More Tales of the West Riding (10 page)

“I hope you're not going to turn snobbish and forget your old Hudley friends, Edward,” said his father.

“No, of course I'm not,” said Edward. He thought the matter over, decided against broaching the subject of Leila, and said: “Well, he annoyed me but I suppose I'd better forgive him.”

“Never forgive anyone, Edward,” said his father sharply.

“What do you mean?” said Edward, astonished.

“Forgiveness is unbearable to the forgiven.”

Edward did not know what to say, so very wisely said nothing. The party went off as arranged. Leila wore a pale yellow frock and looked brilliant. She vanished from time to time and Edward had his suspicions but let them go. She was really
very
pretty, and that sort of thing was done nowadays.

It was in the next Christmas holidays that Edward came home to find old Annie in bed.

“The poor old thing has broken her leg,” explained his father. “You'd better go up to see her straight away, Edward. She's been asking for you. Come down to the mill afterwards, if you like. But, Annie—” he lowered his voice—“she hasn't much time left, I'm afraid.”

Edward was disappointed not to drive off with his father after lunch down to the mill, for this had become one of his regular holiday pleasures, but he readily admitted Annie's prior claim, and went cheerfully upstairs to visit her.

Her appearance shocked him. She looked small, shrunken, her face all yellow and fallen in, her grey hair wild and tangled.

“Well, Annie,” he said, sitting on the bed and taking her hand, in which the pulse laboured jerkily, within his own. “What do you mean by being in bed for my holidays, eh?”

“Never mind that, Master Edward. I want to talk to you serious,” whispered Annie.

“I'm listening, Annie,” said Edward soberly.

“I want you to promise me you'll be good to Miss Leila.”

“Why, of course I will.”

“Nobody else will. Your mother hates her.”

Edward looked away, embarrassed, unable to force a denial.

“You know why, don't you?”

“No, I don't think I do,” said Edward.

“You're old enough to understand, now. She's your father's love-child, that's why.”

“Nonsense! It's not true!” gasped Edward.

“Yes, love, it's true,” said Annie sadly.

“Do you mean my father has admitted it to you?”

“No, no. But don't you remember when I took you down to Southstone when you were a little boy? Your mother pretended to be ill and went off to Switzerland, and you were sent off to Southstone, to hide it all, you see. Then the baby was fetched and your mother brought it back to Hudley and pretended it was hers. To keep the family together. She forgave him, you see.”

Edward groaned, remembering in anguish his father's saying:
Forgiveness is unbearable to the forgiven.
All was explained: the coldness in the house, his mother's hatred of Leila, his father's excessive yielding to his wife and continual acts of love to the child. For Edward's sake, to keep the family together, Claire had forgiven her husband's infidelity, taken its result into the family. Poor, poor Leila. His
mother's action was saintly, but all the same, poor Leila. Edward's world, hitherto so safely based, in utter reliance, upon his father, cracked all round him, broke and sank into grey ashes.

“Not that I blame him altogether,” mused Annie. “He's attractive to women, and your mother was always a rather cold piece.”

“Don't, Annie, don't. It makes me sick,” said Edward, turning aside.

“You'll understand it better when you're older.”

“I don't think so.” (It was an unbearable humiliation that the deception about his half-sister had been undertaken largely for his own benefit.)

“Anyway, I had to tell you, because of poor Miss Leila. Look after her, Master Edward. Being the daughter of a—a loose woman, you know—naturally she can't help being a bit wild.”

“I'll try.”

“She's your father's daughter, Master Edward. You've always been fond of your father.”

“Yes, I have been fond of him,” said Edward bitterly.

Every fibre of his body revolting against the action, he laid his hands on Annie's shoulders and tenderly kissed her cold and withered cheek.

Two days later she was dead.

Edward never entered his father's mill again. Jack was to become a solicitor in his father's practice, so Edward opted for this profession too. His father was hurt.

“I hoped you'd come in with me, Edward,” he said. “There's a good living there. Pity to let it drop.”

“You'd better take in old Higgins' son,” muttered Edward, naming his father's admirable works manager.

“I don't want Higgins' son. I want my own.”

If Edward had been a little older, at this point he might
have blurted out some comment about Leila, but he was too young yet to venture it, and said nothing.

“Well, do what you want, Edward,” said his father wearily. “I'll go in for a merger, I think. There's your mother and Leila to be provided for. I must secure that.”

“Yes,” said Edward.

After this Edward in fact spent little time in his home. He missed the West Riding a good deal, but could not bear the Hall.

He and Jack went to Oxford together and did rather well there. Edward took all the necessary examinations and performed all the necessary procedures, and presently found himself a junior partner in the firm of Clarkson, Clarkson and Milner, solicitors, in Southstone. At this point he married Jack's sister, Dorothy, an extremely nice, honest, good, not especially pretty but very lovable and loyal girl with large brown eyes. Just then the first World War broke out. Jack and Edward were of course involved in it but came back alive; though Jack had lost an arm and Edward had a bad limp, they counted themselves lucky. Coming out of hospital, Edward discovered that both his grandmothers and his father had died of the influenza epidemic of 1918, so he went north to settle the family affairs.

The excellent family solicitor of the Milners, who was Edward's godfather, had already done this to Edward's perfect satisfaction, so that only his signature was required, but naturally Edward went through every detail carefully. The textile business had been sold on excellent terms, for the postwar boom was still in being, so there was plenty of money. Edward was, however, rather surprised by the terms of his father's will. The provision for his mother was just a trifle meagre, he thought, and given to her only for life; Leila fared rather better and the money was her own, but he himself was so very much the largest beneficiary that he felt embarrassed and ashamed. He coloured as he expressed this,
stammering, for the family secret laid restraint on his tongue.

“There is a private communication for you from your father, Edward,” said the solicitor drily.

He handed over an envelope addressed simply
Edward,
sealed rather portentously with a very large blob of red wax.

This obvious demand for secrecy made Edward dread what he should read within. The note was very short and said simply.
My dear son, Whatever you may feel, look after Leila. I rely on you. Father.

Edward sprang up and paced the room. His heart was full of rage, humiliation, and—he could not help it—pity. He felt insulted, outraged; the very signature was an agony, for he recalled all too well that he had never called Ted Milner
father
since Annie's revelation. (He omitted any name, or said
sir;
the feeling implied by
father
had been killed by his father's other paternity.) And now here was his father making this pathetic appeal. He must have loved Leila's mother very much, thought Edward.
I rely on you.

“Do you know what my father has written to me?” he demanded, standing before the solicitor's desk with a very stern look.

“No. And I shall not attempt to guess.”

Of course the man, his father's close friend, must know the whole thing, reflected Edward angrily. With an effort he calmed himself and said stiffly:

“I shall do my best to comply with his request.”

The solicitor bowed his head.

As it turned out, Edward's promise was more easily given than kept, for Leila proved a thorn in his side for years. He moved his mother and his half-sister to an agreeable old cottage on a hill slope outside Hudley, having first asked Claire whether she wished to keep Leila with her. A spasm of anger crossed his mother's still-beautiful face.

“I suppose I must,” she said.

“I don't want to live with you,” said Leila, tossing her head.

Edward took no notice of this petulance, merely observing that the girl's fair beauty, in the heavy mourning then thought proper, was more remarkable than ever.

Leila was sent to an excellent boarding-school, from which she ran away, journeying homeward by night with a lorry-driver and making no secret of this adventure. (Hudley was shocked to the core.) She was sent to another boarding-school, almost as good, which quite promptly asked that she should be removed as a bad influence, and to a third, which publicly expelled her. Each time, Edward travelled north to cope with the problem.

“What would you
like
to do, Leila?” he said heavily on the last occasion. “What do you
want
to do? Tell me, and I will help you.”

“I want to go to London and have a good time,” said Leila, laughing.

“I can't let you do that,” said Edward gravely, looking at the quite exquisite face turned up to his.

Leila laughed and danced away.

“Why not let her go, Edward?” said his mother.

“She wouldn't be safe,” said Edward. “We have a duty… I think she must say with you.”

“She's been a trouble and a nuisance to me always,” said his mother quickly in a very irritable tone. “I didn't want her, I never have, I should be glad to see her go. Your father—” She bit her lip and broke off.

Edward being what he was, the result of this speech was naturally that Edward took Leila home with him to Southstone. Dorothy, who like many daughters-in-law was not particularly fond of her mother-in-law, welcomed Leila from Mrs Milner's unkindness with open arms. But after a week she broke into tears and confessed to Edward that she could not bear Leila's presence any longer. Leila smoked (at her age!),
she drank, she lay in bed in the mornings, she used far more cosmetics than Southstone thought allowable; worst of all, when playing with the Milners' little daughter, she excited her to such a wild pitch of enjoyment that the child became hysterical and could not eat or sleep.

“Leila,” began Edward gravely.

“I know. I'm sorry, Edward,” said Leila sweetly. “I know I'm a nuisance. Dorothy's done her best.”

Leila went home to Hudley and began an art course at the Hudley Technical College, but was soon reported to be coming to London to attend a school of dancing. Edward went firmly up to London and after a good deal of trouble arranged that Leila should live in a students' hostel. She soon left this for a flat which she shared with two other girls. Edward went firmly up to London, but Leila looked so beautiful and for the first time so happy, in her leotard, that he gave her a little present (ten pounds) and left her where she was.

Of course this was not the end of Leila. In spite of her nice little income she often wrote and said she hadn't a bean left to pay the rent—Edward sent a cheque. She wrote and said she thought she was going to need an abortion—what did Edward advise? Edward went swiftly up to London and shouted at the young man concerned (“quite a nice young fellow, really,” he confided to Dorothy, perplexed), so that a marriage ceremony was performed. Shortly after this Leila had a miscarriage (or said so) and lost the child; shortly after this she divorced her young husband—Edward went a great deal to London to get the divorce through. Then Leila married again without telling Edward—or did she just go to live with the man? Edward was never sure. She got a job with a ballet company, and threw it up, breaking her contract, and got another similar job, and lost that. Edward's legal training stood him in good stead through all her
scrapes. At length, if Edward gave a sigh as he opened his letters at the breakfast-table, Dorothy would say mildly;

“Leila again, I suppose.”

And presently even Edward's son and daughter would laugh:

“Aunt Leila again!”

“It all falls on you, dear,” said Dorothy admiringly. She thought the way he managed the Milner affairs was simply marvellous.

For of course Leila was not the only snag in the quiet waters of Edward's happy life.

“Every family man has troubling responsibilities,” he said soothingly to Dorothy. “If it were not so solicitors would be out of work.”

His mother, for instance, often spent too much and got into debt. He thought of making her a regular additional allowance, but Jack was against this.

“You're too good, Edward. If you give her more, she'll just spend beyond it as before, and be no better off. Better pay what she owes at the end of every year.”

It was good advice. Edward took it, but it meant he had to do the long railway journey to the north, rather often, which now that old Mr Clarkson was dead and the firm extremely busy because of its high repute, became rather too time-wasting.

Then there was Uncle Gerald, who got into a financial mess and went into a rather discreditable bankruptcy with his small wine-business. Since Gerald and Audrey had no children, Edward went north and settled it all up, and found enough money somehow for them to live on. Then Uncle Gerald went senile and had to be settled in a nursing home. Edward went north and attended to the matter. His mother became very petulant, demanding and fretful as the years passed by and her beauty faded; she had to accept paid companions, whom she frequently dismissed, sending Edward
frantic telegrams for help in these recurring crises. Edward suggested that his aunt and his mother should live together, but they both hotly refused.