Last Friday I had a bad attack of my trouble. When I came fully to myself again I saw John sitting at my bedside, looking so grim that it was clear the attack had indeed been serious. We were alone. It struck me that this was perhaps the last time we should be able to communicate intelligently with each other. On an impulse I said to him in my slight invalidish tones:
“But why didn’t you marry Beatrice, John? Really, now?”
“I like that, from you, Chris!” exclaimed John, colouring. “When you were always nagging at me for trying to steal Henry’s girl.”
“I never said a word to you on the subject in my life.”
“Happen not. But you looked plenty. I can just see you now as a kid, glaring at me from those large reproachful eyes of yours as I rode off on my bike. Henry stood like a ghost between me and Beatrice, if you want to know, till I thought I’d only a week or two to live and I couldn’t bear to die without once having her. You see, you always blamed me for Henry’s death, Chris, and I knew it.”
“I did nothing of the kind. It was my fault, if you want to know.”
“Nay, I reckon it was Beatrice’s. She couldn’t be satisfied with either of us; she wanted me to be like Henry and Henry to be like me, and we couldn’t.”
“Or it was the Jarmaynes’ fault, ’ I exclaimed, “because none of us satisfied her.”
“Maybe.”
We spoke of Beatrice for a while; her childhood beauty, Dr. Darrell’s death, our marriage.
“There was nothing I could do about it in a German prison-camp even if I’d known, but the first I heard of Robert at all was when Edie told me in a letter that Beatrice was dead.”
“I’m making no accusation.”
“Aye, but you are!” exclaimed John with feeling. “You blame it all on me.”
“I do not.”
“You’ve always blamed everything on me, Chris.”
“I have not.”
“Yes, you have. I don’t blame you, mind. I don’t come up to your high-falutin’ ideas, I know I don’t. None of us do. Poor old father used to say to me sometimes with half a wink: ‘Of course Chris wouldn’t approve of this, but we needn’t tell him.’”
“Approve of what?”
“Oh, any bit of good business. I shall never forget the way you laid down the law about the ethics of buying cheap and selling dear, one night at a party at our house. Uncle Alfred almost had a fit. Mind you, I admired you for it, Chris; I’ve always admired you. But you don’t make life easy, you know.”
“I don’t remember saying a word about buying and selling,” said I thoughtfully.
“You don’t?” exclaimed John, really astonished. “By Jove, but I do!”
Our voices had risen above the muted tones suitable to an angina patient, and Hermia now came in wearing a rather reproachful look.
“You shouldn’t talk any more now, Chris dear,” she said.
So now the last knot of involvement is disentangled. The storm of all my passions has died away, the air is clear and serene and every point of the landscape is very distinctly visible; as I lie here I can see my whole life in its true perspective.
I see for instance that all my life I have been as much a nuisance and a difficulty to my family as they have been to me. My brothers felt quite as much inhibited by my censorious self-righteousness as I did by their various forms of philistinism. I allot myself a very considerable share of blame for Henry’s death and Beatrice’s tragedy. Henry’s shame at having to face me with a fault he would never have committed but for my foolishness, contributed to his suicide, and the feeling of guilt which prevented John from marrying Beatrice had been enhanced or even created by me. My marriage to Beatrice was but a slight atonement for these faults. All the years of my youth while I went about pitying myself, I was causing others to suffer. (The same was true of them, of course; but that is their affair.) It amuses and even pleases me now to perceive that all the other persons in this record appear far more interesting and lovable, though less conscious, than I do myself.
I see also that my writings, though I still think them good and am proud to have produced them, are not the epoch-making, breath-taking works of genius I once believed.
So there are moments, now, near the close of my life, when as I look at my life, it seems a failure; in nothing have I been as noble as I intended.
But there are other moments when I feel more cheerful, I consider Nick beginning to make his way as a barrister; Chrissie joyously married to one of those new-fangled atomic engineers—I can’t understand a word he says when he begins to talk about his work, but he seems a nice lad and is certainly devoted to my daughter; Rie safely through her G.R.C.M.; Hermia beautiful and calm after many years of happiness at my side. I look across the room to the shelf which holds my novels, dip mentally into one here and there, and occasionally strike a theme of some originality or a character not too badly expressed. Then I cast my mind back to the frightened, wretched, twisted little boy I once was, and feel, as I say, cheered; perhaps I have not done so badly after all; I have perhaps contrived—after what agonizing struggles!—to play a not altogether unworthy part in my own place and time. In one of these good moments I smile quietly to myself.
“What are you smiling about, father?” inquires Nick, who is here for the weekend—decidedly that attack on Friday must have been severe! —as he rearranges the eiderdown across my bed. Like Hermia, he is gentle and deft in all his movements.
“Did you ever read my books as I instructed you, Nick?”
“Certainly I read them. I’ll judge each of them when I reach the age you were when you wrote it.”
“Fair enough,” said I, nodding.
“You’re growing very mellow these days, father,” says Nick, smiling down at me.
This is a two-edged compliment, implying a certain lack of mellowness in my earlier years. I accept it as such and when my son hands me the paper and pencil for which I ask, we exchange what Rie called “a Jarmayne look,” that is, one of somewhat sardonic though affectionate understanding. I ponder this look, think of many happy incidents in Nick’s childhood and try to remember moments of temper on my part which may have lived on in his memory.
For whether my moments of vision are glad or sad, at least I still try to see, to understand. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! says Hamlet. I shall try to justify this description of mankind as long as there is breath in my body; I hope that my last conscious moments will be occupied by this attempt rationally to comprehend, lovingly to compassionate, human destiny. Farewell!
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
Copyright © Phyllis Bentley
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ISBN: 9781448203949
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Noble in Reason Page 27
