Charles Snow - The Conscience of the Rich

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I meant it,’ said Charles.

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

‘No.’

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

Charles looked at Ann, and then at his father.

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

‘You realize what it means for me?’

‘I’m afraid I do,’ said Charles.

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

‘Then I must use my own means.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The lines in Charles’ face were cut deep.

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

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

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

I hesitated.

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

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

‘What shall you do?’ I said.

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

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

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.”’