The Partnership (11 page)

“Keep your gladness till it's wanted,” threw out Dyson. His tone was so rough as to be really savage, and Lydia, trembling, realized that his outward calm was deceptive, and that the scene before them was certainly going to be unpleasant. “He hasn't told me,” continued Dyson in disgust, holding out Eric's note. “He's written it in a letter. Daren't face me, I suppose. When I got in I found this waiting for me. You'd better read it. Read it, I say!” he shouted suddenly as
Charles made no motion to take the note from his hand. “You'd best read it and see what your sister's son has come to.”

“I will read Eric's confession if you wish,” said Charles with dignity, keeping his hands firmly clasped round one knee. “But I already know what it contains, and I am sorry to say that it is but too true.”

“Oh, it's true, is it?” said Dyson grimly. “Well, it's nice to know it's true,” He turned suddenly on his niece, and in a tone of intense irritation commanded: “Shut that door, Lydia.”

Lydia hastily complied.

“Lydia, I think, had better leave us,” said Charles. He spoke smoothly, but there was a light as of battle in his eye.

“Not much she hadn't!” countered Dyson. “The whole confounded thing is Lydia's fault.” At this Lydia advanced into the room and sat down defiantly on the sofa. “What does she want to go about picking up nameless riff-raff for, and introducing them into a decent household to bring trouble on it?” continued her uncle.

“Don't speak so of Annice, Herbert,” Louise plucked up spirit to reprove him. “The girl was good enough when she came here.”

“Oh, she was, was she?” said Dyson sarcastically. “That's very interesting—or would be if I believed a word of it.”

“Herbert,” said Mr. Mellor in a dangerously smooth tone, “let us discuss this matter calmly.”

“There's nothing to discuss,” said Dyson,
“nothing whatever. I understand the girl says Eric has got her into trouble. Very well. I say she was a girl of bad character before ever she entered this house, and I notice Lydia isn't eager to contradict me.”

He swung round suddenly and fixed a baleful gaze on his niece. There was a moment in which Lydia felt the blood beating in her ears, while she revolved the problem of her conflicting duties in this case; then she replied firmly: “I knew nothing but good of Annice before she came here.”

“It's a lie!” threw out Dyson contemptuously. “If she was all right, how was it she was able to leave her place at a moment's notice and come north with you like that? How did you meet her? What made you speak to her? You were trying to rescue her, that's what you were doing, Lydia, with your silly dam-fool Tolefree notions of putting the world to rights. You and Wilfred, you're too good to live, that's what you are. I say the girl was no better than she should be, before ever she came to Hudley. Let me just see her, and I'll tell her what I think of her.”

“I'll have no woman blackguarded in my house, Herbert,” Charles warned him in a ringing and authoritative tone, his grey eyes flashing fire. “And pray be kind enough to leave Lydia alone. If you must give vent to your anger, pray direct it where it's due. It's your son who is to blame, not my daughter; and I will thank you to remember that fact.”

“I don't care who's to blame,” began Herbert.

“I hope you don't mean that, Herbert,” commented Charles severely. “It's no light matter to break the commandment of God.”

Dyson looked at him contemptuously and snorted. “Of course I do care,” he corrected himself, “and I shall give Eric the fright of his life about it—you can trust me for that. But what I mean is, whoever's to blame it makes no difference to what's got to be done.”

“There,” said Charles on a friendlier note, “I agree with you. Eric has stated his willingness to repair his fault as far as it is possible to repair such a fault, and the marriage should take place without delay.”

“Aye!” cried Dyson furiously, the veins in his neck thick with rage, “I thought it was you, Charles, that had put the idea of marrying her into his head. I tell you he shan't marry her! I'll see him dead and buried before he shall marry her! I'll give the girl a decent sum of money, of course—you shall look after it yourself, Charles, and see her decently through her trouble—but marry her he shall not. Do you understand that? You'd better, for it's my last word. He shall not marry her. So now you know.”

“Herbert,” said Charles again in a solemn ministerial tone, “it is my duty to remind you that we've had this argument once before, and on that occasion you agreed to take the path of duty.”

“Yes, by God!” exclaimed Dyson with intense feeling; “and I've never ceased to regret it since.
It gave me five years' hell, and killed Fanny—that's what the path of duty did for me.”

“It gave you Wilfred,” Charles reminded him.

“Wilfred!” snorted Dyson. “I could have done very well without Wilfred, Charles, I can assure you. He belongs more to your family than to mine, Wilfred does.”

Charles coloured angrily, and his eyes flashed again. “You've no right to say that, Herbert,” he told him sharply. “Wilfred's been a good son to you, and you may yet have cause to be thankful for him.”

“Well, when I have, I'll let you know,” replied Dyson with heavy sarcasm. “Meanwhile you can make the situation clear to that girl of Lydia's. I'll go as far as three hundred pounds for her, provided she leaves Hudley and keeps her mouth shut; but any idea she may have of marrying Eric she can put right out of her head at once, for it won't come to anything. So now you know.”

“And you may as well know, Herbert,” said Charles, sitting very erect and speaking very distinctly, “that I shall do everything in my power to persuade Eric to do the right thing and marry her.”

“By God, you'd better not, Charles,” said Dyson with feeling. “Now I warn you, you'd better not. You had the whip-hand of me last time in money affairs, but this time it's mine, and I warn you I shall use it. You draw a nice little income from Boothroyd Mills, you know. If I paid you out of the business, and you had to
invest your money elsewhere at the current rate of interest—well, you couldn't live in
this
house.”

“If you've finished insulting me, Herbert,” shouted Charles, suddenly maddened out of his ministerial control, “you'd better go.”

“Oh, certainly, certainly,” said Dyson, regaining his temper as his brother-in-law lost his. “I've made my mind clear on the subject, so I may as well go. I hope it will be a lesson to Lydia not to pick up girls from the streets in the future.”

“Herbert!” Louise reproved him.

“Leave my house!” cried Charles, jumping to his feet, beside himself with rage.

“All right, all right—I'm just going,” said Dyson in a cheerful tone. He rose, smiled grimly, observed, “Good night to you, Charles,” and turned to go. At the door, however, he paused and turned to the Mellors again. “I shall send Eric out of the town for a while,” he said, “till all this has blown over; and I'll give the girl up to three hundred pounds gladly; but you can take it from me, Charles, that if ever there comes a day when Eric marries her, that day will be the last of my connection with the Mellors.”

“Herbert,” broke out Louise, “where do you think Eric is now?”

“How should I know?” demanded Dyson sarcastically. “Unless he's in your kitchen, perhaps. You don't seem to know much of what goes on there.”

“You don't think he will have done anything rash?” said Louise, disregarding this.

“How, rash?” demanded Dyson. “Run off with the girl, you mean?”

“No; Annice is in the kitchen, alone,” replied Louise, not without dignity. “You don't think that Eric might be so overcome with remorse, and so afraid of you, that he might—do himself some harm?”

“What, Eric? Not likely,” replied his father with contempt. “He hasn't got the nerve. No; he'll come in late and try to creep upstairs without me seeing him, I expect.”

At this Lydia, who had loathed her uncle, been quelled by his force, and reluctantly pitied him, at intervals during the last half-hour, felt compassion again unwillingly rising in her breast. He had such a very clear idea of the character of his favourite Eric, and as he spoke was so extraordinarily like the elder son whom he despised, that a sense of the cruelty and strangeness of life's devices pressed upon Lydia's heart.

She moved aside to let him pass.

As soon as the front door closed behind him Charles, looking very pale and shaken, spoke from his station by the fire.

“Lydia,” he said, “you have heard much of your uncle's story to-night, and no doubt have guessed more.” Lydia murmured an assent, and Charles proceeded: “Wilfred does not know it, and it will be best that he never should. I am sure you understand that.” Lydia again murmured her agreement. “And now,” continued Charles, “anything else which we may wish to
say about this great trouble of ours must be postponed until the morrow. I am due to speak at Ribourne to-night at half-past seven, so I must leave the house at once.”

“Oh, father, you're not fit to go!” cried Lydia. “Louise, don't let him.”

“I have promised to go,” said Charles firmly, “and I have not as yet broken a promise. You will learn as you grow older, Lydia, that the daily round and the common task have to be performed even when we are labouring under a great sorrow.”

His pompous and old-fashioned pulpit diction suddenly seemed to Lydia full of pathos. “Poor father!” she thought. “Poor dear! Poor little dear!” She went to him and, putting her arms about his neck, kissed his cheek. Charles returned the caress, and seemed much moved.

“Get my coat, dear,” he said at length huskily.

Louise had already brought it, and was warming it by the fire. Lydia fetched her father's notes, and the women between them managed to despatch Charles along Cromwell Place in time to catch the appropriate bus for Ribourne.

When he had gone, Lydia went along the hall towards the kitchen. Her heart was now soft towards Annice, and she reproached herself for her selfish and callous reception of the news of the girl's tragedy. She reproached herself, too, most bitterly for having left Annice alone on that fatal August evening; if she had not deserted her then for Wilfred, this catastrophe might never have occurred. There was the constructing of the
wireless, too; she had idled with Wilfred in the study while Eric was trifling with Annice in the kitchen. Feeling guilty and ashamed, she opened the kitchen door and found Annice sitting by the fire with her arms folded. Her expression was, as usual, serene, but she did not raise her eyes or smile, and Lydia's sense of guilt was deepened.

“Mr. Dyson has been here, Annice,” she began gravely.

“Yes, miss,” agreed Annice without looking up. “I heard him when I came to fetch away the tea-things.”

“He wanted me to say,” pursued Lydia, “that I knew something ill of you before you came here, but I would not.”

Her tone was warm, loving and conspiratorial, and expressed her genuine feeling in the matter, which was that she had gladly sacrificed truth to friendship. Annice looked up in surprise.

“What ill could you have said?” she demanded rather defiantly.

“Why, Annice,” said Lydia, disconcerted, “do you think that your behaviour, down there at the seaside, was all that it ought to have been?”

Annice's blue eyes became round with astonishment.

“Why, Miss Lydia,” she murmured, aggrieved, “I only did the same as you.”

Lydia, routed, left the kitchen, telling herself that it was but too true. Nor could she altogether disabuse her mind of the idea that there was a
certain parallelism between herself and Annice ever since their arrival at Cromwell Place. Both had sought love; the difference was, as it had been by the sea, that the more Lydia sought it, the more she seemed to throw Annice into its arms.

3

The next few weeks were a feverish nightmare of arguments, remonstrances, pleadings, and threats. The case of Eric and Annice was the topic of the hour and came under discussion whenever two members of the families concerned encountered one another; the only person who had no views on the subject being Annice herself.

After all Dyson did not despatch Eric into solitary exile. Wilfred reached Boothroyd House next day as the two were sitting at their midday meal, and found Eric almost prostrate with nervous emotion and his father looking particularly grim. A very few words from the tearful Eric sufficed to inform Wilfred of the disaster, and he exclaimed with conviction that it was just what he had been fearing all along—he had been a fool to put such faith in Eric's evasions.

“Well, there won't be any more of them,” observed Dyson dryly. “Eric's going away for a bit. Get your coat off and sit down quickly, Wilfred, if you want any dinner; we've a train to catch. What have you done about the wagon?”

Wilfred seated himself, sniffed thoughtfully,
and infuriated his father by questioning the wisdom of sending Eric anywhere alone.

“I don't want to discuss the matter with you,” Dyson told him grimly. “So don't mention it to me again. And I don't intend anyone but me to know where Eric's going, so you needn't bother yourself about that either.”

“All right! I hope there's no girls handy there, that's all,” commented Wilfred, unabashed, “or you'll have the whole thing happening over again.”

Dyson brought his clenched fist down angrily on the table, causing the hapless Eric to give a frightened start.

“Don't talk to me about it!” he shouted, his sanguine face suddenly empurpled. “Do you hear?”

“I hear all right,” returned Wilfred in a defiant tone. “But shouting won't change my opinion.”

His father gave him an angry glare; but his respect for Wilfred's common sense was only equalled by the irritation it caused him, and in the event he allowed Eric to remain at home, merely extracting from the cowed lad a promise that he would not go to his uncle's house, and enjoining strict attendance at the mill. Thither Wilfred immediately carried his brother, extracting from him
en route
all the particulars of the story, from Eric's first impression of Annice at the station to Dyson's absolute prohibition of a marriage between them last night. Wilfred's opinion of it was that it was a bad job, very. Lydia would be terribly upset, he was sure. Eric ought to be
thoroughly ashamed of himself, and he hoped he was. Fortunately, however, Eric could make it pretty well all right by marrying Annice promptly.