The Rise of Henry Morcar Page 20

  Then in the autumn the American stock market fell, with a crash that shook the world. American banks closed, American merchants failed. Morcar suffered a loss which made him wince, but others suffered losses which made them stagger. Merchants who exported largely suffered heavily; for the first time Morcar saw a look of care on Mr. Butterworth’s plump pink face. A fresh wave of economic depression spread all over the world in widening circles, like ripples when a stone has been thrown into a pond. Next year Morcar added the name of Hawley-Smoot to his detested Dingley and McKinley, for in an attempt to retrieve the economic débâcle, the United States imposed a heavy tariff on imported manufactured goods. European states retaliated, and tariffs spread across the world like weeds—weeds which, in the rippling economic pond, prevented free motion, entangled the limbs of trade. A kind of hush spread over the West Riding; there was much feverish activity, but little open talk; men watched each other in silence to detect the first sign of faltering. It began to be rumoured that even the great firm of Armitage, even Oldroyds’, were rocking. Morcar, by the keenest, most unflagging, most expert attention to every detail of manufacture and finance, by continual thought and intensive labour over his designs, by unremitting pursuit of trade, by ruthless cutting of costs, continued to prosper. His textile acquaintances began to ask him with a peevish air how it was done, and to murmur that he was a hard man to come up against, a hard man to bargain with.

  One afternoon in the spring of 1931 Morcar, in high spirits, was on his way to Annotsfield station to catch a London train when it occurred to him that his supply of ready money, though most would have judged it sufficiently ample, was perhaps not enough to have about him when he was near the Haringtons, to whom he was giving dinner late that night. “The bank—I’ve time,” he told his chauffeur, who wrenched the wheel round and made the car leap across the square. Morcar sprang out and ran up the bank’s marble steps. On the top step he encountered Mr. Butterworth.

  “Hullo, Butterworth—sorry I haven’t a minute—just off to town!” cried Morcar breezily, laying his hand on the merchant’s arm as he passed by. “I’ve some Thistledowns coming along to you this afternoon,” he added over his shoulder.

  “Hullo, Harry,” said the merchant gruffly, without pausing.

  “Fifty, please,” said Morcar to the cashier, rapidly filling up a cheque. While he wrote he made a lightning calculation. “Butterworth looks glum—his hair’s grown very white—ill perhaps. Or perhaps something is wrong with his business,” thought Morcar, signing his name. “Yes, that’s it; he’s just come from a gruelling interview with the bank manager. He’s probably just going down—the bank has a first debenture already, I shouldn’t wonder.” If anything went wrong with Butterworth, Morcar would not get paid—or at any rate not fully paid: “Sixpence in the pound perhaps, damn it!” thought Morcar—for the cloths he had sold the merchant recently and already delivered. “No use throwing good money after bad,” thought Morcar swiftly. He made up his mind, snatched up the notes from the counter, ran out of the building and without pausing hurried across the road to Annotsfield Post Office. He telephoned Daisy Mills, glancing impatiently at his watch, and asked for his foreman.

  “Nathan,” he said: “That last lot of Thistledowns for Mr. Butterworth—have they gone yet?”

  “They’re just being loaded on t’lorries now,” said Nathan in a tone of mingled grievance and virtue—virtue that the pieces were on their way, grievance that Morcar had thought it necessary to doubt his efficiency by enquiring about them.

  “Take ’em off, will you?” said Morcar.

  “Eh?”

  “Take ’em off—there’s a hitch about the finish—I’ll explain when I get back.”

  “The finish?” began Nathan, vexed and expostulatory. “There’s nowt wrong wi’t’finish, Mr. Morcar.”

  “That’s what you think,” snapped Morcar. In imagination he could see Nathan as he was looking now, his serious fresh-coloured Yorkshire face agape, his quiff of ginger hair positively bristling, with indignant non-comprehension; the picture irritated him.

  “Well, you passed ’em yourself,” Nathan snapped back.

  “Don’t let them go,” said Morcar in a tone of command. “I want to find them at Daisy when I get back from London, do you hear?”

  “I hear,” said Nathan angrily. “But I make no sense of it. You’ve been fussing about getting those pieces off all t’week.”

  “Don’t let them go to Butterworth’s,” commanded Morcar.

  He rang off; his chauffeur was almost dancing on the kerb outside with anxiety lest he should miss his train. But Morcar was not afraid, for he felt it was one of his lucky days; by his chance encounter with the merchant and his swift telephone call he had saved himself, he felt pretty sure, the loss of a quite considerable sum of money. That he had also helped Butterworth on his road to failure, by depriving him of some stock which, easily and rapidly disposable, would have brought him some ready money at a comparatively early date, Morcar knew at the bottom of his mind but did not stop to consider.

  It was the most completely selfish act, the lowest point, the nadir, of his career.

  V. Rise

  25. Boy off Train

  “Butterworth’s down,” heard Morcar at the Club.

  “It’ll push plenty of others over as well, I shouldn’t wonder. How about you, Harry?”

  “Not too bad,” said Morcar.

  “It’ll about finish Oldroyds’, I reckon. He owed them a packet.”

  “Armitages won’t like it either.”

  “Oldroyds’ are rocky already.”

  “They’ve been going the wrong way a long time.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” said Morcar. “What Francis Old-royd knows about textiles wouldn’t cover a sixpenny piece.”

  He had occasion to repeat this at intervals during the next couple of months, for the rumours about Oldroyds’ difficulties grew stronger every day.

  “It’ll be a pity if they have to go down, though, after all these years,” said opinion at the Club.

  “How long have they been going, then?” asked Morcar.

  “You should know; you worked there.”

  “I didn’t take much notice; I was only a lad.”

  “Well, it must be at least a hundred and twenty years. Nay, it must be longer. They were in at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, if you know when that was. I don’t myself. One of them was the first to run machines in the Ire Valley, and got himself murdered as a result. Luddites and all that, you know.”

  “Ah,” said Morcar noncommittally, and turned the conversation. He had never heard of Luddites, and saw no reason why he should interest himself in the Oldroyds’ past. What interested him at the moment was the news in the papers about the flight of gold. There was a woolcombers’ strike on, too, but that was normal; this gold business was out of the ordinary and it troubled him. Bank Rate up to 3½ to check Heavy Efflux of Gold, the newspapers said, and Last Week the Bank of England lost £15,000,000 and Stopping Gold Drain—but it did not seem to stop. Morcar did not understand what the flight of gold implied—sterling and exchanges and bank rates and all that sort of thing anyway were some of these stock exchange, London, distributors’ tricks, all my eye and Betty Martin, that financiers practised to do down the manufacturers, the men who actually made the stuff, thought Morcar—but that gold should leave England was all wrong. Not respectable, somehow. Gold leaving England. What had the Government been about? England! When Morcar thought of England nowadays he thought of Christina as well. Imagine England borrowing gold from Paris and New York! England having to ask favours! Morcar felt about that as he did when he heard Harington raging at his wife; a burning anger that he could not rescue her. The Haringtons were holidaying in Sark this summer, and Morcar was to join them presently. But he felt he could not leave Annotsfield while things were so upset.

  In August it became known that Oldroyds’ were in liquidation.

  “I suppose Francis w
ill reorganise and start again,” they said uneasily at the Club. The continual disappearance nowadays of traditional textile landmarks like Oldroyds’ gave a very uncomfortable, end-of-the-world appearance to the West Riding landscape.

  “Like the rest of us,” added someone bitterly.

  “Not he! He’ll get out of textiles and go south,” said Morcar contemptuously. “I know him.”

  “The less fool he, then, that’s what I say. I wish I could do the same.”

  “I don’t like to leave a game when I’m losing,” said Morcar curtly.

  “And when you’re winning you don’t want to.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Wait till you’ve lost a quarter of a million, Harry; then you’ll change your tune.”

  “I don’t intend to lose a quarter of a million——”

  “None of us intend it.”

  “—but if I did, I shouldn’t crawl out and go south.”

  “He’d start again with two looms in a room-with-power, wouldn’t you, Harry?”

  “Summat o’ that sort,” said Morcar in the vernacular, joking to conceal his real feeling.

  At another level of his mind he was wondering about Syke Mills. If Francis Oldroyd sold up and cleared out—“and he will,” thought Morcar again contemptuously: “I know him”—the Syke Mills premises would be vacant. “Don’t think of them,” scoffed Morcar to himself: “They’re too large for you. You’d rattle about in them like a pea in a bottle.” They’re well situated, in fine condition, they’d do you credit, the other side of him argued; you’d save eventually by putting all your processes under one roof—you wouldn’t have this continual running back and forth between Booth Bank and Daisy. “Aye! But look what it’d cost—look at the responsibility—look how it would tie you up for years,” he contended. Booth Bank and Daisy are rather hole-and corner, rather mean for what you make; if you had Syke Mills, you needn’t be ashamed to show it to Christina, argued Morcar. “This is not the time for sentiment,” decided his other self hardly. “It’s a time to cut your overhead, not increase it. The Government are going to save ninety-six million on the budget; don’t you expand yours.”

  Francis Oldroyd, as Morcar predicted, decided to sell up and go south; the bank took over; nobody would buy Syke Mills as a going concern; in a three-day sale the looms and other equipment were auctioned off, falling in small lots at low prices to cautious buyers. Morcar had a copy of the sale catalogue and looked it through, but found nothing he wanted; where his own type of machinery coincided with that used at Syke Mills, his own was greatly newer and superior. He dropped into the sale on the first day, not to buy anything but to look at the premises; they were quite as desirable as he had believed. It gave him a strange feeling to see again after all these years the archway where Brigg Oldroyd gave him his start in life, the private office where he corrected Mr. Butterworth, the designers’ room on the upper floor where he had learned his job from Mr. Lucas. He looked back at the ingenuous Harry Morcar of those days wistfully; a nice honest lad, he judged, with all his life before him; he wished he was like that nowadays—though not if it meant giving up Christina. The huge premises, unwanted in this time of bad trade, would go for a song as compared with their real value—or perhaps a couple of songs, thought Morcar. But if he bought, it meant years of intense work to pay off the price; why saddle himself with the additional responsibility? Besides, this financial muddle is going from bad to worse, thought Morcar angrily. Cotton prices were slumping now to the tune of thirty million depreciation; Lancashire staggered under the blow. That was uncomfortably near home, a sister textile just across the Pen-nines; Annotsfield men looked very gravely at each other when they heard of this. The Budget must balance, read Morcar; well, I should hope so! There seemed to be some disagreement in Parliament about what economy measures should be taken; the Labour party objected to cuts in the dole. The unemployment figures were mounting; Ramsay MacDonald begged the country not to listen to panic-stricken talk. At last, in late August, the crisis came to a head; the Labour Government fell and a National one was formed to effect economies and save the pound. With a sigh of relief Morcar went off to the Channel Islands to join the Haringtons.

  He had a glorious holiday with Christina. The dark rocks, the blue sea, the gorse, the butterflies, were much as they had been in Cornwall; the joys of love were greater, for he found he loved Christina more dearly than before. In the perfect intimacy of love she was at ease with him, threw off her cool reticence, her social manner, and talked to him quickly and openly, like a child, of all the happenings, large or small, of her daily life. It was inexpressibly sweet to the lonely Morcar to be consulted about the length of Edwin’s shorts and the sleeves of Jenny’s frock, the colour of Christina’s lipstick, whether to have tea at a farm or take it in a basket, how to make a trunk close or mend a sandal—especially as Christina did not, as far as he could see, chatter with the same happy freedom to her husband. (Indeed she lacked the opportunity, for Harington’s egoistic tones were always booming about himself when he was present.) This childlike dependence on him in practical matters endeared Christina to Morcar the more because on the large political questions of the day she was better informed than himself, and had an æsthetic taste which Morcar rated very highly. To be able to speak freely on every subject in life, and to know that one would be met with understanding sympathy and love, was a heavenly luxury and relaxation.

  If to be with Christina was heaven, to part from her was naturally hell. Parting from her on a London station platform in the early hours of a chilly September day, with the children cold and miserable—Jenny was not a good sailor, had suffered from the night’s crossing and still looked rather green—and Harington fuming in the background over some lost luggage, was certainly wretched. To part itself was bad enough, but to part thus, to part without a kiss, without a loving embrace, to part with a cool word and a casual touch of the hand, to leave her on a chilly rainy morning with all her troubles thick about her lovely head, to know that their holiday together, to which he had looked forward so much so long, was over and for months they would see each other only in rare snatched hours—yes, it was hell. He felt as if someone were digging out his heart with a spoon—a sharp-pointed grapefruit spoon, thought Morcar angrily. He breakfasted alone, called at his office, acquainted himself with the usual collection of thorny problems which accumulate during holidays, and took a northbound train, in a deep depression only slightly mitigated by the rush of the morning.

  In the train, for the first time that day he opened a newspaper. The headline leaped out at him: Gold Standard Suspended. Morcar’s heart fell with a sickening thud. So the pound was not saved after all! We regret to have to announce today that the Government have found themselves compelled to ask Parliament temporarily to suspend … Grave as is the financial crisis …

  “I suppose it will be better for trade,” thought Morcar wretchedly after a moment. “But it seems a shame.” He was deeply wounded in his pride, his love. England off gold! The English pound no longer changeable for gold! “Good God! What are we coming to?” thought Morcar.

  He reached Annotsfield towards the end of a dull grey afternoon. It was the flat time just before the mills turn out; the place had never looked so grimy, so dead-alive, so sordid. His sunburned face and hands, his light summer suit, felt hideously out of place in this industrial landscape. He drove to Booth Bank, where the mill found him exacting and bad-tempered; he rang up Daisy, and was irritable on the telephone to Nathan. He decided to change his clothes and have a meal before going out to Denbridge to examine in the quiet of the evening the mass of correspondence which Nathan said awaited him.

  In the Club he found a good deal of company, less gloom and more liveliness than he had expected. Some event seemed to have occurred locally which was attracting talk away from the gold trouble. A group of textile-trade men of Morcar’s acquaintance, sitting with glasses in their hands, were discussing it with animation.

  “Young fathe
ad!”

  “Silly lad!”

  “What good did he think it would do?”

  “Might have broken every bone in his body.”

  It struck Morcar that though their comments were disapproving, their tones held a wistful, almost an admiring, affection.

  “What’s up? Who are you talking about?” he asked, joining them.

  “Francis Oldroyd’s son.”

  “He hasn’t a son,” objected Morcar. “Don’t you remember, he got a Booth girl into trouble, and the child was stillborn.”

  “Aye—but there was another. David.”

  “I don’t remember any son,” said Morcar stubbornly.

  “Well, he has one, you can take it from me.”

  “He married again after the war—an Armitage.”

  “Nay—that child was a daughter. This David belongs to his first wife. He’s a schoolboy, sixteen or so.”

  “Well, what’s he been up to?” said Morcar disagreeably—he was not pleased that Francis Oldroyd had a son while he had none.

  “The Oldroyds left Annotsfield today.”

  “I know,” said Morcar. “They’ve gone to the south. Good riddance.”

  “Aye—but this boy, you see, he jumped out of the London train when it was moving.”

  “What?” exclaimed Morcar.

  “In the Marthwaite tunnel.”

  “No, it was just before the tunnel. At the top of the Ire Valley, above Marthwaite—just beyond the bridge, you know.”

  “Young fathead!”

  “Might have broken every bone in his body.”

  “What good did he think it would do?”