Sleep in Peace (41 page)

“No! It can't go on like this! I shall go and see Henry Hinchliffe. He must come and do his share.”

“Yes, do so, Papa,” urged Laura. “Go to-morrow morning, and tell him how much you need him.”

“I shall go to-night,” said Mr. Armistead emphatically. “Give me my boots.”

He laced them with the air of a knight strapping on his spurs, threw on his hat and coat, Laura assisting, and left the house.

“I shall say to him: The country needs the cloth, and you must do your bit,” he threw back over his shoulder dramatically.

“Papa,” cried Laura, running after him: “Tell him that Blackshaw Mills was what Edward cared most for in the world.”

“Eh? What? Oh, yes,” agreed Mr. Armistead without conviction.

He covered the distance to Cromwell Place in an impetuous rush, and soon found himself in the presence of his old partner, who sat brooding by the hearth, looking a confirmed invalid, white and thin and bowed, with a rug over his knees as usual. Mrs. Hinchliffe on the other side of the hearth went on quietly with her mending.

“Henry Hinchliffe, old friend,” began Mr. Armistead, laying his hand on Mr. Hinchliffe's knee solemnly: “I've come to appeal to you for the sake of our old friendship and our grandchildren. I can't go on like this, running your business as well as my own, without any real control or power of attorney. If you go on like this you'll ruin yourself, and in ruining yourself you'll ruin me. Here's the Government wanting all this cloth, contracts about as thick as blackberries, a splendid chance for Blackshaw to get thoroughly on its feet, and you not there to take it. You ought to rouse yourself, Henry, and come up to the mill like a man and do your bit for the country. Nobody feels for your grief more than I do, Henry, but Edward would be the first to want you to look after Blackshaw Mills; he'd be just wild, would Edward, if he could see how your half of Blackshaw is going the wrong way nowadays. Besides, my lad's out there too; I may be as badly off as you any day. Either give the place up altogether, or come and take your rightful place at the head of it. I'll buy it from you if you like,” he concluded, suddenly struck by this notion: “Yes, I'll buy the machinery and goodwill from you, at a fair market price to be determined by an agreed accountant.”

Mr. Hinchliffe gave a dry throaty chuckle. “Buy it? Where would you get the money from for that, Alfred?” he demanded.

“Bless you, the banks are tumbling over themselves to lend me money nowadays,” replied Mr. Armistead heartily. Seeing that he had made an impression, he bent forward and followed it up. “The world's a different place from what it was last year, Henry,”
he said earnestly. “You've no idea what textiles are like nowadays. It goes to my heart to see all that trade going by your door and you not there to pick it up. Either come back, or sell, or else give me a power of attorney; for I can't go on as I am now, and that's flat.”

Mr. Hinchliffe pushed up his moustache with a thoughtful hand. “I'll think it over,” he murmured cautiously.

“Aye, do. But don't think too long, or you'll think yourself out of a business,” said Mr. Armistead, rising.

He returned to Blackshaw House as impetuously as he came.

“I'll bet you anything you like he'll be up there to-morrow morning,” he told Laura triumphantly. “And I managed it without once mentioning Frederick! I'll bet you anything you like!”

This hypothetical bet was duly won, for to the amazement of Frederick, who knew nothing of the night's stimulating interview, Mr. Hinchliffe actually returned to work next morning. His father offered Frederick no explanations, but after a few sharp queries took charge of everything that was going on, telephoned customers and galvanised the departments into swifter work by a brisk tour round the mill. He looked pale, and grew very peevish as the day went on, but he kept his ordinary mill hours, and merely snorted contemptuously without replying, when Frederick suggested that he might be tired, and should leave early. In a few days he was his old self, and Messrs. Hinchliffe functioned at their full strength again. Mr. Armistead was jubilant; he told Laura gleefully one day that he had dropped in on Henry and asked him to keep an eye on things across the archway while he himself went off to Leeds.

“What did Mr. Hinchliffe say to that?” asked Laura, amused.

“He couldn't very well say anything, but he looked plenty,” replied Mr. Armistead with gusto. “He doesn't fancy looking after anybody's business but his own, doesn't our Henry.”

The Government's demands increased, both sides of Blackshaw Mills were “pulled out of the place” with business, and presently
a rumour sprang up in the house, from where Laura could not tell, that Messrs. Armistead and Co. and Messrs. Hinchliffe and Co. were to re-unite, and become one limited company. Who had first made this suggestion, and what were its true reasons, Laura also did not know, and she was never told, though she could see for herself some of its obvious advantages; she first realised that the proposal was genuine one Sunday afternoon when, on entering the drawing-room where she had left Gwen alone with Mr. Armistead, she heard her sister exclaim in a peevish tone:

“But what's to happen to
my
shares?”

“We shall change them into shares in the new business,” explained Mr. Armistead, with that air of speaking in words of one syllable because he was speaking to a woman, which so irritated Laura.

From then onwards for four or five weeks Mr. Hinchliffe was often at Blackshaw House, and the two men's talk rang with banks, flotations, prospectuses, dividends, shares cumulative, preference and ordinary. Laura perceived with some pain that Frederick was left out of their consultations, while Ludo, .who after a period of light duty at headquarters was back in hospital again, was also necessarily excluded. She ventured once to communicate her thought on this point to Mr. Armistead.

“Don't you think, Papa,” she blurted, “that you ought to consult Ludo?”

“Ought to consult Ludo?” repeated Mr. Armistead in amazement. “Why? What has Ludo to do with it?”

“Presumably he'll have to work at Blackshaw Mills when the War is over,” said Laura. “And I don't much think,” she added obstinately, “that he'll like working with the Hinchliffes.”

“I suppose I may be considered the best judge of what is for the best for my own business and my own children,” said Mr. Armistead in an offended tone.

“Ludo isn't a child, Papa; he's twenty-seven,” persisted Laura.

“Pshaw!” said Mr. Armistead, resuming his newspaper. “Here
am I,” he emerged a few minutes later to say reproachfully, “planning to give you all shares in the new business, and you go on like this about something of which you know nothing whatever.”

It was true about the shares; Gwen, Ludo, Frederick, Grace and Laura were given one hundred each of the “ordinary” type, whatever that might mean, thought Laura, out of their fathers' equal allotments; in addition, Gwen received five hundred pound shares in the new company, for her old Messrs. Armistead shares, representing the sum originally loaned by her for the purchase of a gas-engine. For some reason which Laura did not quite understand even when Ludo explained it to her, Mr. Hinchliffe was cross about Gwen's shares; it seemed they just enabled the Armisteads to outvote the Hinchliffes, or something of that kind. Mr. Armistead held out firmly, however, and Mr. Hinchliffe gave in, but he insisted that a limiting proviso about the transfer of the company's shares should be inserted in the articles of association. At last it was all settled; and the stone over the archway of Blackshaw Mills no longer lied, for Messrs. Armistead, Hinchliffe and Co., once more existed. Blackshaw Mills had never been so busy since it was built, nor Mr. Armistead more irritable.

“Your grandmother's ill,” he said crossly to Laura one summer morning at the breakfast table, turning over an ill-written letter on cheap blue paper. “She wants to see me, your aunt says; but I can't possibly go. You'd better have the children here for the day, and get Gwen to go over.”

“I'd rather go myself, Papa, if you don't mind,” said Laura. She was ashamed that till this moment she had completely forgotten her aunt and her grandmother since Gwen's wedding five years ago, and still more ashamed of the unthinking snobbery which lay behind this forgetfulness.

Mr. Armistead muttered and grumbled, but he was summoned to the telephone before he could voice a decision, and rushed off to the mill immediately afterwards calling out that he should not
be back till evening; so Laura went off by a morning train to Ashworth.

The little brick street, the round fat smoke vent, the vertical letter box, the yellow lace curtains, the aspidistra with its green sash, sprang up in Laura's memory to meet their counterparts in real life, and Laura could not help rejoicing that the. Laura of to-day had her feet so much more firmly planted than that timid, shrinking little Laura who had come here on the day of her entry into womanhood. History likewise repeated itself in that Grandmamma herself again opened the door, wearing, Laura thought, precisely the same clothes and looking perfectly well and not a day older, and threw up her hands in just the same way. Her strong old face expressed pleasure and then vexation, too, just as it had done of old. “It's Laura,” she called over her shoulder, and there was a sound of scuffling within.

“I wanted to see your father,” said old Mrs. Armistead in a tone of disapproval, effectually blocking Laura's entry by simply not moving aside.

“I know; but it's impossible, Grandmamma,” explained Laura, feeling very grown-up and competent at thus making excuses for her father. “The mill is running night and day on cloth for the Government, and he can't leave it for a minute.”

Old Mrs, Armistead hesitated. Then she drew back. “Well, I suppose you'd best come in,” she said grudgingly.

Smiling brightly, Laura stepped past her. The horsehair furniture, the antimacassars, the kitchen range and the poodles with crinkled manes were just as before; in the rocking-chair by the hearth, however, sat Eva Byram, with a young baby in her lap. An old brown slipper-bath partly full of water stood in front of her on the cloth rug, and the child, a boy, lay kicking, naked, on a towel. Laura stopped dead and turned crimson. Unmarried mothers and illegitimate children were altogether beyond her experience, and she had no idea how to behave to them. Remembering, with an effort, her own emancipated views on these subjects,
she pulled herself together, advanced towards Eva and said in a choked voice:

“Good morning.”

Eva looked up and smiled, but did not speak. Her thick ripe-wheat hair lay in a plait between her shoulders, and her dirty white blouse had pulled out of her skirt, but she seemed quite unconscious of her errors, sartorial or moral. She lifted the child and held him erect, supporting his back with thick fingers; he kicked his little toes strongly against her lap.

“Eva is staying with us for a little while,” said Auntie Mary in an anxious tone, emerging hurriedly from the scullery.

“You're not with Ada, then?” Laura felt constrained to say, hating the disapproval in her own voice.

“Her husband wouldn't have me,” replied Eva calmly, beginning to dress the infant.

It was agreed that Laura should stay for dinner, and Grandmamma and Auntie Mary retired to the scullery to prepare this meal. A good deal of consultation as to provender went on, half-heard in the living-room; Laura's cheeks burned at the implication that a meal good enough for the household was not good enough for Laura.

“How old is he?” she asked, making conversation, partly to drown Grandmamma's arguments about fetching some brawn from the shop at the end of the street, partly to show a friendliness she did not quite feel but thought she ought to feel, to Eva.

“He were born in March,” replied Eva.

In spite of herself Laura did some counting, and thought: “July.” Looking up, she found that Eva had been perfectly aware of her calculations, for a sardonic smile curved her full lips, and the gaze she turned on Laura for a moment was knowing. Could it possibly be that Eva, morally speaking, stood to Laura in the relationship of sister-in-law? Oh, no, it was impossible. The child, a long lanky ugly child, thought Laura with distaste, was now clothed—adequately but not delicately; not like Gwen's children.

“What are you,” began Laura, but could not make herself say the words:
living on
. “How do you manage?” she began again.

“For money? Your brother's put me on some of his pay. I have a card—I fetch it every week from post office,” said Eva. “It was him told me to come here.”

“I see,” said Laura faintly. But a sudden indignation surged in her mind; all this was nonsense, never for one moment would she believe this of Ludo. She sat erect and looked Eva firmly in the eyes. “But the child is not really my brother's,” she said decidedly.

At once Eva's face changed. Her eyelids dropped, her full mouth closed; her whole personality shrank behind a veil, became muted. There was a long silence. Laura waited and waited, trying to force the other; girl to speak. But Eva held her tongue.

Auntie Mary came in and began to lay the table. Laura sighed, and Eva's expression lightened; both knew that it was impossible to discuss serious matters openly before the previous generation— everything awkward must be glossed over, dissimulated, for them.

“What is the baby's name?” asked Laura in a tone of artificial brightness.

“Jesse Kay,” replied Eva.

“Jesse after your brother who's in—the Army, I suppose,” said Laura, feeling an insuperable distaste to uttering the words:
in hudos company
.

“He
was
in the Army. He was gassed at Wipers. He died, you know,” said Eva laconically.

Laura felt a sharp pang, remembering Ludo, who was still, after three months, in a Boulogne hospital. For a moment she had forgotten the War. She raised her eyes to the wall, where hung a string of the Allies' flags in coloured paper, and sighed. As she turned to the hearth again she was surprised to intercept a swift strange glance from Eva, a glance which seemed to say:
I understand your grief, I have suffered too, I offer you my sympathy
. Eva was very fond of the dead Jesse, perhaps, as fond as
Laura was of Ludo? Or, after all, perhaps Eva was fond of Ludo? It was impossible to guess, and Eva would never tell; but Laura's heart stirred and warmed towards her.