The Conscience of the Rich

20: The Coming-Out Dance

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.

Standing in front of a pot of geraniums, Mr March himself was telling Sir Philip an anecdote with obscure glee. It was the obscure glee that usually possessed him when someone committed a faux pas against the Jewish faith. ‘The new parson from the church round the corner paid me a visit the other day,’ said Mr March. ‘I thought it was uncommonly civil of him, but I was slightly surprised to have to entertain anyone of his persuasion. The last parson I was obliged to talk to descended from the ship at Honolulu when I was going round the world in ’88. He was an extremely boring fellow. Well, as soon as I decently could, I asked this one why he had given me the pleasure of his company. And he had an unfortunate stammer, but gradually it emerged that he wanted a contribution for his Easter offering. So I said, I should like to be informed if you still pray on certain occasions for Jews, Turks, and other infidels. He had to admit that he did. I replied that being a Jew I might be excused for finding the phrase a little invidious, and I couldn’t make a donation for his present purposes. But I didn’t want to embarrass him because he’d chosen an unfortunate occasion. So I said: “Come again at Christmas. We’ve got some common ground, you know. I’ll give you something then.”’

Just then Caroline’s son Robert brought Ann to be introduced to Sir Philip. As usual, she was one of the smartest women in the room; as usual, she stayed quiet, let Sir Philip and Robert talk, got over her shyness just enough to put in a question. Mr March broke in: ‘This is the first time I have seen you since you were good enough to come to my house after a concert, which you possibly remember.’

‘Yes, Mr March,’ said Ann.

‘She is rather competed for, Uncle Leonard,’ said Robert. He was a middle-aged man, bald, with a face more predatory than any other of the Marches — predatory but not clever. As soon as he spoke, Mr March resented his flirtatious air; and Mr March’s own manner became more formidable and at the same time more intimate.

‘I am well aware that it would be astonishing if she had time to spare for elderly acquaintances,’ he said brusquely and, ignoring Robert, turned to Ann. ‘I take it that my son Charles has been lucky enough to secure a certain fraction of your leisure.’

‘I’ve seen him quite often,’ she said.

‘I assumed that must be so.’

Then the music started up. Robert took her on to the floor. I went to find a partner. As the first hour passed and I danced with various March cousins and visitors, I noticed that Charles and Ann had danced together only once. Whoever they had as partners, they were each followed by a good many sharp, attentive eyes. She was striking-looking in any company. And to some there, particularly among the women, he was the most interesting of the younger Marches.

Katherine and Francis, on the other hand, had decided that it was no use pretending to avoid each other. It seemed the sensible thing to take the polite average of dances together. As they did so, one could not fail to realize that some of the March aunts were watching them. Several times I saw Caroline’s lorgnon flash, and even to me she shoved in an enquiry, when we happened to visit the refreshment table at the same time.

‘How well do you know this young fellow Francis Getliffe?’ she said.

I tried to pass it off, for she was too deaf to talk to quietly, and there were several people round us.

‘I want to know,’ said Caroline, ‘whether he’s engaged yet?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said.

‘Why isn’t he? He must be getting on for thirty. What has he been doing with himself?’

I smiled: it was easier than producing a non-committal shout.

She went on with the interrogation. She had hoped that Francis might be entangled elsewhere. That hope extinguished, she was framing her plan of campaign.

When I returned to the drawing-room, Ann was dancing with Albert Hart, and Charles with the cousin for whom the dance was being held, a good-looking, strapping girl. For the first time that night, I found Katherine free. She whispered at once, as we went on to the floor: ‘It’s slightly embarrassing being under inspection, isn’t it? You would have expected Francis to mind tremendously, wouldn’t you have expected him to? But he seems to be enjoying himself.’

She was so happy, despite her anxiety, despite the prying eyes, that it was obvious how well — when she and Francis were together — the night was going. She went on: ‘You know, I wish Charles and Ann would decide what they want to happen. They’ve got to settle down some time, and it won’t get any easier. It’s preposterous that she should have this man Porson trailing after her tonight.’

She looked up at me. ‘I think she enjoys it — am I being unfair? I expect I envy her, of course. Mind you, I know she’s made a colossal difference to Charles.

Then she glanced across the room, where Francis was talking to Mr March.

‘But it is a superb party, don’t you think?’ she burst out. ‘Francis dances abominably, but I forgive him even that. It means that I’m nothing like so jealous when I see him dancing with other women. I can always console myself with how disappointed they must be when they get a fairly nice-looking young man for a partner — at least I think he’s fairly nice-looking — and he promptly insists on putting his foot on their toes.’

She was bubbling with happiness.

‘It is a superb party, Lewis,’ she said. She was silent for a moment, and I saw that she was smiling.

‘What are you thinking?’ I said.

She chuckled outright.

‘I’ve remembered what I used to feel about the young men Charles brought to the house. I never believed that they could possibly want to see me. I thought they only came because they wanted to see Charles or needed a house to stay in when they were in London.’

I was sorry when the dance ended; at that time, as I watched others happy in love, I was sometimes envious — but not of Katherine. It was difficult to begrudge her any luck that came her way.

The next dance I watched by the side of Mr March and Sir Philip. Mr March was studying his dance programme before the band began.

‘Though why they find it necessary to issue programmes to the superannuated members of the party, I have never been able to understand,’ he said to me. ‘Possibly so that the superannuated can imbibe the names of these productions that your generation are accustomed to regard as tunes.’

The band struck up, couples went on to the floor; Charles was dancing with Ann, Katherine with Francis. Mr March stopped talking; he let his programme swing by the pencil; he watched them. Katherine was smiling into Francis’ face; Charles and Ann were dancing without speaking.

Philip also was watching.

‘How many times,’ he asked Mr March, ‘has Katherine been to the regular dance this year?’

‘She has missed occasionally.’

‘How many times has she been?’

‘I can’t be expected to recollect particulars of her attendance,’ said Mr March.

Philip went on asking; Mr March fidgeted with his programme and gave irascible replies. If he had been suppressing his knowledge about Katherine and Francis, he could do so no longer.

Philip’s glance followed Katherine round the room. But even as he answered the questions, Mr March did not look in her direction. His expression was fixed and anxious: he had eyes for no one but his son.

‘I should like you to meet Ronald Porson,’ Ann said, as shortly afterwards I delivered a girl to her partner in the corner of the room. Ann, sitting with Porson close by, smiled at both him and me, making herself act as though this was a casual night out.

‘I’ve heard about you,’ said Porson. ‘Don’t you go about picking up the pieces after Getliffe? I suppose I oughtn’t to speak to you about your boss—’

‘Yes, I’ve been with him since I came to London,’ I said.

‘You have my blessing,’ said Porson. ‘And by God you’ll need it.’

His voice was loud, his manner hearty and assertive, though tonight he was preoccupied. He kept looking at Ann, but his eyes flickered nervously away, if he caught hers. His appearance surprised me after what I had heard; he was a short, plethoric man with a ruddy face. His left cheek often broke into a twitch which, instead of putting one off, happened to make his expression companionable and humorous.

The room had cleared for an interval, and Charles was almost alone on the floor. Several times Ann’s attention strayed to him, and then she said to Porson: ‘Have you ever met Charles March, by any chance? He’s the nephew of your host tonight. You’ve heard me talk about him. Perhaps you ought to be introduced.’

‘I might as well,’ said Porson.

He did not glance at Charles; I was sure that he had already identified him. Ann beckoned to Charles: Porson went on talking to me as he came up. It was not until they shook hands that Porson raised his eyes and looked into Charles’ face.

‘Are you enjoying this do tonight?’ he said. ‘Are you enjoying yourself?’

For a moment Charles did not answer. Before he spoke, Ann had turned to him. ‘Ronald is thinking of starting a practice in London,’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying to persuade him that before he makes up his mind he really must get some up-to-date advice. He happens to know Getliffe, I mean Herbert Getliffe, quite well. He doesn’t think much of him, but I don’t see that ought to matter: he might be useful.’

‘Getliffe’s not gone far enough,’ said Ronald. ‘I dislike crawling unless it’s worth while.’

‘It can’t do any harm.’ Ann looked at Charles.

‘It can’t do any harm,’ said Charles. ‘Isn’t that the point? I know it’s an intolerable nuisance, going to people for this kind of purpose—’

‘I dislike crawling in any case,’ said Ronald. ‘Particularly to men I don’t care for and whose ability I despise.’

‘He’s climbing pretty fast, isn’t he?’ Ann was asking me.

‘There are private reasons, which you know enough to guess,’ Ronald said to her, ‘which make it certain that, before I asked Getliffe for a favour, I’d sooner sweep the streets.’

I said: ‘There are plenty of other people you could talk to, aren’t there?’

‘Albert Hart would give you a pretty sensible judgement,’ said Charles. ‘If ever you’d like me to introduce you—’

‘I’m not prepared to go on my knees except for a very good reason.’

‘I should feel exactly the same,’ said Charles. ‘But still, that never prevents one, does it, from pointing out that someone else is doing too much for honour.’

Ronald laughed. After his first remark, he seemed surprised that he was actually liking Charles’ company.

‘Ah well, my boy,’ said Ronald, ‘I might stretch a point some day. But I insist on tapping my own sources first—’ Then he turned to Ann: ‘I’m going to take you home soon, aren’t I?’

‘Yes,’ said Ann.

‘Are you ready to come now?’

‘I think I’d like to wait half an hour,’ said Ann.

‘You’ll be ready then? You’ll remember, won’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Ann.

His masterfulness had dropped right away; suddenly he asserted himself by saying to me in a loud voice:

‘Well, my lad, I’m going to take you away and give you some advice.’

We went to the study, where whisky bottles and glasses were laid out. Ronald said: ‘Now you must develop a master plan too. Of course, you can’t expect it to be on such a scale as mine, but I’m damned if we can’t work out something for you. We must use some of my connections.’

He was at home, now he was giving help instead of taking it. His smile became domineering and good-natured; he could even put aside his obsession with Ann while he was giving me advice. Yet, though his connections were genuine enough, the advice was vague; his voice was throaty with worldly wisdom, but he was really an unworldly man. He was far more lost than Ann believed, I thought.

In time he left off advising me, took another drink, put an arm round my shoulders as we stood by the mantelpiece, told me a dirty story, and confided his ambitions. ‘It’s incredible that they shouldn’t recognize me soon,’ he said in his masterful tone. Those ambitions, like the advice, turned out to be quite vague; he was forty, but he did not know what he wanted to do. When I enquired about details his manner was still overbearing, but he seemed to be longing for something as humble as a respectable status and a bare living at the Bar.

Soon he said, with a return of anxiety: ‘We’d better be making our way back, old boy. Ann wants me to take her home tonight.’

When we returned to the dance-room, Ann and Charles were standing together. Ronald said to her: ‘Do you feel you can tear yourself away yet?’

‘I’d just like the next dance with Lewis,’ said Ann.

Ronald gave an impersonation of nonchalance, heavy and painful.

‘In that case I can use another drink,’ he said.

He went away before the band began to play.

Neither Charles nor Ann spoke. When she looked at him, he gave her a smile which was intimate but not happy. Then Charles’ gaze was diverted to the other end of the room, where his aunt Caroline had just buttonholed Mr March. He watched them walk up and down, Caroline protruding her great bosom like a shelf as she inclined her less deaf ear to catch Mr March’s replies. Charles had no doubt that she was catechizing him about Katherine.

‘I was afraid that they wouldn’t leave him in peace,’ he said.

As Ann and I were dancing, I asked her what Mr March would be forced to do. But she was scarcely attending: her mind was elsewhere: all she said was: ‘Charles has too much trouble with his family, hasn’t he?’

We danced round, the conversation ground to a stop. Then, to my surprise, she settled more softly in my arms, and said: ‘I shan’t be sorry when tonight is over.’

‘What’s the matter?’

She looked straight up at me, but slipped away from the question.

‘I always used to dread meeting people till I got in the middle of them, didn’t you?’

‘Not much,’ I said.

‘Don’t you really mind?’

‘I’m nervous of lots of things you’re not,’ I said. ‘But not of that.’

‘Do you know,’ said Ann, ‘I used to make excuses to stay by myself. Not so long ago, either. As a matter of fact, last summer, I very nearly didn’t go to Haslingfield.’

As we danced on, she said in a low voice: ‘Yes. I very nearly didn’t go. That would have altered things.’

I asked again: ‘What’s the matter?’

After a pause, she replied: ‘You’ve seen Ronald now, haven’t you?’

Then I guessed that all night she had been screwing herself up to make the final break. This was the night when she had to tell him that he had no hope.

I said that she should never have come with him at all.

‘Perhaps,’ said Ann. ‘I’d better get it over.’

Then she softened again, and as she spoke of Charles she pressed my hand. ‘I shall have to go off with Ronald now. I shan’t be able to talk to Charles. Will you tell him that everything is well? You’ll remember, won’t you? I don’t want him to go home alone without being told that.’

Ronald came to Ann as soon as we left the floor. She went to say goodbye to Herbert March’s wife: Ronald and I walked into the hall, where we met Getliffe on the point of leaving. Before he saw us, he was trying to smooth down the fur of his old top hat. He said to me: ‘As soon as my wife comes, I depart from the shores of Canaan. But I must say they’ve done us pretty well.’ Then he noticed Ronald. ‘Why, I didn’t realize it was you. It must be years since we met. Though I’ve always wanted to keep in touch with you. Everything satisfactory with the job?’

‘It’s been a complete success,’ said Ronald. ‘I’ve never regretted going out east for a minute.’

‘I’m very glad to hear that,’ said Getliffe earnestly. ‘Look here, if you’re not ashamed of your old friends, we ought to get together some time. Why, I’ve scarcely had a glass of water with you since we used to tune up the old Feathers — I don’t believe you’ve forgotten the place.’

They fixed nothing, but Getliffe shook hands with both of us, though he was bound to see me the next morning, and said: ‘The best of everything. Pleasant dreams.’

The Getliffes had gone when Ronald and Ann had finished their goodbyes. Charles and I waited with them in the hall while someone moved a car. At last they went out into the road, and Ann said to Charles: ‘I shall see you soon.’ Charles watched her climb into Ronald’s car and draw her coat round her shoulders; she was talking to him as they drove away.

We went back to the dance for half an hour, and it was strange, after breathing the heavy air that descends sometimes on to any passion, to be making conversation to young girls — young girls pleased to find a partner, or else proud that they had not missed a dance all night.

One or two, as they noticed their cousin Charles dancing with Ann, must have wondered if they were in love: but they would have been surprised if they had known the pain and decision that had been going on under their noses in this house.

The dance was almost over when Charles and I began to walk the few hundred yards to Bryanston Square. It had been a wet day; the pavements were glistening, though now the rain had stopped. After the ballroom the air was cool on our cheeks.

Charles said that he was worried about Mr March and Katherine. He questioned me on what Caroline had said. But I saw that he was distracted, and he soon fell quiet.

When I gave him Ann’s message, his face lit up.

‘Life’s very unfair.’ He smiled. In a single instant he had become brilliantly cheerful. ‘If I’d been capable of more civilized behaviour, she’d never have needed to think of me.’

‘You made Porson feel flattered,’ I said. ‘I thought that was rather gallant.’

‘No,’ said Charles. ‘I was behaving with the sort of excellence when I could almost see myself shine. And it’s easy to take in everybody except oneself and the person to whom it matters most.’

Suddenly he said: ‘It’s ridiculous, you know, but I’m jealous of him. Though she’s never loved him in the slightest. Still, I was jealous when I met him. Ann knew that from every word I said. That’s why she sent me that message. She wanted to save me from a dismal night.’

He took my arm, and broke out with a warm, unexpected affection.

‘I wish you’d been saved more, Lewis. You know so much more about that kind of suffering than I hope I ever shall.’

We had reached Bryanston Square. Mr March was long since home, and the house stood in darkness. Charles and I stayed under the lamp, just opposite the railings.

‘It’s curious,’ said Charles, ‘how the unexpected things catch one off one’s guard. I went there tonight, knowing that I had to get him to talk and make him as comfortable as I could and so on. But there was one thing I hadn’t reckoned with; it was the sight of them together in his car, just ready to drive away. For a second I felt that I had utterly lost her.’

21: Whispers in the Early Morning

The day after the coming-out dance, Katherine had to face a scene with her father.

‘Your Aunt Caroline wants you to spend a month in her house,’ Mr March said the moment she arrived at breakfast. ‘There is a consensus of opinion that you don’t meet enough people.’

‘Shall I go?’ said Katherine, so equably that Mr March became more angry.

‘I naturally didn’t consider your refusing.’

‘Of course I’ll go,’ said Katherine.

Until she went to stay with Caroline, Mr March behaved as though Katherine’s presence was irritating. Several of his relations had followed the lead of Caroline and Philip and advised him to ‘keep an eye on Charles’ friend Francis Getliffe’. The sight of Francis and Katherine together had impressed most of Mr March’s brothers and sisters. With their own particular brand of worldliness, they decided that Leonard could not be too careful, the young fellow might think he had a chance of her money.

Katherine duly spent her month at Caroline’s, and there, each night at dinner, was produced a selection of the eligible young men in the March world. It was all magnificent in its opulence and heavy-footedness. At the end of her stay Katherine returned with a collection of anecdotes to Bryanston Square. The anecdotes she had to keep for Charles. It struck everyone that Mr March did not enquire what had happened, and irascibly brushed aside any mention that Katherine made.

In July, on the customary date, Mr March moved his household to Haslingfield. I was invited there in August, and found, on the evening I arrived, that Katherine was still trying to imagine Charles’ life as a doctor.

‘I know you’ll go through with it now,’ she said. ‘But I just can’t see what it will be like, you know. It’s too far-fetched for me.’

‘You just want to purr away in comfort,’ said Charles.

‘You ought to be able to be happy, and get your dash of comfort into the bargain,’ she said.

‘I call that animal content,’ said Charles.

‘I only wish you could have it,’ she said.

Beneath the backchat their voices showed their fondness and concern. Between them there flowed a current of intimacy — it was not only his future they were talking of. Katherine was at once apprehensive and happy, so happy that she had become maternally concerned for Charles. Two years earlier, she would have hero-worshipped him.

They told me nothing that evening. Mr March appeared to be in something like his old spirits; his manner to his son was not constrained, and he talked about a holiday abroad which Charles had spoken of, and then shelved, as ‘my son’s misguided expedition to gather energy for purposes which he was never able to justify. Like the time my Uncle Natty gave them all a fright by trying to go on the stage. But it was always rumoured that he had his eye on an actress. So he went to London University and they made him a knight.’

‘It sounds rather easy, Mr L,’ said Charles.

‘No! No!’ said Mr March. ‘He went to London University and became a professor and a member of their financial board. I always thought he was a superficial fellow. He went slightly off his head, of course, and they gave him his knighthood just before he died.’

Lying half awake the next morning, after the footman had drawn the curtains, I heard the whisper of conversation in Charles’ room next door. I could distinguish Charles’ voice and Katherine’s, hers raised and animated, and I caught one whole reply from Charles: ‘I can easily ring him up at Cambridge.’ When Katherine came down to breakfast I said: ‘What conspiracy are you busy with now?’

She blushed. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Consultations before breakfast—’

‘Lewis, you didn’t hear? You can’t possibly have heard, can you?’

Then Charles entered, and she said:

‘Lewis pretends he overheard us this morning. He’s probably bluffing, but I’m not quite sure.’ She turned to me, smiling and excited: ‘If you really do know, it’s absolutely essential you shouldn’t breathe a word.’

Charles said to Katherine: ‘You’re rather hoping he does know, aren’t you? I mean, you wouldn’t be entirely displeased to give yourself away.’

‘You suggested telling him.’ They were smiling at each other. Katherine burst out: ‘Look here, I insist on being put out of my misery. Did you hear or didn’t you?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I can see you’re very cheerful, and it’s about Francis. I couldn’t very well help seeing that, could I? But I don’t know exactly what’s happening.’

‘Is this a double bluff?’ she said.

‘You’d better tell him,’ said Charles.

‘Well,’ said Katherine, ‘it’s important for me. You’ll be discreet, won’t you?’

I said yes.

‘As a matter of fact,’ she said, ‘about a fortnight ago Francis asked me to marry him.’

I said how glad I was. Her delight seemed to become even greater as she shared the news. She had been forced to restrain herself for a good many days, except to Charles. ‘When it came to the point,’ said Katherine, smiling lazily, ‘Francis was different from what any of you would expect.’

‘Now did you know?’ she harped back.

‘No.’

‘But you see why I’m anxious that Charles shouldn’t do anything more to upset Mr L — till my marriage is settled. If Charles begins to talk about his career or his independence again, it will only make things more difficult. Of course, I shall be the chief affliction. If I’m to have the slightest hope of getting away with it, Mr L mustn’t feel there’s anything else wrong with his family.’

Charles caught my eye.

‘Don’t you see, Lewis,’ she said, ‘I still have the worst time in front of me? Somehow I must break the news to Mr L.’

‘How much does he know?’

She shook her head.

‘It will be the biggest disaster he’s ever had,’ she said.

I said: ‘Are you sure of that?’

Katherine said to Charles:

‘Don’t you agree? Don’t you agree that I’m right?’

Charles did not answer.

Katherine said: ‘I’m positive that I’m right. Lewis, you simply can’t understand what this will mean to him.’

She spoke to Charles: ‘You know, I feel gross asking you to think of the slightest point that might affect my chances. But, as things have turned out, I can’t do anything else. I must have a clear field, mustn’t I?’

‘I’ve been telling you so for days,’ Charles teased her.

‘You see, Lewis,’ said Katherine, ‘I shall marry Francis whatever happens. I knew I should never have a minute’s doubt — if ever he asked me. I’m not a self-sacrificing person, and however much it upsets Mr L it’s more important for me than for him. I’m worried about him, but I shan’t feel that I’ve done wrong.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘If the worst comes to the worst,’ she said, ‘we can live on what Francis earns. It won’t exactly support me in the condition I’ve been accustomed to. But still—’

‘Francis is pretty proud,’ said Charles. ‘He’s not as sensible as he tries to appear. He’d like to have you without a penny.’

‘He’s always taken the gloomiest view and expected to keep me,’ said Katherine. ‘At any rate, that’s settled. We shall be married by December. But it’s obvious that I want to placate Mr L as much as I humanly can. I’m prepared to be thrown out if there’s no other way, but it would be an enormous horror for us both. I expect I should feel it even more than I think now.’

‘Yes, you would,’ said Charles.

‘You know it, don’t you?’ She looked at him.

Then Katherine said: ‘Whatever happens, Mr L must be told soon.’

22: Invitation

As soon as I got back to London after that weekend, Ann asked me to dine with her. Once more she took me out in luxury, this time to the Ritz. I took it for granted, going out with her, that the waiters would know her by name: I was not surprised when other diners bowed to her. As usual, she set herself out to buy me expensive food and wine.

Looking at her across the table, I had no idea what she wanted to talk to me about that night. Not Katherine’s marriage, I was sure. Not Charles, at least directly, it soon seemed. No, the first person she began to mention was Ronald Porson. She wanted to tell me that he had given up trying to see her: that even he accepted that it was over and done with. As she told me, Ann was referring back to the coming-out dance three months before, when I blamed her for letting Ronald’s attendance drag on: she wanted me to admit that she had been firm. Laughing at her, I saw the shyness wiped away from her face as though it had been make-up; and yet my piece of criticism rankled, she might have just been listening to it.

At the same time she was giving me something like a warning about Porson. She said that now he bore a grudge against the Marches, and he was a man who could not stop his grudges breaking out; she talked about him with a kind of remorseful understanding, because she could not love him back.

She knew him well, she was fond of him, she was afraid of what he might do. Although he had got nowhere himself, she told me, he had some influence; his father had been an ambassador, he had his successful acquaintances.

‘What can he do?’ I said with scepticism.

‘Would you like him as an enemy?’ she replied.

But it was not really Porson she had got me there to talk about. Politics: the depression was deepening all over Europe: had I been following the German election? She was in earnest. All she said was business-like. She had a clear sight of what was coming. She was better informed than I was. It was not quite like the politics I used to talk with my friends in the provincial town; we had been born poor, we spoke with the edge of those who rubbed their noses against the shop windows and watched others comfortable within; she had known none of that. She was more generous than we were, but she hoped as much.

As we talked — we were not so much arguing as agreeing — I felt a curious excitement in the air. Her voice at the same time quickened and sank to something like a whisper; her blue eyes had gone wide open, were staring at me, or past me, with the kind of stare that one sees in someone who is obsessed by the thought of making love. In fact, it might have been the beginning of a love-affair.

Yet she was totally in love with Charles: I was just as single-minded in my love for Sheila: that was why Ann and I could keep up a friendship without trouble to either of us.

The excitement tightened, and I was completely at a loss. She whispered: ‘Look, Lewis. Isn’t it time you came in with us?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Isn’t it time you came into the party?’

When at last I heard the question, I thought I had been a fool. Nevertheless, up to that evening she had been discreet, even with me; she had talked like someone on the left, but so did many of our friends, none of whom were communists in theory, let alone members of what she called ‘the party’.

I looked at her. The strain had ended. She was brave, headstrong, and full of faith.

I owed her an honest answer. Trying to give it to her, I felt at a disadvantage just because she was brave and full of faith. I felt at a disadvantage, too, because I happened not to be well that night. Giving her reasons why I could not come in I did not make either a good or an honest job of it. Yet I did manage to make the one point that mattered most to me. She wasn’t as interested as I was, I told her, in the nature of power and those who held the power. The more I thought of it, the less I liked it. Any régime of her kind just had to give its bosses great power without any check. Granted that they were aiming at good things, it was still too dangerous. People with power began to get detached from anything but power itself. No one could be trusted with power for long.

For a time she argued back with the standard replies, which we both knew by heart, then she gave up.

‘You’re too cynical,’ she said.

‘I’m not in the least cynical.’

‘You’re too pessimistic.’

‘I don’t think so, in the long run.’ But I wished that my hopes were as certain as hers.

She was disappointed with me, and put out, but she wasted no more time. This was what she had come for, and she had failed. She had a business-like gift of cutting her losses. She decided that in my own fashion, I was as obstinate as she was.

She asked me to order more brandy: even after a disappointment, she liked giving me a good time. In a voice still lowered, but not excited by now, only brisk, she said: ‘You’ll keep this absolutely quiet, of course, won’t you?’

She meant about herself and the party. She spoke with trust. In the same tone I said: ‘Of course.’ I went on: ‘It’s the sort of secret I’m not bad at keeping.’

She looked at me, her face open and gentle, and said: ‘Nor am I.’

We both laughed. After the argument, we were glad to feel comradely again. She asked me (I thought it was a relief to her to be straightforward) whether I had suspected she was a member.

‘No,’ I said, and then suddenly a thought crossed my mind.

‘You’re pretty good at keeping your mouth shut, aren’t you?’ I said. ‘But that first night at Haslingfield — why did you give everyone such a hint?’

Her reply did not come at once. At last she said: ‘I think I knew already that Charles was going to be important to me.’

‘And so—’

‘And so I couldn’t let them take me in on entirely false pretences, could I?’

I was pleased to think that, at the time, I had been somewhere near the truth. There was a streak of the gambler in her. She did not like being careful; even though she had to be, it seemed to her, more than to most of us, cowardly, impure, dishonourable. It was really part of her to tell the truth. That night at Haslingfield, a cardinal night for her, she had believed she could tell the truth and get away with it.

But there was no one outside the party, apart from Charles and me, who knew that she was in it — so she told me as we finished our last drinks at the Ritz. She had made clear to Charles exactly what she did, before their affair began. That I should have expected from her: what interested me was that she had made no attempt to invite him in. She had not tried to persuade him, even to the extent she had tried with me. It seemed that she did not want to influence him. She had taken care that he knew the exact truth about her. That done, she longed just to make him happy.

23: Katherine Tells Mr March

Katherine put off breaking the news to her father. It was the second week in October before she told him. The family were together at Bryanston Square, and Mr March, having written his usual hundred letters for the Jewish New Year, had been grumbling because others’ greetings were so late. Katherine waited until the festival had passed by.

I had tea at Bryanston Square the day she finally brought herself to the pitch. We were alone. Francis had not long left for Cambridge, after staying the weekend in the house. She told me that she meant to face Mr March that night.

‘I’m extremely embarrassed,’ she said. ‘No, I’m more than embarrassed, I’m definitely frightened. It’s absurd to feel oneself being as frightened as this.’

She added: ‘I can’t shake off an absurd fear that when I do try to tell him, I shall find myself go absolutely dumb. I’ve been rehearsing some kind of an opening all day. To tell you the honest truth, I’ve been rehearsing it ever since Francis proposed. I never thought I should put it off as long.’

The next evening she and Charles came round to my rooms. She said at once: ‘I’ve got it over. I think it’s all right. But—’

‘It’s all right so far,’ said Charles.

Mr March had been at moments extravagantly himself, and Katherine could laugh at some of his remarks: yet she was still shaken.

Immediately after dinner she had said to Mr March, falling back on the sentence she had rehearsed:

‘I’m sorry, Mr L, but I’ve something to tell you that I’m afraid will make you rather unhappy.’

Mr March replied:

‘I hope it isn’t what I suppose it must be.’

They went into his study, and Katherine heard her own information sound blunt and cut-and-dried. It took only a minute or two, and then she said: ‘Naturally, I’m tremendously happy about it myself. I’m not going to try and hide that from you, Mr L. I’m only sorry that it’s going to make you slightly miserable.’

Mr March said: ‘Of course, I wish you’d never been born.’

Katherine felt that he was saying simply and sincerely what he meant. She felt it again, when he said:

‘My children have brought me nothing but disgrace.’

‘I know I’ve given you a lot of trouble,’ said Katherine.

‘Nothing you’ve done matters by the side of what you are informing me of now.’

‘I was afraid of that.’

‘Afraid? Afraid? You knew that you were proposing something that I should never get over. You never gave a moment’s thought to the fact that you’d make me a reproach for the rest of my life.’

‘I’ve thought of nothing else for weeks, Mr L,’ she said.

‘And you are determined to persevere?’ he shouted.

‘I can’t do anything else.’

Mr March spoke in a calmer tone: ‘I suppose I can’t stop it. He can presumably maintain you in some sort of squalor. Not that I have any objection to his profession. It’s all very well for men who are prepared to sacrifice all their material requirements. Though I can’t understand how they venture to support their wives. How much does this fellow earn?’

‘About eight hundred a year.’

‘Twopence a week,’ said Mr March. ‘It’s enough for you to contemplate existing on, unfortunately. I suppose I can’t stop it. It was exactly the same when your Aunt Hetty insisted on marrying the painter. He took to drink before they’d been married three years.’

He broke off: ‘I’m obliged to say, though I couldn’t disapprove more strongly, that I’ve no particular objection to this fellow on personal grounds. He seems quiet, and he’s surprisingly level-headed, apart from whatever proficiency he may have at his academic pursuits. I realize that he exercises himself on mountains, but he doesn’t look particularly strong.’

‘He’s as tough as I am,’ said Katherine.

‘The doctors said you were delicate when you were young,’ said Mr March. ‘They said the same about me in ’79. If they had been right in either case, I might have been spared this intolerable state of affairs you’re bringing on me. I say, I haven’t any strong personal objection to the fellow. I could put up with his poverty, since he’s pursuing a career which isn’t discreditable. I should be willing to give you my approval apart from the fact that makes it impossible, as you must have known all along. It would be different if he were a member of our religion.’

‘I realize that,’ she said.

‘What’s the use of realizing it?’ said Mr March. ‘When you come and tell me that you are determined to marry him. What’s the use of realizing it? When you’re determined to do the thing that I shall never get over.’

Then he said: ‘I know it’s not so easy for a woman to refuse. If he’d satisfied the essential condition, I shouldn’t have blamed you for accepting him on the spot. After all, you mightn’t get a second chance.’

It was strange, Katherine felt as though she were noticing it for the first time, to see his distress suddenly streaked with domestic realism. Rather excessively so in this case, she grumbled to Charles and me, since she was not quite twenty-one, ‘and not so completely repulsive as Mr L seems to assume’. In the same realistic way, he appeared to be convinced that there was nothing for him to do. He cut the interview short, and neither Charles nor Katherine saw him again that night; Katherine took Charles off to the billiard-room, and they played for hours.

In the morning they arranged to come down to breakfast at the same time. As soon as they had sat down, Mr March came in, banging the door behind him.

‘You never show the slightest consideration,’ he said. ‘You announce your intentions at night just before I’m going to bed. You might have known that it would keep me awake.’

Charles was reassured when he heard that first outburst. He tried to speak casually:

‘What is the proper time to upset you, Mr L? We should like an accurate answer for future reference.’

Mr March gave a reluctant chuckle.

‘After dinner is the worst time of all,’ said Mr March. ‘If I must have an ungrateful family, the best thing they can do is not to interfere with my health. It was exactly the same when Evelyn contracted her lamentable marriage. She was thoughtless enough to tell me at half past ten at night. So that I actually got to bed late in addition to finding it impossible to sleep.’

‘I’m extremely sorry,’ said Katherine.

‘That’s the least you should be,’ said Mr March. He turned on her: ‘You go on expressing your sorrow uselessly while you persist in making it intolerable for me to show myself in the streets.’

Charles had to intervene.

‘This comes,’ he said, ‘of letting your children bring their disreputable friends to the house.’

‘I’ve tried to consider where I’m to blame,’ said Mr March. ‘But no precautions that I might have been expected to take would have been certain to spare me from the present position.’

That afternoon Charles said that Mr March would tolerate the marriage ‘so long as no one else interferes’.

They argued about Mr March’s state of mind. How deeply had he been wounded? None of us could be certain. They were surprised that he was not more crushed. True, he had a lively affection for Francis, and respect for his accomplishments. Possessive though he was, he was instinctively too healthy a man not to want to see his daughters married. But neither Charles nor Katherine could feel sure to what extent he had been afflicted, afflicted in himself apart from finding about other people’s opinion, because Francis was not a Jew.

I did not have much doubt. I had so little doubt that to Katherine certainly, to Charles almost as much, I seemed right out of sympathy. Katherine told me flat that I could not understand. For I believed that Mr March was hurt a good deal less than by the first quarrel with Charles, at the time when he abandoned the law: and incomparably less than by the struggle over Ann and Charles’ future. The suffering he felt now was on a different level, was on the level of self-respect and his external face to the world. It was not the deep organic suffering that he knew over his son, when he felt that a part of his own being was torn away.

Both on the first day and in the week after, he seemed far more preoccupied with the family’s criticism than with any distress of his own. He became irascible and hunted, and kept exploding about the esteem he would lose as soon as the news got out. In fact, Mr March tried to delay the news getting outside the house. He did not object to seeing Francis and arranging the settlement; he greeted him with the cry: ‘I’ve nothing against you personally. But I entirely disapprove.’ Afterwards he said to Charles: ‘The astonishing thing is, he knows something about business. He doesn’t like imprudent methods any more than I do myself.’

But he invented excuses for delaying the announcement from day to day. He could not write to his relations for a few days, he said, since he had just written all round for the New Year. It might be better to wait for one of Herbert’s daughters, whose engagement was just coming out, ‘if the man doesn’t fight shy, as I strongly suspect,’ said Mr March. ‘Hannah thought she’d hooked a man once. I never believed it was possible.’ He would not put an announcement in The Times until he had let the family know: and he dreaded the thought of publication even more than anything Philip and Hannah and Caroline might say. For he knew himself how after the first glance at the news, he read in order the deaths, the births, and the forthcoming marriages. He could imagine too clearly how people throughout the Marches’ world would do the same one morning and suddenly ask: ‘Who’s this Francis Getliffe that’s going to marry Leonard March’s daughter? Does it mean that she can be marrying “out”?’

A fortnight passed after Katherine broke the news, and then one day Mr March ordered the car in the afternoon. It was a break in his daily timetable such as neither Charles nor Katherine could remember. His temper muttered volcanically at lunch, and he refused to say where he was going. At night they realized that he had at last confessed to his sister Caroline.

‘She had furnished herself with an absurd ear-trumpet,’ said Mr March. ‘It was bad enough being obliged to divulge my family’s disgrace without having to bawl it into this contraption of hers. Your mother made the same mistake when she bought a fur in Paris on the ridiculous assumption that it was cheaper than in London—’

‘Sorry, Mr L,’ said Charles. ‘What mistake?’

‘Of not being able to resist articles in foreign shops, of course. My sister Caroline succumbed to the temptation when she was in Vienna recently. She caught sight of this apparatus in one of the latest shops. Women are unstable in these matters.’

‘You are being a bit hard,’ said Katherine. ‘She probably gets on better—’

‘Nonsense,’ said Mr March. ‘She found it exactly as difficult to comprehend what I was trying to say. Then she was polite enough to remark that I ought not to hold myself entirely to blame, and that these disappointments were bound to occur in the family, and that they’d all come round to it in time.’

Actually Caroline, just by being as tactless as usual, cheered him up; in his heart, he had expected a far more violent outcry. He was so much relieved that he indulged in louder complaints.

‘I can’t dissociate myself from the responsibility according to her advice. I remember that she regarded it as my responsibility when she suggested that fishing trip for you at her house. Not that I ever had the slightest faith in her averting the disaster. I suppose I must have brought it on myself. Though I can’t decide where I went wrong with my family. If I’d made you’ — he said to Katherine — ‘take your proper place at dances and other entertainments, I doubt whether it would have served any useful purpose.’

‘I’m sure it wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘Mr L, you mustn’t blame yourself because your family is unsatisfactory. It’s just original sin.’

‘Everyone else’s children have managed to avoid being a reproach. Except Justin’s daughter who did what you’re doing in even more disastrous circumstances. The less said of her the better. I suppose I’m bound to accept responsibility for what you call original sin. Even though my wishes have never had the slightest effect on your lamentable progress.’

The next day, he told the news to Philip, who received it both robustly and sadly; that night, with great commotion and expressions of anger, Mr March drew up the announcement for The Times. He sat in his study with the door open, shouting, ‘Go away, don’t you see I’m busy!’ when Charles approached. ‘I’m busy with an extremely distasteful operation.’ Then, a moment afterwards, Mr March rushed into the drawing-room. ‘Well, how does the fellow want to appear? I suppose he possesses some first names…’ Several times Mr March dashed into the drawing-room again: at last, standing by the open door, he read out his composition — ‘“A marriage has been arranged…”’

‘That’s done,’ said Mr March, and, instead of leaving the letter for the butler to collect, he took it to the post himself.

Katherine was thinking of getting up the next morning, when Mr March flung open the door.

‘It’s not my fault this has happened,’ he said. ‘It’s your mother’s fault. I never wanted another child. She made me.’

24: A Piece of News

From the morning of the announcement, Mr March was immersed in letters, notes, conversations, and telephone calls. Since he had feared more than the worst, he became cheerful as he answered ‘what they are civil enough to term “congratulations”’. Most of the March family wrote in a friendly way, though there were rumours that one cousin had threatened not to attend the wedding. Hannah was reported to have said: ‘I never thought she’d find anyone at all. Even someone ineligible. Mind you, she’s not married him yet.’

For several days Mr March did not receive any setback; Katherine thought she had been lucky.

Then Herbert Getliffe spoke to me one evening, in chambers, just before I went off to dine at Bryanston Square. He entered the room I worked in looking worried and abashed, and said: ‘There’s something I want to say to you, L S.’

Recently he had taken to calling me by my initials, though no one else did; as a rule, I was amused, but not that night, following him into his own room, for his alarm had already reached me. He sat at his desk: the smoke from his pipe whirled above the reading lamp; his face was ominous, and the smell of the tobacco became ominous too.

‘I want a bit of help, L S,’ he said. ‘They’re getting at me. You’ve got to come along and clear up the mess. I may as well tell you at once that it can turn out badly for your friends.’

His misery was as immediate as a child’s. It was hard to resist him when he asked for comfort.

‘Your friend Mr Porson is trying to raise the dust,’ said Getliffe. ‘You know something about him, don’t you? He was called at the same time as I was. But he didn’t find this wicked city needed his services enough to keep him in liquor, so he went off to lay down the law in the colonies. Well, he’s suddenly taken it into his head that I’ve been making more money than is good for me. He’s decided that I’ve used some confidential knowledge to make a packet on the side. You remember the Whitehall people asked me for an opinion last year? You gave me a hand yourself. Remind me to settle up with you about that. The labourer is worthy of his hire. Well, Master Porson is trying to bully them into an enquiry about some of my investments. Involving me and other people who are too busy to want to go down to Whitehall to answer pointless questions. But I don’t like it, L S. I can’t prevent these things worrying me. I ought to tell you that Porson is a man who can’t forgive one for being successful. You’ll find them yourself as you go up the ladder. But you’ll also find that more people than not will lend half an ear to Porson and company when they start throwing darts. That’s the world, and it’s no use pretending it isn’t. That’s why I want you to help me out.’

He wanted support from someone. He quite forgot, he made me forget, that he was the older man.

He gave me his own version of what Porson had discovered. It was not altogether easy to follow. Getliffe gave as much trouble as any of the evasive clients about whom he had ever grumbled. All I learned for sure that night was that he had been asked an opinion by a government department eighteen months before; while giving it, he had guessed (Porson said he had been told as an official secret) a Cabinet decision about a new government contract; two of his brothers-in-law had bought large holdings in the firm of Howard & Hazlehurst; they had done well out of it.

After telling me this story, Getliffe said: ‘Well, Mr Porson has just broken out in a new place. I’ve been told that he’s trying to persuade some pundit to ask a question in the House. Porson’s had the face to tell me so in as many words.

‘I warn you,’ Getliffe went on, ‘it’s possible he may bring it off, LS. I can talk to you frankly now you’re going up the hill a bit. Of course, I don’t worry much for myself. It may be a little difficult even for me, but it’s a mistake to worry too much about the doings of people who would like to step into one’s goloshes. I want you to believe that I’m thinking entirely of the effect on some of your friends. And particularly on my young brother. It’s for their sakes that I want everyone to use their influence to calm Porson down.’

He knew that I had met Porson occasionally since the coming-out dance.

‘If I can get the chance,’ I said, ‘I’ll talk to him. Though it won’t be easy. I don’t know him well.’

‘You mustn’t get the impression that I’m exaggerating. Porson could make things awkward for your friends. You see, my name couldn’t help but be brought in, whatever he did. That wouldn’t be good for my brother. The Chosen People don’t like public appearances. There are one or two members of the March family who would specially dislike this one. I give you fair warning. It’s uncomfortable for all of us.’

He was speaking with a severe expression, almost as though I was responsible for the danger. When he wanted your help, he sometimes appealed, sometimes threatened you with his own anxiety: anything to get the weight from his shoulders to yours. Then he said: ‘I can’t make out why Porson has got into this state. I always thought he was unbalanced. I don’t like to believe that he’s trying to bring the place down on our heads simply because he hates me. After all, I’ve managed to get on with most of my fellow men. I don’t like being hated, L S. Even by that madman. It’s a nasty sensation, and when people say they don’t mind being hated they’re just whistling to keep their spirits up. So I prefer to think something else may be moving Mr Porson. I shouldn’t be altogether surprised. Didn’t the young woman Ann Simon turn him down pretty flat not long ago? You may find that’s got something to do with it.’

He warned me again not to think that he was exaggerating the trouble. In fact, I was uneasy. He was shrewd, despite (or partly because of) his excessively labile nature. He was not a man over-inclined to anxiety. I had often seen him badgered, I had often seen him inducing others to extricate him from troubles — but the troubles were real, the consequences of living his mercurial, tricky life.

When I left him, it was nearly eight o’clock, and I had to go to Bryanston Square by taxi. As I waited while the Regent Street lights jostled by, rain throbbing against the windows, I was listening for the strike of eight. There was no chance of a word with Charles before dinner: I was greeted with genial shouts by Mr March: ‘You’ve made a frightful ass of yourself. You’re three minutes late. Anyone knows that you must allow five minutes extra on nights of this appalling nature.’

We went straight in to dinner. I was enough of a favourite of his not to be allowed to forget that I was late. Meanwhile I saw Charles several times, and Katherine once, looking in my direction: Charles at least knew that something was on my mind.

As luck would have it, Mr March was in more expansive form than for weeks past. Margaret March, whom I had met at my first Friday night, was there as well as Francis. After disposing temporarily of the topic of my incompetence, Mr March spent most of the night talking to Francis about buying a house.

The two of them were happy discussing plans and prices. Mr March occasionally burst out into accounts of his own struggles with Haslingfield and Bryanston Square. ‘One trouble you won’t have,’ he said, ‘since you are camping out in your Bohemian fashion, is that you won’t surround yourself with a mass of ponderable material that you’ll never extricate yourself from.’ The internal furniture of Bryanston Square had been valued years before at £15,000; but Mr March was lamenting that he could not sell it for as many shillings.

Houses of this size were relics of another age, now that people ‘camped out in a Bohemian fashion’, as Mr March insisted on referring to the style in which Katherine and Francis proposed to live. So the solid furniture of the March houses had become almost worthless, and Mr March and his brothers spent considerable ingenuity in persuading one another to accept the bulky articles that they unwillingly received as legacies, as their older relations died off. Several of Mr March’s stories on this night, told mainly for Francis to appreciate, finished up with the formula: ‘I pointed out it was far more use to him than it was to me. And so I was willing to sacrifice it, provided he paid the cost of transport.’

When Mr March went to bed, Margaret settled down in her armchair. She was older than the rest of us, but still not married; she had a similar handsomeness to Charles’, and a similar hard, ruthless mind. Yet underneath, at the thought of any of our marriages, she was full of feeling. That night, she noticed the constraint in the air. Naturally she put it down to Mr March. So she said to Katherine: ‘I’m sure he has come round now. I’m positive you haven’t got anything to fear.’

‘I suppose not,’ said Katherine.

Margaret had spoken warmly and protectively. She was surprised, a little put out, to feel us all still in suspense. She turned for confirmation to Charles: ‘Don’t you agree that she’s safe enough?’

‘She ought to be,’ said Charles.

‘I wouldn’t have believed that Mr L could come round so quickly.’ Like her cousins, Margaret was not above plucking away at the same nerve. ‘He’s now drawn up your settlement good and proper, hasn’t he?’

‘Yes, he’s gone as far as that,’ Katherine replied.

Charles kept watching me, knowing I was not going to speak while Margaret was there. But Katherine was not so much on edge. At the mention of the settlement, she began to smile. ‘I’ve actually got it here,’ she said to Margaret.

She went to the writing-desk and brought out a sealed envelope. She broke the seal and looked over the document inside. It was printed, and ran into several pages.

‘I still think this is extremely funny,’ she said.

‘You don’t know what I shall become as I get older,’ Francis said, and they laughed at each other.

‘The point is,’ Katherine went on, ‘that really Mr L has the greatest possible confidence in Francis. Apart from his not being a Jew. Actually, Francis would have been a far more suitable child for Mr L than Charles. He wouldn’t have rebelled anything like as much.’

‘I should have managed,’ said Francis. His cheeks were creased by a smile, but he meant it. He would have found his way to his science somehow; he would have been radical, but he would have kept quiet. That night his quixotic, fine-drawn expression was less evident than it used to be; he looked composed and well.

‘Well,’ said Katherine, ‘it’s obvious that Mr L approves of the man. But as soon as he drew up my settlement’ — she pointed to the sheet in front of her — ‘he at once acted on the assumption that I was an imbecile and Francis was a crook. He’s taken every possible precaution to see that Francis never touches a penny. The settlement never gives him a chance. When I die, the money goes straight to our children. If Francis outlives me, he receives a small tip for watching his sons inherit their slice of their grandfather’s estate.’

All the marriage settlements in the family followed the same pattern; no one but a March should handle March money. Katherine and Charles had been amused, but nevertheless they took for granted the whole apparatus as an ordinary part of a marriage: while in the property-less world into which I had been born, no one would have known what a marriage settlement was.

I mentioned that I had never seen one. Katherine was just going to show me theirs, but Francis said: ‘I think Mr L would be shocked — even though it’s Lewis.’

‘You mean you’d be shocked yourself,’ said Katherine, but slipped the papers into the envelope again.

It was nearly midnight, and Margaret rose to go.

As she said goodbye, she noticed that I was staying. Her bright eyes looked keenly, uncomfortably round, worried because there was something wrong, self-conscious because she had been in the way.

We heard the butler taking her across the hall.

‘What’s the matter?’ said Charles, the moment the door clanged. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Is anything wrong with Sheila?’ said Katherine.

‘It’s nothing like that,’ I said. I told the story.

Katherine cried: ‘Will he bring it out in the next three weeks? Before we’re married?’

‘No one knows,’ I said. ‘In any case, we may all be taking it too seriously—’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Charles. ‘Herbert Getliffe is right, it’s the sort of affair the family wouldn’t like. You mustn’t worry,’ he said to Katherine. ‘It ought to be possible to stop Porson yet.’

‘That must be tried,’ said Francis. ‘There’s plenty to do. We’ll break the jobs down in a minute.’

Suddenly he had taken charge. He had the decision, the capacity for action, of a highly strung man who had been able to master his nerves. It was easy at that instant to understand the influence he had had on Charles when they were undergraduates, with Francis two years older.

He spoke straight to Katherine as though they were alone.

‘The first thing is, we must prepare for the worst. We’ve got to assume that he’ll act on it. It’s better to assume that right away. If he does, we shan’t let the family make any difference.’

‘That’s easier said than done,’ said Katherine. ‘But — no, we shan’t.’

‘Good work,’ said Francis, and took her hand. ‘Now let’s get down to it. Lewis, tell us the practical steps Porson can take. If he wants to make as much fuss as possible. We want all the details you can give us.’

Sharply he asked me: could Porson start anything more damaging than a parliamentary question? How long did it take to get a parliamentary question asked? Could it be delayed? Could we find out the moment it began to pass through the department?

Francis arranged that on the next day I should try to see Porson. Charles would see Albert Hart, who might have an acquaintance in the department. Francis himself would speak to his brother.

That settled, Francis looked at Katherine, and said with a smile, tart and yet distressed:

‘I’m sorry that my brother should be responsible for this. It isn’t altogether his fault. Ever since I can remember, I’ve been listening to his latest manoeuvre. He’s got too much energy for one man. That’s what has made him a success.’

He had just surprised me by being more effective than any of us. Now he surprised me again — by showing something he had never shown before, his true relation to his half-brother.

Occasionally he had not been able to disguise his shame and anger at one of Herbert’s tricks: but he had usually spoken of him very much as Charles used to speak, with amusement at his exploits, with indifference, with humorous disapproval. His apology to Katherine had torn that cover aside. Now we saw the affection, the indulgent, irritated, and above all admiring affection, which a man like Herbert Getliffe so often inspires in his nearest circle; so that Herbert’s children, for example, would come to worship him and make his extravaganzas into a romance. That was true even of Francis, so responsible and upright.

Francis soon controlled his smile, so that the distress was no longer visible. His expression became commanding and active.

‘It’s clear what must be done,’ he said. ‘I think it’s all set. You’ll do what you can with Porson, Lewis? I don’t like to involve you in this business, but if it can be stopped it would be convenient.’

‘It probably can be stopped,’ said Charles. He was trying to reassure Katherine on a different plane from Francis’. ‘I’ll see Ann first thing tomorrow. She may know more about Porson. And there is something I might be able to say to the family myself.’

25: The Smell of Wet Leaves in the Square

From the night of Getliffe’s warning, there were nineteen days before the wedding. On the first of them I could not find Ronald Porson, but within forty-eight hours of the news from Getliffe I had managed to have a long talk with him. I was able to assure Katherine that there did not seem much to fear.

Since we met at the coming-out dance, I had got on well with Porson. He was boastful, violent, uncontrolled; but he had the wild generosity one often finds in misfit lives, and I was the only one of his new circle who was still struggling. With me he could advise, help, and patronize to his heart’s content. And with me he could stick a flower in his buttonhole, swing his stick, and lead the way to a shop girl who had taken his fancy: he was a man at ease only with women beneath him in the social scale.

Ann had punctured his sexual vanity, as was so easy to do. He had talked to me about her with violent resentment and with love. He was more easily given to warm hate than anyone I knew.

So I did not dare ask him to call off his attack on Getliffe in order not to risk disturbing Katherine’s marriage. He was capable of such inordinate good nature that he might have agreed on the spot, even for a girl he scarcely knew; but on the other hand, because she was connected with Charles and Ann, he might have burst out against them all. Instead I felt it was safe to talk only of Herbert Getliffe and of what Porson was now planning.

To my surprise he was very little interested: he seemed to have given up the idea of a parliamentary question, if he had ever entertained it. He mentioned Ann affectionately, and I suspected she had gone to see him the day before. He was full of his scheme for going on to the midland circuit.

For some reason or other his anger had burned itself out. So I told Katherine, and Charles agreed that there seemed no danger from him. He had heard something more about Ronald, also reassuring, from Ann, though exactly what I did not learn.

For a day or two there seemed nothing to worry over. Katherine had to show Francis off to some of her relations, and recaptured the fun of being engaged, which, since Mr March first came round, she had been revelling in.

Then, though Ronald Porson made no move, rumours spread through the Marches. One reached Charles; Katherine heard others hinted at. It was known that the Getliffe brothers had been discussed on the past Friday night, when Mr March happened to be away. No one was sure how the rumours started; but it became clear that Sir Philip knew more about Herbert Getliffe than anyone in the family did, and had described him with caustic contempt.

Both Charles and Katherine accepted that without question. Philip had his code of integrity. It was a worldly code, but a strict one. He did not forgive an offence against it. He was indignant that Herbert Getliffe should have laid himself open to suspicion, whether the suspicion was justified or not.

All the family were impressed by his indignation. Charles and Katherine were told by several of their cousins to expect him to visit Mr March. Katherine waited in anxiety. Night after night she could not get to sleep, and Charles played billiards with her at Bryanston Square. For three mornings running, Mr March grumbled at them; then he suddenly stopped, the day after Philip’s visit.

Philip called at Bryanston Square on a Tuesday afternoon: the wedding was fixed for ten days ahead. He went into Mr March’s study, and they were there alone for a couple of hours. On his way out, Philip looked into the drawing-room, said good afternoon to Charles and Katherine, but would not stay for tea and did not refer once to seeing her at her wedding.

When Philip left, they waited for Mr March; they expected him to break out immediately about what he proposed to do. But he did not come near them all the evening: the butler said that he was still in the study: at dinner he spoke little to them, though he made one remark about ‘a visit from my brother about your regrettable connections’.

When Katherine tried to use the opening, he said bad temperedly: ‘I have been persecuted enough for one day. It is typical of my family that when they wish to make representations to me, they select the only relative whom I have ever respected.’

By the time I arrived for tea the next day, Charles had already heard, from various members of the family, versions of the scene between Mr March and Philip; the versions differed a good deal, but contained a similar core. They all agreed that Mr March had put up a resistance so strong that it surprised the family. He had made no attempt to challenge the facts about Herbert Getliffe, but protested, with extreme irritability, that ‘though I refuse to defend my daughter’s unfortunate choice, I have no intention of penalizing the man because of the sharp practice of his half-brother’. According to one account, he had expressed his own liking and trust for Francis; and certainly, with his accustomed practicality, he had said that it was far too late to intervene now. ‘If you had wanted me to refuse to recognize the marriage, you should have communicated your opinion in decent time.’

It sounded final. Charles, piecing together the stories, was relieved, but he was not quite reassured: even less so was Katherine. Mr March had brazened matters out, as though he were ready to defy the family. But his mood since had been sombre, not defiant; and they knew he was hurt, more than by the family’s disapproval which Philip represented, by his feeling for Philip himself.

They knew the depth of his feeling. Warm-hearted as he was, yet with no intimate friends outside the family, this was the strongest of his human bonds, after his love for his children. When he had spoken the night before of ‘the only relative whom I have ever respected’, he was trying to mask, and at the same time relieve, his sadness. He made it sound like an outburst of ill-temper, an exaggerated phrase; but it was really a cry of pain.

So Charles and Katherine kept coming back to Philip’s effect on Mr March. It was not till after tea that Charles said: ‘It’s possible that I may be able to help with Uncle Philip.’ He asked me to take Katherine out for the evening: he would see Mr March, and persuade him to invite Philip for dinner.

Katherine looked puzzled as he made these plans. Charles said: ‘It may help you. You see, Ann has promised to marry me. I think I ought to tell them at once.’

‘Did you expect to be able to tell them this?’ Katherine burst out. ‘You said something — you remember — the night Lewis brought the news?’

Charles did not reply, but said: ‘It may smooth things over with Uncle Philip.’

‘Of course it will,’ said Katherine, suddenly full of hope. ‘It will put Mr L right with the family. Your making a perfectly respectable marriage. And he ought to be glad about it himself.’

Charles looked across at me.

‘Of course, he ought to be glad about it,’ Katherine went on. ‘I know he thinks she’s got too much influence over you. But she’s everything he could possibly wish, isn’t she? He likes her, doesn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ said Charles. ‘Yes. In any case, he ought to be told at once.’

Then he got up from his chair, and added in a tone now vigorous and eager: ‘I want to tell him tonight.’

Charles had become impatient. He scarcely had time to listen to our congratulations. He asked me again to take Katherine away for the evening, and before we were out of the house he had entered Mr March’s study.

It was pouring with rain, and we went by taxi to our restaurant, and even then got wet as we crossed the pavement. But Katherine, without taking off her coat, went straight to the telephone to ring up Francis at Cambridge. In a few minutes she returned, her eyes shining, her hair still damp.

She was anxious, but her capacity for enjoyment was so great that it carried both of us along. In her bizarrely sheltered life, she had never dined out with a man alone, except Francis. She was interested in everything, the decoration of the restaurant, the relations between the pairs of people dining, my choice of food. It was her own sort of first-hand interest, as though no one had ever been out to dinner before.

With the same zest, she kept returning to the news Charles was at that moment telling Mr March. ‘Lewis, when did he propose? It must have been what he hinted at that night, don’t you agree? That was a week ago — don’t you admit he’s had it up his sleeve ever since?’

She chuckled fondly. Then she asked me: ‘Lewis, do you think she’ll make him happy?’

I told her what I thought: they would be happier together than either with anyone else. She was not satisfied. Did that mean I had my doubts? I said that Charles had been luckier than he ever expected. Katherine asked if Ann was not too complicated. I said that I guessed that in love she was quite simple.

Katherine broke out: ‘If she makes him happy then everything is perfect. Lewis, you’ve just said that he never expected to be so lucky. What I am positive about is that he never expected a wife who would please the family. Don’t you agree that’s the astonishing part of it? That’s why I’m fantastically hopeful tonight. I don’t pretend that Mr L and Uncle Philip will think she’s a tremendous catch. She doesn’t come from our group of families, and she’s only moderately rich. But they’ll have to admit that she passes. After all, most of Mr L’s nephews have done worse for themselves. And I don’t think it will be counted against her that she’s very pretty. She’s been admired in the family already.’

I took her to a theatre, so that we should get back to Bryanston Square late enough for Charles to be waiting for us. On the way back her anxiety recurred, but Charles met us in the hall and his smile dispelled it.

‘I’m pretty certain that all is well,’ he said in a low voice. She kissed him. He stopped her talking there, and we went into the drawing-room.

‘I’m pretty certain all is well,’ he repeated. ‘You mustn’t think it’s due to me. It would have come all right anyhow — don’t you really believe that yourself?’

When she questioned him, he admitted that Philip had been pleased with the news. There had been considerable talk about the Getliffes and Porson. Mr March and Philip had parted on good terms.

We both noticed that Katherine suddenly looked very tired. Charles told her so; she was too much excited to deny it, and went obediently, first to the telephone and then to bed.

Charles’ smile, as we heard the final tinkle of the call, and then her step upstairs, was tender towards her. His whole expression was open and happy: yet, despite the tender smile, it was not gentle. It was open and fiercely happy. He jumped up and went to the window. His movements were full of energy.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I think it has cleared up now. I’d very much like a stroll. Do you think you could bear it?’

It was just such a night as that on which we walked home after the coming-out dance. The rain had stopped: there was a smell of wet leaves from the garden in the square. The smell recalled to Charles the excitement, the misgivings, the promise of that night, as well as the essence of other nights, forgotten now. In an instant he was overcome by past emotion, and did not want to speak.

It was some time before I broke the silence.

‘So you think Katherine is safe?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Charles. ‘It’s quite true what I told her. I think the wedding would have come off without any more trouble — any more trouble in the open, anyway. But I’m glad I talked to them. Uncle Philip did seem to be placated. He was completely surprised about Ann. He said that I’d never been seen with her in public. He couldn’t remember hearing anyone in the family couple our names together.’

Charles smiled. He broke off: ‘By the way, he is very angry about this Getliffe business. I suppose he’s sufficiently patriarchal to feel that all attachments to the family ought to come up to his standard of propriety. That must be the reason, don’t you agree? It pleased him more than you’d think, when I said that Porson had probably got tired of his own indignation.’

Charles went on: ‘And Uncle Philip was genuinely delighted about Ann. He decided that she would be a credit to us. He also said’ — Charles laughed — ‘that he did hear she was a bit of a crank, but he didn’t take that seriously.’

‘And Mr L?’

Charles hesitated.

‘He was not so pleased. Did you expect him to be?’

‘What did he say?’

‘Something rather strange. Something like — “I always knew it was inevitable. I have no objections to raise”.’

In a moment, he said: ‘Of course he was extremely glad that Uncle Philip is coming round. That is going to be the most important thing for him.’

Then Charles broke into his good-natured, malicious grin: ‘It struck me as pleasing that I should be soothing the family. It struck me as even more pleasing that I should be doing it by announcing that I intended to marry in as orthodox a manner as my father did.’ The malicious smile still flickered. ‘There is also a certain beauty,’ he reflected, ‘in the fact that, after all the fuss I’ve made from time to time, I should be eager to tell my father so.’

‘Ah well,’ he said, ‘it’s settled. It is superb to have it settled.’

Just as when he saw Ann at Haslingfield he smiled because he had first met her at the Jewish dance — so tonight he was amused that he of all men, who had once winced at the word ‘Jew’, should now be parading his engagement to a Jewess, should be insisting to his father that he was conforming as a Jewish son. It was a sarcastic touch of fate completely in his style; but it was more than that.

All of a sudden I realized why he had been so fiercely happy that day, why he had gained a release of energy, why as he walked with me he felt that his life was in his own hands. To him the day had been a special one — though all the rest of us had had our attention fixed on Katherine and her father, and had forgotten Charles except as a tactful influence in the background.

In Charles’ own mind, the day marked the end of the obsession which had preyed on him since he was a child. It marked the death of a shame. He felt absolutely free. Everything seemed open to him. He felt his whole nature to be fresh, simple, and at one.

We walked across Bayswater Road and into the Park. His stride was long and full of spring. He was talking eagerly, of his future with Ann, of what he hoped to do. He was more spontaneous, frank, and trustful than I had ever known him. He had forgotten, or put aside for the night, any thought of his conflict with his father over Ann.

In the darkness I listened to his voice, lively, resonant, happy. I thought of this shame which had occupied so much of his conscious life. It had gone, so it seemed to him, because he had fallen in love with Ann, and thus that evening could tell his father, with unqualified happiness, that he was going to marry her — and, more than that, could use the fact that he was marrying a Jewess in order to ease the way for Katherine.

So Charles was talking with boyish spontaneity, completely off his guard, his secrecies thrown away. I felt a great affection for him. Perhaps the affection was greater because I did not see his state that night quite as he did himself. For me there was something unprotected about his openness and confidence.

I remembered his confession when he gave up the law. I had felt two things then, and I felt them more acutely now: that this shame had tormented him, and that at the same time he had used it as an excuse. Charles would always, I thought, have been prouder and more self-distrustful, harsher and more vulnerable to shame, than most of us. In his youth, he would in any case have gone through his torments. But even he, for all his insight, wanted to mollify and excuse them. Even he found it difficult to recognize his sadic harshness, his self-distrust, above all his vulnerability, as part of his essential ‘I’.

Some years before, I had had a friend, George Passant, who put the blame for the diffidence and violence of his character on to his humble origin. His vision of himself was more self-indulgent than Charles’. Yet Charles’ insight did not prevent him from seizing at a similar excuse. He had felt passionately, as we have all felt, that everything would have been possible for him, life would have been utterly harmonious, he would have been successful and good ‘if only it had not been for this accident’. Charles had felt often enough ‘I should have been free, I should have had my fate in my hands — if only I had not been born a Jew.’

It was not true. It was an excuse. Even to himself it was an excuse which could not endure. For his vulnerability (unlike George Passant’s) was of the kind that is mended by time; for years the winces of shame had become less sharp. It seemed to him that by telling his father and Philip he was marrying a Jewess he had conquered his obsession. I should have said that it was conquered by the passing of time itself and the flow of life. In any case, he could no longer believe in the excuse. That night for him signalized the moment of release, which really had been creeping on imperceptibly for years.

He was light with his sense of release. He felt that night that now he was truly free.

That was why I was stirred by a rush of affection for him. For he would be more unprotected in the future than he had been when the excuse still dominated him. In cold blood, when the light and warmth of release had died down, he would be left face to face with his own nature. Tonight he could feel fresh, simple, and at one; tomorrow he would begin to see again the contradictions within.

26: Mr March Crosses the Room

Up till the day of the wedding, rumours still ran through the family, but I heard from Charles that Philip had sent an expensive present. I also heard on the wedding morning that Mr March was in low spirits but ‘curiously relieved’ to be getting ready to go to the register office.

When I arrived at Bryanston Square after the wedding, to which not even his brothers were invited, I thought Mr March was beginning to enjoy himself. Nearly all the family had come to the reception and, soon after being ‘disgorged from obscurity’ (his way of referring to the marriage in a register office) he seemed able to forget that this was different from any ordinary wedding.

In the drawing-room Mr March stood surrounded by his relatives. There were at least a hundred people there: the furniture had been removed and trestle-tables installed round two of the walls and under the windows, in order to carry the presents. The presents were packed tightly and arranged according to an order of precedence that had cost Katherine, in the middle of her suspense, considerable anxiety; for, having breathed in that atmosphere all her life, she could not help but know the heart-burnings that Aunt Caroline would feel if her Venetian glasses (‘she hasn’t done you very handsomely,’ said Mr March, who made no pretence about what he considered an unsatisfactory present) were not placed near the magnificent Flemish tapestry from the Herbert Marches, or Philip’s gift of a Ming vase.

The tables glittered with silver and glass; it was an assembly of goods as elaborate, costly, ingenious, and beautiful as London could show. At any rate, Mr March considered that the presents ‘came up to expectations’. Hannah, so someone reported, had decided that they ‘weren’t up to much’; but, as that had been her verdict in all the March weddings that Mr March could remember, it merely reassured him that his daughter’s was not continuously regarded as unique.

There were few of those absences of presents which had embarrassed the cousin whose daughter married a Gentile twenty years before. ‘That appears to be ancient history,’ said Mr March to Katherine, when presents had arrived from all his close relations and some of his fears proved groundless. The two or three lacunae among his cousins he received robustly: ‘George is using his religious scruples to save his pocket. Not that he’s saving much — judging from the knick-knack that he sent to Philip’s daughter.’ At the reception itself, he repeated the retort to Philip himself, and they both chuckled.

Philip had already gone out of his way to be affable. He had greeted Ann with special friendliness, and had even given a stiff smile towards Herbert Getliffe. He seemed set, in the midst of the family, on suppressing the rumours of the last fortnight.

Mr March responded at once to the signs of friendship. He began to refer with cheerfulness and affection to ‘my son-in-law at Cambridge’, meaning Francis, who was standing with Katherine a few feet away. A large knot of Mr March’s brothers and sisters and their children had gathered round him, and he was drawn into higher spirits as the audience grew.

‘I refuse to disclose my contribution,’ he said, after Philip had been chaffing him about the absence of any present of his own. Everyone knew that Mr March had given them a house, but he had decided not to admit it. Philip was taking advantage of the old family legend that Leonard was particularly close with money.

‘You might have produced half a dozen fish forks,’ said Philip.

‘I refuse to accept responsibility for their diet,’ said Mr March. ‘I gave Hetty some decanters for her wedding and she always blamed me for the regrettable events afterwards.’

‘You could have bought them something for their house,’ said Herbert.

‘You could have passed on a piece of your surplus furniture,’ said Philip. ‘So long as Katherine’s forgotten that you ever owned it.’

‘There must have been something you could have bought for the house,’ said Herbert’s wife.

Mr March chuckled, and went off at a tangent. ‘They insist on living in some residence in the provinces, owing to the nature of my son-in-law’s occupation—’

Katherine interrupted ‘I wish you wouldn’t make it sound like coal-mining, Mr L.’ But he was sailing on:

‘A month ago I went to inspect some of their possible places of abode. My son Charles told me the eleven-fifty went from King’s Cross, and it goes from Liverpool Street, of course. However, I never had the slightest faith in his competence; naturally I had consulted the time-table before I asked him, and so arrived at the station in comfortable time. Incidentally, in twenty-five minutes my daughter and son-in-law will be compelled to leave to catch the boat train. On my honeymoon I had already left for the train at the corresponding time, allowing for the additional slowness of the cab as a means of conveyance. People always say Mentone is a particularly quiet resort, but I’ve never found it so. The first time I visited it was on my honeymoon with its general air of unrest. The second time my wife had some jewellery stolen and I was compelled to undergo some interviews with a detective. I never had any confidence in him, but the jewellery was returned several months later. The third time passed without incident. Having arrived despite Charles’ attempt to make my journey impossible—’

‘Where? When?’ shouted several of his audience.

‘At my daughter’s future domicile in the provinces. On the occasion under discussion,’ replied Mr March without losing way, ‘I proceeded to inspect the three residences which were considered possibilities by the couple principally concerned—’ Philip and the others threw in remarks, they gave Mr March the centre of the stage, and he was letting himself go.

Then, just after he had triumphantly ended that story and begun another, he looked across the room. Outside the large noisy crowd over which his own voice was prevailing, there were two or three knots of people, not so full of gusto — and Ann by the window, talking to Margaret March.

Mr March broke off his story, hesitated, and watched them. As Mr March stared at Ann, the room happened to become quiet. Mr March said loudly: ‘I’ve scarcely spoken to my future daughter-in-law. I must go and have a word with her.’

Slightly flushed, he crossed the room, swinging his arms in his quick, awkward gait.

‘Why haven’t you talked to me, young woman? Why am I being deserted on this public occasion?’

He took her to the centre of the carpet, and there they stood.

Mr March showed no sign at all of the gallant, elaborately courteous manner which he had first used to her in company. He was speaking to her, here in public view, intimately, simply, brusquely.

‘I shall have to see about your own wedding before long,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Ann.

‘The sooner the better,’ said Mr March. ‘Since we are to be related in this manner.’

Ann looked at him. His expression had become sad and resigned. His head was bent down in a posture unlike his normal one, a posture dejected, subdued.

‘Now, whatever happens,’ he said, ‘we must bear with each other.’

Ann was still looking at him, and he took her hand. They went on talking, and some of us moved towards them. Katherine began teasing him about arranging another wedding in the middle of this. For a second he was silent, then he straightened himself and recovered his gaiety. Katherine was continuing to talk of weddings, funerals, and Mr March’s Times reading habits.

‘You can’t help paying attention to them,’ he told her, ‘when you reach my venerable years. I’ve attended a considerable number of both in my time. And I’ve also been informed of a great many births. Most of the results of which survived,’ Mr March reflected. ‘Even my cousin Oscar’s child — even that lived long enough for me to give it the usual mug.’

27: ‘My Favourite Child’

After Katherine’s wedding it seemed as though Mr March was groping round to heal the breach with his son. We had watched him cross the room to Ann at the wedding breakfast; he was acting not happily, not with an easy mind, but impelled to remove some of the weight that had for months, even through the excitement over Katherine, been pressing him down.

I intruded so far as to tell Charles that he ought to forget the night of the concert, and meet his father more than halfway. Charles himself was happy in the prospect of his marriage, which was fixed for three months ahead. He was also gratified that he could discipline himself enough to work patiently at his medicine; he had done it for a year, and he had no misgivings left. So that he was ready to listen to everything I said. His natural kindness, his deep feeling for his father now shone out. He wanted Mr March to be happy for the rest of his life. He would respond to any overture his father made. I tried to persuade him to go to his father, on his own initiative, and ask to be made independent. I did not need to give him reasons. Speaking to him, I had no sort of foresight. If I had been asked, I should just have said that if a man like Charles had to put up with domination, no good could come of it.

‘Do it,’ I pressed him, ‘as though nothing had been said. As though the question hadn’t ever been mentioned before. I believe that he will agree. He’s in danger of losing more than you are, you know.’

Charles knew all that I meant. But he hesitated. As we talked his face became lined. If Mr March refused, the situation was worse than before. If Mr March refused, it would be even harder for Ann. They would know that all that was left was to put a civil face on things.

Nevertheless, I pressed him to go. He promised everything else but would not definitely promise that.

Then Mr March himself showed us the colour of his thoughts when he talked to Charles one Friday night in January.

It was Mr March’s turn that night to give the family dinner party, and he invited me without any prompting, saying: ‘You might oblige me by filling one of the gaps at my table.’ He had never done so before; I felt the invitation on his own account marked a break with things Mr March had known.

The dinner party itself had changed since the first I went to. It was neither so lively nor so large. There were only eighteen people this time sitting round the great table at Bryanston Square. Some of the absences were caused by illness, as Mr March’s generation was getting old; Herbert had just had a thrombosis. Florence Simon was married now, and living out of London. While Katherine’s marriage not only kept her away, but at least two of Mr March’s cousins.

Philip’s glance went round the room, noticing those relatives who had attended his own house the week before but who had not come that night. He said nothing of it to Mr March, and instead chaffed him, as he had done at the wedding, with the dry, elder-brotherly friendliness that had been constant all their lives. But even Philip’s sharp tongue did not make the party go; family gossip never began to flow at its usual rate; by a quarter to eleven the last car had driven away.

Mr March came into the drawing-room, where Charles and I were sitting. We were sitting as we had been on the night of Charles’ quarrel with his father, after that different dinner party three years before. Mr March sat down and stretched out his hands to the fire.

‘I never expected to see a Friday night in my own house finished in time for me to have only ten minutes less than my usual allowance,’ he said.

‘Mr L,’ said Charles, ‘don’t you remember saying they were nothing like they used to be, even in Uncle Philip’s house? You said that months ago.’

‘I appreciate your intention,’ said Mr March, ‘but I am unable to accept it entirely. I never expected to find myself in danger of being in Justin’s position. After his daughter’s marriage he did not venture to hold a Friday night until we were able to reassure him that there would be an adequate attendance. Which we were unable to do until a considerable number of years afterwards. I confess that I am surprised at not having a similar experience.’

‘They respect you too much to treat you in the same way,’ said Charles.

‘It’s not respect,’ said Mr March. ‘It’s the family that has changed. It’s curious to see the family changing in my own life-time. I’ve already seen most things pass that we used to regard as completely permanent features of the world.’

He spoke, with regret, in a matter-of-fact, acceptant, almost cheerful tone. He added: ‘As for respect, the nearest I approach it is that at synagogue people are always ready to commiserate on the misfortunes which have happened to me through my children. Last Saturday one fellow insisted on keeping me talking in the rain. He said: “Mr March, I should like you to know I am as upset as you must be to see the Marches fall from their old position.” I acknowledged his remark. The fellow was making it impossible for me to cover myself with my umbrella. He said: “We all feel the decline of our great houses.” I said that it was very civil of him. He said: “Think of your family. Your father was a great man. And his brothers were known outside our community. But your generation, Mr March — I know you will excuse me for speaking frankly — you have just been living on the esteem of your father. What have any of you done compared with the old Marches?” I brought up the name of my brother Philip, but this man replied: “He was lucky enough to be the eldest son of your father. That’s all. And you and your brothers weren’t even that, again speaking frankly, Mr March.”’

‘Who was this man?’ Charles asked.

‘I refuse to disclose his name,’ said Mr March, still reporting the conversation in such a matter-of-fact way that Charles had to follow suit.

‘Is he the man,’ said Charles, ‘who called you a radical reformer because you wanted to let women into the synagogue?’

‘Of course not,’ said Mr March. ‘In any case, that was Hannah’s fault. He proceeded to say: “You and your brothers did nothing to add to the family reputation. While among all your children and nephews and nieces, is there one who won’t subtract something from the family name? Think of your own children. Your son’s just an idler about town. One daughter married a man who lives by his pen. The other daughter has inflicted this great sorrow upon us. Whatever can happen to the next generation of Marches? What about your grandchildren?”’

‘I must say,’ said Charles, ‘that he sounds a vaguely disagreeable companion.’

‘He was just being frank,’ said Mr March.

‘If that’s frankness,’ said Charles, ‘give me a bit of dissimulation.’

‘It was possibly true,’ said Mr March, ‘though I thought it was rather pungently expressed. And I wished he had delivered himself before synagogue when it wasn’t raining.’

‘I am inclined to think,’ he added, ‘that he represents what a number of my acquaintances are saying.’

‘They’re not worth considering.’

‘No,’ said Mr March. ‘I can’t help considering anything that is said about the family’s position. These lamentations show how general opinion is preparing to dispose of the family. As I remarked previously, it’s curious to see such changes occur in my own life-time.’

Charles looked at him, astonished by the fortitude with which Mr March could see part of his world destroyed. He was realistic as ever: nostalgic also (for that was the other side of his realistic temperament), hankering after the world that was gone or going, but not pretending for a moment that it could be saved. His fortitude was stoical: but Charles knew there was nothing light about it. It came out in matter-of-fact terms, but it was only separated from melancholy because the pulse of his vitality was still throbbing deep and strong.

‘You might blame me more than you do,’ said Charles.

‘I don’t propose to,’ said Mr March. ‘I don’t know how much either you or I can be held to blame. In any case, I should not consider the investigation profitable. We have arrived at the position we are now in. And I lay no claim to a philosophical turn of mind, but I have noticed one result of things changing outside. One has to fall back on those attachments that can’t change so rapidly. After his daughter’s marriage and its regrettable consequences, Justin always devoted himself entirely to his wife.’

Mr March gazed at his son, and added: ‘Since I am deprived of other consolations, I find that I attach more value to your continued existence.’

For days afterwards, I kept trying to persuade Charles that now was the time to go to his father. Now if ever was the time. Sometimes he was nearly persuaded. Sometimes he advanced the old arguments. He was not obstinate, he was not resenting my intrusion. He was gripped by an indecision so deep that it seemed physical, not controllable by will. He said: ‘I admit that he spoke with complete sincerity. He always does. He desperately wants everything to be right between us. But you notice that he didn’t mention my marrying Ann? You noticed that, didn’t you?’

Katherine joined in my efforts, warmly, anxiously, emphatically, when she came to Bryanston Square for a weekend in February. It was two months since her honeymoon, and there was a physical change in her face, as though some of the muscles had been relaxed. She was tranquil, happy, more positive than we had known her. When Charles had told Mr March of his engagement, she had shown less than her usual insight; she had even expected Mr March to be pleased. But now she saw the situation with clear eyes. It was worth the risk, she argued; it was the one step which could set them free with each other.

Once she grew angry with Charles, and told him that he would surely do it if only Ann were not holding him back. Her concern was so naked and intimate that he did not take offence. She continued to persuade him. For half an hour one night, I thought she had succeeded. Then, suddenly, his mood changed. In fatigue and resignation, he said, smiling at her with extreme affection: ‘I’m sorry, my dear. I’d do anything else. But I can’t do it.’

She knew that the decision was final. She called to see me the next evening in my rooms.

‘Lewis,’ she said, ‘I’ve asked Charles if he minds my speaking to Mr L.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He welcomed it. Oh, it’s wretched, don’t you think it’s wretched? He was within an inch of going himself, and yet he simply can’t. I’m appallingly diffident about talking to Mr L myself. But if I don’t, I should feel cowardly for ever. Don’t you agree?’

Katherine promised to return after she had talked to Mr March. I waited in a fret of apprehension, thinking time after time that it was her footsteps on the stairs. When she came at last, I knew that all had gone wrong.

She sat down heavily.

‘He was absolutely unreasonable,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t even begin to listen to reason. His mind seemed absolutely shut.’

She had told him that he could not treat Charles like a child; he was a grown man; this attempt to keep him dependent was bound to make a gulf between them. Mr March replied that he did not propose to let such considerations influence his actions. She had told him that his actions were stupid as well as wrong. They could not even have the practical effect he wanted. Charles was committed to becoming a doctor now; and he would marry Ann in April, come what might. Mr March replied that he was aware of these facts; he did not propose to discontinue Charles’ allowance, which might hinder his son’s activities, but he refused, by making him independent, to give any sign of approval to either of his major follies. Katherine begged him to think of his own future relations with Ann. She was going to be his daughter-in-law. For the rest of his life he would meet her. Mr March said that he did not propose to consider the opinions of that young woman on the matter.

He was not angry, but utterly set in his purpose. He even told her that he needed his son’s affection more than he had ever done; he said, quite naturally, that he had told Charles so. But, on the issue before them, he would not make the slightest concession.

‘I do not believe,’ Katherine burst out, ‘that it would have made any difference if Charles had gone himself. I shall always console myself with that. I tell you, I’m sure it’s true.’

She had finished by asking him to explain the contrast between his gentleness over her own marriage, and this fantastic harshness to Charles. Mr March had not answered for a long time. Then he said, in a sombre tone: ‘He was always my favourite child.’

Katherine stayed with me for a long time, in order to put off breaking the news to Charles.