Читать книгу Iron and Smoke - Sheila Kaye-Smith - Страница 21

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Jenny had once hoped that when Spring came her husband would take her to London. But she soon found that he had no such intention. He went to London himself every now and then, and had once taken her up to see Mademoiselle Genée dance at the Empire. But he rejected the idea of a longer visit during the season. By this time she knew that more than half their income was being spent on the estate. The house itself and the house’s ways were very much the same as before his marriage. There were no such refurnishings and reconstructions as might have been expected when a man’s income had been trebled. The creaking floors and fading furniture of Herringdales Manor continued to creak and fade. There was still no proper water supply, still no gas nor adequate heating. The doors and windows still admitted the weather freely when shut. On the other hand, the Mallard land was as a land reborn. Gates, fences, hedges had all been repaired and renewed, farmhouses glowed with new tiles and shone with new paint; some new machinery filled the tenants with mixed emotions of pride and fear, and outraged those of their labourers who still believed in Providence. And with it all, Humphrey was saving money to pay off the mortgage on Yockletts, to launch new schemes both in Sussex and in Kent, to redeem his dear land east and west for the glory of the Mallards and its own good luck.

Jenny was well pleased to have it so. She was enough in love to ask no more for her money than that it should give her husband what he wanted, and she was young enough not to care about domestic comforts and pretensions. She soon grew used to the lacks of Herringdales, and forgot the superior ways of Slapewath and the North.

Nevertheless she was glad to go there for a time in August. Humphrey himself proposed it, and said he would join her when his wheat was in. She had not seen her parents since her marriage; somehow, she could not picture them at Herringdales, and Humphrey did not suggest it. She also had an uneasy feeling that her father would resent the way her money was spent, and would generally find himself out of patience with the slow goings of the slow South. It was much better that the parting should be knit up at home in Eden-in-Cleveland. ... She rebuked herself when she found she was thinking of it as home. But the thought deepened and grew as the train ran out of York, and the fresh stiff air of the Moors blew in at the window. Soon the outline of the Cleveland hills was seen biting the sky ... and then came Darlington, the vanishing length of platform and Stevenson’s engine, familiar tokens of return.... It was like the days when she came home from school. Countless happy returns seemed to throng her as she climbed out of the train, to greet her father himself, who had come to take her the last few miles on the branch line.

The first evening was all joy and excitement, meetings and greetings, parents, servants, dogs, familiar corners of the house and grounds. Now she returned to them she could see a certain pretentiousness and lack of taste in the splendours of Slapewath. All the gas and glory failed somehow to give that sense of aristocracy which haunted every room of the shabby Herringdales. But she loved the house as a schoolgirl loves her home, and was careful not to hint at differences; though sometimes she felt inclined to exclaim—as when the lights went up on the dining-room chandelier, or when the long string of servants filed into the drawing-room for family prayers. What would her parents think, she wondered, of a baronet’s house in which there was nothing but candles on the dinner table, not more than half a dozen servants in the kitchen—and no prayers.

However, these tokens of prosperity were reassuring. She could not believe that with so many outward signs of wealth the family fortunes were in any real uncertainty. If any crisis was imminent, surely there would have been a little less food, a little less light, a little less superfluity of service. She went to bed that night feeling happy and comforted, her mind at rest with her body.

But the next morning her comfort was dispersed—by her father himself as he joined her on a walk through the grounds. They skirted the cycling track, unused since her marriage, and he waved his hand towards the stucco pile of the Grange and its terraces, saying—

“There’s trouble coming to all this, Jenny.”

She was startled at his words, but before she could speak her eyes received the same warning as her ears. They had come to where a clearing in the trees showed the chimney of the Southbeck iron-stone mine, and she saw that it stood cold and lifeless as a pillar—there was no banner of smoke unfurled in token of the strivings within.

“What’s happened?” she asked.

“Henderson’s gone bust.”

“But—but does that mean anything to us?”

“It does, my girl. It just about finishes us for the time being.”

“Oh, Daddy ...”

“I don’t expect ye to understand the ways of such things, but when a big firm like Henderson’s goes smash it spoils confidence all round, and many a business that might have weathered the storm goes under. Henderson’s have appointed a receiver, and I hear that Gibson’s ull have done the same in a week or two. That’ll upset the markets and we can’t stand it. Things have been bad with us for some time past, and now I’m afraid it’s only a question of months.... Tim says he dropped you a hint when he was staying at your place in May.”

“Yes, but I haven’t told anyone.”

“Not told your husband?”

“No—not a word.”

“Well, look ye here, Jenny, he’ll have to know soon. And I tell you, my girl, it’s important that your brass stays in the business. With care we may get this thing through in such a way as it’ll mean no more than a sort of general reconstruction. We can start again—as other folk have done—as Henderson’s and Gibson’s mean to do. I shall have to sell this place and live quiet for a bit, but I’m not too old yet to climb back to where I’ve fallen from. We go up and down quickly in these parts. But if he won’t let me put your money into our new show ... Mark ye, my dear, it’s your money, according to the law, and he can’t touch it, capital or interest. But I know what it is to be husband and wife, and he’ll strive might and main to get what’s left of your capital into his hands. He never wanted it to be in the business—he wanted it to spend on his estate, to buy land with—just bare land. I’d never have let him have it, even if things hadn’t been so tight ... but he fought hard, and I’ll wager, my dear, there’ll be trouble when he hears what’s happened.”

Jenny did not speak. She could not help seeing Humphrey’s side of the question, and realising that there were sinister accusations which he could bring against her father. On the other hand, she was as anxious as any director of Bastow, Routh and Partners that her money should be used for purposes of reconstruction, to redeem mines and factories in the North rather than empty meadows in the South.

“I did my best,” continued her father, “but I couldn’t push him further than he’d go. At first I thought he’d chuck the whole thing up, just because I wouldn’t let him have the money to do as he pleased with. And after I’d talked him round on that, he got his lawyers to put a clause into the settlement that ud cover a situation like this—and I didn’t fight it, because I thought we were all right then. Honest to God, I did, my dear. He won’t believe that. He’ll say I was bound to have seen this coming. But I didn’t. I knew there’d be a slump one day, but I didn’t think it would happen for years yet, and by that time we’d be like a rock. It hasn’t really happened now—only we see it coming, and it’s that what’s done us in.”

Still Jenny was silent. Her mind had never moved beyond the beginning of his last words—“At first I thought he’d chuck the whole thing up, just because I couldn’t let him have the money to do as he pleased with.” Had her marriage really been such an affair of bargaining? Had Humphrey really haggled with her father over her price? She knew that there had been big settlements involved, and that she had entered the Mallard family bearing its relief, but she had never till then imagined that her entrance had depended on this relief—that if it had not been forthcoming she would not now be Humphrey’s wife. The thought struck her with a chill which she could neither reason nor scold away.

“But the whole point is”—her father was still speaking—“that the brass is yours. He can’t make you do anything with it against your will.... You must stand by your people in this, Jenny.... Your own folk have the first claim on you. You mustn’t let him talk you over....”

His words seemed to come from a great way off.