The Conscience of the Rich (16 page)

‘I acknowledge your remark,’ Mr March shot out furiously. ‘I repeat that he is not responsible for this preposterous nonsense. You regard me as being considerably blinder than I am. From the moment I heard of it, I knew that he was committing it at your instigation. You have forced him into it for reasons of your own.’

‘I assure you that isn’t true,’ said Ann. Mr March burst out again, but she went on, her manner still respectful, but with firmness and anger underneath: ‘Charles has discussed his future with me, I won’t pretend he hasn’t. I won’t pretend that I haven’t told him what I think. As a matter of fact I do believe that becoming a doctor is absolutely right for him. But the idea was entirely his own. Neither I nor anyone else has any influence over him when it comes to deciding his actions. As far as I’m concerned, I shouldn’t choose to have it otherwise.’

She was sitting back in her chair, and the flickering of the bright fire threw shadows on her checks and heightened the moulding of the bones. As she replied, Mr March’s frown had darkened. He was maddened at not being able to upset her. Then he said: ‘You are much too modest. You are aware that you are an exceedingly attractive woman. I have no doubt that you have tested your power of twisting men round your little finger. I have no doubt that you are testing it on my son now. I can imagine that he is enough in your power to be willing to throw away all I had hoped for him.’

‘I can’t think you know him,’ said Ann.

‘I know,’ said Mr March, looking at her with an intense and bitter stare, ‘that many men would do the same. They would do any nonsense you might want them to.’

‘I shouldn’t have any use for a man who did what I told him,’ she said.

‘Then you have no use for my son?’ shouted Mr March, in a tone that was suddenly triumphant and full of hope.

‘He would never do what I told him.’

‘What is your attitude towards him?’

‘I love him,’ she said.

Mr March groaned.

Ann had spoken straight out, almost roughly, as though it was something that had to be settled once for all. Perhaps she was provoked, because she could feel him torn by a double jealousy.

She was taking away his son, destroying all his hopes: this was the loss which kept biting into his thoughts. But there was another. He was jealous of his son for winning Ann. He too had been attracted by her. That had been evident under the gallantry he showed her at Haslingfield. There was nothing strange about it. Mr March was still a vigorous man. He could imagine by instinct exactly what his son felt for her, down to the deep level where passion and emotion are one. He could imagine it because, with the slightest turn of opportunity, he could have felt it so himself.

So Mr March groaned, as though it were a physical shock.

‘If that is true,’ he said, bringing himself back to the other loss, ‘I find it even more astonishing that you express approval of his absurd intention. Even though you refuse to accept responsibility for it, from what you have just said, I am more certain than ever that the responsibility is yours, and yours alone.’

‘I was glad when he decided to become a doctor, of course I was. He knew I should be glad. That is all,’ she said.

‘Glad? Glad? What justification have you for feeling glad except that you are responsible for it yourself? Are you incapable of realizing that he is ruining any reasonable prospects he might have had? Even if he goes through with this absurd intention–’

‘He will go through with it.’ For the first time she interrupted him.

‘What then? You think my son ought to be satisfied to be a mediocre practitioner?’

‘He’ll be happier about himself,’ said Ann.

There was a silence. A lull came over them. Katherine and I said a few words: Ann even talked of the music she had heard. Then Mr March began to start on his accusations again. A few minutes later, we heard a noise in the hall. As we listened, the clock on the mantelpiece struck midnight. The door opened, and Charles came into the room.

‘I was given no warning to expect you back,’ said Mr March.

‘I only decided to come a couple of hours ago,’ said Charles.

He looked at Katherine, and I guessed that she had let him know, as soon as she realized what her gaffe had meant.

Charles drew up a chair by the side of Ann’s.

Mr March’s expression was harsh, sombre, and guilty. He said: ‘I met your friend Ann Simon being escorted by Lewis Eliot to the Queen’s Hall. A remarkably undistinguished evening the performers entertained us with, by the way. So I invited them here for refreshments, before they went to their respective homes.’

‘I see,’ said Charles.

Mr March paused, then said: ‘I have taken the opportunity to give Ann Simon my views on your present intentions. I have also asked her for an explanation as to why you have conceived such a ridiculous project.’

‘I should have preferred you to do that in front of me,’ said Charles.

‘I refuse to listen to criticisms from my son upon my behaviour in my own house,’ said Mr March.

‘I shall make them,’ said Charles, ‘if you insist on intruding on my privacy. Don’t you see that this is an intolerable intrusion, don’t you see that?’

‘Your privacy? Do you expect me to accept that your ruining your life is simply a private concern of your own?’

‘Yes,’ said Charles.

‘I refuse to tolerate it in any circumstances,’ Mr March said. ‘Particularly when you’re not acting as a free agent, and are simply letting this young woman gratify some of her misguided tastes.’

‘You must leave her out of it.’

‘I’ve told Mr March,’ said Ann, ‘that I’m very glad about your decision. But I’ve told him that I had nothing to do with your making it, and couldn’t have had.’

‘I shall leave her out of this matter when I have any reason to believe that she’s not the source and origin of it all. If she enjoys wearing the trousers, she’s got to be prepared to answer for the results.’

Up to that instant, Charles’ manner had been stern without relief, and his voice hard and constrained. Suddenly he broke for a second into a singular smile. It was a smile partly sarcastic, partly amused: it was edged by the nearness of Ann, by his sense of the absurd, as though, after Mr March’s last remark, nothing could be so absurd again. Then the argument went on.

With their usual repetitiveness they went over the practical reasons time and time again: underneath one heard the assertion of Mr March’s power, the claims of his affection, the anguish of his jealousies, the passion of his hopes, and in Charles, his claustrophobic desire to be free, his longing for release in love with Ann, his search for the good, his untameable impulse to find his own way, whatever its cost to others and himself. At least twice Charles was on the point of an outburst, such as he had struggled against. He did not let it come to light; he had mastered himself enough for that.

At half past one, Mr March sent Katherine to bed, and a little later made a last appeal.

‘I have not alluded to the opinion of the family,’ he said.

‘You know they could not even begin to count,’ said Charles.

‘I must remind you that they will occupy a place in my regard as long as I live,’ said Mr March. ‘But I was aware you allowed yourself to entertain no feeling for them. You did not leave me any illusions on the point when you made known your intention not to continue for the time being at the Bar.’

He was talking more quietly and affectionately than at any time that night.

‘You even had the civility to say,’ Mr March went on, ‘that you would pay considerably more attention to my wishes than to theirs. You expressed yourself as having some concern about me.’

‘I meant it,’ said Charles.

‘You did not pretend that your actions had no effect on my happiness.’

‘No.’

‘I should like to inform you that if you carry out your present intention, it will have a considerable effect on my happiness.’

Charles looked at Ann, and then at his father.

‘I wish it were not so,’ said Charles. ‘But I can’t alter my mind.’

‘You realize what it means for me?’

‘I’m afraid I do,’ said Charles.

Until that moment they might have been repeating their quarrel on the first Friday night I attended, the quarrel to which Mr March had just referred. All of a sudden it took a different turn. Immediately he heard Charles’ answer, Mr March got up from his chair. He said:

‘Then I must use my own means.’

He said goodbye to Ann with his old courtesy, and even now there was a spark of the gallant in it. He asked me to see her into the car, and retired to his study with Charles. The door closed behind them.

As Ann got ready to go, I saw that she was radiant, full of joy. I told her that I would stay in case Charles wanted someone to talk to. She pressed my hand and said: ‘And thank you for taking me to the concert. You can see what being kind lets you in for, can’t you?’

She was happy beyond caring. The car was ready, and she walked down the steps, straight-backed, not hurrying. I switched on the lights in the drawing-room. It was brilliant after the dark study. The fire had gone out hours ago, and there was nothing but ashes in the grate. The cold, the bright light, made me shiver. I tried to read. Once, perhaps twice, I heard through the walls a voice raised in anger.

An hour passed before Charles entered. He asked me for a cigarette, and had almost smoked it through before he spoke again. Then he said, in a level, neutral tone: ‘He’s revoked his promise to make me independent.’

He went on: ‘I’ve told you before, he was going to make over some money to me when I was twenty-five. He’s just admitted that it has always been his intention.’

I asked what Mr March had said. He had repeated, Charles replied, that up to that night he had been arranging to transfer a substantial sum to Charles on his twenty-fifth birthday – something like £40,000. He had now altered his mind. He was prepared to continue paying Charles his allowance. But he was determined to make no irrevocable gift.

‘I said that I might want to get married soon,’ said Charles. ‘He replied that he could not let that influence his judgement. He was not going to make me independent while I insisted on going in for misguided fooleries.’

The lines in Charles’ face were cut deep.

‘I can understand,’ he said, ‘that he wants me to lead the life he’s imagined for me. I know I must be a desperate disappointment. You know, don’t you, that for a long time I’ve tried to soften it as much as I possibly could? You do know that? But I tell you, I shan’t find this easy to accept.’

I felt a sense of danger which I could not have explained. I could not even have said which of them I was frightened for.

Charles asked me: ‘Do you think he wants to stop me marrying?’

I hesitated.

‘Do you think he wants to stop me marrying Ann?’

‘He wouldn’t have chosen her for you,’ I said, after a pause. His insight was too keen for him not to have seen both of Mr March’s jealousies: but they were best left unspoken.

‘What shall you do?’ I said.

Suddenly his heaviness and anger dropped away, and he gave a smile.

‘What do you think I shall do? Do you think I could stop now?’

The Marriages

Mr March did not have another talk in private with Charles that winter. In company they took on their old manner to each other, and no one outside guessed what had happened. Charles had begun to work for his first MB, but the news was not allowed to leak out, any more than that of his assignations with Ann.

Meanwhile, tongues all over the March family had kept busy about Katherine and Francis Getliffe. Charles received a hint from Caroline’s son, Robert; Katherine from someone at her club; Herbert Getliffe became inquisitive about his brother. For a long time, despite false alarms, the gossip seemed not to have been taken seriously by Mr March’s brothers and sisters; certainly none of them had given him an official family warning.

When the invitations were issued for the coming-out dance of one of the Herbert March girls, we wondered again how far the gossip had spread. For that family scarcely knew Francis Getliffe; and yet he had been invited. Katherine threshed out with Charles what this could mean. Was it an innuendo? It looked like it. But invitations had gone out all over the place; the Holfords had been sent one, even Herbert Getliffe through the Hart connexion, I myself. Francis’ might have been sent in perfect innocence and good nature.

Katherine still remained suspicious. For days before the dance she and Charles re-examined each clue with their native subtlety, repetitiveness, realism, and psychological gusto. One thing alone was certain, said Charles, grinning at his own expense: that for once his passion for secrecy had been successful, with the result that Ronald Porson had been invited, obviously as the appropriate partner for Ann.

This piece of consideration did not seem funny to Ann herself. Her pride rose at being labelled with the wrong man. It was her own fault. Porson was still pressing her, begging her to marry him; she had not yet brought herself to send him away. Nevertheless, when the Herbert Marches picked him out as her partner, she was angry with them for making her face her own bad behaviour.

On the night itself, Herbert March’s larger drawing-room had been converted into a ballroom. We stood round the floor waiting for the band to begin. The shoulders of young women gleamed, the jewels of old ones sparkled, under the bright lights: loud March voices were carried over the floor: the Holfords, the Harts, the Getliffes, formed a group round their host, while his sister Caroline, standing elephantine in their midst, pulled up her lorgnon and through it surveyed the room.

It was a room on the same scale as those at Bryanston Square, but brighter and more fashionable. The whole house was a little less massive, the decoration a little more modern, than Mr March’s, and the company less exclusively family than anywhere else in the March circle. One remembered Mr March’s stories about Herbert as the rebel of an older generation.