Read Online A Modern Tragedy by Phyllis Bentley - Free Book Online Page B

birth and power and all that made life good offered to him, as it were, on a plate; all Crosland had to do was to hold on to them, and he hadn’t the sense even to do that, seemingly—that damned Henry Clay Crosland, hum-ing and ha-ing and looking down his nose and putting his hand to his ear, was threatening to pull him up, stop his yarn supply, force him into bankruptcy!
    The car had run out of the valley now, and Stone Green was no longer in view; the road was rising; Tasker’s lungs expanded, and he felt less oppressed. “So they think they’ve got me down, do they!” he raged to himself, gritting his teeth, his hard blue eyes gleaming in the darkness. “Well, they haven’t! No, by God, they haven’t! It takes more than that to down Leonard Tasker. I’ve been in worse corners than this before, and turned them; and I shall turn this. I know the cloth trade better than anybody in the West Riding, and there isn’t a man in the whole damned lot of them can touch me when it comes to business. If only this slump would lift! What are those fools of politicians and bankers about?”thought Tasker in contemptuous disgust. “If I were in their place I could settle the whole thing in a month. They cling to the gold standard as though it were a life-buoy, when it’s really a lump of lead tied to their legs. The bankers lend millions of pounds all over the place, to countries with unpronounceable names, but if a decent little English business—like the Lumbs’, for example—needs a bit, they look down their noses, and want security for every ha’penny.”
    By a natural transition Tasker here remembered Walter; and his thoughts sank down to a less conscious level, a level where he admitted every idea that came, without attempting to make it consistent or respectable. On this level he was able to feel at almost the same moment that Walter’s high moral tone was intensely offensive, and he detested the silly lad: that morality of that sort was a luxury which Leonard Tasker, self-made man that he was, had never been able to afford: that if he could get out of this hole he’d enjoy the luxury of running straight always, never “wangle” anything again: that wangling was the spice of his life: that with his early history, his difficulties, his talents, his success, he was an exception to the general run of people, and ordinary morality, such as Walter’s, was not required of him: that, indeed, he despised it: that he would like to take Walter down a peg: that Walter was a nice boy, a good lad, rather like Tasker himself at that age, and he was sorry he’d had that impulse (under the exasperation of his interview with Crosland) to raise the price of the damaged indigo on him: that it was smart of Walter to catch him out on it: that he was Dyson Haigh’s son, and obviously knew what was what about cloth: that, indeed, he was just the sort of lad who might be very useful.
    At this point Tasker took his foot off the accelerator, braked the car, and brought it neatly to a standstill.
    â€œTake the wheel,” he commanded briefly.
    The man obeyed, dismounting and walking round the car.
    Tasker slid into his seat, and drew out paper and pencil. His whirling thoughts had fused into an idea, a notion, a scheme; he thought he saw how the thing might be worked, how he might get round the difficulty of his creditors by means of Walter. A grim smile curled along his mouth as he bent eagerly over his notes, jotting down figures and names and dates. By the time the car had drawn up in the drive of Grey Garth, his large, new, solitary house in a suburb of Ashworth, the scheme was more or less complete.
    Tasker ordered the car for eight-thirty in the morning; nodded dismissal to the man, and let himself quietly into his home. Lights had been left on for him, as always; drinks in cut glass decanters, and several kinds of sandwiches, stood on a silver tray