can't do any good here.”

“Home!” said Eric. “Yes, I'll go home—to
Annice.” His voice rose suddenly into a shriek as he uttered his wife's name; he tossed his arms aloft and shouted out some disconnected and meaningless syllables, and Lydia began to be really frightened. What had she done? Putting her own grief aside for the moment, she took her cousin's arm and urged him gently away. “Fetch Mr. Dyson's hat and coat,” she commanded over her shoulder, and one of the younger men ran off to do so. She thought these onlookers had a rather unsympathetic air, and judged that Eric was not a favourite at Boothroyd Mills Eric's steps were so stumbling and uncertain that she wondered whether to wait and telephone for a taxi, but the fear of an encounter between her cousin and Evan urged her on. She guided Eric out through the archway and along the road; a lad caught them up with the hat and coat, and between them he and Lydia tried to direct Eric's arms into the sleeves, but he resisted pettishly, and they were obliged to give up the attempt. Eric took his hat in his hand, but would not put it on, and as his coat hung down draggingly from Lydia's arm—she had scarcely strength to carry it—they made a sufficiently curious pair to justify the astonishment of the lad, who stood gazing after them as they progressed slowly and waveringly along the street. At the corner Eric suddenly stood still, and said in a tone of heartbroken yearning:

“I wish Willie were here.”

This was too much for Lydia's composure, and
tears began to roll heavily down her cheeks. “Poor boy! Poor Eric!” she said with a compassion which came from her heart. “Come! We'll go home together.”

After this Eric was for a time more docile, and walked with a less uncertain step. But when they reached the main street of the town, he insisted on mounting a tram. “We shall be home sooner,” he said. Lydia tried to guide him towards the car for Ribourne, but Eric looked at her sideways with a kind of mad cunning in his eyes, tittered, shook his head and said: “No, no! That isn't the one. That isn't the one,” he repeated several times, and steered towards a tram which would take them past Cromwell Place. Lydia tried to persuade him to come to the Mellors, and as he did not answer her, seized his arm and drew him back to the pavement. Eric thereupon suddenly shouted: “Let me go!” and freed his arm with violence. The passers-by were beginning to look with interest at this little scene, and as Eric was certainly not fit to be left alone, Lydia had no alternative but to follow him across the road and mount the tram behind him. Here she suffered agonies, and was left to marvel, as she had often marvelled before, at the kindly good humour of the world at large as represented by tram conductors and people in the street. Eric insisted on remaining on the platform of the tram; he leant against the steps in a limp attitude, and with an idiotic smile on his weak face began to talk to the conductor on a
variety of indifferent topics, laughing heartily and slapping the man on the back from time to time. Everyone on the tram concluded that he was drunk, and treated the pair with a genuine and cordial sympathy. The passengers moved up so as to allow Lydia to sit next the door; the conductor laughed when Eric did, selected two pennies from the handful of coins Eric offered him for the fare, and put the tickets and the rest of the coins respectfully into Lydia's hand. An elderly man whispered in her ear: “Best get him home at once.” “I'm doing so,” murmured Lydia, feeling desperate. She wondered what she ought to do; could she throw herself on this man's mercy and get him to accompany them to Boothroyd House? The consequences of an interview between Eric and Annice just then might be too appalling, and she felt she could not face them alone. But Charles was away out at Ribourne, not within call of the telephone; and Wilfred—ah, where was he? At this thought Lydia could not restrain her sobs, though she bit her lips and frowned in the attempt to keep her reserve intact; while the passengers, with true kindness, averted their eyes and pretended to be interested in the advertisements. At this point the conductor bent towards her and murmured in her ear that he had to go upstairs now to collect the fares. “Best keep an eye on him,” he advised her with a friendly jerk of his head towards Eric, who indeed at present looked absolutely crazy, smiling, waving his hat in the air and beaming affectionately around him.

“We shall be getting out soon,” said Lydia faintly. “Cromwell Place.”

The conductor nodded and withdrew upstairs, his whistle ready poised in his mouth. A jolt of the tram made Eric lurch and titter; Lydia rose in alarm and went out to him. “Be careful, Eric,” she said warningly. “Hold on to the rail.” Eric looked into her eyes and laughed, then descended to the step ready to dismount. Lydia, with a sigh, followed him.

Their destination was now at hand; as the tram-stop was slightly beyond Cromwell Place, Mr. Dyson's house and the opening into the Place were now plainly visible to Lydia, though perhaps not to Eric, whose line of vision was curtailed by the tram itself, against the end of which he was leaning. A lorry was just turning out of the Place into the main road; with an awful pang Lydia recognized it as the Dysons'. Repressing the cry which rose to her lips, she shrank back, hoping Eric would not see the lorry; but her movement had betrayed her, and Eric, grasping the vertical rail to balance himself, leaned forward curiously. Instantly his foolishly pleasant expression changed to one of mad rage; he shouted wildly, his shrill voice rising almost to a scream as he poured out incoherent curses in which Lydia could only distinguish the names of Annice and of Evan. As they drew nearer the lorry, which had now pulled up to allow the tram to pass before attempting to cross the road, Evan became plainly visible behind his glass screen.
“Stop! You, Evan! Wait for me!” screamed Eric wildly. He shook his fist at the unconscious driver. This gesture released the vertical bar from his hand, and he fell instantly into the road and lay asprawl. Lydia screamed; the tram conductor, leaning over from the top, blew a long blast of alarm on his whistle; there was a frightful jar of brakes as the lorry, which had moved again as soon as the tram passed, drew up a few feet from Eric's head; the tram stopped, and Lydia, springing into the road, found herself kneeling beside her cousin's prostrate body. At first sight there seemed to be nothing wrong with him; he lay on his back and had no visible injury; but he made no response to Lydia's entreaties, and when she tried to raise his head a thin straw-coloured fluid was seen to be issuing slowly from his ear. Evan, very pale, ran up; the tram conductor, horrified, did the same; he was followed by all the passengers; in an instant a small crowd had collected, and Lydia found herself the centre of a hurly-burly of conjectures, surmises, sympathy and advice.

“Take him to the hospital,” said several voices. “Telephone for the ambulance. There's a doctor just up the street.”