Noble in Reason

by Phyllis Bentley

  My father now entered with hurried step, frowning and drawing out his watch; he crossed the room and vigorously rang the bell. We children all knew how our “cook-general” resented these vehement summonses, and we exchanged glances expressing criticism, as we silently gathered round the table. My father continued to fuss; strode out into the hall and called “Ada! Ada!” impatiently, returned at a trot and examined his watch once more. At length, however, my mother and the breakfast appeared together, grace was said, we seated ourselves, my father helped out the porridge and received his cup of tea. It was usually at this moment that he opened his letters, and I fixed my gaze upon him in eager expectation.

  He opened the Northchester letter and drew out the report. “This is your report, Christopher,” he said sternly.

  “Yes, father,” said I.

  My father cast a glance rapidly down the document, then, frowning, threw it down without a word. The bottom dropped out of my world.

  “May I see it, father?” I managed to utter timidly at last.

  “Yes—yes,” said my father irritably. He threw it across to me. “It’s very good,” he said in a grudging tone; and sighed.

  I examined the report, which indeed exceeded even my own high expectations. Henry looked over my shoulder.

  “It really is very good, father,” he said at length in a protesting tone.

  But my father had already passed on to another envelope.

  “This is your report, Netta,” said he. “Let us see what the Miss Craddocks have said about you”

  Netta smiled.

  “Tchk! Tchk! Tchk!” exclaimed my father in rising fury as he perused each item in turn. “Arithmetic, poor! Reading, a slight improvement! Dictation, tries hard! Composition, fair! What shall we do with you, Netta, if you can’t get a better report than that! What will become of you, my poor child!”

  Netta, utterly overthrown, burst into tears and rushed to my mother’s arms.

  “I don’t want father to scold me. Miss Craddocks never scold me,” she cried.

  “Never mind, darling!” said my mother soothingly, drawing Netta to her breast.

  “There, there! Never mind! I’m not cross with you, Netta,” explained my father impatiently, a little ashamed. “I just wonder what will become of you when you grow up, that’s all.”

  “I don’t want to grow up. I don’t want to be scolded,” wailed poor Netta.

  “She’ll get married, surely,” said my mother, stroking Netta’s hair.

  So much fury seethed in my heart that I had difficulty in choking down my food. To see Netta wounded in this way was almost more than I could bear. And my father was so unreasonable, I thought, so unjust. He scolded me for having a good report, Netta for not having one. It was impossible to please him.

  At this moment John came in.

  “You’re late, John,” said my father sharply.

  “Am I?” said John. His tone had that pretended innocence which when suspected to be ill-founded has such an insolent ring.

  “Don’t speak to me in that tone, sir!” snapped my father.

  John raised his eyebrows and enquired: “What tone, father?”

  “I am perfectly aware of why you are late every morning, John,” said my father. “I will speak to you about it tonight.”

  John coloured angrily and was silent.

  The holidays thus begun proceeded in the same tense and uneasy atmosphere. Our Christmas rites were muted; the turkey was small, the dessert scanty. It appeared that Henry’s bicycle, which had descended to me (because too small for him) in the summer of that year, was to be counted as my Christmas present. I was disappointed and disgusted by this arrangement but not surprised; I thought it characteristic of my father’s parsimony. Netta soon recovered from the incident of the report, for she soon forgot it; but both my brothers seemed uncomfortable. It was clear that John was under my father’s serious displeasure for some crime unknown to me, while Henry seemed brooding and touchy. As for myself, I took to fainting suddenly at unexpected moments. For some time I managed to conceal this from my family, but an unlucky chance brought it to light.

  It was my custom to go to the mill on holiday mornings, to run errands and make myself generally useful, and this had usually seemed to please my father, who allocated me simple tasks with a smile. But these holidays he frowned on me impatiently when I asked for work, and one day his impatience broke out into an angry scene. Returning to find that in his absence I had split the wood of a drawer he had set me to repair—I was always clumsy with my fingers—my father threw the drawer violently to the other side of the office, where it smashed against the wall, and cried:

  “Go away! Go home! You can’t help me! Nobody can help me! Get out of my sight!”

  Frightened, resentful, remorseful, I fled away gladly to the street, where I met John.

  “What’s up?” said he.

  I explained in a quavering tone that father was vexed because I couldn’t repair a drawer.

  “Well, keep out of his way,” said John with a scowl. “Don’t come to the mill any more.”

  This advice though humiliating was welcome and I was about to act on it with relief when I fainted, clutching at the railings as I fell, in vain.

  Naturally a good deal of fuss supervened. John carried me back to the office, where my father became so upset, pacing the room in vehement strides and telling me with emphasis that I took things far too much to heart, that in sheer justice to him I was obliged to confess that I had fainted before. I was taken home in a cab and Dr. Darrell was summoned. He pronounced my malaise due to overwork at Northchester. This diagnosis I resisted hotly, and though during the weeks that followed I certainly felt odd in more ways than one, I concealed my symptoms with care lest they should give the anti-Northchester theory more support.

  But in vain, as it seemed. For one night Henry came into my room, where I was reading in bed as usual, and leaning over the rails at the foot with an expression of vexation and perplexity on his handsome face, asked me if I would like to go to London with him.

  “Of course!” I exclaimed joyously, sitting upright.

  “Instead of going back to school,” concluded Henry.

  No doubt my face revealed the incredulous horror, the dumbfounded despair, which I felt, for Henry added on a note almost of apology:

  “It might be better for you, Chris—since you seem to be overworking.”

  I got out a strangled exclamation: “No!”

  “Well, there’s no help for it, Chris,” said Henry, walking about the room with a quick nervous step. “Father can’t afford for you to go to Northchester any longer.”

  “But I have a scholarship!” I cried proudly.

  “It doesn’t cover the whole expense. And there’s your railway fares, and your midday meal, and so on. No! It’s no good. Father’s made up his mind. I’m to go to London—an old friend of father’s has got me a job there. And I’ll take you with me. We’ll manage somehow.”

  I gazed at him overwhelmed.

  “But will you like going away from Hudley, Henry?”

  Henry strode about the room. “I shall attend music classes at night,” he said. “John is going to one of our step-uncles in Ashworth.”

  As I had never then heard of our step-uncles in Ashworth, I was more and more dismayed. My normal world seemed to be breaking up about me, revealing dark horrifying vistas veiled in wreaths of sulphurous smoke.

  “There’s a good opening for John there as the uncle hasn’t any sons. Father wanted me to go,” explained Henry haughtily, “but I declined. I didn’t wish to be beholden to them. Come, Chris!” he added on an impatient note: “It’s no use pulling a long face about it. You must bear up and be a man. We must all do our best.”

  “But why must everything be changed like this?” I wailed.

  Henry shrugged his shoulders. “It’s those American tariffs, I suppose,” he said.

  “What will Netta do?”

  “I don’t know,” said
Henry, frowning. “Now don’t make any fuss about this to father and mother, Christopher. And don’t start Netta crying. We’re going on Wednesday.”

  Accordingly on Wednesday morning a sad little group of male Jarmaynes stood on the departure platform of the Hudley railway station. My father’s mood seemed to me at its most difficult and peremptory; he had already offended the booking-office clerk, the ticket-collector and the porter by his strictures on railway procedures as to tickets, luggage and the signalling of trains. John stood silent and scowling, viewing my father’s fussings with heavy contempt. Henry walked impatiently up and down the platform; he held his head high but his face was pale and pinched. I could see that he suffered. As for me, I experienced a keen agony. We had parted from my mother and Netta at home; Netta bade me farewell with loving sweetness, as always, but she did not understand that our absence was to be permanent and babbled: “Goodbye Chris goodbye have a nice time come back soon Chris dear soon soon soon” all in a breath as her way was, so that she almost broke my heart; my mother, slow and drowsy in her speech that morning, embraced me tenderly but seemed hardly more conscious of the meaning of our departure than her little daughter from whom the knowledge had been kept. After this ordeal of parting, to see my father making himself absurd in front of amused spectators, to perceive his injustice to the porters and resent it on their behalf, to dread further explosions of his vehement temper, kept me in a state of quivering pain, so that I longed for nothing so much as the arrival of the express.

  Across two sets of railway lines, both at present empty though trains were signalled, as John pointed out to me, for arrival on both, another platform lay open to our view. It was from this platform that I had been used to take the train to Northchester. On that platform, I thought despairingly, the travellers looked ordinary, happy people, bound on interesting and hopeful journeys; and this impression was heightened when I saw descending the far steps Mrs. Darrell and Beatrice, both agreeably dressed in furs and what I remember as “costumes” in two shades of mauve, with crisp lace bows at the throat. We Jarmaynes hastily put on our public expressions at the sight of our neighbours; we removed hats and caps, bowed and smiled as blandly as if we too were on some pleasurable excursion. Suddenly Henry, with an exclamation, left us; he flew up the steps from our platform and could be seen a moment later hastening down the other flight. This rush to the side of a pretty girl naturally aroused the interest of all the waiting passengers, who smiled amiably, for Henry was a pleasing and even distinguished-looking young man. But John’s heavy face flushed a dark crimson, while my father’s aquiline features turned pale—even in my anguish I could not help remarking with interest the difference in their hue. Almost at the same moment our train came in. The necessary slight bustle with our luggage was completed and two corner seats had been secured for us by John, and still Henry had not reappeared.

  “Well, goodbye, Christopher. Be a good boy,” said my father, kissing me. “Henry is too busy with his friends to say goodbye to his father, I see.”

  My father’s tone was so full of grief and anger, and I was so obviously a second-rate son as far as he was concerned, that I could hardly have felt at once more ashamed and more resentful of him than I did at that moment. How could my father imagine that any son of his should wish to bid him a fond farewell? Yet it was wrong of Henry not to behave as the departing sons of other families would (I thought) surely do.

  “He’ll miss the train if he doesn’t look out,” said John.

  Although we all knew that in fact the efficient, alert and sensible Henry would not miss the train, there was a pause full of suspense and wretchedness until he at last appeared running rapidly down our flight of steps. His expression was now bright and eager, and he jumped into the train breathless and laughing.

  “Well, goodbye, Chris—don’t let Henry here make too much of a prig of you,” said John.

  The train now began to move; my father reached up hastily to Henry, seized his hand and implanted a sudden kiss on his cheek.

  “Goodbye, father! Goodbye, John!” cried Henry cheerfully, in his resonant and pleasant tones.

  “Goodbye,” said John.

  His face was grim, and he stood with both hands in his pockets, not offering a parting clasp to either of his brothers. It was then that I perceived the rivalry between Henry and John for Beatrice. I grasped at once that John’s lateness for breakfast every morning had sprung from his meetings with Beatrice—in the backyard we shared with the Darrells, perhaps; there was disused stabling where such meetings could take place. My heart sank like a stone at the prospect of further family conflict which such a rivalry evoked. This additional emotion, piled on top of all the rest, with the immense relief of leaving my father behind, the sadness of leaving home and the fear of the unknown future, was altogether too much for me, and as the train glided past the Hudley signboard I gave a loud sobbing snort. This displeased Henry.

  “You’re too old for such childishness, Christopher,” he said sternly. “Pull yourself together. What have you to cry about, after all?”

  2

  To me, of course, Henry’s remark seemed at that time the height of unkindness. How could he so callously disregard my grief and despair at being torn away from Northchester? It never occurred to me that in fact he was ignorant of it, that my dumbfounded, appalled, despairing submission to this stroke of Fate was believed by my family to be a not dissatisfied acceptance. They had no idea how I loved Northchester, how I hated to leave it; because I had never mentioned these emotions.

  I had not then learned the lesson that, if you want something from a high shelf, you must stretch up for it yourself— you must not expect others to reach it down for you. If you wash a car to go fast, you must press the accelerator; the mechanism will not act unless you set it in motion. Life does not offer you its prizes on a plate. A struggle to secure them is necessary. You have the right to try for what you want, or at least to express your wish so that it may be known; if it is inconvenient or troubling for others, they in their turn must not fail to tell you so; you can then take an ethical decision as to whether you should proceed. Submission without a struggle is not a virtue. Few people are more difficult to aid, or stand more persistently in their own light, than those who, often out of sheer goodness of heart, conceal their wishes or their objection to your own.

  Considering how many novels I had read where the hero had won my admiration by his unyielding pursuit of his ideals, considering how greatly I approved the ancient Romans’ self-respecting character, considering how undauntedly my daydream Etherington behaved in defence of justice and culture, it seems strange to me now that I did not put up a fight to stay at Northchester. But no; I did not recognize the need to be undaunted when I met it. I believed it to be my duty to acquiesce; I acquiesced; and blamed others for the blighting of my hopes.

  My father’s decision to send Henry and myself away from Hudley was part of a larger decision forced upon him by various economic and family stresses. His business was about to go into voluntary liquidation, and he wished to spare his young sons the shame and humiliation of witnessing this process. In his distress he had applied for assistance to his eldest stepbrother, Alfred Jarmayne of Ashworth, who refused. A comparatively small sum, of a few hundreds only, would then have saved the firm, but Alfred Jarmayne did not see his way to providing it. (It was after my father’s final interview with Alfred that he returned to find my carpentering so unsatisfactory.) Instead Alfred found a job in his mill office for one of his nephews, and further, on learning as I suppose of the problem of my mother, offered to take Netta into his household for a year or two, until, as he put it, my father should “get on his feet again.” Henry haughtily refused the proffered post, but John, who knew of the old quarrel and concluded without waiting for evidence that his father was sure to be in the wrong, accepted. It was decided that he should live in Ashworth rather than travel there daily by train, my father pressing this arrangement in order to take John away from Be
atrice, for he had received complaints about John’s conduct from Dr. Darrell.

  My father was incapable of taking this boy-and-girl affair lightly. His father’s second marriage, his own catastrophe with my mother, had caused him to fear and hate sexual love, as the cause of all the troubles of his perplexed and frustrated life. John’s flirtations he regarded as amours, and viewed them with real disgust. It was Henry, the stern, the upright, the proud, the musical, for whom my father felt a deep and admiring affection; he longed for Henry to achieve all the success which his own life lacked; he longed for a vicarious triumph through Henry. He was proud of Henry’s musical ability, because it seemed to transcend yet fulfil his own; he had a wistful romantic dream of Henry becoming famous and rich in the metropolis; he rejoiced that Henry should leave the difficult, and for him so unpropitious, terrain of the West Riding.

  It was Henry’s idea to take me with him; a self-sacrificing notion of removing his younger brother from the increasing trouble with my mother, of “saving Chris’s face” with regard to leaving Northchester, and perhaps of improving my health. My father agreed to the project with relief. My ill-timed faints would be attributed now, I feel sure, to misbehaving glands and the belated onset of adolescence, complicated by psychological fears, but the medical science of those days was not capable of such a diagnosis, and he genuinely believed he was caring for my health in removing me from Northchester.