Charles Snow - The Conscience of the Rich

Mr March said, in a low voice: ‘Why was it necessary to act as you have done? You seem to have been compelled to break every connection with the family.’

Charles, still standing by the window, did not move or speak.

‘You seem to have been compelled to break off at my expense. It was different with Herbert and my father. But you’ve had to cut yourself off through me.’

Mr March was speaking as though the pain was too recent to feel; he did not know all that had happened to him, he was light-headed with bereavement and defeat. He spoke like a man baffled, in doubt, still unaware of what he was going to feel, groping and mystified. He forgot Ann, and asked Charles why this conflict must come between them, just because they were themselves. A little time before, he had spoken as though he believed that, without Ann, he and his son would have been at peace. It was inconsistent in terms of logic, but it carried the sense of a father’s excessive love, of a love which, in the phrase that the old Japanese used to describe the love of parents for their children, was a darkness of the heart.

‘Yes,’ said Mr March, ‘you found it necessary to act against me. I never expected to have my son needing to act against me. I never contemplated living without my son.’

‘Believe what I said to you at that last party,’ said Charles quietly. ‘I want you to believe that. As well as what I’ve said today.’

Mr March asked, not angrily, but as though he could not believe what had happened: ‘You’ve counted the cost of this intention of yours? You’ve asked people what it’s like to be penniless?’

‘Yes,’ said Charles.

‘You’re ready to put yourself in the shameful position of living on your wife’s money?’

Charles had been answering listlessly. He gave a faint smile.

‘I may even earn a little myself.’

‘Pocket-money. I disregard that,’ said Mr March. ‘You’re prepared to live on your wife?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re not deterred by my disgrace in seeing you in such a position?’

‘No,’ said Charles.

‘You’re not deterred by the disgrace your wife’s action will inflict upon my brother and my family?’

‘I thought I’d made myself clear,’ said Charles with a revival of energy.

‘You’re not deterred by the misery you’re bringing upon me?’

‘I don’t want to repeat what I’ve said.’

Without looking at Charles again, Mr March said: ‘So, if this calamity happens, you’re requiring me to decide on my own actions?’

Even now he was hoping. He could still ask a question about the future.

‘Yes,’ said Charles.

Charles came into the middle of the room, and said: ‘I might as well go now. I told Ann I would see her before I left.’

We heard him run upstairs. Katherine spoke to her father: ‘It’s no use. I wish I could say something, Mr L, but it’s no use. There’s nothing to do.’ Her mouth was trembling. She added: ‘I’ve never seen him like that before.’

Though she was supporting her father, there was something else in her voice. It dwelt more gently on Charles than any word she had said while he was there. She had made her choice; she could not help but take her father’s side. But that remark was brimming with regret, with admiration, with the idolatrous love she bore Charles when she was a girl.

During most of October there was no more news. I saw Francis regularly in Cambridge, but he and Katherine knew no more than I. Charles had already cut himself away from them. We heard a number of rumours — that Sir Philip had seen Charles and threatened a libel action whatever the consequences, that Mr March had visited Ann, convalescing by the sea, that Ronald Porson had visited her, that Charles would not have her back unless she broke with the Note .

There were many more rumours, most of them fantasies; but it was true that Sir Philip had seen Charles. Charles mentioned it himself, when I was dining with him on one of my nights in London. He mentioned it with indifference, as though it were a perfectly ordinary occurrence, as though his concerns were as pedestrian as anyone else’s. He wanted to regard them as settled; he did not want to see that there was a part of his nature, even yet, after all he had said and done, waiting in trepidation, just as the rest of us were waiting.

The final article in the Note was published in the fourth week of October. I did not subscribe to the Note , but a colleague of mine used to send it round to me; it was brought to my rooms in college by the messenger, on his last delivery, at ten o’clock on a Friday night. For two Fridays past I had raced my eyes over it, before looking at my letters. On this Friday night I did the same; and, as soon as I had unfolded the sheet, I knew this was it. Though I was prepared, I felt the prick of sweat at my temples.

It was the second item on the first page (the first was a three-line report of a meeting between Edward VIII and the Prime Minister, and it read:

Note can now give final dope about scandal of Ministers, Ministers’ stooges, lurkmen in Whitehall, Inns of Court, official circles, making profits from prior knowledge of armaments programme. Back references ( Note May 26, August 10, August 24, for background, see also…). In ’29 Tory Government laid contract of £3,000,000, engine development, with Howard & Hazlehurst (Chairman Sir Horace (Cartel-spokesman) Timberlake; on board of Howard & Hazlehurst is Viscount Talland, cousin of Alex Hawtin). Alex (Britain First) Hawtin, Under-Secretary of…, rising hope Tory party, groomed for cabinet in immediate future, bought £20,000 — approx. — Enlibar shares. Enlibar subsidiary of Howard & Hazlehurst. Sir Philip March, Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of…, ex-banker, ex-director 17 companies, ex-President Jewish Board of Guardians, bought £15,000 Enlibar shares. Shares in parent firm — quantities not known to nearest pound but over £10,000 — bought by G L and F E Paul, brothers-in-law of Herbert Getliffe, KC, legal consultant Hawtin’s ministry. Shares also bought by S…, H… Profits on these transactions (approx.):

Hawtin £35,000

March £46,000 [1] March, old city hand, held on longer.

G L and F E Paul £11,000

S… £ 5,000

H… £ 3,000

’35, aircraft programme, same story, contract laid with aircraft firms… Details of investments not to hand, but Hawtin and March repeated gambit. G L and F E Paul not concerned this round — Getliffe no longer consultant to ministry. S…, H… took a rake-off, possibly cat’s-paws for bigger players, but Note not in position to confirm this. Hawtin, March still in Government. Hawtin due for promotion. ‘Friend of Franco’ speech, Oct. 16, Liverpool; ‘Franco is at any rate a Christian’ speech, Oct. 23, Birmingham.

That was all.

The effects did not come at once. Mr March referred to it in his weekly letter to Katherine, but briefly and without comment. She went to comfort him, but on her return reported that he was composed, strangely passive, almost glad that the words were down on paper; there was nothing to imagine now. He showed no sign at all of taking action. He seemed to have feared that, the instant the words appeared, he would be surrounded by violence and disgrace: but no one except Sir Philip spoke to him about the article for several days. In that time-lag, he had a last hope, strong and comforting, that it would all be forgotten: if he stayed in his house, hid away from gossip, this would pass over, as everything else had done.

We had, in fact, all expected that there would be a blaze of publicity from the beginning. That did not happen; partly because there was another scandal going round the clubs, and people were not to be distracted from Mrs Simpson and the King. The Note attack had gone off half-cock. A member of the extreme left asked a question in the House, and demanded a select committee. A few eccentric liberals and malcontents of various kinds (including a conservative anti-semite) occupied a committee room for some hours, but could not agree on a plan of action. There was a leader, so stately and stuffed that it was incomprehensible unless one knew the story, in one of the conservative papers.