The Rise of Henry Morcar (17 page)

The calm silver light, the perfect stillness, the silence, mocked him; he could have borne the torment of his heart better, he thought, in storm and rain. Even nature was out of sympathy with him, even Marthwaite Moor thought he was a fool for his pains. A fool, a fool, a simple, soft, silly credulous fool! He remembered his engagement and marriage—how Winnie had forced it, hurried it on. He remembered also that she had said:
I always loved you, Harry
—and laughed in self-derision. He had believed that? He had been flattered by that? He remembered Winnie's eagerness to have a house of her own—an eagerness with which he had softly, sentimentally, sympathised. A home of her own— to conceal her lover, her bastard child, from the eyes of her family, of course. Morcar laughed aloud, and the echoes of this cynical and raucous mirth rolled away among the rocks. Who was her lover, he wondered? Which face at the tennis club, in the Army, was reproduced in Baby Harry? He spared a moment of unselfish grief for the child, a gentle and affectionate being, guiltless, whom he could have loved. If Winnie had only held her tongue, thought Morcar cynically, as she did on my other visits, during the war—if she had only held her tongue I should never have known and I should have loved that kid like a son. Who was his father? Which other part of Morcar's life had that treachery blasted?

In this hour of frightful disillusion it was not only his relation with Winnie which floundered in filthy and putrid mud such as he had seen in Flanders; his whole life seemed to crack across its surface, to gape, to reveal obscene and squalid truths below. That old scene with the Prospect Mills weights, for instance—he now believed Mr. Shaw had known of the unstamped light weight's presence, had been a party even to its use against unsuspecting customers. That explained, thought Morcar with a knowing smile, his sudden anger against the lad who revealed the weight to the Inspector. Again, Mr. Shaw's unexpectedly affable agreement
to Morcar's departure to the Oldroyds'—Morcar thought he understood it now. Mr. Shaw had had Morcar trained at somebody else's expense, securing his services again just when, and only when, they became of value. The plan had probably been in his mind the whole time. Mr. Shaw's protest, that very night— was it only that night? It seemed a century ago—that he saw no place at Prospect Mills for Morcar, what was it but an attempt to get him at a cheaper price? Morcar had been a fool all his life, a credulous gaping fool, a fool whom others laughed at, whom cleverer men bought and sold while he received nothing. No, he was not altogether a fool, argued Morcar; he had his captaincy, won by merit, he had his medal. A medal for bringing in a dead man, retorted the new Morcar; a medal for an act unproductive of good to God or man, useless, stupid, sterile. I shan't hang such a medal on my watch-chain. And what was the whole war indeed but insensate, useless? He felt a savage scorn for his uniform, his ribbon; he wanted to throw it off, to tear it up, to burn it. He remembered that he had civilian clothes at his mother's house, and swung round at once to make for them.

He found that he stood in a waste of rock and heather from which no discernible path seemed to lead; but what of that, thought Morcar contemptuously; far to the left, across a confluence of two distant valleys, a narrow thread of white hinted at the road which crossed the Pennine pass at the level of the Ire Valley; he could orientate himself by that; such a small matter as being lost in the middle of Marthwaite Moor would not now trouble him. For it seemed to him as if the shock of Winnie's betrayal had peeled a thick layer of protective fat from his brain, so that the raw nerves, apt for perception as for suffering, lay exposed to every wind that blew. In the old life Morcar had been slow, placid, mild; nobody now would be more rapid in perception, more critical, more ruthless than he. He pushed swiftly through the tough black wiry stems of the heather, the rusty fronds of last year's bracken, avoided the rocks and the hollows with a light quick step, gained the upper road and hurried down towards Hurst.

The little suburb slept; the pubs, the chapels, the shops, the houses, all were quiet and dark, doors shut, blinds drawn. Morcar glanced at his luminous watch, relic of trench warfare; the hands showed between two and three. From consideration less for his mother than for the scandal it might start—“I shall need all the reputation I've got,” thought Morcar, setting his teeth— he did not knock on his mother's door. He had not been a soldier four years for nothing, he reflected, drawing out his knife; he forced back the trumpery catch, lifted the window easily and
climbed into the living-room almost without a sound. Flinging off his khaki tunic, he lay down on the sofa and tried to sleep.

He had been through so many emotions that day that he was exhausted and slept heavily till the sound of workers' footsteps in the street outside woke him with a start. It was not yet quite daylight. He lay still for a moment and the full realisation of what had happened swept over him.

“There are two ways of taking this sort of thing,” he said to himself. “Bend or stiffen. The soft or the hard. I shall take the hard.”

A new epoch of his life began from that moment.

He rose, lit the fire, washed, went upstairs and looked out some civilian clothes. Then remembering that Mrs. Morcar used to keep a set of his father's old-fashioned razors, he went into her room to find them. Not hitting upon the right drawer immediately, he raised the blind, and Mrs. Morcar awoke. She peered at him, frightened. The old Morcar would have soothed, explained, apologised, but the new Morcar coldly stated his errand, accepted his mother's direction—“How old she looks without her teeth,” he thought brutally—and carried the razors downstairs without further words.

His mother soon followed, dressed with her usual neatness but looking scared and pale.

“I'll have breakfast with you, Mother,” said Morcar, shaving.

“Harry,” began Mrs. Morcar piteously, folding and refolding a towel she held in her hand.

“Winnie and I have finished with each other, Mother,” said Morcar.

“Oh, Harry!”

“That's all there is to it; there's no more to be said. So don't try to say anything,” said Morcar.

“She was never the girl for you, Harry,” mourned Mrs. Morcar. “I always knew it. I didn't want you to go into business with the Shaws, on that account. You should have had someone softer. But it's too late for all that, Harry,” she said in a firmer tone. She came close to him and laid her left hand on his arm. Morcar found himself peculiarly susceptible to wedding-rings on women's hands, and winced.

“Yes, it's too late,” he said.

“Far too late,” said his mother with dignity. “Winnie's your wife and the mother of your child, Harry, and you have a duty to her.”

Morcar exclaimed, then bit off the exclamation before it was completed. The full implications of his situation rushed upon him. He saw that he had to decide at once what line he meant
to take about Winnie. Was he to attempt a divorce? He could not see himself publicly accusing Charlie's sister of adultery. Besides, it was all so long ago. The child was more than two years old. He had “condoned” Winnie's betrayal technically, he supposed, for all that time. Or if that was perhaps not the legal view, and a divorce remained possible, what evidence could he procure? And how procure it? Who was the child's father? Some fellow who was in Annotsfield round about the new year in 1916, Morcar calculated bitterly. If Charlie had not been killed the year before, none of this would have happened, he reflected, cursing himself again for allowing Charlie to spring up above the lip of the crater. Who would know Winnie's lover besides Winnie? Could he endure to confront her with the demand for his name? Would she ever yield it? It seemed clear to him now that Winnie had sought his protection in marriage because her lover either could not or would not give her his own. He's probably rotting in a shell-hole by now, anyway, reflected Morcar. The shell-hole brought Charlie back again, and Morcar knew with certainty that he could not in public or in private accuse Charlie's sister. He decided at once upon silence.

“Winnie and I will never live together again, Mother,” he said. “I can't go into it all, but there it is. It's settled.”

“But little Harry, love?” pleaded his mother.

“It's all finished and done with, Mother,” said Morcar, wiping his razor.

His mother, her pale face fallen into deep lines of perplexity and distress, slowly moved away, and with a long tremulous sigh began to fill the kettle.

As they sat at breakfast together a knock sounded on the door. Mrs. Morcar's face lighted with hope, her son's became correspondingly more sombre.

“Come in!” called Morcar.

The sneck of the latch lifted, and there entered a shabby tousled lad in his teens with a nervous look.

“Mr. Henry Morcar?” he piped. “Mr. Shaw told me to come up from Prospect to you with a message. He telephoned.”

“Aye. Well?” said Morcar.

“Mr. Shaw says: You need not trouble to come to the mill any more,” said the boy, repeating the words in a parrot tone to show their authenticity, very clear and conscientious.

“Thanks,” said Morcar drily. On an impulse he felt in his pocket and gave the lad a sixpenny piece. The boy's eyebrows twitched in astonishment, then as he withdrew he involuntarily gave a smile of pleasure. Mrs. Morcar burst into tears.

“If you've done wrong in France, Harry, all the same Winnie should forgive you,” she wailed.

“It's not a question of forgiveness.”

“She's your wife,” mourned Mrs. Morcar, sobbing. “But you never should have married her.”

“It's no use crying over spilt milk, Mother,” said Morcar at length. “We own this house, don't we?”

Mrs. Morcar, startled, raised a tear-flushed face. “Yes.”

“Where are the title-deeds?”

“They're upstairs,” faltered Mrs. Morcar. “Why?”

“Mother, you'll have to lend them to me,” said Morcar.

“But you wouldn't sell the house, Harry?” wailed his mother.

“No—only borrow money on it,” said Morcar. “I'm going to set up in manufacturing on my own. Get me the deeds.”

“But——”

“Get me the deeds,” repeated Morcar hardly.

By ten o'clock he was closeted with his lawyer in Annotsfield. He instructed him to dispose of the incompletely purchased Hurstcote by negotiation with the Building Society, to ensure the possession of its furnishings to Winnie, and to inform her that her husband would provide her with the necessary evidence for a divorce. Meanwhile, pending the legal provision of alimony, he would contribute to her upkeep as far as lay in his power—at present, said Morcar, he could not offer her more than two pounds ten a week. The lawyer's well-meant attempts to suggest an interview, hint at a reconciliation and in other ways interpose delay, Morcar brushed aside.

“We shall never live together again, so the affair must be wound up now,” he said.

The mystified lawyer hinted that possibly a legal separation might be wise.

“What would be the use of that?” said Morcar. “A divorce is what we need.”

“An interview,” began the lawyer.

“Any interview between myself and any of the Shaws is out of the question,” said Morcar. “Please make it quite clear to my wife that I shall not initiate a divorce—I could not do so, of course,” he added hurriedly—“but I am taking steps to provide her with evidence on which she can divorce me. I shall not defend any divorce suit she brings. Good-day.”

By eleven Morcar was talking to his father's banker. By twelve he had money in his pocket. By three that afternoon he had rented a room and bought two looms.

“Why should you think I like to remember an occasion when I was wrong?” asked Mr. Butterworth testily. His silver hair sparser than of old, his pink cheeks more pendulous, his body plumper, the merchant sat in his private office and scowled at Morcar, loftily disregarding the patterns on the desk before him.

“Because it's the only time in your life when you
have
been wrong, Mr. Butterworth,” Morcar informed him cheerfully. “If I were making a lot of cloth for you, it would make you a splendid selling anecdote. You could sell hundreds of yards of striped suiting on that story alone.”

“I'm surprised you didn't stay on at Oldroyds',” said Mr. Butterworth, flipping his thumbnails.

“A private matter,” said Morcar easily. He knew that rumours about himself and Winnie had lacerated his reputation, but did not intend to show a scratch on his public surface.

“Why didn't you stay at Shaws?”

“The same private matter,” said Morcar, smiling.

“What is it you want from me, young man?” enquired the merchant crossly. “Is it a job? Do you want me to recommend you to a manufacturer?”

“Nay, Mr. Butterworth,” said Morcar pleasantly: “I'm a manufacturer myself, you know. What I want is a good customer.”

“I know the kind of manufacturer
you
are,” said Mr. Butterworth rudely. “You've taken one 'room with power' in a tumbledown old place out at Denbridge, and are weaving a few pieces a week on commission.”

“You're out of date, Mr. Butterworth,” said Morcar mildly.

“Eh?”

“That was two years ago. I have a couple of floors now and I'm making forty pieces a week.”

Mr. Butterworth snorted. “Well—I'll look at your suitings,” he said grudgingly. “Though I don't suppose for a moment you're making the class of stuff I care to buy.”

Morcar displayed his patterns.

“They're not bad,” said Mr. Butterworth reluctantly at length. “They're not bad at all.”

When Morcar left the merchant, he had a good order from him in his pocket.