Yet he still could not quite bring himself to accept Cordelia’s position. He took no pride in being unconventional and, besides, it was his wife not his father’s. He was sensitive to other people’s comments. He got no pleasure out of hearing them discussing purpurin and verantin, or why rubian when decomposed by chlorine left grape sugar. There was a charitable scheme afoot for buying some old property near the works and building houses on the land. Sometimes she would go into Mr Ferguson’s study in the evening and be there for an hour or more talking over plans. He resented that a great deal.
But Brook’s slow awakening had not stopped at common day; all the good things in his life he now took for granted and he saw instead only the lack of real freedom. Pridey’s going to London was a constant gall, and Cordelia often found herself in the position of being the pacifying influence in the depleted household.
No one, to look at him at supper tonight, round-shouldered and pale and ascetic and listening to Essie’s airy London talk, or turning agreeably to one of Mr Ferguson’s new friends, a Swedenborgian, as he spoke about the Heavenly Arcana, would have thought he was resenting anything. No one, certainly not Brook himself, had any idea that the final explosion was so near.
Chapter Two
It began a fortnight later with a letter from Hugh Scott.
The two men had written occasionally since Hugh’s move to London, but with their wives corresponding regularly the impulse to exchange news was lacking.
Hugh wrote:
MY DEAR BROOK,
You may be surprised at hearing from me so soon after Essie’s return, but things have been moving quickly while she’s been away; and anyway this is something quite outside the womenfolk.
I’ll put it briefly right at the start. There’s a project afoot to start a new weekly, to be called, we think, the Westminster Bulletin. It will be Liberal in politics, though not radical, and will generally try to take an independent line. Lord Hirondel is at the back of it and will be managing director of the company and will direct the policy of the paper. You know the wide experience he has had. Brompton Jones is to be editor. I have been offered a sub-editorship, and think I shall take the political. Now the point is this: there are two sub-editorships still vacant, finance, and the literary side, which will be small but very important.
There’s no difficulty in filling these appointments, and two or three names have already been mentioned, but a preference will be given to any man who can put money into the company, and I think, if you wished to take it and could put up, say, five thousand pounds, I could get you the literary sub-editorship. I don’t mean that anyone could buy a sub-editorship: that would be fatal; but you have your published poems to show and your reputation to set against your lack of journalistic experience.
Believe me, it’s a wonderful opportunity – that’s if you really mean what you’ve sometimes said, that your heart isn’t in your present job and that you want to devote all your time to literary work. Brompton Jones has had ten years on the News and before that he was with The Times, and he’s not the man to give up a fine job to join a new paper unless he’s pretty sure of his ground. I have put fifteen hundred into it, mostly borrowed from Father. I’ve always wanted to start with a paper on the ground floor and to share in its growth.
If you are really interested, let me know as quickly as possible and I’ll send you more details. The actual appointment will have to be made in about a fortnight, so there isn’t much time to waste. We hope to begin with the first number in the middle of March.
And now I must thank you for having Essie and Jane; they both enjoyed themselves a lot, but I’m glad to have them back. I don’t think I should take kindly to being a bachelor again. Essie is as excited about this as I am and she says there’s a nice house to let in the next avenue from our own, and she’s already getting excited at the prospect of having Brook and Ian and her dear Cordelia as neighbours. I tell her not to count the chickens, for of course I don’t know how you are placed with the old man.
Believe me, Yours ever, H UGH
Cordelia usually went down to the dye works with them at eight forty-five, and when they were not returning to dinner she would drive home by herself at noon, this being the end of her day. But today they came back with her. She could see that Brook was excited about something. He had a rare flush in his cheeks and hardly spoke through the meal.
Afterwards, during the ten minutes before the phaeton arrived back at the door, he showed her the letter.
Walk warily over this.
‘It is nice of him to write to you. It’s an exciting idea. What shall you do?’ If she had loved him there would have been no need to pretend her enthusiasm.
‘It’s the sort of thing I’ve always – well, not exactly on a newspaper, I didn’t think of journalism; but the more I look at it the more I like it. And of course I’ve had articles published and things. It would put me right in with the people I want to know. I’m not interested in dyes, never have been. This would be living!’
He glanced at her with a queer look which might have been his father’s; expectant, faintly imperious.
‘How long have you got to decide? A fortnight? Shall you–’
‘Yes, I’ll have to tell him tonight. Of course, I know the sort of thing he’ll say–’
‘Brook, d’you think it would be better to write for more particulars before you say anything? It’s all rather vague, and you’d have to go and see Hugh and meet the others. I don’t want to put you off, but d’you need to say anything to your father until you’re more sure?’
He shrugged uneasily, irritably. ‘I don’t know. It seems perfectly clear to me. Anyway, I’ll write to Hugh this afternoon …’
His voice died away as Mr Ferguson came padding down the stairs.
So four days passed before Mr Ferguson heard anything of it at all. Cordelia wondered if she had done Brook a disservice by delaying his first impulse. Yet if Brook’s need were strong enough …
Brook’s need was strong enough. On Saturday evening when they were in the drawing-room he showed his father the first letter.
Mr Ferguson’s first irrelevant and irritating comment was: ‘January the twelfth. The letter has been a long time reaching you.’
‘No, I got it on Tuesday.’
Mr Ferguson raised his eyebrows and began to read. There was a minute’s silence during which his breathing occupied the room. Then he folded the letter and tapped it against the knuckles of his other hand.
‘Young Scott was always an enthusiast. I hope he’ll not lose his money.’
‘I don’t see why he should. They’re all highly reputable people in it. And Hugh is canny enough, you know, on the quiet. Coutts are the bankers, and the capital is to be forty thousand pounds.’
‘I didn’t see those facts mentioned here.’
‘No, I – I wrote and he’s replied again.’ Brook passed over the second letter. Now for it.
More breathing in the silence. It was a cold night: the fire was glowing with the frost, warm light reflecting from the ornate tiles of the grate.
‘I confess I’m a little puzzled here, Brook. He writes as if you have expressed some enthusiasm for the project on your own behalf.’
‘Yes … I did …’
Mr Ferguson read the letter again. ‘With what object in view?’
‘Well, I thought I’d like to – I was interested in the idea and wrote for more particulars.’
‘It might have been more thoughtful all round if you had consulted me first.’
Cordelia said: ‘I thought it a pity to have all the – I mean it was a pity to trouble you if there were details which might put Brook off in any case.’
‘It’s no trouble to me to advise my children. That is a pleasure and a duty.’
Brook picked up the first letter and folded it and refolded it.
‘Well, there we are. I haven’t been put off at all.’ His defiant voice trailed away. He frowned across the room at the fire, bit at a
piece of loose skin on his finger.
‘Tell me,’ Mr Ferguson said, ‘ was your idea to invest five thousand pounds in this as a profit-making venture without taking a personal part?’
‘Oh, no. I’d like to be in it as Hugh suggests – in the way he suggests.’
‘And what do you propose should happen at the dye works?’
Brook did not answer for a moment. ‘ I thought you could do without me,’ he said sullenly.
‘You think that Cordelia and I can run it while you accept a permanent situation in London?’
‘No … If I went – well, obviously, Cordelia would have to come too.’
Mr Ferguson put the second letter back in its envelope. Not a flicker on his face. ‘And the dye works?’
‘Well, nobody’s indispensable. You could get a manager in.’
‘You’re not serious, Brook?’
‘Yes, I’m serious,’ Brook said angrily. ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
Mr Ferguson got up, paced across the room. Aunt Tish had put down her knitting. Cordelia had a sudden sense as of something rushing to destruction. She wanted to cry, draw back, draw back!
‘Where do you propose to get your money from?’
‘… There’s my partnership – to say nothing of Cordelia’s. Together they are worth many times that.’
‘Let me first see this quite clearly. What you propose is to sell your holdings in a very prosperous though perhaps unromantic concern. This concern pays a high dividend, a long-established, a family business, where you are your own master and where – if you’re ill or want a holiday – you are always assured that other people, many other people, employees, are continuing to work for you. Instead you wish to invest this money in one of the most speculative … Launching a new weekly magazine against all the keen competition of those already established. You want to take an undistinguished position as a sub-editor; exacting work at all hours of the day, no longer your own master but at the beck and call of others. Is that it?’
‘… Yes.’
‘And further, you’d leave a very large and comfortable house with nearly a score of servants and take Cordelia and your son to live in some little London suburban avenue – one maid to do the rough work, and two trees and a concrete path for a garden?’
‘… Yes.’
Mr Ferguson said in the same quiet tone: ‘Are you mad?’
Brook went white. ‘ I don’t – well, I don’t look at it that way, Father.’
‘How do you look at it then? Pray tell me.’
Brook stammered, licked his lips. A tremendous moment, to throw over the old fetishes to which he’d been bowing since a tiny child. The ruler at two, the frown at four, the inflection at seven. All the iron doors, deep overgrown and long forgotten, shaking and breaking. It was not only his father; he was fighting what had become a part of himself, thoughts and opinions of another man.
‘It isn’t always money that means happiness, is it? It’s what you do with your life. I’ve always wanted to write, to – to be a poet chiefly, but you can’t live by poetry. Or not many people can. I can’t help it. I’ve never been interested in chemicals, never shall be. I know I’m secure here. But security isn’t everything. I want to launch out – on my own. You say I’m independent here, but I’m– not really. Even with the partnership we’re still really dependent on you. It’s only exchanging one master for another …’
‘So you look on me as that. You will find there can be a great deal of difference in masters, my boy.’
‘It’s only natural, isn’t it, to want to strike out on my own? I want to make a home for Cordelia. We’ve been married over five years now. It’s better for young married couples to have their own place? Did you live with your father and mother when you were first married?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well – anyway, that’s how I feel, that’s how we feel.’
‘So Cordelia is in this too?’
‘I’m Brook’s wife, Mr Ferguson.’ She said it with a dreadful sense of futility, of guilt towards Brook, of throwing her support into a cause already lost.
Mr Ferguson walked again up and down the room. So far they had not progressed an inch. This was just striking on the outer walls.
‘I didn’t know you were both so unhappy here.’
‘We’re not. That’s not it at all, is it, Brook? But if you can understand–’
‘I want to make my own life,’ Brook said obstinately. ‘This is an opportunity I haven’t looked for–’
‘Oh, haven’t you?’ Mr Ferguson said, suddenly standing quite still. ‘Then what of the contents of Scott’s first letter? It’s plain from that that you have been expressing your discontent to everyone. The contemptuous way he speaks of your ‘‘present job’’ as if it were an office boy’s. Changing one ‘‘job’’ for another. It’s the language of the petty clerk. And he speaks of me as the ‘‘old man’’. How you stand with the old man. People adapt their style to the known outlook of the people they’re writing to. It’s perfectly plain what he judges yours to be.’
‘I’ve tried to put this to you as – as reasonably as I can. I knew it would be a disappointment. I knew there would be trouble–’
‘Then I wonder you bothered to consult me at all.’
‘I’m not dead to the decencies, though you pretend to think I am.’ They were slipping rapidly now down the slope; she couldn’t stop them.
‘I’m glad you realize that there is something slightly unmoral in accepting a partnership in a firm one year and attempting to slide out of it the next with the money made over to you as a gift.’
‘I never wanted the partnership! Cordelia persuaded me to take it. We were freer as we were before.’
‘But short of money. You wouldn’t have had this offer from your good friend if you had been short of money. They don’t want you, you know – an untried youth with a few flimsy poems published at his own expense, a–’
‘Leave my poems out of this.’
‘Please don’t interrupt me. I repeat that they don’t want you. Why should they? The whole enterprise smacks to me of a sharp practice, a ruse to get your investment. In a few months – the first time you are in bed with one of your ailments – they’ll tell you it’s all a mistake, they are calling in an experienced man. But you’ll not see your money again.’
‘That’s my concern, isn’t it!’ Brook said furiously. ‘If I care to make a bad investment that’s my look-out. At least I shall have got away from you for a bit. At least I shall be able to breathe freely. And if I fail, well, I’ll not come whining back!’
‘Please, Brook!’ Cordelia was between them, afraid that one would strike the other. She had never seen such anger, such hatred in men’s eyes before. It was as if the blood relationship had festered and turned to something more ugly than could exist between ordinary men.
She knew Aunt Tish was quietly crying, tears running down her cheeks soundlessly as if someone had turned an easy tap. Across her, these two men were saying dreadful, unforgivable things, things that would rankle and be remembered for years. Did they mean it, were these the true thoughts and feelings, hidden until now and now tumbling out? Or was a single trickle of poison infecting all the rest?
Once Brook tried to push her out of the way, but she clung to him, feeling his arm trembling against hers.
‘Brook!’ she whispered urgently. ‘No more now! Let it rest now. Give it time. Talk again tomorrow. Brook!’
At length, exhausted by his own passion, he quieted down and the old man stood there staring at them both, staring at them with angry eyes which were blank and unrevealing, summing them up, condemning. He had shut them both out from himself, from understanding. If Brook went on with it there would be an irreparable cleavage, she saw that. The long dominion might be coming to an end, but there would be no acceptance of it, never any giving way on the father’s part.
Chapter Three
Brook was going on with it. Later that night or the following day she ha
lf expected to find his mood changed, as it so often had in the past. Once the grievances had been ventilated … But not now. The revolt went too far and too deep. And the offer was an opportunity which would not be repeated. It was now, now or never on all counts.
For three days the two men didn’t speak to each other. They drove down with her each morning, they returned together at night. Brook, who was usually upset to the point of illness at any quarrel, seemed to thrive with nervous malignance on this one. On the following Thursday he left for London and on Saturday afternoon he returned, exhausted but satisfied. There was a light in his eye as of one who has seen a vision, though yet far off. He had met Lord Hirondel and Mr Brompton Jones and two others. If Father thought they were after his money he should have been there during the interview. Hugh had had to talk to them every way to get them to accept an untried man. The money had turned the scale, but only just. They were in deadly earnest to turn out the best magazine of the day. Contracts had already been entered into to secure advertising revenue. Prominent members of the Liberal party were interested and would consider it a matter of policy that the magazine should succeed. It was quite a different thing from starting a weekly without adequate backing. They were planning everything to the smallest detail.
Mr Ferguson had gone to Oldham on the Friday evening and he did not get back until nearly six. He passed Brook in the hall as if he were not there and did not come down again until prayers.
In frigid silence they gathered there in the hall, Mr Ferguson by the small table which he used as a sort of rostrum, the Bible open before him. The servants formed a line down the wall. Ian was now considered old enough to attend these prayers before he went to bed and had been drilled into rigid silence. He stood with his hand in his mother’s and with Brook on his other side.
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