South Riding (32 page)

“Yes. To a large extent.”

“You don’t believe then in a higher providence?”

“Not if it means just knuckling under as soon as things grow difficult, and calling that God’s will. I think we have to play our own providence—for ourselves and for future generations. If the growth of civilisation means anything, it means the gradual reduction of the areas ruled by chance— providence, if you like.”

“Chance?” The grey spring twilight seemed to reflect the melancholy of the older woman’s sigh. All her habitual gaiety was subdued. “Life isn’t as easy as all that. There’s so much hardship, so little means of helping. If you give too much here, another must go without there. If you strain the law here, you’ll break it there. We do what we can, but that’s so little. We need patience.”

“Oh, patience!” flashed Sarah. “Surely we need courage even more,” and through her mind passed a procession of generations submitting patiently to all the old evils of the world—to wars, poverty, disease, ugliness and disappointment, and calling their surrender submission to Providence.

“We need courage, not so much to endure as to act. All this resignation stunts us. We’re so busy resigning ourselves to the inevitable, that we don’t even ask if it
is
inevitable. We spend so much time accommodating ourselves to other people’s standards, we don’t even ask if our own might not be better. We’re so much occupied in letting live that we haven’t begun to live.” She drew a deep breath as though she had received a revelation. “That’s it. That’s it. We haven’t even begun to learn yet how to live. We’re still a blind and stumbling race of savages, crawling up out of the primeval slime, trailing behind us fears and superstitions and prejudices like jungle weeds, and not daring to get rid of them because patience and resignation are still accounted virtues. We’ve got to have courage, to take our future into our hands. If the law is oppressive, we must change the law. If tradition is obstructive, we must break tradition. If the system is unjust, we must reform the system. ‘Take what you want,’ says God. ‘Take it and pay for it.’ ”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Beddows quietly. “But who pays?”

Before Emma Beddows there passed another picture—not Sarah’s panorama of abstractions, but the concrete memory of life as she had found it: of the neat little self-assured man whom she had married, and had found to be as empty of human kindness as a withered hazel nut; of her son, so strong, so gay, so full of promise, choking out his life in the army hospital, dying from pneumonia after gas poisoning in a war which had come upon them all like an upheaval of the earth; of her daughter-in-law, Willie’s Jean, dead beside her stillborn baby; of Muriel Carne, crouched on the sunlit floor, her beauty marred and raddled, her wild senseless cries lamenting incurable woe. She saw the wreckage of the mental hospitals, which she had to visit, the derelicts in the county institutions, the painful optimism of the coughing, bright-eyed patients in the sanatoria, the bleak defeat of hope and independence which brought applicants before the public assistance committees. She saw Carne of Maythorpe, betrayed in love, in fatherhood, in prestige, in prosperity, by circumstances which neither courage nor intelligence could have altered. She had seen compassion impotent and effort wasted. She was an old woman. She felt sorry for the wilful unbroken girl before her. “It isn’t as easy as all that.”

“Then you won’t help me?” Sarah might have known, she told herself, that she would get nothing out of Mrs. Beddows that evening.

“I didn’t say that. We can keep the scholarship open in case she’s able to return later. Boarding’s a different matter. She’s too near. We can’t exceed our powers.”

The door opened. Mr. Beddows slid in, a grey, ghostlike figure. He did not see the women in the alcove by his wife’s desk. Cautiously he stole forward and lifted, first one cover from the supper table, and then another. Not red currant jelly
and
mint sauce, he decided. Not boiled eggs in the salad. Not jam
and
custard with the blancmange. Quietly, silently, he crept back to the larder carrying those dishes which he considered to betoken unwarrantable extravagance. He replaced the blue tin cages. He retreated.

Mrs. Beddows, looking through the mirror which, above her desk, reflected in miniature the dim green evening, never saw him. Sarah, staring, fascinated, found no word to say. She felt that she had accidentally spied upon the skeleton in the alderman’s cupboard. She could be angry no longer.

“I’ll go and see the Hollies. If I can do anything,” repeated Mrs. Beddows.

She rose. It was all unsatisfactory. She was not quite sure that Sarah Burton had the common sense, the sober stability of temperament that she had hoped.

The interview was at an end. She switched on the light. The ugly crowded room leapt into full view, the supper table, the mantelpiece, the Death of Nelson. By the clock stood an Easter card drawn by Midge. Three rather nebulous but soulful angels, with immense eyes, adorned it, and a chime of golden bells tied with pale blue ribbon.

“Is this the sort of thing you teach at Kiplington?”

“I hope not.” laughed Sarah. “Who did it? Oh—Midge Carne.”

“How’s she getting on?”

“Not so badly. Poor little Midge.”

“She likes school.”

“Who wouldn’t? After that great, gloomy, isolated house.”

“You’ve seen it?”

“Yes.” Sarah outlined the circumstances of her visit. She was amusing. She could tell a good story. She did not describe the moment when she had stepped back from the shadowed portrait, the candles in her hand.

“I didn’t know,” said Mrs. Beddows. “He didn’t tell me.”

A less honest woman might have pretended. Mrs. Beddows was hurt. A chill invaded her heart. He might have told me.

“I don’t suppose it ever entered his head again,” smiled Sarah. “He obviously dislikes me.”

“Oh, no—I’m sure he doesn’t,” said Mrs. Beddows falsely.

“Why shouldn’t he? We’re natural antagonists. We dislike everything each other stands for.” The implication of antagonism established a bond between the teacher and the councillor which Mrs. Beddows found herself resenting.

“Still you did save his cow,” she smiled with generous effort.

“I don’t think he was grateful,” laughed Sarah.

“Men never are,” said Mrs. Beddows. “After all, why should they be?”

Sarah, on her way to the door, turned as Mrs. Beddows switched off the light again, and felt that they had shut up into that room more than Midge’s card and the cluttered desk and the cold Sunday supper; she felt that a question remained there curled on the still air like a smoke ring.

“Take what you want,” said Sarah, “take it and pay for it.”

“But who pays?” asked Mrs. Beddows.

S
ARAH WAS
not the only person to be troubled by the problem of the Hollies. Councillor Huggins was almost equally concerned. His fortuitous presence at the Shacks had affected him profoundly.

For when Lydia sprang from the gateway calling for help to the man who drove the lorry, Huggins had been in that vulnerable state of super-sensitiveness which accompanies spiritual convalescence. The grey April afternoon which had terrified Lydia by its chill indifference calmed Huggins’ soul to humble gratitude.

For Snaith had saved him. Bessy was safely married to Reg Aythorne. The money had been quietly handed over. With it Reg had bought the sheds on Leame Ferry Waste and the uneven marshy ground immediately surrounding them. On these he had raised a mortgage from a Kiplington undertaker, Mr. Stillman, to whom Huggins had hinted that land values on the Wastes were likely to go up a bit now that the new Skerrow road was to be built. With Stillman’s loan, Reg and Bessy had acquired the coveted general shop at Dollstall, and there they were, all settled down as easily as though no financial earthquake had recently threatened the whole fortress of Huggins’ reputation.

Of course he would one day have to pay off Snaith; but that would be quite easy. Within six months, as soon as the housing scheme went through, the old warehouses would be trebled or quadrupled in value. Reg would pay off the mortgage, repay Huggins’ loan, still hold the Dollstall business, and nobody would be a penny halfpenny the worse for it.

That was what came of trusting in the Lord. God could work miracles—God and a God-fearing man like Snaith worth half a million.

Since his appeal to the alderman, Huggins had lost all fear of Snaith. They were now allies, confederates in a complex but meritorious plan to make the wilderness rejoice and the desert blossom like the rose. They were doing God’s work. They were both His servants.

Though Councillor Huggins’ financial transactions might be complicated, his mind was simple enough. When he was disturbed by the tragedy of Mrs. Holly’s death his immediate reaction was a desire to do something about it. Because Snaith had helped him once, he would help him again. Because the Leame Ferry Waste Housing Scheme was to be the salvation of Mr. Huggins, it must also become the salvation of threatened mothers.

Why had Mrs. Holly died? Because she had given birth to a child under impossible conditions. The Shacks were insanitary and unfit for human habitation. The Shacks must go. Where should their present residents find refuge? In the Leame Ferry Garden Village, of course.

There was no proper maternity hospital nearer than Kingsport. And that was overcrowded; there had been complaints about it. A new annexe for mothers had been suggested as part of the General Hospital, but the money had not yet been raised nor the site chosen. Where should such a site be found if not on the cheapest and most convenient land available—Leame Ferry Waste? Why not? Why not indeed?

That the incidents of Bessy’s blackmail and Mrs. Holly’s death should find identical remedy, appeared to Huggins wholly as an act of guidance. He was being led to do the Lord’s work. He saw all this tribulation as a pointing finger.

He rang up Snaith to say that he must see him before the next meeting of the Public Health Committee. Snaith was just off to Manchester on business, and only returning the same day as the committee. Was it urgent? Yes, yes! All Huggins’ ideas, as they occurred to him, were urgent. Was it private? No, not at all. Mrs. Holly’s death had upset him. It had given him an idea about the new Maternity Annexe. He wanted to discuss it before the committee met.

He thought he heard a sigh at the other end of the telephone. Relief, fatigue, impatience? But Snaith’s clear even voice reached him across the buzzing wire.

“Well, my train gets in to Flintonbridge at 12.30. Could you meet me for lunch at the Golden Ball? Quarter to one? Good.”

It happened that the Public Health Special Committee met in May. It was market day in Flintonbridge and the little town was astir with life.

Huggins arrived early at the Golden Ball—an old-fashioned inn, famous for its cooking and popular with sportsmen. He was told that Mr. Snaith had reserved a table and followed the waiter to one laid for two people in the bow window of the coffee-room. Impressed as ever by this evidence of Snaith’s power and foresight, he sat down to await his host and watched the busy coloured scene before him. The stalls were piled high with scarlet tomatoes, clear green lettuces, tufted bundles of white-whisked crimson radishes. Sacks of new potatoes squatted low on the cobbles. Fowls, plucked and dressed, dangled limp skinny necks; cottage women offered for sale long sticks of bright pink rhubarb and bunches of forget-me-nots or wallflowers. Enterprising young farmers’ wives in white drill overalls sold their own butter, eggs and cheese, calling to husbands and friends who rattled round the square in their dusty Fords. The scene appeared so pleasant and animated that it gave the lie to tales of the slump, the agricultural depression.

They’re well enough, thought Huggins. They don’t need derating. Their wives don’t die in childbed in wretched hovels for want of proper attention. Look at this pub! Full of ’em. Look at these girls, dolled up, going to the cinema this afternoon, tea at the café, hunt balls and point-to-points, I shouldn’t wonder. They ought to be made to pay. What if the rates do go up?

He worked himself into a fine state of moral indignation before Snaith crossed the square towards the Golden Ball.

He walked quickly, lightly, daintily, moving like a wraith among the noisy people. Nobody greeted him; he spoke to nobody. This was not his kingdom. But when he entered the dining-room of the hotel and made for the window table, Huggins felt a warmth of admiration and championship stir his heart.

Snaith gave an order to the lethargic waiter.

Huggins launched forth into a denunciation of the wealthy and idle farmers. Snaith listened quietly, his subtle face showing not even amusement.

After a pause, he said, “What is this case of a Mrs. Holly?”

Huggins told him and began to enlarge upon the enormity of the Shacks as a place of residence. Snaith noted down one or two facts in a slim leather-covered book. Huggins watched with fascination the gold pencil moving so neatly and evenly over the lined paper. By such neatnesses were millions acquired.

The waiter was slow.

Snaith touched the bell again.

“They’re half asleep here.”

“They’re not accustomed to busy men,” laughed Huggins. “Only farmers.”