Читать книгу South Riding - Winifred Holtby - Страница 14

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The following evening the light waned quickly; a chill rain blew across the South Riding, and Alderman Mrs. Beddows sat warming her knees over her drawing-room fire. Her skirt was pulled high, exposing her taut rounded calves and well-turned ankles. She was proud of her legs. For a woman of over seventy they did her credit; but it was to save her skirt from scorching that she lifted it. Chloe might send her dress-lengths of brocade and marocain and dark luscious velvets from Paris, and Mrs. Beddows had by nature a taste for lavish generosity, but she had learned parsimony and forethought in a hard school.

Carne, drinking whisky and soda in the big arm-chair, sat enjoying both warmth and Mrs. Beddows.

She was his friend. To her alone had he ever been able to speak freely about his wife and daughter. She had stood by him during the terrible days when he returned from France to find Muriel unable to recognise him. It was to her hospitable house that he sent Midge whenever her absence from Maythorpe seemed desirable. It was because of Midge that he was here now. The child had been spending the afternoon with Willy Beddows' children, and Willy, a widower, lived with his father and mother. Carne had come to fetch his daughter on his way from Kingsport market. He found Mrs. Beddows by the fire.

"I've been at York at a Rescue and Preventive Meeting," she said, explaining the fire. "After wrestling all day with fallen girls and upstanding bishops I feel I need my bit of comfort."

"How did you get on?"

"Not so long-winded as usual, but I feel I've soiled my ticket. I said to the secretary, 'I want to catch the four o'clock train if I can, and I'd give a pound note to the collection if only they'd cut it short a bit.' And would you believe it, that wretch of a man went and told the bishop, and after he'd been speaking about ten minutes, he said: 'Well, there is much more that I could tell you of this good work, but one lady member of our committee has said that she will give a pound note to the collection if I would cut my eloquence short, so in this case, though speech is silver, silence is certainly golden.' And down he sat."

"Good for you."

"But that's not the worst of it. When they came round with the collection, there they stood in front of me chuckling—waiting for the pound note. And I hadn't got one. I don't know when I felt worse; I don't really. I said to Mr. Cross who was sitting next to me, 'For Heaven's sake lend me a pound,' and he said 'So you're the lady!' and roared with laughter and told every one. So now it's all round the county and I've had to borrow a pound from Willy, and what my husband will say when he hears of it, I don't know."

"He probably has heard," comforted Carne, "and decided to say nothing."

"Well . . . now don't stand about like a lad on hiring day. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. Yes, of course smoke your pipe, and help yourself to a drink. I wanted to see you."

Meekly, Carne sat.

"What's all this nonsense about Midge being too delicate to go to school?"

Carne bit on his pipe, smiling quietly. Mrs. Beddows could not offend him. In her ugly, cheerful house, life seemed sane and simple. All problems could be solved by courage, humour and plain common sense. Madness and doom and passion faded like wraiths.

"Good schools cost money," he told her.

"Bad schools cost more. What's wrong with the High School? It did well enough for Chloe and Sybil, and it's doing well enough for Wendy."

"Midge is a bit difficult."

Mrs. Beddows studied him. She was never sure how far he recognised the extent of his daughter's evil heritage. She sympathised with his reverence for the aristocracy. She herself set great store by breeding. She was far from thinking Jack as good as his master and explained failure in plebeian upstarts by saying with suave contempt: "Well, what can you expect? Wasn't bred to power." On the other hand, the Sedgmires were by all accounts a queer lot, and Midge had inherited more than blue blood from her maternal ancestors. Maythorpe could not afford two patients in private mental homes. Mrs. Beddows had talked to Dr. Campbell, who said it was touch and go with the child and recommended the High School.

Accustomed to take the bad with the good in this world and having wide experience of both commodities, Mrs. Beddows wasted no undue sympathy. Some people, she would say, are so full of the milk of human kindness that it slops over and messes everything. If Midge can't stand up to normal life, she reasoned, she might as well quit it early as later. Coddling and sentiment help no one.

"There's one thing about the school as it stands to-day," she said cleverly. "Under Miss Holmes the numbers fell off so that it's small enough for every girl to get individual attention. Fifty-seven day girls and fourteen boarders, isn't it?"

"Fifty-three and thirteen," corrected Carne, who could remember figures.

"I know it's not easy for you to send Muriel's daughter to school with the children of fish-and-chip-shop men and common labourers. But times are changing, and we've got to change with them. Why should you be afraid of other girls influencing Midge? She's as likely to influence them."

That was not true. As she said it, she thought that Midge, poor scrap, would influence no one.

She must try a different appeal.

She was enjoying herself. Assured of her own common sense and the wholesome wisdom of her arguments, she proceeded to the fuller education of Robert Carne, who was, like most men, a child, she considered, in practical affairs.

"It's not the past, it's the future you've got to think of. It's your girl you're educating, not Lord Sedgmire's. If he'd lend a hand, that would be a different matter. But he doesn't. He left his daughter and his granddaughter for you to deal with and we've got to work with the tools that providence sends us. It's not your fault that Muriel's where she is, poor soul. If her people had been more reasonable about her marriage, all this might have been different. And if you hadn't insisted that only the best was good enough for Muriel, there'd have been more now to spend on Midge, and I'm not sure that would have been any better for her in the long run. Midge is a dear child, but she needs knocking into shape, and company of her own age. It's not good for her to be so much alone."

"I know that."

The fear haunting Carne looked for a moment through his eyes. He drained and set down his glass.

He's tired, thought Mrs. Beddows. So was she. But hers was the pleasant fatigue that comes of work well done. When at night in bed she went over the events of the day, it was with a modest yet certain satisfaction at this misunderstanding disentangled, that problem solved, some other help given in time of need. Her good deeds smoothed her pillow.

But Carne looked like a man whom peace had deserted. Some central spring of hope had failed within him. Wherever his mind dwelt, on his farm, his public work, his wife, his daughter, his financial prospects, his health, his house crumbling to ruin, he found no cause for comfort.

Mrs. Beddows saw in this no reason to stop urging him.

She crossed her legs, remembered her blue petticoat, silk, but with a patch in it, pulled down her skirt and pushed her chair farther back from the fire.

"I suppose you knew how they worked the election," she snapped abruptly.

Carne's slower mind followed her dully. "Yes," he said.

"I told them you were as sound as the Bank of England, and that this rumour about failing was a lie and a damned lie," said the alderman. "How true is it?"

"I shall get through. I'm selling some horses to pay harvest wages."

"Is that wise?"

She knew the effect upon credit when a farmer sells horses before harvest.

"I'm dealing through a chap in the West Riding. I shall lose a bit."

"Of course you know it was Snaith who worked the whole business."

"I don't need telling."

"It's largely your own fault. You will go at him. I told you he was a queer friend but a worse enemy. There's not a thing going on in the South Riding he doesn't know and not a thing he doesn't know he can't make use of."

"He's straight as a corkscrew."

"There you're wrong. He's slim, but he's not crooked. He'll never break the law. He'll only work in the dark for the causes he thinks righteous. He sees you as an obstructionist. You are, too; I always told you you overdo your economy cry. It's one thing to champion the rate-payer; it's another to block all action. The difference between you and Snaith is that he thinks the end justifies the means and you think the means justify the end. You'd never play a dirty card; but when you do win—what is it? Just putting full stop to everything."

She loved him so much that to scold him was a sensuous pleasure to her. When a small child she had regarded Maythorpe Hall as a superb and inaccessible palace. To have Robert, old Mr. Carne's elder son, there at her mercy, sitting in her arm-chair, smiling at her, accepting her reproof, submitting to her advice, gave her satisfaction too profound for words. He was so handsome, so big, so masculine. He bought such admirable clothes and wore them splendidly. A natural dandy, Muriel Sedgmire had taught him how to dress, how to order wines, how to help a woman into her coat. His official education had been completed at St. Peter's, York, but his social education in the hunting field, at shooting parties with the "county" and in his wife's company, had given him an air found irresistible by Mrs. Beddows. Whether he was thundering round the ring at agricultural shows on his huge heavyweights, or strolling, sullen and apathetic, into the County Hall, or sitting here in her drawing-room, melancholy and gentle, she gloried in his presence.

Mrs. Beddows had, in her time, endured humiliation, disappointment, and the sharp twisting pangs of fear and jealousy. But the tragedy of Carne's marriage had placed him at her mercy, in need of reassurance and of comfort. She gave both, open-handed, and was unconsciously grateful to Muriel Sedgmire for afflicting Robert with that desolation which drove him to her side. In her hard, rich, varied, unconquered life, his friendship for her was one of her most treasured experiences.

She smiled at him now.

"We'll get you in next time. Astell's a sick man. That's what I said to Captain Gryson. He was mad, I can tell you. He came raging to me. 'It's dirty work, Mrs. Beddows, dirty work,' he kept on saying. 'Snaith's using Huggins and his gang to keep Carne out because Carne's a straight man and a pukka sahib.' 'Have you heard Astell cough?' I asked him. 'What's that to do with it?' he said. I said, 'There's perhaps six months good work in that poor fellow and then we shall have to elect another alderman. And if you can't work for your candidate as Snaith worked for his, you're not the man I thought you.' I sent him away with a flea in his ear, I can tell you. But you mustn't go out of your way offending Snaith, and you mustn't give cause to the heathen to blaspheme. Can you afford another two hundred or so a year to send Midge to a good boarding school?"

"No——But—I thought . . ."

"You thought you could do it cheaper. You thought you could put off deciding. You can't. Face up to it. Be a man. Send her to the High School with Wendy."

Then she remembered his solitary vote at the governors' meeting.

"Don't you like our Miss Burton?"

"No."

Mrs. Beddows cocked her head on one side—as though by this physical effort teaching herself to see Sarah Burton as Carne would see her.

"I remember her mother. She had breeding in her. Touch of the bar-sinister in that family somewhere, I shouldn't be surprised."

"I knew her father," said Carne grimly, and told the tale of the drunken blacksmith.

Mrs. Beddow twinkled: "I can't say I saw signs of our lady lifting her elbow."

"Oh, no." He was shocked at the suggestion.

"You don't know what you mean. But I do," she teased him. "You mean she has red hair and a snip-snap manner and isn't frightened of all your pompous governors, eh? Well—I'll tell you something. I remembered Jess Harrod's girl went to that South London United and I wrote to Jess and got glowing reports back. You mark my words. That girl will wear well. I'll see to her."

Carne's smile warmed her heart's core.

She flung out her plump, work-roughened hand.

"Don't take things so hard," she said. "When you're over seventy you'll have learned that we have to make the best of the world that God has given us, and not expect too much of any one, even of ourselves."

The door opened. Gas-light from the hall streamed into the twilit room.

"Ah—ah——You've got a fire on. Very hot, isn't it? Who's that there? You, Carne? Glad to see you. That your kid playing in the coach house?"

Mr. Beddows, auctioneer and corn dealer, ten years his wife's junior, looked round the room, noticing the fire, the whisky decanter, his wife's abandoned attitude of luxurious enjoyment. His quick little eyes discerned all evidences of extravagance and totted them up against his wife's account. But he was none the less genial in his jerky fashion.

"So they didn't make you alderman, eh Carne? Won't let you join my wife, eh? A long suffering husband, I am. Never know who I'll find my wife with when I come home from market."

He sat down and began to unbutton his leather leggings. His daughter Sybil had followed him into the room, and Carne watched the quiet dignity with which she waited upon him, removing his boots and leggings, handing him his slippers, curbing the spirits of the noisy children who came rioting along the passage.

Sybil, he remembered, had attended Kiplington High School.

The children entered the room and Carne saw Midge, her face too radiant, her eyes too bright, her voice too shrill in its excitement.

Muriel had been like that.

It was too late now to save Muriel.

"Midge, d'you want to go to school next term with Wendy?"

"Yes, yes, yes. Please, please, darling Daddy!"

"Will you look after her, Wendy?"

"Oh, rather, Granny."

Wendy Beddows had no special love for Midge, whom she regarded as a spoiled cry-baby; but the Beddows family had been implacably trained in public spirit.

"That seems to be settled, then."

Mrs. Beddows sighed. She had conquered. Carne was hers. She could twist him round her little finger.

On the drive home, with Midge tucked in the trap beside him, Carne could see his wife's pale scornful profile outlined against the sombre hedges. He could hear her clear voice.

"The Kiplington High School? Are you out of your senses? We talked of Cheltenham or Heathfield, Ascot—then Paris—or perhaps that new place at Lausanne. I suppose that you want Midge to revert to type—now that I'm safely out of the way? Oh, very well! I cannot stop you. Do as you like with your own daughter, Robert, since you are so sure that she is your daughter."

Her high thin scorn lashed him.

He had loved her so much. He had always failed her. He had muddled the interview with her parents. Muddled his war leave. Muddled that child business. His slower mind could not keep pace with her swift reactions; his emotions, not easily aroused, were still less easily subdued. Always he felt himself left far behind her, dull, clumsy, insensitive, too fond, too gross, too awkward. But now that she was gone he could invent for her invective more violent than any she had used; scorn, anger, criticism, mockery sprang to his hurt and groping mind. All the abuse she might have left unuttered, all the distaste she might never have felt for his uninstructed bucolic habits; all the resentment she might not have known, all the nostalgia for her former status, for the great house in Shropshire, for the London season, for the house parties, the family foregatherings which she had renounced for his sake, all the pain of her bitter quarrel with her parents—all this he imagined, made articulate, and repeated to torment his unhappy spirit. While she was with him he was so far seduced by the charm of her presence that he often forgot how much that presence cost her. Now that she was shut off from him, a wild shrinking tragic creature, wearing her life away in angers as inhuman as the moods of the sea, now when he could not touch her, smooth her brown hair, coax her to the tranquillity of exhaustion, call her his own, his dear, his little love, hold her fierce panicking body till it was quiet—now that neither love nor remorse could comfort her, he was comfortless.

He must not fail Midge now. She was all he had now. Well, she should go to the High School. Mrs. Beddows chose it. Mrs. Beddows might choose wisely. At least she had managed her own life better than he had.