Noble in Reason

by Phyllis Bentley

  Asked by the waiter whether she preferred chicken (I think it was) or salmon, Netta chose salmon; I chanced to make the opposite choice.

  “Oh, Chris, why didn’t you tell me?” she cried reproachfully. “Then I could have had the same as you. Waiter! Waiter! Oh, I can’t catch his eye. Chris, tell him I’ll have the same as you. He shouldn’t have asked me first, then I could have said the same as you.”

  “But, Netta my dear, you must have what you prefer.”

  “Oh, no, thank you, I’ll have the same as you. Stephen darling, what are you having? Are you having the same as your uncle Chris?”

  “I’ve told the waiter, mother,” muttered Stephen crossly, hanging his head.

  “Stephen always knows his own mind,” said Netta proudly. “You’d be surprised if you knew how obstinate he is sometimes, Chris. Of course he’s a very good son to me really— you’re devoted to your mother, aren’t you, darling?”

  “Oh, mother!” groaned Stephen.

  “I’m sure he is. Have some salad, Netta,” said I, to divert her attention from her son, for whose sufferings I began to feel some sympathy. While Netta gave me a long and detailed description of a new recipe for salad dressing— “It’s beautiful, really beautiful, Chris; you should try it, Mrs. Womersley would make it for you—” I looked at Stephen with more interest than I had previously had time for.

  He was a tall, slender, stooping lad, with a very fair complexion he had inherited from Netta, well-cut if rather mignon features, a handsome pouting mouth, and thick wavy fair hair which he often tossed back from his forehead. Usually, what with his concave posture and his thick spectacles, his eyes were barely visible, but on the hair-tossing occasions one caught a glimpse of that sea-blue colour I remembered so clearly in his father. His voice was thin and high, his demeanour sulky, his tone (as John had rightly observed) disdainful.

  “I brought him to see you, Chris. I mean I wanted you to see him. I thought this was a good opportunity, you’d be sure to be here. He’s called after you, you know: Stephen Geoffrey Christopher Graham, that’s his name. I wanted you to be his godfather, but mother thought perhaps you wouldn’t want to bother. But that’s his name, Stephen Geoffrey Christopher Graham. He’s done so well at school.”

  “Oh, mother!” groaned Stephen as before.

  “He’s read all your books.”

  “Uncle Chris doesn’t want to hear all this, mother,” muttered Stephen, writhing.

  “Yes, he does, darling. Of course he does. Don’t you, Chris?”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t like talking about my books in public. But what is Stephen going to do with his life, eh?”

  “Well, that’s just the point. He’s won a scholarship to Oxford———”

  “It’s only an exhibition, really.”

  “—but it isn’t enough.”

  “Yes, it is, mother; I can manage.”

  “No, Stephen darling, you can’t. You aren’t at all good at economizing, whatever you may think,” said Netta, beaming at him proudly. “Your father was just the same.”

  “I’m not in the least like my father,” muttered Stephen.

  “Where were you at school, Stephen?” enquired Robert.

  “Canterbury,” said Stephen shortly, without looking up. “I went in every day.”

  “What games did you play most?”

  “Fives.” (This silenced Robert, who thought Rugby football the only manly game.)

  “He worked so hard he didn’t have much time for games, did you, darling? It’ll be a pity if he can’t go to Oxford.”

  “Of course he must go to Oxford,” said I in an irritable tone, experiencing again on Stephen’s behalf all the pain of my own truncated career at Northchester. “We’ll talk about it this evening, Netta.”

  ‘There! What did I tell you, Stephen? He didn’t want me to mention it to you, Chris. Say thank you to your uncle.”

  “He’s nothing to thank me for yet,” said I loudly, cutting across another of Stephen’s expostulations.

  Luncheon was now over, our solicitor had arrived and we moved away to the other room to hear my father’s will read. Owing to the effects of the post-war slump, my poor father had not very much to leave, and it now appeared that Netta came out of his testamentary dispositions rather badly, because—this was previously unknown to myself and John—she had received most of her portion already. Most of the shares in Hilbert Mills went, very properly, to John.

  “You don’t get much out of this, Chris,” said John to me privately as the gathering broke up.

  “I’m perfectly satisfied. It’s a pity about Netta, though. If she hadn’t had her share before, it would just come in nicely now for Stephen.”

  “Stephen! I’ll tell you what I think of darling Stephen,” said John sardonically. “I think he should have been drowned when he was a pup. Not a word to say for himself except oh, mother. I won’t have him in Hilbert, not at any price, Chris, so it’s no use you trying to persuade me.”

  “He’s not the type for textiles.”

  “Bob’s all right, he’s framing very nicely, but darling Stephen’s another thing altogether and I won’t have him in.”

  “Stephen must go to Oxford and enter some professional career.”

  “He’ll have to give that up. Netta hasn’t the money for it.”

  “I have.”

  “Oh, well! If that’s the line you’re going to take! A fool and his money are soon parted. You should marry again, Chris, before it’s too late, instead of going round financing other people’s children who’ve no claim on you.”

  “Stephen is our sister’s child,” I said with some irritation. “I ought to have looked after him before.”

  “Aye, well, he is of course,” conceded John. “I don’t see what you’ll get out of it, though.”

  8

  What I got out of it was fairly clear to me even then, however. To be a true friend, a helpful uncle, even if belatedly, to the son of Geoffrey Graham and Netta, cleansed my bosom of much perilous stuff, dragged out of it, in fact, some thorns which had long festered there.

  It made all well between myself and Graham. Nothing soothes the sting of evil received so completely as benefits conferred. One should always examine one’s own motives with great care, and it is possible that an unworthy triumph over one’s enemy forms part of the pleasure of heaping coals of fire on his head—indeed the phrase coals of fire reveals this aspect of the matter only too clearly. (Certainly my feeling of inferiority to Graham disappeared.) But the revenge of returning good for evil is better than the revenge of returning evil for evil, after all. If I had anything to forgive Geoffrey Graham, my help to his son showed that I forgave it; if he had anything to forgive me, my help to his son would perhaps partly atone for my transgression.

  What I did not fully realize at the time, however, was that the sight of my poor little sister in the rôle of fond foolish mother, all her inadequacies accentuated by the pressure of the years, had cured me of the jealousy I had always felt for her husband. That Netta was always prevented from seeing her relatives by her devotion to Stephen, had been a wry family joke for many years. But while I was in London I was within an hour’s train or car journey from the village where she lived; that I had not seen her for nearly eighteen years was my fault as much as hers. Moreover, as I say I had never written to her save once, since her marriage. The truth was that since our childhood together there had always been a certain sexual element in my relationship to Netta. Her marriage to Graham was an outrage to my deep feeling for her and I had avoided seeing or writing to her since because there was a painful area in my mind surrounding our attachment, which I did not wish to inflame by exposure to her presence. Now all that was cut away. Poor Netta was no longer capable of arousing such emotions in me. I still felt for her a most tender and pitying affection; but this love was now entirely that of a brother.

  Although, as I say, I did not realize this at the time completely, yet when I went up to bed on
the night of my father’s funeral I knew I felt entirely freed; exhausted, empty, as if my brain had been washed clear of all the painful sediment of my childhood. I was ready for a new life.

  10

  Vitaï Lampada

  1

  The morning after my father’s funeral Hitler marched into the Rhineland.

  It was while reading this news in the press I made the reflection I have recorded before, that although my father’s illness had made great calls on my energy and time, it had also sheltered me from other such calls. My hands full with my work and my father, I had been able to eschew political activity without too much self-reproach. Now this was no longer possible; if I was to retain any respect for myself at all, I was obliged to enter the arena in defence of my ideas.

  Accordingly in the next three years I spoke and wrote often against the Nazi and Fascist ideology, and wrote the novel To Bury Caesar, which investigated the contemporary European situation in terms of an earlier dictatorship. The purpose of this novel was misconstrued and it proved less popular than the previous trilogy, while some of my anti-Hitler writings called down on me much correspondence and a certain amount of obloquy. But these were not the kind of demonstrations I was afraid of; I could face more easily a stack of hostile press-cuttings than a single criticism from my father; and this was no longer to be feared. Moreover, I had the support of my family in this matter, though for oddly assorted reasons. John as an old soldier distrusted all Germans and Robert’s natural youthful patriotism was affronted by Hitler’s insults to England, while Stephen wrote me a carelessly spelled and ill-written but well composed letter expressing the typical Leftist sentiments of the day. More than these I valued a short note in Mr. Merridew’s small, neat, highly stylized but now slightly quavering calligraphy, approving my views for all the generous and humane reasons I myself approved.

  In addition to these political and literary activities I removed from Ashroyd and established myself, with the aid of the admirable Mrs. Womersley, in Upper Bairstow, one of those numerous Jacobean yeoman clothiers’ halls agreeably tucked into the high folds of the hills surrounding Hudley. This I entertained myself by furnishing in a more or less period style. The view from its windows across the surrounding Pennines was very fine, for the house deserved its name, being decidedly upper to most of the neighbouring landscape; the approaching lane was not too steep for a modern car; old walls protected the garden and made some flowers possible; altogether the place gave me a deep satisfaction, a sense of fitting at last into the West Riding scene.

  All this kept me busy, and it seemed to me only a few months after my father’s death though in reality it was three years, when the Hitlerian war began. Robert at once volunteered for the Army; Stephen became a pacifist but relented when Russia was attacked; the twins went off on overseas nursing service; Anne presently entered the A.T.S. and married a captain; John drove Hilbert Mills relentlessly hard to make cloth for the necessary service uniforms and later for exports with which England could buy food and guns. I tried hard to find some niche where my own services would be useful to the war effort, but it was not until Churchill succeeded Chamberlain after the disasters and England so to speak really began to fight, that I was able to place myself in a departmental post and found myself in London.

  Remembering (not without some derisive alarm) the Official Secrets Act, I will say nothing of my work except that it was not altogether unliterary in character, occupied me day and night for some four years, gave me a strong dislike for every kind of government-department activity including all forms of nationalization, and was eventually thought worthy of a C.M.G. This very happy consummation was not, of course, remotely on the horizon when I joined the Ministry concerned in a decidedly subordinate capacity; the chief immediate result was a catastrophic drop in my income, which made me wish to return to my former garret flat above the Merridew premises. At first I found this occupied, but presently the tenant was swept off into the Army and I succeeded to his lease.

  Dear Mr. M, whom I sought out on my first afternoon, immediately the interview confirming my appointment was over, appeared stooped and frail, but very lively; he still contrived to read, or at least to know the contents of, every book of interest and distinction recently published; his voice was soft but clear, his eyes as bright as a bird’s. His daughter-in-law had remarried a few years ago—a compatriot—and was now unfortunately in Czechoslovakia. Of his grandchildren, Nicholas, he told me, was at sea in a destroyer; Hermia had been “lent,” by the university library in which she usually worked, to the government department I had just joined.

  “I shall see her there, no doubt,” said I, with a pleasant but not excited anticipation.

  “That would be agreeable,” returned Mr. M mildly.

  In the event it was several months before I knowingly encountered Hermia, and when I saw her I did not at first recognize her. I had meanwhile risen up a little in the departmental hierarchy, and was at present engaged in selecting a young woman to fill a certain post in the section of which I was head. After interviewing a couple of impossible applicants, and one slightly less so, I had shown in to me a girl in her late twenties who struck me at once as the right one. Her appearance was extremely pleasing; very trim and neat in a good dark suit, she had none of that pseudo-sophistication which I disliked in the young; thick soft dark hair moulded to a shapely head, and very fine dark grey eyes, were enhanced by the kind of unobtrusive make-up known as “discreet” and an entire absence of jewellery. Her voice was low but clear, very charming, with a kind of happiness and serenity in its undertones; her smile too was serene; her cheek smooth and fresh. She answered my questions with great intelligence and an admirable precision in her choice of words—no, that is rather a hard phrase and there was nothing hard about her, only a loving care for accuracy, a desire to do the subject proper justice, as it were, to show it the affectionate respect it deserved. I drew her personal file towards me, observed the excellence of her university degree and came at last to her name.

  “Hermina Merridew!” I exclaimed, “I must apologize for not recognizing you.”

  “It is ten years since we last met.”

  “Well—it would be a great pleasure to me to have Mr. Merridew’s grand-daughter in my section, but of course I must interview all the applicants before expressing a preference to Establishment.”

  “Of course.”

  I was very much pleased to find that Hermia’s qualifications for the post in question were far superior to those of the other candidates. She was accordingly appointed, and as the war years ground on, became my chief assistant and presently my deputy. We rose together in the department; worked together, struggled unremittingly through the thicket of official regulations together, sometimes had occasion to fly overseas together and experienced together all the major and minor trials of life in wartime London: the blackout, the rationing, the wretched transport facilities, the bombs. We worked seven days a week and stayed long hours. Professionally, in fact, we were inseparable.

  The life of a temporary civil servant in one of the mushroom government departments during the Hitlerian war was a severe test of character. The temptations to idleness or intrigue were innumerable if one’s nature inclined in those directions; while the perpetual sense of danger occasioned by air raids heightened all the emotions to a feverish pitch and produced a violent desire to live to the full while one was still alive, which led other natures into extravagant follies. Hermia’s quiet, gentle but high integrity never wavered; her work was entirely steady and reliable, very intelligent yet always practical. I had with her, therefore, that feeling of comfort and reassurance which comes from a real similarity of viewpoint; she rejoiced with me when we managed to push some necessary matter “through,” while if I received a minute from Sir R or Mr. S which infuriated me, I knew that when I handed it to her to read, the colour would rise in her clear cheek and she would utter some quiet but incisive condemnation.

  Outside the Ministry this
similarity of viewpoint persisted. The custom of the period allowed us to lunch and dine together often, and we spent our scanty leisure in enjoying together the arts, which flourished exceedingly in wartime London. We had plenty of opportunities, therefore, to discover that we liked and disliked the same people and the same works of art, and for the same reasons. Hermia was the better acquainted of our pair with music and painting, I with literature; we submitted ourselves cheerfully to each other’s guidance in these matters because we found that our taste ran along such similar lines. I was not so insensible that I did not perceive Hermia’s quiet, grave young beauty or remain unaware of its effect on me; but her youth, her relationship with Mr. Merridew, my position as her official superior, and (quite simply) her virtue, obliged me to behave to her with the strictest propriety.

  In a word, we became close friends, in spite of the difference between our ages. When Nicholas was killed on convoy duty, in a duel between his destroyer and a submarine, it was tcf me that Hermia turned to sustain her grandfather—for poor Mr. M was much broken by grief. For a time he gave up coming to the shop, and it was only by degrees that we were able to coax him to return to it.