‘Inevitably.’
‘Well, Rupert hasn’t given up hope – he’s dominated by hope – and so he’s better than we are now.’
‘Perhaps,’ said the Vicar. ‘But I’m tired of trying to think young men’s thoughts.’
‘Is your leg still hurting you?’
‘It’s not very comfortable.’
Mrs Finger brought in tea. Mrs Finger had been the Vicar’s housekeeper for the last six months. She had formerly been in the employment of the Duke of Starveling, and was accordingly inured to hard work and well-trained in the art of making a pound do the work of thirty-five shillings. She was a shrewd, smooth-haired, tightly clad, buxom, solid woman with short legs and very bright inquisitive brown eyes. She allowed herself the liberty of a half-smile to Hilary.
Hilary said, ‘Those boys have a curious breadth of understanding. They’re possibly narrow and mistaken in their own enthusiasms, but they make allowances for each other. They’re instinctive psychologists, though I don’t think that Denis is a very reliable psychologist. But when we were their age…’
‘You’re being sentimental about youth,’ said the Vicar.
‘I don’t think so. I believe the young people of today have sharper eyes, and a better understanding, and a more urgent desire for honesty and justice than we ever had: or than I ever had.’
‘And your evidence for this belief is what Rupert and Denis have been telling you?’
‘Not altogether. Have you read this book?’ She showed him New Country.
‘I’ve done nothing but read books for the last six weeks, and I’m tired to death of them. The world is in a state of anarchy, and each book I read depresses me more than the last one.’
‘But everyone knows …’
‘I didn’t know!’ The Vicar’s voice rose to a thin parody of his old healthy tone of pompous indignation. ‘How was I to know that the foundations of life, as I thought of them, were being attacked, and weakened, and burrowed into? There was no one in Lammiter who talked of such things. The newspapers I read paid no attention to them. I was allowed to live in ignorance of four-fifths of contemporary thought.’
Hilary refrained from making the obvious reply.
‘It’s a dreadful thing to find there is no justice or honesty in the world,’ said the Vicar.
‘I suppose all revolutions start from that discovery.’
‘There are spiritual as well as political effects.’
Hilary took another sandwich; and there was silence for a full minute.
The Vicar’s head sank forward at a dejected angle. His features, as they often did in the relaxation of defeat, showed a curious resemblance to Arthur’s weak lines. His brief puff of indignation had left him deflated. He mumbled, as though speaking to his lower waistcoat buttons, ‘I think I have lost faith.’
Hilary said sharply, ‘Don’t be a fool, Lionel.’
The Vicar muttered to his waistcoat buttons, ‘I believed in a Just God. Then Caroline died, then I fell and broke my leg, and then I found I had been left in ignorance of all that was going on in the world.’
‘Really, Lionel, I’ve no patience with you sometimes!’ said Hilary. ‘Simply because of a trumpery – well, because of a perfectly natural series of accidents, you have the folly and the audacity to say you have lost faith! I never heard of such silly, childish egotism in all my life.’
‘A bruised reed shall He not break,’ muttered the Vicar.
‘What on earth have reeds got to do with it? You say you’ve just discovered – what everyone else has always known – that the world is full of injustice, and Communism, and war, and poverty, and dissatisfaction, and Heaven knows what else: and hasn’t it occurred to you that all these things are due, not to Christianity, but to lack of Christianity? Didn’t it strike you, in your marvellous studies, that if the world put into practice, whether they believed it or not, simply one fraction of Christian Teaching, the bulk of their troubles would disappear? Don’t you see that such things as loving your neighbour, and refraining from covetousness, and not laying up excessive treasure on earth, are practical advice? Whether Christianity is divine teaching or not – and personally I haven’t any doubt – it’s obviously sensible teaching: but you have the silly audacity to deny both its origin and its use simply because you fell off your horse and hurt your leg.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said the Vicar.
‘I understand too well,’ said Hilary.
‘I have a guilty conscience.’
‘So has everybody else. You can’t claim distinction because of that.’
Hilary, roused to anger by the Vicar’s parade of self-pity, became still more angry because of her display of anger. Anger fed anger, and embarrassment blew the flames. The Vicar had shocked her by exhibiting his weakness, and she had shocked herself by unclothing her faith. She intensely disliked such spiritual nudism. She preferred to keep her piety secret as her ablutions, and she hotly resented the provocation, the successful provocation, to publish it. She rose, noisily and abruptly, and prepared to go.
The Vicar still seemed more interested in his waistcoat buttons than in his visitor. He said, as though confiding in them, ‘I see no possibility of sending Rupert and Denis to Oxford. I haven’t the money, and I don’t know what’s going to become of them.’
‘They’re provided for at present, and you’ve no reason to worry about them till next autumn. Good-bye, Lionel, and for heaven’s sake stop grovelling.’
Hilary marched out of the Vicarage with the stamping impatience of a right flank guardsman advancing to fix bayonets. She walked home through the late afternoon dusk with indignation sounding in every footfall. Never in her life had she been so angry with anyone. She went so far as to say to herself that she wouldn’t go back to the Vicarage. But a moment later she was rehearsing a little speech that might, on her next visit, help in restoring him to his senses. After all, she thought, it’s common enough for people to lose faith in adversity, and even commoner to forget it in prosperity. Most people are fools; or half-fools; or, at the best, quarter-fools. Lionel’s certainly a fool. But he’s the father of Rupert and Denis, Cecily, Patrick, and Rosemary and Peter: so there’s a lot to be said for him, after all. And when he’s happy, and not showing-off, he can be very pleasant. But five days out of seven he’s a fool. He needs someone to look after him. He lost his backbone when Caroline died.…
Mr Peabody was waiting to see her at Rumneys. His smooth grey cheeks showed, with more difficulty than most people would have found in repressing it, a certain animation. The pleasurable anticipation of giving a surprise endeavoured, but almost in vain, to twist his facial muscles into a smile. He was a man with news to tell.
‘I have received a letter of unusual interest,’ he said, and thrust his hand into an inner pocket. ‘A letter that we had almost ceased to expect. It came with the afternoon post, and under the circumstances I thought it best that I should deliver it to you personally.’
‘What is it?’ asked Hilary. ‘News of George?’ Her interest in human affairs was temporarily exhausted by the demands already made on her sympathy, and she showed nothing of that eager astonishment which Mr Peabody had been looking forward to.
He was disappointed by her ready guess and lack of excitement, but he saved what he could from the ruin of his surprise, and answered, ‘Not of him, but from him.’
‘Where is he?’
Mr Peabody removed the letter from its envelope: ‘He gives an address in Parel, near Bombay.’
‘Let me see,’ said Hilary.
George’s notepaper was thin, cheap, and not very clean. It retained a slight domestic smell, not of English cooking, but of more pungent ingredients. The letter was as follows:
Dear Peabody,
The malice of circumstance – and circumstance can be damned malicious when it likes – obliged me to leave Bombay a few months ago, though at the time I had a very good job there, and take up a secluded residence in Goa. But Time is the Great
Healer – it wasn’t the police I was afraid of, not on this occasion – and I returned a week ago to my former abode in this select garden-city suburb of Bombay the Beautiful. I was then told, by a certain friend, that during my absence an advertisement, of that frequently fallacious ‘will hear something to his advantage’ type, had appeared in three separate issues of The Times of India.
I promptly repaired to Bori Bunder and searched the files – a dusty job it was, too – and found the cheerful news of my favourite uncle’s demise.
I suppose it is too much to expect that the old boy has made me his sole heir and successor, but apparently he’s left me something, and I shall be much obliged if you will transmit my cut without unnecessary delay. I would come home to claim it if I thought it was big enough, but my nature is too sensitive to run the risk of being presented, after so much travelling, with a gold watch and chain and a signed photograph of the deceased in regimental uniform.
How are all my revered cousins? I suppose they’ve done pretty well out of Uncle John. Well, I’m not jealous – and that’s a lie if you ever heard one.
Be a good sort, Peabody, and send my estate by return, if you can.
Hilary read and re-read this shabbily cheerful effusion. ‘He’s not abashed by misfortune,’ she said.
‘Reading between the lines,’ said Mr Peabody cautiously, ‘I gather that he is in reduced circumstances. Perhaps very reduced circumstances.’
‘Very very reduced, I should think. Have you replied to him yet?’
‘I’ve had a copy of the will made, which I propose to send him tomorrow.’
‘I wonder if he’s in a position to benefit by it?’
‘Mrs Clements and Mrs Arthur Gander will be sadly disappointed if he is.’
‘Simply to know that George has turned up will make them very frightened and furiously angry,’ said Hilary.
‘Perhaps you will inform them of his letter?’ Mr Peabody suggested. ‘I think they had better be told about it.’
‘I’ve always felt that George would turn up in time to make a nuisance of himself,’ said Hilary.
‘A rolling stone,’ sighed Mr Peabody.
‘And we don’t know where he has been rolling,’ said Hilary.
Chapter 14
January, the longest and darkest month in the year, fell tardily from the calendar with the painful deliberation of water-drops on the victim of a Chinese torturer. Like an endless chain of buckets, draining a cold quarry, reluctant February followed. And March came limping in on frostbitten feet.
Neither Daisy nor Katherine could find hobby or employment to whip on the tedious slowcoach days. Long before the old year was finished they had made infant clothes enough to stock a creche; and that occupation came to an end. They were afraid to take much exercise, and nervous lest they took too little. They grew somewhat ill-humoured. Hilary found it difficult to keep the peace between Katherine and Jane, who had been inclined to surliness since the unhappy conclusion of Bolivia’s engagement; and Arthur, driven with increasing frequency to seek comfort in the rockery, caught a severe cold through drinking gin in the rain.
Everybody had been very upset by George’s letter. Daisy and Katherine had made little or no attempt to hide their anger: they said that such a man as George had no business to be alive, he should have perished from one or other of his excesses long, long ago, and the Law should prevent him from coming home to compete for their inheritance. Even those whose interest in the Nursery Stakes was merely academical – Miss Montgomery, Mrs Corcoran, Miss Foster, and some two or three hundred other friendly observers – were genuinely perturbed by the possibility of George Gander’s return to Lammiter. He was not only a nuisance, but a dangerous nuisance. He borrowed money, he encouraged young men to drink more than was good for them, his own drunkenness was open and shameless, and he had an old-fashioned habit of seduction. On his last visit to Larnmiter both Miss Montgomery and Mrs Sabby had lost parlourmaids through his attentions, and there were many who still believed that it was on his account the charming but light-headed teacher of gymnastics at the Girls’ High School had been compelled to resign. Nobody in Larnmiter had any desire to meet George again, and even those who would hate to see good money going to Daisy or Katherine, were horrified to think that George might inherit it instead of them.
After the first shock, however, a certain degree of equanimity returned, and everybody concerned was increasingly eager to discount the likelihood of George’s interference. Katherine said, ‘He can’t possibly have a family, because if he ever did get married, which isn’t likely, no woman would live with him long enough to have more than one baby, and he’d have left her months before that anyway. I’m not afraid of George, and I don’t suppose we’ll ever hear from him again.’
Daisy was less emphatic, but after a few anxious days she became equally sure of the impossibility of George’s intervention. ‘Poor George,’ she said, with a kind smile and a tremulous movement of her thyroid cartilage. ‘I don’t believe that he’s really wicked, you know, he’s only weak. And how he must be suffering now! Because this will bring home to him how terribly he has wasted his life. If he had been sensible, and married and settled down, he might be as happy as we are, and be in a position to benefit by poor Uncle John’s will. The wild nomadic life he leads isn’t natural, and in the long run I’m sure that beachcombing – well, he isn’t a beachcomber, of course, but he’s that kind of a person – I’m sure they become very embittered. I myself had something of the gipsy in me when I was a girl, and I’ve always been grateful for being able to suppress my romantic craving to have done with civilization, and wander for ever in the woods and fields. But poor George hadn’t my strength of mind.’
In February there was another alarm. George wrote again, from the same address, to acknowledge Mr Peabody’s communication and to make further inquiries. ‘I never thought the old boy had it in him. to spring such a surprise on his collection of Willy-wet-legs and Dora Don’ts – I mean my charming cousins,’ he wrote. ‘I’d like to have seen their faces when you read the will to them. Personally I think it’s a good joke, and I hope you’ll do something to satisfy my curiosity about the present state of the field. I can figure out who the nominations were, but who were the actual starters? And how are they running? Who’s in the lead, and by how much, and who’s coming up on the rails? In plain language with no frills, who’s got how many babies, who’s expecting more, and when?’
Mr Peabody sought Hilary’s advice before he undertook to answer these questions. ‘George is, I think, entitled to know the actual statistics,’ he explained, ‘but I very much doubt whether I would be justified in telling him of the potential statistics, though in the circumstances the latter are of greater importance – of greater news-value, if I may be allowed the phrase – than the former. And yet it is common knowledge that Mrs Clements and Mrs Arthur hope shortly to increase their families, and were I merely to tell George that the former has no children, the latter one, I should come dangerously near to being guilty of suppressio veri. You see my dilemma? On the one side suppressio veri, on the other indelicacy, breach of confidence – though, as neither of them has personally confided in me, we may perhaps disregard that – or at the worst misrepresentation – for even medical men, I understand, have sometimes been deceived in such cases.’
‘Give me George’s address, and I’ll tell him everything,’ said Hilary.’ I’ll write a nice gossiping family letter, without saying a word about his letters to you, and you can reply to him as officially and formally and discreetly as you like.’
‘An excellent suggestion,’ said Mr Peabody gratefully, and on his way home he thought, with as near an approach to idle sentiment as his nature permitted, that it was a great pity Hilary could not inherit the money. She was in no real need of it, of course, though on account of her recent extravagances – school fees for the Vicar’s children, and another loan to Arthur – she had lately been living beyond her income. But she was the kind of p
erson whom good fortune would suit. It would seem natural to her, and she would wear it as becomingly as a pretty child a daisy-chain. Mr Peabody, walking under his umbrella on which the rain beat noisily, felt a pang as sharp as the rheumatic twinges that sometimes darted through his right shoulder. He felt lonely. For nearly thirty years he had been such a stranger to all kinds of feeling, except occasional rheumatism and a desire to play Contract Bridge, that he gave to this sensation a greater importance than it deserved. For a few unhappy minutes he saw himself, beneath his umbrella, and Hilary, by the fireside where he had left her, in the magnification of a sentimental close-up. His feeling of loneliness became desolation, and through this emotional telescope he perceived, as never before, Hilary’s honest charm, and kindliness, and good sense, and physical attraction. Her forty years were a lighter burden than Daisy’s thirty-two, and his vivid unexpected realization that her lips were firm, her teeth white and even, her hair a pleasant brown, her complexion good, induced in Mr Peabody yet another novel and bewildering sensation.
Fortunately his nature was unable to sustain or nurture such feelings. Long abstinence from emotion had destroyed his capacity for it, and his early instincts to avoid it had been reinforced by an acquired instinct to get rid of it whenever, with increasing rarity, it came his way. But he was still so shaken when he reached home – where his sister, who resembled him in looks and temper, kept house for him with impersonal efficiency – that he tried to open the door with the wrong key. Habit, however, and a column of foreign news restored his calm. In the morning it was his custom to read only the financial pages of The Times. The rest of the paper was reserved for the peaceful hour before dinner, and under the spell of alien intelligence Mr Peabody forgot the emotional squall which had struck him. Reading of bloodshed and tyranny in Germany, of France’s martial hysteria and helical finances, of devilment in Manchuria and simplicity in Downing Street, of preparations for war and demonstrations for peace, of modern inventions and medieval mentality, of Mussolini’s imperialism and de Valera’s rural isolation, of poverty in America and prosperity in the Faroes, of discontented minorities in Croatia and Catalonia and dissatisfied majorities everywhere else, of new designs for death and ancient miseries for life – reading such matters as these, and forty other signs of our age and manifestations of civilization, Mr Peabody thought, as he had often thought, how sensible a paper was The Times. It did not despise the events it chronicled, but it did not overrate their importance. It saw them already with the calm eye of posterity. Tempusfugit, Tempora stat might be its motto. Men may come and go, but history is there for ever: looking at the silly world with the impartial gaze of history Mr Peabody, though contemning its folly, was not oppressed by its unhappiness. And he forgot all about Hilary and the other Ganders till the next morning, when he dictated a brief business-like letter to George in Bombay.
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