The Partnership, page 18
“Not yet,” said Lydia in a guarded tone.
Her uncle fixed on her a piercing gaze, beneath which poor Lydia felt the last remnants of her courage ooze away. “I reckon he’s dead and ye’re trying to break it to me,” he said at last. “Is he?”
The wretched Lydia was silent, but the answer was only too clearly written on her face.
“Well!” exclaimed Dyson in a quivering tone. “Dead! Eric! Dead!” His grasp of Lydia’s hand relaxed, and with a deep sigh he sank back on his pillows. His eyes closed, his haggard face turned upwards, and for a long moment he was so still that Lydia thought the news had killed him. Presently, however, he spoke again, his voice sounding thin and empty as though it came from very far away. “Where’s your father?” he asked pitifully.
“We’ve sent for him, uncle,” Lydia told him. “He’ll be here soon.”
“Aye! Well!” murmured Dyson feebly. “Dead!” There was a long pause, then he said in broken, scarcely audible tones: “I want to see your father when he comes.”
“Yes, you shall see him as soon as he comes. Shall I stay with you till then, uncle?” asked Lydia, exerting her will to forget Dyson’s part in her own drama.
“What?” snapped Dyson, irritably, opening his eyes. “Oh—no. Where’s Annice?”
“She’s downstairs,” replied Lydia. “Shall I send her up to you?”
“Aye, do,” said Dyson, closing his eyes again.
Lydia took up the tray and turned to go. Just on the threshold, however, she met her father, looking haggard and grief-stricken, with his white hair disordered and his eyes red-rimmed.
“This is a terrible business, Lydia!” he exclaimed, breathing heavily—he had evidently come hot-foot from Ribourne. “Terrible! How does your poor uncle take it? What’s this I hear about Wilfred, too?”
“Uncle Herbert wants to see you,” began Lydia stiffly, disregarding this last question. Her uncle, however, had evidently heard her father’s voice, for he now called feebly: “Charles!”
Charles pushed open the door and entered. “This is a day of great grief to us all, Herbert,” began Charles in a tone of deep solemnity. He advanced to the bed and took his brother-in-law’s hand.
“Aye,” agreed Dyson listlessly. Without opening his eyes he continued: “You’ll have to look after me now, Charles—now Eric’s gone. I can’t look after myself, you know.”
“Rest assured,” said Charles solemnly, “that I shall do everything that lies in my power to help you, Herbert.”
“Wilfred’s away too,” murmured Dyson.
The heart-broken Lydia softly closed the door and withdrew.
4
The inquest on Eric made a good deal of talk in Hudley, because it appeared that Evan’s partiality for young Mrs. Dyson was only too well known at Boothroyd Mills. It was known, for instance, how often he called at Boothroyd House on one pretext or another; for on these occasions he would put the man who rode beside him on the lorry down in Hudley for twenty minutes or so, picking him up again before returning to the mill. Though Eric was not popular with his workpeople, who despised him heartily, and though Evan had undoubtedly been admired amongst them on account of his lively tongue and his blithe ways, Eric was old Mr. Dyson’s son, and a Yorkshireman, whereas Evan was a stranger, and a stranger with reprehensible morals at that; and it was generally felt that for Evan to knock down and run over his employer because he was in love with his employer’s wife was rather too much of a good thing, even for a Welshman. For this was the view generally taken of the accident; the opinion was loudly expressed that Evan ought to hang for it if everyone had his due, and a perfect storm of angry feeling descended on Lydia’s head because at the adjourned inquest her evidence showed that the lorry had not touched Eric at all. Some people said that she was trying to hush up the Evan-Annice affair for the sake of the family—which was perfectly useless, for everyone knew it already. Others accused Lydia of being in love with Evan herself and meeting him regularly at Boothroyd House, and said that this had recently come to Eric’s ears and precipitated the tragedy. That even the authorities doubted Lydia’s story was shown by the persistent and detailed questioning which was brought to bear on it—and on that of Evan, whose first amused astonishment at the suggestion that he had run over Eric developed into anger, then into anxiety, and lastly into imploring dependence on Lydia, as the proceedings went on. The value of the testimony of the passengers of the tram, to the effect that Eric was undoubtedly and visibly drunk, was negatived by Annice, who declared indignantly that she had never seen him anything of the kind. Lydia was obliged to give an explanation of her presence in the tram with Eric. She had called, she said, colouring painfully, at the mill to ask why Mr. Wilfred Dyson had not been out to Ribourne at the week-end, had found her cousin obviously ill, and accompanied him home. Her testimony, vague and wavering here, was clear and emphatic about the accident, which she alone had clearly seen. Eric was standing on the step of the tram, holding the vertical bar with one hand; he had caught sight of Evan, had called out to him, waved a detaining hand to him, and, his grasp of the bar being thus released, fallen headlong into the road. The lorry had stopped some six feet from his head. The lorry was not travelling on its wrong side; it was just emerging from Cromwell Place. (“What did I tell you?” murmured the gossips.) It had waited for the tram to pass by, then begun to move slowly, then drawn up abruptly with a jar. Had the driver of the lorry seen Eric’s fall? Lydia thought not; and Evan was emphatic that he had neither seen nor heard anything till he saw the prostrate figure of a man lying in the road in front of the lorry. Even then he had not the slightest notion that it was Mr. Eric Dyson; when he recognized Miss Mellor kneeling beside him in the road he feared it might possibly be Mr. Wilfred Dyson, the deceased’s step-brother, but he had not really any idea who it was until he came running up and actually saw Mr. Dyson’s body lying in the road. He had borne a good character on the whole in the army, he added resentfully, and his licence had never been endorsed; in reply to a question he said that he had gone to Boothroyd House that afternoon to take a supply of wood and soap, commodities which were always sent up there from the mill. There was a pause; then Miss Mellor was asked if she would kindly describe her cousin’s fall again. Lydia sighed, and explained again that Eric was leaning forward to get a better view of the lorry, and when he released the bar his over-balanced position naturally caused him to fall into the road. Why did he want to get a better view of the lorry? “Well, it was his own lorry,” said Lydia, feeling suffocated. Was she certain that he was not knocked from the tram by a blow from the lorry? Yes, she was absolutely certain; the lorry was several yards distant when he fell. And she was certain that the lorry had not run over the prostrate man? Quite certain. Nothing could shake her in these statements, because they were the truth; and though there was a general feeling that some domestic drama lay behind the accident—Wilfred’s complete disappearance seemed so odd when coupled with the rumours about Evan and Annice—eventually these truths prevailed, and a verdict of death by misadventure was recorded, with no awkward hint of manslaughter or criminal negligence, or something worse, to cast a shadow over Evan’s future. Charles and Louise were, of course, in possession of a rather fuller version of recent events than that which found its way into the Hudley News; but even they did not know at first what Eric and Wilfred had quarrelled about or why Eric was “feeling ill” on the fatal day. Partly from a desire to spare their feelings, partly from sheer sickness of heart at the thought of having to drag through the story and expose her own tragic errors, Lydia kept silence on these points; and she was helped in this concealment—on which, as usual, Annice made no remark—by her absence from Ribourne just then.
For Charles, of course, kept his word to Dyson, and it was upon the Mellors that the burden of the Dyson affairs fell. Every possible machinery, including that of wireless, was set in motion to find and recall Wilfred, but he did not appear. It seemed to the Mellors, and especially to Lydia, that he had deliberately cut himself adrift from his old life and never meant to return to it—had taken a new name, perhaps, and almost certainly sought a new land. In his absence it was Charles who conducted the funeral arrangements and attended to the transferring of Boothroyd Mills into other hands. Thanks to Eric’s activities and the prevailing trade depression, this latter transaction took time and seemed likely to be not very profitable; and meanwhile Lydia remained at Boothroyd House, by her father’s wish, to help Annice and be a support to her in this time of trouble. Her chief duty there was that of looking after Dyson; she had had experience with invalids in attending to Louise, and gradually the whole charge of her uncle fell upon her shoulders. Dyson was not particularly grateful for her care; his first remark when she entered the room was almost invariably: “Where’s Annice?” and by many peevish hints and grumbles he made it clear that he preferred his daughter-in-law’s attentions to those of his niece. But this was not to be wondered at, as Lydia reflected; for Lydia was adamant on such points as washing and medicine, while Annice had allowed the invalid to do almost anything he liked, provided he was cheerful about it. Lydia was able to congratulate herself, at the end of a few weeks, on a great improvement in her uncle’s appearance; he no longer stayed unkempt and dishevelled through all hours of the day, but had become a clean and wholesome invalid, able to receive visitors at appropriate times and sit up for a little in the afternoon. Though his health was thus slightly improved, his temper was perhaps rather worse than before; but on the whole Lydia was very well satisfied with his condition.
With other things in Boothroyd House she was less well pleased. Many evenings she spent upstairs with Dyson or sitting alone in the dining-room, listening to a murmur of voices from the kitchen which meant that Evan and Annice were together again as usual. Lydia could not bring herself to mention Evan—who always kept carefully out of her way—to Annice, but for her father’s sake the thought of another scandal caused her much anxiety, and she was considerably relieved when one night after Evan had gone Annice made her position clear to her. The two women were sitting together in the dining-room, Lydia mending, Annice looking into the fire, when Annice observed abruptly: “Will Mr. Dyson go and live with you at Ribourne soon?”
Lydia was startled, but she merely inquired in the level, unemotional tones she always employed nowadays: “What would you do in that case, Annice?”
There was Annice’s customary pause, then she said: “Evan and I are going to Canada next month.”
Lydia was speechless, and after a moment Annice went on: “It isn’t nice for him here. People think he ran over Eric on purpose. But you know he didn’t, Miss Lydia,” she added earnestly, turning her blue eyes on her companion.
Lydia stitched a little faster for a moment, then she said dryly: “And the children? Shall you take them with you?”
“Of course!” said Annice in accents of unmitigated astonishment. “What else? So I was just wondering,” she concluded, “what would happen to Mr. Dyson when we go.”
Lydia was silent again, then she observed: “Am I to tell father, then, that you and Evan are to be married next month?”
The colour in Annice’s rosy cheeks deepened, and she lowered her eyes before she answered mildly: “Yes.”
Even then Lydia did not mean to tell Charles and Louise the whole of Annice’s story, but she was constrained to do so by their astonished incredulity, which expressed itself in a host of questions. When the matter was at last made clear—which took place a day or two later at Ribourne, whither Lydia had gone for tea—an expression of strong disgust appeared on Charles’s simple face; he jumped up and began to walk about the room, frowning deeply. Louise, on the other hand, exclaimed: “And did he come straight to her after five years in the army?” Lydia signified assent, and Louise continued, shaking her head: “What a life that girl has!”
“It seems to me she’s ruined Lydia’s life,” threw out Charles in anger.
At this Louise’s face softened into pity, and she laid one hand gently on her daughter’s arm. Lydia, however, could not yet bear any allusion to her grief, so she said harshly: “I suppose Uncle Herbert will come here to us.”
Louise sighed.
“If Annice marries again,” she observed practically, “he will have to come here. There’s nowhere else for him to go.”
“Of course he will come here,” said Charles, pausing in his parade and regarding her sternly. “We at least,” he explained in his loftiest tones, “will not fail in our duty, whatever Annice may think fit to do.”
“Annice will marry Evan and go to Canada,” muttered Lydia sardonically.
VII
THE PARTNERSHIP
One golden evening in late summer, therefore, Dyson was carefully transported from Cromwell Place to Ribourne. Boothroyd House was already sold, and its contents were to be put up for auction shortly. Evan and Annice had been married a few days ago, and Evan had gone that afternoon to Liverpool, where Annice and the children were to join him on the morrow. Charles had done his best to persuade Annice to leave at least one of the children behind her, but she opposed a blank silence to all his urging, and at length he had been obliged to give it up. Annice and her family, however, were to spend this, their last night in Hudley, with the Mellors; for they had an early train to catch next morning, and for Annice to catch an early train with three children from a dismantled house was more than the Mellors’ sense of duty could allow. The taxi drew up at the Mellors’ gate; Charles and Lydia, who had been on the watch for its arrival, helped Dyson carefully out, and supported his tottering steps up the little path to the house. Annice followed behind with the children; Louise, an interested spectator, as always, watched from the door. As Dyson was to occupy the spare room permanently, his grandchildren and their mother were accommodated in various improvised beds in Lydia’s room. The evening seemed endless to Lydia; it was a considerable task to settle the young Dysons comfortably in their new quarters, and even when they were all safely abed there were hours, spent in the constraint which Annice’s presence now always brought on Charles, which seemed intolerably long, and made Lydia yearn unspeakably for the morning, when Annice should depart out of her life for ever.
At length, however, it was night and they were all asleep; Dorothea in her pram, brought upstairs for the occasion, the two boys in a little bed against the wall, and Annice by Lydia’s side. Lydia herself expected to have a white night, and her expectation was realized, for after a short doze she started suddenly awake and could sleep no more. But she was used to sleepless nights nowadays, used to lying awake through long hours, living again the only scenes of her life which had any colour, any animation, any importance—those connected with Annice. She had passed through the time when she tossed and moaned upon her bed in impotent rebellion, passed through the time when she simply lay still like a wounded animal, too sick with pain to move; she had come now to a time when it was a relief to her—perhaps because she was after all Louise’s daughter, perhaps because, as M, Estaunié has observed, mankind always rebels against the particular case—to view over and over again the incidents of her tragedy and try to extract some sort of a meaning from them, take the sting out of them, if she could, by referring them to some general law. She realized with bitterness that her drama had not begun till the entrance of Annice, had experienced each of its phases through Annice, and reached its catastrophe through Annice too. And whatever Lydia did—whether she tried to help Annice, whether she turned against her, whether she sacrificed her own love, or whether she tried to save it—whatever she did only served to help on Annice’s story.
As Lydia lay to-night, for the third time in her life, still and controlled beside the sleeping Annice, and reviewed thus the whole course of her acquaintance with the girl, she could not help feeling that she was like a minor character in a drama of which Annice played the leading part. Annice played all her big scenes without Lydia: her love-making with Evan, then with Eric; the birth of her children, her reconciliation with Dyson, the reappearance of Evan again—all these took place while Lydia, as it were, was off the stage. But as soon as Annice needed help, as soon as the plot of her story needed moving on, as soon as life seemed about to fail her—then Lydia’s cue sounded, and she was recalled to the stage. So long as the soldier was there Annice did not need Lydia—except once, to stave off discovery, on the canal—but his departure was Lydia’s cue; she appeared and carried Annice off with her towards the next episode of her brightly coloured story. It was due to Lydia that Eric met and loved Annice; due to Lydia and Wilfred that he married her. So long as Annice loved Eric and was content with life, Lydia was left to languish off the scene at Ribourne, but when disaster threatened, and Evan appeared, and Annice wanted to love him but could not out of pity for Eric, then Lydia had to take a part, recall Wilfred, make Eric prosperous again so that Annice could be happy in despising him. Lydia’s lover had made a shield for Annice’s growing love for Evan; Lydia, by revealing the truth to Eric, had—you might say—killed him and made Annice free; nay, finally, it was Lydia’s evidence which cleared Evan from blame and enabled him to colour Annice’s future. Of course, in every well-constructed play, as Lydia thought bitterly, these minor characters who helped on the plot were always woven into a sub-plot of their own; the love between Lydia and Wilfred was just such a sub-plot, a tepid sort of affair put in partly as a contrast to the fierce rich loves of Annice, partly to keep the minor characters occupied and make their presence, their comings and goings on and off the stage, natural, their actions not entirely motiveless. That her love affair with Wilfred was a tepid one was a suggestion Lydia writhed over, but admitted to be true; had they loved each other with a tithe of Annice’s overriding passion they would never have allowed themselves to be thus feebly parted. Yes, Lydia was a minor character in a tepid sub-plot. The world, as she had observed to Charles, was divided into two kinds of people; the people who had a thrilling story, and the people who merely helped on the plot—the people who lived, and the people who made it possible for them to do so. Dyson was amongst those who lived, Charles amongst those who made it possible for them to do so. Wilfred was a Tolefree, Eric and Evan went with Annice. (Louise, of course, was the spectator in the stalls.) But putting aside her own particular story for the moment, how much support for this division of humanity could Lydia find when she cast her eyes round the circle of her acquaintances! How many ageing narrow spinsters, how many dull maiden aunts and bachelor uncles, how many toiling, punctual, methodical, useful minor characters, their lives drab with the sand of abstinence, there were in the world! And how universal was their reputation for being boring! Their lack of experience, their lack of life, made them tedious and naïve, and helped to alienate life still further from them; they fussed about tiresome details and made themselves a bore, and were always too much cumbered with serving to be able to snatch the moment and be joyous in the passing hour. Whereas Annice and her kind, to whom the cup of life was offered brimming, were always loved—and rightly so, decided Lydia with a pang; for they were young at heart and fresh and merry: the savour of life was hot in their mouths and they could enjoy the cakes and ale: fruits of life and beauty had indeed been planted in them by gratified desire. In spite of everything that had passed between them, Lydia still loved Annice dearly, and at the bottom of her heart she knew that Annice was really a more attractive person, pleasanter as a companion, easier to love, than that excellent and methodical Tolefree, Lydia Mellor. How the lights rose, the music sounded, when Annice came upon the stage! How the pace of life quickened when she entered! Annice’s life had how much more validity in the world’s story than had Lydia’s! By what law was it so? With all her heart Lydia, on behalf of the innumerable minor characters who peeped about and found themselves unhonoured graves, resented this division of the world.
