Mary Westmacott - Giant's Bread

‘I’ve got no son of my own. I’m willing – if you’re willing – to look upon you as a son. The girls are provided for, and handsomely provided for at that. And mind you, it won’t be a case of toiling for life. I’m not unreasonable – and I realize just as much as you do what that place of yours stands for. You’re a young fellow. You go into the business when you come down from Cambridge – mind you, you go into it from the bottom. You’ll start at a moderate salary and work up. If you want to retire before you’re forty – well, you can do so. Please yourself. You’ll be a rich man by then, and you’ll be able to run Abbots Puissants as it should be run.

‘You’ll marry young, I hope. Excellent thing, young marriages. Your eldest boy succeeds to the place, the younger sons find a first-class business to step into where they can show what they’re made of. I’m proud of Bent’s – as proud of Bent’s as you are of Abbots Puissants – that’s why I understand your feeling about the old place. I don’t want you to have to sell it. Let it go out of the family after all these years. That would be a shame. Well, there’s the offer.’

‘It’s most awfully good of you, Uncle Sydney –’ began Vernon.

His uncle threw up a large square hand and stopped him.

‘We’ll leave it at that, if you please. I don’t want an answer now. In fact I won’t have one. When you come down from Cambridge – that’s time enough.’

He rose.

‘Kind of you to ask Enid up for May week. Very excited about it, she is. If you knew what that girl thought of you, Vernon, you’d be quite conceited. Ah, well, girls will be girls.’

Laughing boisterously, he slammed the front door.

Vernon remained in the hall frowning. It was really jolly decent of Uncle Sydney – jolly decent. Not that he was going to accept. All the money in the world wouldn’t tear him from music …

And somehow, he would have Abbots Puissants as well.

May week!

Joe and Enid were at Cambridge. Vernon had been let in for Ethel, too, as chaperon. The world seemed largely composed of Bents just at present.

Joe had burst out at once with: ‘Why on earth did you ask Enid?’

He had answered: ‘Oh, Mother went on about it – it doesn’t really matter.’

Nothing mattered to Vernon just then except one thing. Joe talked privately to Sebastian about that.

‘Is Vernon really in earnest about this music business? Will he ever be any good? I suppose it’s just a passing craze?’

But Sebastian was unexpectedly serious.

‘It’s extraordinarily interesting, you know,’ he said. ‘As far as I can make out, what Vernon is aiming at is something entirely revolutionary. He’s mastering now what you might call the main facts, and mastering them at an extraordinary rate. Old Coddington admits that, though, of course, he snorts at Vernon’s ideas – or would if Vernon ever let out about them. The person who’s interested is old Jeffries – mathematics! He says Vernon’s ideas of music are fourth dimensional.

‘I don’t know if Vernon will ever pull it off – or whether he’ll be considered as a harmless lunatic. The border-line is very narrow, I imagine. Old Jeffries is very enthusiastic. But not in the least encouraging. He points out, quite rightly, that to attempt to discover something new and force it on the world is always a thankless task, and that in all probability the truths that Vernon is discovering won’t be accepted for at least another two hundred years. He’s a queer old codger. Sits about thinking of imaginary curves in space – that sort of thing.

‘But I see his point. Vernon isn’t creating something new. He’s discovering something that’s already there. Rather like a scientist. Jeffries says that Vernon’s dislike of music as a child is perfectly understandable – to his ear music’s incomplete – it’s like a picture out of drawing. The whole perspective is wrong. It sounds to Vernon like – I suppose – a primitive savage’s music would sound to us – mostly unendurable discord.

‘Jeffries is full of queer ideas. Start him off on squares and cubes, and geometrical figures and the speed of light, and he goes quite mad. He writes to a German fellow called Einstein. The queer thing is that he isn’t a bit musical, and yet he can see – or says he can – exactly what Vernon is driving at.’

Joe cogitated deeply.

‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘I don’t understand a word of all this. But it looks as though Vernon might make a success of it all.’

Sebastian was discouraging.

‘I wouldn’t say that. Vernon may be a genius – and that’s quite a different thing. Nobody welcomes genius. On the other hand he may be just slightly mad. He sounds mad enough sometimes when he gets going – and yet, somehow, I’ve always got a kind of feeling that he’s right – that in some odd way, he knows what he’s talking about.’

‘You’ve heard about Uncle Sydney’s offer?’

‘Yes. Vernon seems to be turning it down very light-heartedly, and yet, you know, it’s a good thing.’

‘You wouldn’t have him accept it?’ flamed out Joe.

Sebastian remained provokingly cool.

‘I don’t know. It needs thinking about. Vernon may have wonderful theories about this music business – there’s nothing to show that he’s ever going to be able to put them into practice.’

‘You’re maddening,’ said Joe, turning away.

Sebastian annoyed her nowadays. All his cool analytical faculties seemed to be uppermost. If he had enthusiasms, he hid them carefully.

And to Joe, just now, enthusiasm seemed the most necessary thing in the world. She had a passion for lost causes, for minorities. She was a passionate champion of the weak and oppressed.

Sebastian, she felt, was only interested in successes. She accused him in her own mind of judging everyone and everything from a monetary standard. Most of the time they were together, they fought and bickered incessantly.

Vernon, too, seemed separated from her. Music was the only thing he wanted to talk about, and even then on lines that were not familiar to her.

His preoccupation was entirely with instruments – their scope and power, and the violin which Joe herself played seemed the instrument in which he was least interested. Joe was quite unfitted to talk about clarinets, trombones and bassoons. Vernon’s ambition in life seemed to be to form friendships with players of these instruments so as to be able to acquire some practical as opposed to theoretical knowledge.

‘Don’t you know any bassoon players?’

Joe said she didn’t.

Vernon said that she might as well make herself useful, and try to pick up some musical friends. ‘Even a French horn would do,’ he said kindly.

He drew an experimental finger round the edge of his finger-bowl. Joe shuddered and clapped both hands to her ears. The sound increased in volume. Vernon smiled dreamily and ecstatically.

‘One ought to be able to catch that and harness it. I wonder how it could be done. It’s a lovely round sound, isn’t it? Like a circle.’

Sebastian took the finger-bowl forcibly away from him, and he wandered round the room and rang various goblets experimentally.

‘Nice lot of glasses in this room,’ he said appreciatively.

‘You’re drowning sailors,’ said Joe.

‘Can’t you be satisfied with bells and a triangle?’ asked Sebastian. ‘And a little gong to beat –’

‘No,’ said Vernon. ‘I want glass … Let’s have the Venetian and the Waterford together … I’m glad you have these aesthetic tastes, Sebastian. Have you got a common glass that I can smash – all the tinkling fragments. Wonderful stuff – glass!’