The Conscience of the Rich (8 page)

‘You told me so,’ said Katherine. ‘But still – you’re going to have a foul time. I wish to God I could help.’

She went on: ‘He thinks the world of Uncle Philip, of course. Did you notice that he pretended to have told him? He’d obviously just muttered “my son Charles is mumpish” and was hoping that nobody would notice that you never appeared in court–’

‘Is there anything I can do?’ said Francis. His voice was a little thick. In his embarrassment at dinner, he had been drinking more than the rest of us; now, when he wanted to be useful and protective, he looked as though the light was dazzling him.

Charles shook his head and said no.

‘You’re sure?’ said Francis, trying to speak with his usual crispness. Again Charles said no.

‘In that case,’ said Francis, ‘it might be wiser if the rest of us left you to it.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ said Charles. ‘I’d rather Mr L found you all here.’

For a second it sounded as if he were trying to avoid a scene. Listening to his tone, I suddenly felt that that was the opposite of the truth.

He went on speaking to Francis. Katherine smiled at them anxiously, then turned to me.

‘By the way, according to your theory, the mass of people at dinner must have sounded very forbidding,’ she said. ‘Did you find a few who made it tolerable? When you actually arrived?’

The question was incomprehensible, and yet she was clearly expecting me to understand. ‘Your theory’: I could not imagine what she meant.

‘Don’t you remember,’ she said, ‘saying that to me the first time we met? When I was being shunted off to the Jewish dance. I won’t swear to the actual words, but I’m pretty certain they’re nearly right. I thought over them a good many times afterwards, you see. I wondered whether you meant to take me down a peg or two for being too superior.’

It was the sort of attentive memory, the sort of extravagant thin-skinnedness, that I should have become accustomed to; but a new example still surprised me just as much.

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Katherine, ‘I decided that you probably didn’t mean that.’

Then Mr March entered. He went straight to Charles, paying no attention to the rest of us: he stood in front of Charles’ chair.

‘Now you see what you’re responsible for,’ he said. Charles got up.

‘You know how sorry I am that you’re involved, Mr L,’ Charles said.

‘I haven’t got time to speculate whether you’re sorry or not. I’ve just been listening to my brothers telling me that you’re making a fool of yourself. As though I wasn’t perfectly aware of it already. I expressed exactly the same point of view myself but unfortunately I haven’t succeeded in making much impression on you.’

‘No one could have done more than you did.’

‘A great many people could have done enormously more. Do you think my father listened to Herbert when he got up to his monkey tricks and wanted to study music? An astonishingly bad musician he would have made if you can judge by his singing in the drawing-room when we were children. Hannah said that he was only asked to sing because he was the youngest child. Anyone else would have done enormously more. In any case, I never gave my permission as you appear to have assumed. You may have thought the matter was closed, but that doesn’t affect the issue.’

‘It’s no good reopening it, Mr L. I’m sorry.’

‘Certainly it’s some good reopening it. After tonight, I haven’t any option.’

Charles suddenly broke out: ‘You admit that tonight is making the difference?’

‘I never allowed you to think that the matter was closed. But in addition to that, I don’t propose to ignore–’

‘The position is this: when we were left to ourselves, you disapproved of what I wanted and you brought up every fair argument there was. If it had been possible, you know that I should have given way. Now other people are taking a hand. I know what they mean to you, but I don’t recognize their claim to interfere. Do you think I can possibly do for them what I wouldn’t do for you alone?’

‘You talk about them as if they were strangers. They’re treated better by an outsider who’s just married into us, like that abominable woman who married your cousin Alfred. They’re your family–’

‘They’ve no right to affect my life.’

‘I won’t have the family dismissed as strangers.’

‘I should feel more justified in going against your wishes – now you’ve been influenced by them,’ said Charles, ‘than when you were speaking for yourself.’ They were standing close together. There came a cough, and to my astonishment Francis began to speak.

‘Will you forgive me for saying something, Mr March?’ His face was pallid under the sunburn; there was a film of sweat on his forehead. But he managed to make himself speak soberly: the words came out strained, uncomfortable, but positive.

Mr March, who had been totally indifferent to his presence or mine, did not notice anything unusual. With a mixture of irritableness and courtesy, Mr March said: ‘My dear fellow, I’m always glad to hear your observations.’

‘I assure you,’ said Francis, uttering with care, ‘that Charles would have gone further to meet your wishes than for any other reason. I completely agree with you that he’s wrong to give up the Bar. I think it’s sheer nonsense. I’ve told him so. I’ve argued with him since I first heard about it. But I haven’t got him to change his mind. The only argument which would make him think twice was about the effect on yourself.’

Mr March regarded him with an expression that dubiously lightened; the frown of anger had become puzzled, and Mr March said, his voice more subdued than since he entered the room: ‘That was civil of him, anyway.’

He went on: ‘I don’t know what’s happening to the family. My generation weren’t a patch on my father’s. And as for yours, there’s not one of you who’ll get a couple of inches in the obituary column. My Uncle Henry said that just before he died in ’27, and all I could reply was “After all, you can say this for them. They don’t drink, and they don’t womanize.”’

Mr March spoke straight to Charles:

‘You might be the only chance of rescuing them from mediocrity. There’s always been a consensus of opinion that you wouldn’t disgrace yourself at the Bar. Ever since your preparatory schoolmaster said you had a legal head: though he was wrong in his prognostications about all your cousins. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve the most unsatisfactory children in the whole family. First your sister made her regrettable marriage. Of her there’s nothing good to report. Then you choose to behave in this fashion. And neither you nor your sister Katherine have ever made any attempt to fit into the life of the people round you. You’ve always been utterly unsociable. You’ve never taken the part everyone wanted you to take. You’ve not had the slightest consideration for what the family thinks of me. You wouldn’t cross the road to keep me in good repute. I’ve been more criticized about my children than anyone in the family since 1902, the time Justin’s daughter married out of the faith. Justin had a worse time than anyone. He couldn’t bear to inspect the wedding presents. It was always rumoured that he sent some secretly himself to cover up a few of the gaps. Since Justin, no one has been disapproved of as I have.’

Mr March sat down, in an armchair close to one of the side tables. For a second, I thought the quarrel was over. Then Charles said: ‘I wish it weren’t so, for your sake.’

Charles had spoken simply and with feeling: in reply, Mr March flushed to a depth of anger he had not reached that night. He clutched at the arm of his chair as he leant forward; in doing so, he swept off an ashtray from the little table. The rug was shot with cigarette-stubs and match-ends. Charles bent to clear them.

‘Don’t pick them up,’ Mr March shouted. Charles replaced the ashtray, and put one or two stubs in it.

‘Don’t pick them up, I tell you,’ Mr March cried with such an increase of rage that Charles hesitated.

‘I refuse to have you perform duties for my sake. I refuse to listen to you expressing polite regrets for my sake. You appear to consider yourself completely separate from me in all respects. I am not prepared to tolerate that attitude.’

‘What do you mean?’ Charles’ voice had become angry and hard.

‘I am not prepared to tolerate your attitude that you can dissociate yourself from me in all your concerns. Even if I survive criticism from the family on your account, that isn’t to admit that you’ve separated yourself from me.’

‘I come to you for advice,’ said Charles.

‘Advice! You can go to the family lawyer for advice. Though I never knew why we’ve stood a fellow so long-winded as Morris for so long,’ cried Mr March. ‘I’m not prepared to be treated as a minor variety of family lawyer by my son. I shall have to consider taking actions that will make that clear.’

Charles broke out: ‘Do you imagine for a moment that you can coerce me back to the law?’

Mr March said: ‘I do not propose to let you abandon yourself to your own devices.’

Everyone was surprised by the calm, ambiguous answer and by Mr March’s expression. As Charles’ face darkened, Mr March looked almost placid. He seemed something like triumphant, from the instant he evoked an outburst as angry as his own. He went on quietly:

‘I want something for you. I wish I could know that you’ll get something that I’ve always wanted for you.’ He checked himself. Abruptly he broke off; be looked round at us as though there had been no disagreement whatever, and began an anecdote about a Friday night years before.

Father and Son

For some time after the quarrel I did not get a clear account of Mr March’s behaviour. According to Katherine, he was so depressed that he stopped grumbling; he listened to criticisms from his brothers and sisters, but even these he did not pass on. Weeks went by before he began to greet Charles at meals with: ‘If you’re determined to persist in your misguided notions, what alternative proposal have you to offer?’ One afternoon, when I was in the drawing-room, Mr March burst in after his daily visit to the club and cried: ‘I’m being persecuted on account of my son’s fandango.’ That was all I heard directly. When I dined with them, there were times when he seemed melancholy, but his level of spirits was so high that I could not be sure. One day Charles mentioned to me that he thought Mr March had begun to worry about Katherine. I fancied that I could recall the signs.

As for Charles himself, none of his family had any idea what he was intending, or whether he was intending anything at all. He put on a front of cheerfulness and good temper in his father’s presence. His days had become as lazy as Katherine’s. He stayed in bed till midday, talked to her most afternoons, went dancing at night. Many of his acquaintances thought, just as he had predicted, that he was settling down to the life of a rich and idle young man.

They should have watched his manner as he set me going on my career.

By the early summer I still had had nothing like a serious case, and I was getting worn down with anxiety. Then Charles took charge of my affairs. He handled them with astuteness and nerve. He risked snubs, which he could not have done on his own behalf, and got me invited to the famous June party at the Holfords’. At the same time he approached Albert Hart and through him met the solicitors who sent Hart the majority of his work. One of them was glad to oblige Philip March’s nephew, and said he would like to meet me; another, one of the best-known Jewish solicitors in London, promised to be present at the Holfords’ party. There were other skeins, concealed from me, in Charles’ plans. They took up his entire attention. As he devoted himself to them, Charles was continuously angry with me.

A few minutes before the Holfords’ party, where he planned for me to make a good impression, there was an edge to his voice. I was sitting in his bedroom at Bryanston Square while he knotted his white tie in front of the mirror. I mentioned a story of Charles’ grandfather that Mr March had just told me – ‘he must have been a very able man,’ I said.

‘Obviously he must have been,’ said Charles. He was still looking into the mirror, smoothing down his thick, fair, wiry hair. ‘But he didn’t do so much after all. He was a rather successful banker. And acquired the position that a rather successful banker could in that period, if he happened to be a competent man. Don’t you agree?’

I was referring to Mr March’s account, but Charles interrupted: ‘Oh, I know he’d got some human qualities. The point is, he didn’t do so much. Look, don’t you admit those jobs he spent his life on are really pretty frivolous? I mean, the traditional jobs of my sort of people. The Stock Exchange and banking and amateur politics when you’ve made enough money. Can you imagine taking them up if you had a free choice?’

‘No,’ I said.

Charles turned round.

‘And if you had a free choice, can you imagine taking up the profession you’re anxious to be successful at?’

I did not answer.

‘You can’t imagine it. Don’t you admit that you can’t?’ Charles said, with an angry, contemptuous, sadic smile.

‘Not if I’d been given a completely free choice, perhaps.’

‘Of course you can’t. You don’t want just money. You’ll realize that if you make some. You don’t want the sort of meaningless status that appeals to Herbert Getliffe. You’ll realize that if you get it. Granted that you want to satisfy yourself instead, it’s not a job a reasonable man would choose. Don’t you agree?’

In my suspense that night, those ‘ifs’ were cruel: we each knew it. I was both hurt and angry. I could have told him that he was speaking out of bitter discontent. Did I admit to myself what kind of discontent it was? He was angry that I had direct ambitions and might satisfy them. I ought also to have known that he wanted to lead a useful life. He could not confide it or get rid of it, but he had a longing for the good. We faced each other, on the edge of quarrelling. He sounded arrogant, impatient, cruel; he was angry with me because we were different.

As he drove me to Belgrave Square through the June dusk, Charles suddenly turned as anxious as I was myself. He wanted me to be at ease; he wanted me to forget the doubts that he had raised by his own words five minutes before; he kept reiterating facts about the Holfords and their guests, and conversational gambits I could use with Albert Hart.