The Conscience of the Rich (15 page)

He set to work upon my draft. Impatiently, but with extreme thoroughness and accuracy, he reshaped it; he altered the form, pared down the argument in the middle, brought in the details so that the line of the case stood out from beginning to end. It was criticism that was more than criticism, it was a re-creation of the case. He did it so brutally that it was not easy to endure.

I tried to shut out pique and vanity. I thought how strange it was that, at this crisis of his conflict with his father, in which they were quarrelling over his new profession, he could immerse himself in the problems of the one he had deliberately thrown away. He would never go back; he was determined to find his own salvation; yet was there perhaps the residue of a wish that he could return to the time before the break was made?

‘Well,’ said Charles, ‘that’s slightly less meaningless. It’s not specially elegant – but it will do you a bit less harm than your first draft would have done, don’t you admit that?’

It was nearly midnight, and neither of us had eaten for a long time. I took him to a dingy café close by. Charles looked at the window, steamy in the cold, wet night, smelt the frying onions, heard the rattle of dominoes in the inside room. ‘Do you often come here?’ he asked, but he saw, from the way the proprietor spoke to me, and the nods I exchanged, what the answer was. This was a side of my life he scarcely knew – the back streets, the cheap cafés, the ramshackle poverty, which I still took for granted.

We sat in an alcove, eating our plates of sausage and mash. Charles said: ‘You haven’t many ties, have you?’

‘I’ve got those I make myself,’ I said.

‘They’re not so intolerable,’ said Charles. ‘You’re lucky. You’ve been so much more alone than I ever have. You’ve had such incomparably greater privacy. Most of the things you’ve done have affected no one but yourself. I tell you, Lewis, you’re lucky.’

His eyes were gleaming.

‘They think I’m irresponsible to have gone off like this. They’re right. And they think I’m naturally not an irresponsible person. It might be better if I were. Can’t they imagine how anyone comes to a point where he wants to throw off every scrap of responsibility – and just go where no one knows him? Can’t they imagine how one’s aching to hide somewhere where no one notices anything one does?’

‘That’s why,’ he said, ‘you’re lucky to have no ties.’

He could not break, he was telling me, from his: for a night or two he had escaped, behaved completely out of character, shown no consideration or feeling or even manners: but he was drawn back to the conflict of his home. For a night or two he had escaped from the attempts to confine him, not only his father’s but also Ann’s. He was drawn back. But, sitting in the alcove of the smoky café, his face pale against the tarnished purple plush, his eyes brilliant with lack of sleep, Charles talked little of his father or Ann. He was unassuageably angry with himself. Why had he behaved in this fashion? – without dignity, without courage, without warmth. He could not explain it. He felt, not only self-despising, but mystified.

He talked of himself, but he said nothing I had not heard before. He went over the arguments for the way he had chosen. He was exhausted, unhappy, nothing he said could satisfy him. We walked the streets in the cold rain, it was late before we went to bed, but he had not reached any kind of release.

In the morning, grey and dark, we sat over our breakfast. He had been dreaming, he said, and he looked absent, as though still preoccupied and weighed down by his dream. Suddenly he rose, went to my desk and took hold of the brief on which we had worked the night before. He turned to me, his lips pulled sideways in a smile, and said: ‘I was unpleasant about this yesterday.’ It was not an apology. ‘You know what it is not to be able to stop being cruel. One hates it but goes on.’

At that moment we both knew, without another word, why he had escaped. He had not really escaped from the conflict: he had escaped from what he might do within it.

He knew – it was a link between us, for I also knew – what it was like to be cruel. To be impelled to be cruel, and to enjoy it. Other young men could let it ride, could take themselves for granted, but not he. He could not accept it as part of himself. It had to be watched and guarded against. With the force, freshness, and hope of which he was capable, he longed to put it aside, to be kind and selfless as he believed he could be kind and selfless. When he spoke of wanting to lead a ‘useful’ life, he really meant something stronger; but he was still young enough, and so were the rest of us, to be inhibited and prudish about the words we used. He said ‘useful’; but what he really meant was ‘good’. When Ann fought shy of my questions about what he hoped for, we both had an idea: he wanted to lead a good life, that was all.

I sometimes thought it was those who were tempted to be cruel who most wanted to be good.

Charles wanted to dull his sadic edge. He knew the glitter which radiated from him in a fit of malice. He was willing to become dull, humdrum, pedestrian, in order not to feel that special exhilaration of the nerves. For long periods he succeeded. By the time of that quarrel, he was gentler than when I first knew him. But he could not trust himself. To others the edge, the cruel glitter, might seem dead, but he had to live with his own nature.

So he was frightened of his conflict with his father. He must be free, he must find his own way, he must fulfil his love for Ann; but he needed desperately that he should prevail without trouble, without the harsh excitement that he could feel latent in his own heart. Neither Ann nor his father must suffer through him.

In the grey bleak light of that winter morning, he stood, still heavy from his dream, and knew why he had run away. Yet he believed that he could keep them safe. Those fits of temptation seemed like a visitor to his true self. They faded before the steady warmth and strength which ran more richly in him than in most men. With all the reassurance of that warmth and strength, he believed that he could keep them safe.

‘I shall go to stay with Francis for a few days,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll come back to Mr L’s. I’ll let them know today, of course. It’s monstrous to have given them this absurd piece of worry.’

As soon as Mr March heard from his son, he insisted once more that Katherine should invite Ann to the house. Again Ann refused. Katherine was frightened to bring the reply to Mr March, but he received it without expression.

Hearing what had happened, I met Ann and told her it was a mistake to have declined the invitation. We were sitting in a Soho pub. Her eyes were sparkling, as though she were laughing it off.

‘Why shouldn’t I?’

She spoke so lightly that I went on without concealing anything: I said that Mr March suspected her influence, and that for all their sakes she ought to calm him down.

Then I realized that I had completely misread her. It was anger that made her eyes bright; she was not only indignant, but outraged.

‘I’m very glad that I didn’t go,’ she said.

‘It will make things worse.’

‘No,’ she said with fierceness. ‘He’s got to see that Charles has decided for himself.’

‘He’ll never believe it,’ I told her.

‘I can’t help that.’

‘Can’t you try?’

‘No.’ Her tone was dismissive and hard. ‘I should have thought you knew that Charles had made his choice. I should have thought you knew that it was right for him.’

‘I’m not asking you to make me realize it–’ I began.

‘Any sane father would realize it too. If Mr March insists on making a nuisance of himself, I can’t help it.’

She added that she had rung up Charles to ask whether she might refuse the invitation – and he had said yes. The pleasure, the submissive pleasure, with which she spoke of asking Charles’ permission glowed against the hardness she had just shown about Mr March.

She had been angry with me also, for telling her what she already knew. But she was tired by the conflict over Charles; she found it a relief to make it up with me and talk about him. She told me something, more than either of them had done before, about their plans for marriage. It was still not settled. Recently, there had been a reason for delay, with Charles deciding on his career; but Ann told me that, months before, he had been pressing her to marry him. I did not doubt her for a second, but it puzzled me. The delay had been on her side. Yet she returned his passion. That night, in the middle of trouble, she spoke like an adoring woman who might be abandoned by her lover.

‘I wish it were all over,’ she said to me. ‘I wish he and I were together by ourselves.’

Her face was strained. It occurred to me that hers was the kind of strength which would snap rather than give way. To divert her, I arranged to take her to a concert the following night.

When I spoke to Katherine, in order to find out whether Mr March had taken any more steps, I mentioned that Ann was only putting a face on things by act of will.

Katherine said impatiently: ‘I often wish Charles had found someone a bit more ordinary.’

As Ann and I walked to our seats at the Queen’s Hall next evening, I noticed how many men’s eyes were drawn to her. When the first piece had started and I was composing myself, because the music meant nothing to me, for two hours of day-dreaming, I looked at her: she was wearing a new red evening frock, the skin of her throat was white, she had closed her eyes as she had done in the sun at Haslingfield.

In the interval, we moved down the aisle on our way out. Suddenly, with a start of astonishment and alarm, I saw Mr March coming towards us. Ann saw him at the same instant. Neither of us had any doubt that he had followed her there to force this meeting. All we could do was walk on. As I waited for the moment of meeting, I was thinking ‘how did he learn we were here?’ The question nagged at me, meaninglessly important, fretting with anxiety, ‘how did he learn we were here?’

Mr March stood in our way. He looked at Ann, and said good evening to us both. Then, addressing himself entirely to Ann, he said without any explanation: ‘I’m glad to see you here tonight. I haven’t had the pleasure of your company since you graced my establishment in the country. My children, for some reason best known to themselves, have deprived me of the opportunity of renewing our acquaintance.’

‘I’m sorry that I couldn’t come this week, Mr March. Katherine asked me,’ said Ann.

‘It was at my special request that my daughter asked you. I see no reason why my house should not claim an occasional evening of your time,’ said Mr March. From the first word his manner reminded me of his reception of her at Haslingfield: except that now he made more demands on her. ‘I recall that shortly after our first acquaintance we had an unfortunate difference of opinion upon the future of the world. I should consider the views you expressed even more pernicious if they prevented you from coming to my house again.’

Ann made a polite mutter.

‘I am expecting you to come tonight,’ said Mr March. ‘I expect you both to give me the pleasure of your company when these performers have finished. I don’t think you can refuse to call in at my house for an hour or so.’

Ann’s expression stayed open and steady: but her eyes looked childishly young, just as I had seen others’ at a sudden shock.

‘I shall have the pleasure of escorting you,’ said Mr March. For the first time, he turned to me: ‘Lewis, I rely on you to see that when the performers have exhausted themselves you both find your way towards my car.’

Ann sat by my side through the rest of the concert without any restless tic at all, as though keeping herself deliberately still.

The drive to Bryanston Square was quiet. I sat in front and only once or twice heard any words pass between the two behind. Even when he did speak, Mr March’s voice was unusually low. It was still not his full voice that he used in giving orders to the butler, as soon as we entered the house.

‘Tell my daughter to join us in my study. See that something to eat and drink is provided for my guests. Tell Taylor he is to wait with the car to take Miss Simon home.’ He took Ann’s arm, eagerly, perhaps roughly, and led her across the hall.

His study was the darkest room in the house, the wallpaper a deep brown, the bookshelves full of leather-bound collections that came down from his ancestors, together with the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
, the
Jewish Encyclopaedia
, and rows of works of reference. A bright fire was blazing, though the room still seemed cavernous. A tray of sandwiches and glasses was brought in after us, and Katherine followed. At the sight of her face, I knew the answer to the nagging question ‘how did he know where to find us?’ She must have let fall, after my conversation with her, that I was taking Ann to the concert. I felt an instant of irrelevant satisfaction, as one does when a name one has forgotten suddenly clicks back to mind.

‘I am not aware what refreshment you consider appropriate for this time of night,’ said Mr March to Ann, as he sat down in his armchair on the opposite side of the fireplace. ‘I hope you will ask for anything that may not be provided.’

Ann absently let him give her a brandy-and-soda, and sipped at it.

‘I want to ask you,’ said Mr March, ‘why my son is contemplating a completely unsuitable career.’

‘I want to ask you,’ said Mr March, ‘why my son is contemplating a completely unsuitable career.’

The firelight glowed on Ann’s face. She did not show any change of expression. Politely she answered:

‘I really don’t know why you’re asking me that.’

‘I’m asking you,’ said Mr March, ‘because there is no one else qualified to give an opinion.’

‘There is only one person who can give an opinion, you know,’ said Ann.

‘Who may that be?’

‘Why, Charles himself.’ She answered once more in a deferential tone, but Mr March’s voice was growing harsh as he said:

‘I do not consider that my son is responsible for his actions in this respect.’

‘I wish you’d believe that he’s entirely responsible.’