Sleep in Peace (64 page)

Laura, searching the room for some clue to this cryptic remark, saw, pinned to the wall behind Madeline's back, an oblong sheet, an odd mess of black and blue. She looked closer, and perceived that it was, in fact, some black brushwork on a rough blue paper which had probably been a sugar-bag. Madeline reached out a hand and took it down.

“I was just studying the design,” she remarked.

She did not offer to show the drawing to her aunt, and Laura, well understanding this reserve, scrupulously refrained from glancing towards it; excusing her visit by a remark about some household arrangement, she withdrew.

She was rather struck, however, by the notion of studying the design of a drawing reversed in a mirror and upside down; so
much struck, indeed, that she took a step she had previously hesitated over, and asked Mr. Quarmby to find out how Madeline was getting on in Leeds. Mr. Quarmby understood her difficulty at once, as he always did, and promised to make the enquiry without appearing to do so. The result, however, was to disturb Laura about her niece's progress rather more than before.

“They say they can't teach her anything,” said Mr. Quarmby. “She can only work if she's left alone. They can't teach her anything at all—if they try to make her view a structure logically, for instance, her drawing seems to turn out more confused than ever, if you see what I mean.”

“Does that mean that she has no talent, or a great deal?” asked the startled Laura.

“It might be either,” replied Mr. Quarmby, shaking his head. “It's too early to tell.” He added apologetically: “She's rather erratic in her work, you know.”

Laura sighed. She had a horrid vision of a
poseur
, one of those people who did no work and were extremely conceited about it, who attributed their failure to jealousy in others, and sneered at the successful. Madeline's silence might as easily be one of arrogance as of modesty. At the end of her first year she won no prizes, and none of her work was shown in the students' exhibition; the Armisteads, used to Laura's small triumphs of this kind, were disappointed, and Gwen began to grumble that Madeline was wasting her time, doing no good.

“It's too early to tell yet whether she has talent or no,” said Laura, warding off this attack with a decision she by no means felt: “You can't possibly tell till she is older and has finished her course.”

It was all very worrying. However, Madeline at least did not obtrude her art, and Laura was usually able to forget it, put it right out of her mind. Only sometimes at night, when she awoke to a sudden consciousness of all the appalling difficulties under
which her family laboured, the thought of her niece's mistaken effort was an added wretchedness.

For the country's economic affairs grew more and more unsatisfactory, and the affairs of the Armisteads followed a parallel course.

That spring the Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Snowden—for whom, since he was a Yorkshireman, even Ludo had a sneaking admiration—in introducing a Budget with an expected deficit of an astronomical number of millions, spoke of “the economic blizzard, more severe than our generation has ever known”; while Mr. Armistead paced the dining-room of Blackshaw House in anguish, crying that he had never seen such times before—”grass will grow in the streets of Bradford,” he said. After all these years of honest business, he lamented, he greatly feared he would be obliged to call his creditors together very soon.

“Nonsense, Papa,” Gwen rallied him. “You must just go on, and hope that things will take a turn.”

“If we go on much longer,” said Ludo grimly, “our creditors won't get sixpence in the pound.”

“And what shall
we
get, if Papa calls them together now?” demanded Gwen in an angry tone. “What would happen to my five hundred pounds?”

“We can't go on like this indefinitely,” mumbled Ludo. “It isn't honest. You ought not to continue business when you've become insolvent.”

This conversation was repeated,
ad lib
and
da capo
, as Laura sadly reflected, during the next few months, while the Royal Commission appointed to report on the state of the unemployment insurance fund came to the conclusion that this expenditure must be cut down by some forty million pounds. Meanwhile Mr. Armistead, in a desperate attempt to cut down
his
expenditure,
gave notice to several more of his workpeople. A great many other employers, similarly desperate, did the same; the queues grew, and there was a riot at the Hudley Labour Exchange. The whole country felt restless and insecure, the price of shares constantly fell; presently the bank informed Mr, Armistead that the security he had deposited for his overdraft had sunk in value, and they must have further cover. Wincing and groaning, bewailing his failure to provide for his children, Mr. Armistead threw in his last insurance policy, on which he had paid premiums for more than fifty years. This covered the drop in his securities, and gave him a certain amount—though abominably little, as he considered—of extra overdraft.

“Really you'd think the banks don't want to help the manufacturers to survive,” commented Laura.

“Help?” said Ludo. “The banks?
Help?
All they want is to cut their own losses. However, we shall be all right for a few months now.”

Unfortunately this prophecy was not fulfilled. A series of minor crises supervened, periods when, perhaps for a couple of days only, Mr. Armistead had drawn up to the limit of his overdraft and could draw no more, and yet needed some ready money. One such crisis occurred when, a certain merchant finding himself unable to pay his account for the moment, Mr. Armistead discovered that without exceeding the agreed overdraft he could not pay his wages bill that week. Remembering the former occasion when this had happened and Blackshaw House had been deprived of some three pounds, Laura offered her father the small sum she had saved and held in the bank.

“It's a mere drop in the ocean,” said Mr. Armistead peevishly. “No use at all. You must learn to stick to what you've got, Laura, and not go offering it to people all over the place.”.

It was maddening to be brought down by such a comparatively small sum after so many large-scale difficulties had been successfully negotiated, and Mr. Armistead in his exasperation would
even have been willing to seek a private loan, if he had known anyone in the West Riding able to make such a loan on short notice at the moment. But he did not.

That evening as he sat over his newspaper, restless and dismal, Geoffrey summoned him to the telephone—a trunk call, the lad said. The family, whose nerves were in such a state that they constantly expected disasters, listened intently to catch the tones of his voice, but could not judge whether the news were good or bad. He returned looking somewhat embarrassed.

“It's your Grandmother—she's suddenly passed away,” he said.

“As if we hadn't enough trouble on our hands just now without that!” cried Gwen. Seeing that her father looked somewhat shocked, she added hastily: “Poor old Grandmamma! It's a happy release, of course.”

Laura, who always felt ashamed of their neglect of old Mrs. Armistead and her daughter, whenever she remembered them, realised that Gwen was ashamed too; what Ludo's emotions were concerning Ashworth she preferred not to enquire, though she looked at him covertly.

“I shall have to go over there to-morrow, I suppose,” said Mr. Armistead with a worried look. “And then the day after, for the funeral. It's very awkward, especially this week.”

“Let me go to-morrow to make the arrangements, Father; then you need only be away from the mill on the day of the funeral,” offered Ludo.

Mr. Armistead agreed, relieved; and Laura also felt relief. Ludo would thus have time to arrange—to arrange what?—before Mr. Armistead visited the Ashworth household.

Mr. Armistead had clung to his car through all his troubles, since without it he would be confined to very narrow limits, on account of his increasing lameness. Ludo usually drove it; but since Blackshaw Mills really could not be left without a head in the present crisis, Mr. Armistead instructed one of the mill lorry
drivers to chauffeur him to Ashworth on the day of the funeral. Gwen went with him, Laura being engaged with her class. Laura thought the arrangement a good one, since Ludo and Mr. Armistead thus went singly to Ashworth, not together, and she hoped the visits would pass over without untoward discoveries.

She was not prepared, however, for her father's expression when the car drew up at the Blackshaw House door on his return from the funeral and she hurried out to help him descend. Mr. Armistead positively wore a look of naughty glee, of almost febrile pleasure. Gwen too seemed happy, almost smiling, in the odd collection of black garments which she and Laura had managed to assemble for the occasion. Mr. Armistead limped into the dining-room, followed by the puzzled Laura. He stood with his back to the hearth, as in days of old, jingling his money in his pockets, smiling.

“Look at that, Laura,” he said, pointing to a bag he had thrown down on the table; an old leather bag, with a tarnished chain handle, which Laura now dimly remembered having seen in her grandmother's possession.

She opened it, and exclaimed in amazement; for the bag was full of gold.

“Why!” said Laura, taking up a handful: “Surely these are—”

“Sovereigns!” cried Mr. Armistead, chuckling. “They were your grandmother's. There are some Treasury notes as well.”

“Are there a great many?” cried Laura, laughing and amazed.

“No—only about a hundred altogether. But they'll help me out with my wages bill this week,” said Mr. Armistead, laughing in his turn. “Of course they came from me, originally.”

This was true. Mr. Armistead had of course sent money for his mother's support ever since she left Blackshaw House, when Ludo first went away to school. The old woman, thrifty, as all her generation, had put some aside each week, and treasured the gold in a secret hoard through all the Government's appeals for this invaluable
commodity. Since Mr. Armistead was his mother's sole legatee and sole executor, the money was his and he had brought it away with him, to solve his wages problem.

It was impossible not to be amused, startled and entertained by the incident; but Laura also felt disgusted. It was a feverish incident, which could only have happened in the present unbalanced times; she could not help feeling that the convenience of her grandmother's death was an outrage on human decency. The story was told to Ludo and Geoffrey respectively, when they came in. Ludo frowned—his delicate moral sense (though how could one speak of his delicate moral sense when one remembered Eva Byram, wondered Laura) was troubled. Geoffrey, who had never seen his great-grandmother, exclaimed: “Poor old bird!” and when rebuked by Mr. Armistead for disrespect, explained that he only meant it was jolly decent of her. When, later, Madeline returned from Leeds, nobody spoke to her of the unexpected legacy, and Laura was glad of this reticence. For the moment, however, the Armistead financial situation was saved—saved by the thrift of our Victorian forefathers, thought Laura, drawing national parallels.

But all too soon the respite was over, and the same tedious difficulties began again. Mr. Snowden admitted publicly that the country's financial situation was serious, just as August came in, and the nation's confidence was seriously shaken. August was a flat month for trade in any year; in this year, with rumours flying round that England was already practically bankrupt and the Trades Union Congress had declined to allow the Government to cut down the unemployment benefit, there was almost no trade at all. In Blackshaw House wretchedness grew daily, for a deadly weariness was beginning to weigh down the Armisteads' minds at the continual recurrence of the same old problems: the spinner, the wages bill, the bank, the merchants who were unable to pay their accounts for the moment. Ludo's happy beaming air, when he returned every morning to the breakfast-table from an
early service he was beginning to call Mass, almost distracted Gwen and Laura by the contrast it offered to their father's haggard face and shaking fingers. Ludo's face soon lost its glow when he returned to everyday life, however; he was sickened, as they were, by the monotony of their suspense. The nation's confidence ebbed and ebbed; presently the bank began to press Mr. Armistead again for further cover, since his securities had again dropped in value—the very words were now odious to Laura—and again he paced the room at night, crying that after all these years he would be obliged to call his creditors together. Again Gwen, rallying her exhausted energies, stiffened and reassured him.

But now at last, overwhelmed by difficulties, the Labour Government fell. A National Government, composed of members of all parties, was formed, pledged to drastic economies.

Mr. Armistead was delighted. Business would be all right again now, he said joyfully, for those who could last out long enough, those who could weather the storm. Whether he himself would be one of those lucky ones, however, he greatly doubted.

“You
must
, Papa,” Gwen told him firmly.

In mingled anguish, optimism and bravado, Mr. Armistead now threw into the struggle the last piece of property he had, namely the title-deeds of Blackshaw House. If Blackshaw Mills failed now, the Armisteads would be left without a penny in the world, and lacking even a roof over their heads.

Again there was a few weeks' peace. But one Monday morning Mr. Armistead, pale to the lips, looked up from his morning's paper and exclaimed to Ludo that a certain merchant's suicide was announced there. His account, long overdue and under promise to be paid this week, would therefore not be paid to Messrs. Armistead and Hinchliffe for a considerable period, if ever. A look of alarmed dismay settled on Ludo's face, and Mr. Armistead threw out wildly:

“I'm sadly afraid…”