Charles Snow - The Conscience of the Rich

The September night was fresh, and Ann shivered in the taxi. As we stood on the steps in Bryanston Square just before eight o’clock, the smell of fallen leaves in the garden was blown on the sharp wind. Even for myself, I wished that the evening was over.

In the drawing-room, Margaret March and a cousin whom I scarcely knew were sitting by the fire. Ann began to talk to the cousin, who was a shy, gauche youth of twenty. Margaret said to me quietly: ‘I don’t think anyone else is coming. And I accepted before I heard what was happening. Otherwise I think I should have got out of it. Perhaps it would have been behaving grossly, but still—’

Then Charles entered, and she became silent. Before any of us had spoken again, Mr March followed his son into the room.

He felt the silence. He looked at Charles, at Ann, and then at the rest of us. At last he shook hands with Ann in a stiff, constrained manner, and said: ‘I’m glad to have your company on this occasion. I’m glad that you were not prevented from attending.’

Through dinner, he went on as though trying not to disappoint us. He showed no sign of working up to a scene.

He knew he was expected to show pleasure at the birth, and he tried to act it. He talked of Katherine’s children and Katherine herself. He made an attempt, as it were mechanically, to recall the times when ‘my daughter had previously made a frightful ass of herself’.

Everyone at the table knew what he was doing. It was no relief to laugh at the jokes. I could not keep from looking at Charles, whose own glance came back time and again to his father. And I could not keep from looking at Ann; once I noticed Charles anxiously watching her. Glancing often from one to the other, I had to maintain more than my share of the conversation, replying to Mr March’s mechanical chaff.

Margaret March helped, but the cousin was too shy to speak. In that way we got through dinner, though there was one incident, quite trivial, which chilled us all. Mr March’s knife slipped as he was cutting his meat; as he righted himself he knocked his claret glass over. We heard the tinkle, watched the stain seep over the cloth, expecting at any instant that Mr March’s usual extravagant stream-of-consciousness grumbling would begin. But he said nothing. He stared at the cloth while the butler dried it up. He did not make a single complaint to save his face.

In the drawing-room, Mr March again attempted to behave as though this were nothing but a celebration. He told Margaret a story at my expense; as he developed it, he became less preoccupied. Then Margaret March made a tactless remark. For she talked about Katherine’s children, and said, casually but wistfully: ‘If I married, I wonder if I should dare to have a child. I don’t suppose I shall have the chance now, worse luck: but I wonder if I should.’

She was getting on into the mid-thirties. I looked at her handsome face, fair and clean-cut.

She added quietly: ‘Of course, I know that really I should do the same as Katherine. I should want children, I should start a family. But it would worry me. I’m not sure that it would be wise.’

‘Yes,’ said Ann, breaking from her silence with feverish intensity. ‘Of course you’d have children, of course you would.’

Mr March stared at her. Then he turned away to Margaret March.

‘I am not certain that I understand your suggestion,’ he said.

She hesitated: ‘I mean — when you think of what the world may be.’

Mr March shouted: ‘You need not try to respect my feelings. I am not accustomed to having my feelings respected in more important matters. I suppose you mean the world may not be a tolerable place for people of our religion?’

Margaret March nodded.

Mr March cried out: ‘I wish the Jews would stop being news! ’

It was a shout of protest: but somehow he said it as a jingle, and as though they were doing it on purpose. Even that night there were lips being compelled not to smile. Mr March could feel the ripple round him. He scowled and went on: ‘You need not respect my feelings about such matters. I admit I never expected to see my religion getting this deplorable publicity. I never expected to spend my declining years watching people degraded because they belong to the same religion as myself. But I do not consider that these events should compel any of my relations to cripple their lives. I refuse to credit that they can be affected. And if they should be affected, which I repeat is not possible, they would be better off in the company of their children. If their children turn out to be a consolation, and not a source of grief.’

At that moment, Charles started to talk to his father. That last cry sounded in Charles’ ears. The lines of his face became deeper. Across the table he saw the wife whom he adored. He saw her looking strained and ill. With her face before him, he had to speak to his father.

As we listened, nearly everyone there thought there was going to be a reconciliation. It sounded as though he knew which choice must be made. Each word he spoke was affectionate, subtle, concerned. He seemed at first to be talking casually to his father about Haslingfield and Bryanston Square. Yet the words were charged with his feeling for his father, with his family pride, so long concealed, with his longing for privacy and ease with those he loved.

Gradually Charles got Mr March to talk, not in his old vein, but with some show of ease. He soon began to expand on the weather. ‘It’s been remarkable weather this summer,’ said Mr March. ‘Only exceeded in wretchedness in my experience by the summer of 1912, which I always blamed for the regrettable misadventure of the third housemaid. It is the first summer since 1929 when there has been no danger of drought at my house in the country. It is the first summer since 1929 that I have not been compelled to make my guests ration the amount of water in their baths.’ He turned to me. ‘1929 was, of course, singularly difficult. I remember that, on your first visit to my house in the country, I was compelled to allow you a maximum of four inches in your bath. The time I issued those instructions to you was immediately followed by the appearance of Ann Simon after luncheon.’

He did not look at Ann.

The name came as a shock. There was a silence.

Charles recovered himself, and said: ‘It wasn’t a direct consequence, Mr L.’

‘No! No! I’ve always presumed that she was invited through the ordinary channels.’

Mr March was quiet.

‘You’re not certain that anyone has ever been properly invited to any house of yours, are you?’ said Charles.

From his tone, so much more intimate than teasing, I knew that he would not stop trying to persuade Mr March of what he felt.

‘You’ve never been able to trust your children to behave with reasonable decorum, have you?’ Charles went on.

‘That is so,’ said Mr March. ‘As I remarked recently, I ought to have been born in a different epoch.’

‘I think perhaps I ought to have been too,’ said Charles.

‘You’re better prepared to endure unpleasantnesses than I am,’ said Mr March. ‘Whereas I only require to pass my declining years in peace.’

‘I’m not as well prepared as you are, Mr L,’ Charles said. ‘And I don’t like the prospect of the future much more than you do.’

‘I never liked the prospect of any unpleasantness,’ said Mr March. ‘But that’s my temperament, I’ve told you before. I’m a diffident and retiring person.’

‘Don’t you see that our temperaments are very much alike?’ said Charles. His tone suddenly turned urgent and anxious. ‘Even though we seem to do different things. I may do things you wouldn’t have done, but we’re much more alike than most fathers and sons. I wish you’d believe it. At bottom, we’re very similar people. Father, don’t you know that we are?’