Charles Snow: The Conscience of the Rich

‘I suppose you’re really going to the dance at last?’ he said to Katherine.

‘I’m not absolutely certain,’ she said.

‘I wish you’d make up your mind one way or the other. How can I keep Taylor in a suitable frame of mind tomorrow if he doesn’t know whether he’s on duty at eight o’clock or not?’

‘Look. I can easily take her if she wants to go,’ said Charles.

‘I refuse to accept responsibility for my son’s car,’ said Mr March.

‘But I’m pretty certain she’d definitely rather not,’ said Charles. ‘That’s true, Katherine, isn’t it?’

‘I shan’t get any pleasure from it myself. If I go it’s only to oblige you, Mr L,’ said Katherine.

I glanced at her. For an instant I thought she was frightened of being a failure at the dance. It did not make much sense — she had pleasant looks, she was so fresh and warm. But she was only eighteen, there were the traces of a schoolgirl left in her: I imagined she could be shy of men, or dread they would have no use for her.

Suddenly, I knew that was not the reason. This dance must have a special meaning.

In fact, as I soon gathered, it was one of the regular dances arranged for the young men and girls of Jewish society in London; a means, as Mr March accepted with his usual realism, of helping to marry them off within their proper circle.

‘I’ll only go to oblige you,’ said Katherine.

‘I don’t want you to oblige me, but I want you to go.’

‘I’ll promise to get myself there once before the end of the winter,’ said Katherine.

‘It’s no use attending as though you were paying a visit to a mausoleum,’ Mr March shouted.

‘I’m certain I can’t possibly like it,’ she said.

‘How do you know you won’t like it? Florence thought she wouldn’t like it till she tried.’

Florence was not, as I thought at the time, the other daughter — but merely a second cousin of Mr March’s.

‘I’ll try to be unprejudiced when I do go,’ she said. ‘If you don’t press me until I just want to get it over.’

‘I’m not pressing you. Except that there are certain actions I require of my daughter—’

Charles broke in: ‘That’s putting her in a false position.’ At once Katherine was left out of the quarrel. Mr March’s temper flared against his son. He said:

‘It’s a position you ought to have adopted on your own account. You’ve only been there once or twice yourself. Though you knew what I required—’

‘Don’t you see it is for exactly the same reason that I only went once myself? You’re asking her to spend her time with totally uncongenial people—’

‘What do you mean, uncongenial?’

Charles said: ‘She’ll only be miserable if you insist.’

Mr March shouted: ‘I don’t know why you’re specially competent to judge.’

‘I’m afraid I know,’ said Charles.

‘I refuse to recognize it for a minute.’

Katherine was flushed and worried, as she looked from one to the other. Now that the anger was concentrated between them, with her left out, it had taken on a different tone.

Charles began to speak quietly to Mr March. I said to Katherine to take her attention away:

‘Don’t you think any mass of people sounds rather forbidding? But one can usually find a few who make it tolerable, when one actually arrives.’

She gave an uncomfortable smile. The quarrel, however, seemed to have died down. Soon Mr March said, with no sign that he had been shouting angrily a few minutes before:

‘The chief feature of these dances occurred one night when I escorted your mother. I was feeling festive, because we’d recently become engaged. It was 1898, though my sister Caroline always said we were as good as engaged after Seder night in ’96. She wasn’t at this dance, but your mother’s sister Nellie was, unfortunately as it turned out. We’d been dancing very vigorously, proper old-fashioned dancing that you’re all too degenerate to approve of. So I went outside to mop my brow. When I came back into the room your mother and her sister were sitting down on the other side. Someone stopped me and said: “Mr March, I must felicitate you on your engagement.” I didn’t like him, but I said “Thank you very much”; I thought I might as well be civil. Then he said: “Isn’t your fiancée sitting over there?” And I agreed. He went on — he was a talkative fellow — and said: “I suppose she’s the pretty one on the left.”’ Mr March simmered with laughter. ‘Of course, he’d fallen into the trap. That was her sister. No one ever thought my wife was the prettier one. But I liked her more.’

At exactly 10.40 Mr March started to his feet and said good night. ‘You’ll visit us again, I hope,’ he said, in a manner so simple and natural that it seemed more than a form. Then, with equal attention to the task in hand, he set off on a tour of inspection round the room; he pulled aside each curtain to make sure that the window behind it was latched for the night. His final words were to Charles: ‘Don’t forget to lock this door. When you decide to retire.’

When he had left, Charles explained:

‘The idea is, you imagine a burglar getting through the windows. In spite of the fact that Mr L has seen they’re locked and bolted. Then, having got through the window, the burglar discovers with amazement that the door is locked on the other side.’

Katherine smiled.

‘But he was more tolerable than I expected tonight, I must say,’ she said. ‘I thought there might be a scene. I was afraid it might be embarrassing for you,’ she said to me.

‘Yes,’ said Charles. Then he asked her: ‘You are satisfied, aren’t you? You do feel that things are coming out better?’

‘Thanks to the way you coped,’ she said.

In a few minutes she went to bed, and soon Charles and I walked out into the square. I told him how much I liked them both.

‘I’m enormously glad,’ he said. His face was lit up with a blaze of pleasure; for a second, he looked boyish and happy.

We talked about Mr March. Charles pointed back to the house: several windows were still lighted. ‘He’s waiting to hear me come in,’ he said. ‘Then he’ll trot downstairs to see that the door is properly fastened.’ Charles was speaking with fondness; but I noticed that he found it easier to talk of Mr March’s eccentric side. He was using this joke, this legend of Mr March, to distract first my eyes, and then his own.

When I mentioned Katherine again, he broke out without any reserve.

‘I’m devoted to her, of course. As it happened, we were bound to have a lot in common. It was exciting when I suddenly discovered that she was growing up.’ Then he said: ‘I couldn’t let her be sent to this dance — without trying to stop it. You could see it wasn’t just ordinary diffidence, couldn’t you?’

I said: ‘As soon as she spoke.’

‘If a man she liked wanted to take her to a dance, she might be nervous, and then I’d definitely bully her into going,’ said Charles. ‘It would do her good to be flirted with. But this is different. It means something important to her. If she goes, she’s accepting—’ He hesitated. He had suddenly begun to speak with obsessive force. He said: ‘If she goes, she’ll find it harder to keep on terms with everything she wants to be.’

Charles seemed to be afraid that, during our conversation about Katherine, he had given himself away. He did not refer to it again until, in curious circumstances, he made a confession. That happened some months later than my introduction to his family, on the night after his first case.

Meanwhile, Mr March and Katherine welcomed me at Bryanston Square, and I went there often.