The Conscience of the Rich (35 page)

In the afternoon of the ninth day, a warm and cloudless autumn afternoon, we knew that she had been a long time asleep. Mr March and Charles were sitting opposite to each other in the drawing-room, and I was on the sofa. The clock ticked on the mantelpiece, and each quarter of an hour there came its chime, sweet, monotonous, and maddening. It was beyond any one of us to go outside into the sunshine. It would have seemed like tempting fate.

Mr March’s face was an old man’s that afternoon. The skin beneath his eyes was dark sepia; his head was sunk down, the veins on his temples were blue. Charles was leaning forward, his hands locked together; his position did not change for half an hour at a time. Often when he was anxious he smoked in chains: that afternoon he did not smoke. There was no tinge of colour in his face. His eyes shone bright, bloodshot, and intent.

Mr March stared at him and once, with a grinding effort, broke the silence: ‘I believe that this sleep may be a good sign. They informed me before luncheon that they had considerably more hope.’

Charles made no sign that he had heard.

At last, it was well after four o’clock, we heard footsteps down the stairs, and a tap on the door. A nurse entered and beckoned Charles. He was out of the room at once. The nurse’s manner had not been specially grave, and I felt a touch of relief. Mr March and I exchanged a few words, and then fell silent again. The quarters chimed – half past, a quarter to. Suddenly Mr March sprang up and stopped the clock.

Then there was noise on the stairs, and the sound of a loud, unmuted, orotund voice: ‘I think she’ll do, March. If we look after her properly, I think she’ll do.’

Charles came into the room. He spoke directly to his father for the first time for many hours.

‘Did you hear that?’ he cried triumphantly. ‘Did you hear that?’

Ann’s convalescence was a slow one, and she could not be moved from Mr March’s house. I ceased calling when the danger was past, but heard of her each day from Charles. She had asked Mr March to visit her in her room; it seemed that she had apologized for the inconvenience she had caused him by falling ill; she promised to go as soon as the doctors would let her. From what she told Charles, it had been an interview formal and cool on the surface. After it, Mr March had not spoken to Charles about her.

One afternoon soon after, Charles rang me up.

‘You remember when Ann was ill? She gave you a message for me?’

I said yes.

‘She said this morning that I could ask you about it. She’d rather you told me than tell me herself.’

I was taken aback, so much so that I did not want to speak over the telephone. I arranged to call at his house. As I walked there along the reach from Chelsea, the river oily in the misty sunshine, the chimneys quivering in the languid Indian summer, I was seized by a sense of strangeness. This new wish of Ann’s – for she had, while in danger, said that if she recovered she would tell Charles herself – this wish to have her message given him at second hand seemed bizarre. But it was not really that wish which struck so strange. It was the comfort of the senses, the warmth of the air and the smell of the autumn trees, assuring one that life might be undisturbed.

Charles was in his surgery. He was not pleased to see me. He did not want to be reminded of what I had come to tell him. He was looking better than when I had last seen him: he had made up sleep, the colour had come back to his face. But he was not rested. In a tone brittle and harsh, he began: ‘I’d better hear what she said. I suppose it’s about this wretched paper, isn’t it? I’d better hear it.’

I was sure that, since she got better, he had not been able to put the choice out of his mind. I gave him her message, as I should have been obliged to if she had died.

‘So she left it to me,’ Charles said.

He did not ask for any explanation at all. With a deliberate effort – it was the habit I had got used to when he was a younger man – he talked of things which prevented me saying any more.

‘I’ve been writing a letter,’ he said. ‘Would you like to read it? Do you think you would?’

I did not know what to expect. It was, in fact, a letter to the
Lancet
. In August, just before Ann’s illness, one of Charles’ cases had been a child of three ill with a form of diphtheria, in such a way that the ordinary feeding-tube could not be used. Charles had improvised a kind of two-way tube which had worked well. In the last fortnight, since he knew Ann would recover, he had discovered another case in a hospital, and persuaded them to use the same technique. It had worked again, and now he thought it worthwhile to publish the method.

‘You see, no one has ever been worse with his hands than I am,’ said Charles. ‘So if I can use this trick, anyone else certainly can. I can’t understand why some practical man hasn’t thought of it long ago. Still, it’s remarkably satisfying. You can believe that, can’t you?’

He put the letter on his desk, ready to be typed.

‘It’s all very odd,’ he said. ‘When I was very young, I used to think that I might write something. I imagined I might write something on a simply enormous scale. I should have been extremely surprised to be told that my first published work would be a note on a minor device to make life slightly more comfortable for very small children suffering from a rather uncommon disease.’

He was talking to keep me at a distance: but the sarcasm pleased him. He was genuinely gratified by what he had done. It was good to have aroused a bit of professional envy, to receive a bit of professional praise. It was good to have something definite to one’s credit. Concentrated and undiffuse as he was, he had been distracted for a few hours, even at this time, by getting a result.

But I was frightened, because he would not talk about the
Note
. I tried to get him to.

We had been intimate so long: not thinking it out as a technique to soften him, but just because I did not want to leave him quite alone, I confided something about my own marriage – something I had not told him before, nor anyone else. His eyes became sharp with insight, he gave me the support with which he had never failed me. But I did not get any other response.

At last I said: ‘Charles, will you let me ask you about something else?’

‘What is it?’

‘I don’t want to add to your trouble. You know that.’

‘I know that,’ he said.

‘Can you tell me what you propose to do? About stopping this paper?’

There was a silence.

‘No,’ he said. His eyes were steady. He went on: ‘I don’t know. It’s no use talking about it.’

The words were slow, dragged out. Looking at him, I believed he had spoken the precise truth. What his decision would be, he just did not know. But he was by himself, and nothing that anyone said could affect it now.

We went on talking. We even talked politics. I knew by his tone, what I already knew, that whatever he chose, politics would not move him either way.

As I sat with him, I believed that, whatever he chose, he was asking himself – I remembered, with a trace of superstition, the night in Bryanston Square after I had taken Ann to the concert – how much he could bear to dominate another. He had gone through too much in order to be free himself: it was harder for him to choose that she should not be.

Late that night I happened to see him again. I had been dining in Dolphin Square, and was walking home along the Embankment in the moonlight. I saw Charles coming very slowly towards me on the opposite side of the road. His head was bent, he was wearing no overcoat or hat; he might have been out at a case. As he came nearer, he did not look up. Soon I could see his face in the bright moonlight: I did not cross the road, I did not say good night.

Three days later, I was surprised to be rung up by Charles. He told me that Katherine, her children, and Francis had arrived the evening before at Bryanston Square. I was surprised again; it was only a month since the baby was born; then I realized from Charles’ tone that they had come for a purpose.

They were pressing him to go to Bryanston Square for tea that afternoon: would I pick him up and go with him?

As soon as I saw him, I thought he looked transformed. He was still pale and tired: he was tired but not restless, tired but easy, as though he had just finished playing a game.

At once he asked me, in a relaxed, affectionate voice: ‘I’m sorry to be a nuisance, but just tell me again exactly what Ann said to you, will you, Lewis?’

At that moment I knew he had made up his mind.

When I had finished, he was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said, almost as though he were making fun of her: ‘I suppose she is much braver than you or me, isn’t she? I’ve always thought she was, haven’t you? Yet she didn’t want to tell it me herself. She was glad to get out of that.’

He smiled.

‘She’s been incomparably nearer to me than any other human being ever has, or could be again,’ he said. ‘She thinks I know her. But I was astonished when she wanted to get out of telling me. Sometimes I think that I don’t know her at all.’

On the way to Bryanston Square he asked me if I had ever felt the same, if I had ever felt that someone I knew and loved had for the moment become a stranger – utterly mysterious, utterly unknown. It was like the talks we used to have when we were younger.

Katherine and Francis were waiting in the drawing-room. Charles embraced his sister, held her in his arms, asked about the child. She told him how the delivery had been quick and easy. Charles showed a doctor’s interest as he questioned her. She replied with zest; she was physically happier, and more unreticent, than anyone there. She looked blooming with health, radiant as though she had just come from a holiday. The next hour was preying on her mind, she was heavy-hearted, but still she gave out happiness. It set her apart from Charles, or even from her husband, in whom one could see already the signs of strain.

Charles said: ‘I must run up and see Ann for five minutes.’

‘I suppose,’ said Francis, ‘that she can’t come down for tea?’

‘It wouldn’t be a good idea,’ said Charles. ‘Don’t you admit that it wouldn’t be a good idea?’

There was a sarcastic edge to his tone, and Francis flushed. When Charles had gone, Francis said to me: ‘This is intolerable whatever happens.’

He had become more than ever used to getting his own way: but his feelings had stayed delicate. He was still colouring from Charles’ snub, and a vein showed in his forehead. He would go through with what he had come to say, just as he went through with any job he set himself. But it cost him an effort which would have deterred a good many of us.

Katherine wanted to begin talking of Charles and Ann, but he stopped her. ‘We shall have enough of it soon,’ he said. I asked about his work; he was trying a major problem, but had struck a snag. We exchanged some college gossip.

We were beginning tea when Charles came down.

‘How is Ann now?’ said Francis, with a difficult friendliness.

‘She’ll be able to leave here next week,’ said Charles.

‘Good work,’ said Francis.

There was a pause. A spoon tinkled in a saucer.

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Francis, ‘it was about her, of course, that we wanted to talk.’

‘Yes,’ said Charles. His eyes gleamed.

‘I think we’re bound to ask you,’ Francis went on, ‘what the present position is about the
Note
. Has Ann stopped that affair?’

Charles answered: ‘I shouldn’t think so for a minute.’

‘What is the position then?’ said Katherine.

‘I imagine it’s exactly the same as when she fell ill,’ Charles said.

‘You mean, everything’s coming down on our heads, that’s what you mean, don’t you?’ she cried.

Francis asked: ‘I take it we’re right to gather that the only certain way of stopping this business is to get the
Note
suppressed?’

‘You’re quite right,’ said Charles.

‘And we’re right to gather that it’s in Ann’s power to do it?’

‘You’re quite right,’ said Charles.

‘She would do it if you told her?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Have you tried?’

For the first time, Charles did not answer immediately. He might have been considering telling them that by now the choice was his. At last he just said: ‘No.’

‘We must ask you to.’ Francis’ temper was rising. ‘You ought to know that I dislike interfering, but this is too serious to let go by. We must ask you to tell her.’

‘I absolutely agree with Francis,’ said Katherine loudly. ‘It would be gross to interfere between you and Ann, but this is an occasion which we simply can’t shut our eyes to, surely you admit that? We must ask you to tell her.’

Charles’ voice was quiet, level, self-possessed after theirs.

‘I haven’t the slightest intention of doing so.’

He looked from one set face to the other. Unexpectedly he smiled.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You know how fond I am of both of you. Nothing will affect that, so far as I am concerned, don’t you know that? I would do anything for you both.’

‘Then for God’s sake do this,’ cried Katherine.

Charles shook his head. ‘I gave you my answer more unpleasantly than I ought to have done. But it’s still my answer.’

Francis tried to control himself, to subdue his tone in response to Charles’. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘we can’t leave it there. You know, Charles, I feel responsible to some extent. If it hadn’t been for my brother Herbert, we might never have got into this mess. He seems to have covered his tracks somehow–’

‘You needn’t worry about Herbert,’ I said.

‘Are you sure?’ said Francis.

‘Quite sure,’ I said. ‘He’s still got a chance of finishing up as a judge.’

‘I shouldn’t be surprised by anything he did. Not even that,’ said Francis. He turned to Charles again. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you understand that we can’t leave it there.’

‘I know it’s difficult for you. And I’m sorry.’

Francis went on: ‘I want to make one point clear. Before I go on. We’re not prejudiced by Ann’s political motives you know that, but I want to tell you. I think she over-simplifies it all: but if it comes to two sides, we are on the same side as she is. It’s the only side one could possibly be on. I’m also prepared to admit that the
Note
has its uses. By and large it’s making a contribution. I should just say that it’s not such a major contribution – it’s not such a major contribution that she’s justified in driving on whoever is getting hurt. It is certainly not worth disgracing your family and breaking up Mr L.’