Noble in Reason

by Phyllis Bentley

  “You won’t regret the loan, I promise you, Mr. Hodgson,” said John.

  “That’s as may be,” returned Mr. Hodgson with a sceptical sniff.

  So the new business came into being, in a small building at the bottom of the town called from the name of its street Hilbert Mills. (Eventually all the buildings on the top side of the street came to share this name.)

  I accepted it as my duty, of course, in spite of the disillusionments I had experienced since my return to Yorkshire, to help my family in this new venture in any way I could; keenly anxious for the Jarmayne welfare and most earnest in my efforts to promote it, I ran about under John’s command with immense zeal if little skill. This latter defect, however, John was determined to remedy, and I found myself launched upon a three-year course in textiles in the Hudley Technical College, which was then just rising to fame. The early stages of this course, with its simple textbooks, were easy to me and I had a pleasant feeling of progress and achievement, of proving equal to the change in the family fortunes and assisting the rise of the Jarmaynes.

  For from the first the new venture prospered. Quite soon, as it seemed to me, the short Ashroyd sub-lease falling in, we were financially strong enough to take our furniture out of store, re-occupy the house and resume family life there.

  The preparations for this return were highly enjoyable. To save expense, we decided—or rather, John had decided, John decided everything Jarmayne nowadays—to do everything except the actual cartage ourselves; we put up beds and laid carpets, we hung curtains and scrubbed floors. In these tasks we were assisted on the first day by Beatrice Darrell. I had not previously seen her since my return to Hudley, for Mrs. Darrell had been struggling with the illness which was beginning to make her a permanent invalid, and Beatrice had been busy nursing her. I was delighted when, on answering a quick knock at the back door, I found Beatrice there in a green frock and a highly becoming apron, sparkling and lively and sophisticated as always. I greeted her warmly and gladly accepted her offers of help; we made merry together over the unpacking of a crate, kneeling side by side and plunging our arms into the straw. Suddenly she turned to me and whispered:

  “Was it my fault, Chris?”

  I did not know to what she referred, and gaped at her.

  “About Henry, I mean,” said Beatrice.

  Ashamed to have forgotten my brother’s tragedy so soon, I coloured and began to stammer my usual answer: “I don’t know why he did it.” But I was interrupted by John, who had come downstairs unheard and was standing in the kitchen doorway.

  “Don’t worry the boy,” he said. “Why should you ask him that, anyway?”

  His tone was harsh and inimical, and he fixed his eyes on Beatrice in a strange scornful glare. Beatrice without a word stood up, dusted her fine long hands together and slipped out of the house.

  “Have you quarrelled with Beatrice, John?” I asked, surprised.

  “Oh, shut up!” said John savagely, and stalked from the room.

  When at last the house was ready, Edie brought Netta from Ashworth to us and there was great rejoicing; Netta and I running about all over the house and shouting with glee. Edie seemed quite loth to leave Netta and I saw that she had made a pet of the child, and for this I always had a friendly feeling towards her, so that when, a few months later, John announced his engagement to Edie, my feelings were mixed; though astonished I was not altogether displeased.

  “But I thought you were going to marry Beatrice, John?” I said when I next saw him.

  “What’s it got to do with you?” shouted John in a loud angry tone, turning an ugly crimson.

  “Nothing, of course,” I responded hastily. “But I always thought-”

  “Beatrice was Henry’s girl,” said John.

  There was so much bitterness in his tone that I did not venture to press the matter further.

  The day after my return to Ashroyd my mother also returned from the cure which, as I understood, she had been taking in hospital. Netta and I were drawn up in the hall to receive her, and rushed forward as soon as my father opened the door. As I was so much taller and older than Netta, I reached her first and with a beaming smile of love made to kiss her, but my mother without a glance at me rushed past me to Netta and clasped the child in her arms. I was deeply wounded by this rebuff, but it was part of my philosophy, because I thought it so contrary to my father’s and John’s philosophy, to believe that people should be allowed to do what they liked without any resentment from their relatives; accordingly I subdued my disappointment and accepted, then and on many subsequent occasions, my mother’s preoccupation with Netta.

  In the months preceding his marriage John’s temper was very uneven, and we were all heartily thankful when the day of the wedding at last arrived. In a hasty last-minute warning before we parted at the church door—John had ruled that I was too young to act as his best man—John had given me to understand that my father and Uncle Alfred had old grudges against each other and were to be kept apart as much as possible during the reception at Ashville which followed the ceremony; but in the event they sat side by side on a garden seat in apparent amity, making sardonic remarks on the dresses of the “womenfolk,” a word greatly in favour with my father and disliked by me because of its condescending tone. This behaviour confirmed my belief in the general unpredictability, unreasonableness and vulgarity of all West Riding adults, and I stood aside on a garden path, kicking at a stone, disliking equally the central cactus and my present company, for the fleshy and prickly quality which they appeared to share.

  But a very much more serious trouble awaited me. Netta, who had acted as one of Edie’s bridesmaids, suddenly came running up to me with starting eyes and a cheek as white as her silk dress, and gasped out that mother was ill. Without the slightest presentiment of what lay in store for me, I took her hand and let her guide me into the house and to a back room, where my poor mother lay back in an armchair, her face flushed and her breathing stertorous. On a small table at her side stood a glass and a near-empty bottle. A lurid light seemed suddenly to flash on many incidents of the past, and in spite of my incredulity I could not really doubt what had happened. I told the frightened Netta to fetch John as quietly as she could, then drew up a chair, sat down beside my mother and took her hand. For to me she was a victim; horrified and repelled by her condition, I was yet passionately on her side.

  John came in alone, still in his morning-coat with the white rose in his buttonhole. He strode towards the brandy bottle, picked it up and examined it, then exclaimed with grief and disgust. But his actions were familiar, accustomed; I saw that this was no new thing to him. As he replaced the bottle he glanced up and met my eyes.

  “Well, now you know, Chris,” he said.

  “Father drove her to it,” I cried fiercely.

  “Well—that’s as may be. Your feelings do you credit, Chris,” said John sardonically. “But I don’t know how you’ve managed not to find out before, I really don’t. I’ve been wondering whether I ought to tell you, now I’m leaving home. But I hoped this last cure had done the trick.”

  “But what shall we do now? Here?” I demanded. “Shall I fetch Beatrice?”

  Beatrice, infinitely outshining the bride, immensely elegant and lively in a soft veiled blue dress and the large picture hat of the period, was present at the wedding reception as a guest. John crimsoned.

  “Beatrice! What has she to do with it? No! We’ll just draw the curtain,” said John, doing so in his usual competent fashion, “and let her sleep it off.”

  At these vulgar words the full realization of the wretched truth swept over me, and I gave a sudden sob.

  “Oh, shut up, Chris!” said John irritably. “You’re too old for such baby work now. Do try to be a man. There’s one thing,” he added in a decided tone: “Netta will have to go away to school. She wouldn’t be happy at Ashville now Edie won’t be there, and we can’t leave her with mother. We must get her away somehow.”

  I sadly acqui
esced.

  2

  In all this, of course, I greatly underestimated John’s loyalty to his family, his difficulties and his achievement.

  My father’s ambition to succeed in the world had broken with Henry’s death. His textile skill, which though not equal to John’s was well-rooted, remained and he worked hard and conscientiously in the new firm, but he no longer had any spring of desire to carry him forward. He appeared to dread any new method, any new purchase. What he really dreaded, however, was to lose any of Josiah Hodgson’s money. To pay the interest punctually on the Hodgson loan and to return the principal eventually intact was his only real aim, this repayment having become identified in his mind, by one of those defensive metamorphoses which enable us to hope when there is no hope, with the honour of Henry. Thus though he had no enthusiasm for John’s schemes of advancement, he was still emotionally involved in the Hilbert Mills firm; his will was still strong and his opposition formidable, and every step John wished to take had to be fought for. It would, as John said, have been much easier for him to remain with Uncle Alfred than to return to Hudley and start his father in business again.

  John had also opposition from the other side to deal with. Uncle Alfred was strongly against the new plan, which was therefore not broached to him till it was almost in operation. John married to Edie, living in Ashworth and superintending his father in-law’s business, was one thing; John taking Edie away from her family to Hudley and making her dependent on a “wild-cat scheme,” as my uncle habitually called Hilbert Mills in its early days, was altogether another. He said so many times; whereupon John pointed out that his father and mother, brother and sister had all to be provided for somehow; set up in a business of their own, Uncle Alfred’s stepbrother and nephew could be self-supporting. Uncle Alfred thought little of his stepbrother’s business acumen, and even less, it appeared, of mine.

  “He’s a nice, well-spoken lad, is Chris,” he said: “I’ve nothing against him, mind. But he couldn’t say boo to a goose, John; he’ll never make his way.”

  ‘Then I shall have to make it for him,” said John.

  “Well, if you want to throw away your chances, do; it’s no affair of mine. You won’t get a penny of mine into such a wild-cat scheme,” said my uncle in a grumbling tone.

  “I haven’t asked you to put a penny of yours into anything as far as I remember,” said John.

  “There’s no need to get nasty about it,” snapped my uncle. He added sardonically: “You do as you like with your money, and I’ll do as I like with mine.”

  “That suits me,” said John.

  “Aye, and I’ll do as I like with my own daughter, too, and don’t you forget it,” said my uncle, getting angry.

  John went off laughing, for here, of course, was my uncle’s weak spot. He was the fond father of a very determined daughter, who had long since made up her mind to marry John. (“I’d fixed on him long before he looked at me, Chris,” Edie often said to me in later years.) However, my uncle could tie up all Edie’s money so that not a penny of it could be put into the wild-cat scheme, as he told his future son-in-law repeatedly, and eventually he did this with very great care— an action which was unfortunate for him in later years.

  For John to come from my uncle’s tough disapproval and the knowledge of his own very real sacrifice, to my father’s vehement opposition and my own dreamy lack of initiative, must have been extremely trying. He had not the gift, however, of soothing opposition or of presenting a contradiction without giving offence; indeed it is not a gift often found in the West Riding.

  On the other hand, John had, I think—and probably he even knew it himself—another motive besides family loyalty, in beginning the Hilbert Mills enterprise. As the secretary hero says in Chapin’s play Art and Opportunity, it is sometimes useful to judge the motive of an act by its effects. The result of John’s move was to make him independent of Uncle Alfred, and as he was not a man to accept anyone’s domination with comfort, this may not have been without its influence on his actions.

  It did not occur to me at the time that the relations between my father and his stepbrother were basically like those of John and myself and of all other brothers: that is to say, love, hate, the obligation of the blood tie and resentment of the blood tie precisely because of its obligation. In the case of the elder Jarmayne brothers these feelings were exacerbated by the jealousy natural to the families of first and second wives, which had caused old wrongs, but the tie of contemporaneity between them was also strong; if the young tend instinctively to “gang up” against their elders, the elders are also drawn to each other by their exasperation with the young.

  As for my poor mother and her weakness, there is little else to be said, for she did not speak for herself and nobody else knows her defence. To send Netta away from her was, however, I am now sure, the very worst possible course from her point of view. In the holidays when Netta was at home my mother was smiling, loving, cheerful; took Netta out to buy clothes and to entertainments of a simple kind; hung over her fondly; listened with eager attention whenever she spoke. When Netta was away my mother sank into herself; became brooding, silent; neglected the house and her own person, and a few weeks after the beginning of term, when the melancholy of her loneliness overpowered her, began to slide by degrees into her only consolation.

  So absorbed in my own sufferings was I at this time that I never noticed that my father, in an attempt to soften the effect of Henry’s death upon me, had begun to call me by my short name instead of the formal Christopher.

  3

  A period of great unhappiness, a grey dreary stretch lit by flashes of turbulent resentment which came more frequently the nearer I drew to manhood, followed for me during the next few years.

  Like my mother, when Netta was at home I felt reasonably cheerful. She laughed, she chattered, she ran about the house; she asked me to do things to help her—to lift a chair, to reach down a jar from a high shelf, to carry a tray, to add a row of figures—and admired me when I easily did them: “Oh, how tall you are, Chris! How strong you are! How clever you are!” cried my dear little Netta. We felt linked by our youth in a conspiracy against our elders, smiled meaningly at each other when my father uttered one of his characteristically vehement criticisms, and escaped joyously together from the constraint of his company, bumping each other as we ran giggling along the hall. In the evening we played racquets together in the back yard, using the side of the empty stable for wall; it was a pleasurable exercise of skill for me to maintain my supremacy by winning, without hurting Netta’s feelings by winning too easily.

  But when Netta returned to school, I was desperately lonely; now that the house held nobody of my own generation, it began to seem a hushed and dreary prison. Although I was not really interested in my tasks at the mill and disliked being always under John’s eye there, I began quite to regret leaving it each day; my heart sank instead of rising when the buzzer sounded, and I looked forward to Monday morning after the isolated weekend with real longing: at the mill at least there were people, noise, talk, I was not shut in alone with my parents.

  This loneliness was increased after a time by the failure of my Technical College studies. My practical applications of the theory I learned so easily had always been feeble; now, to my incredulous dismay, I suddenly reached a point when the theory itself became unintelligible to me because of my inability to translate it into the reality behind the words. I could not believe this, I struggled against it; I copied the diagrams and learned the explanations by heart, but the fact remained that I could not, for example, understand the mechanics of a modern automatic loom or contrive a complex textile design. My marks dropped; from being the model pupil I became the laggard; my masters harangued me; my fellow-pupils most kindly strove to enlighten me, but I was as incapable of following their explanations as they would have been of understanding the scansion of a sonnet, to me so crystal clear. The climax came when I actually failed in an end-of-term examination. This was
the most severe blow my vanity had yet received. Its impact was the same in kind as my misfortune in the dictation lesson at Miss Craddock’s school, but this time there was no kind Miss Craddock to reassure me. Could it really be that my brain, in which I took such pride, my only hope, was not of good quality after all? My clumsy, cheerful, Yorkshire-speaking companions at the Tech, who never read a book, were they after all stronger in mind than me? I stuffed the notice in my pocket and postponed telling my father the bad news till I should have gathered my courage. But no doubt I looked sick and wretched enough, for the first time John and I were alone together at the mill that morning, my brother said to me in a kindly tone:

  “What’s wrong, Chris? The old man been nagging at you, eh?”

  I pulled the paper on which my failure was notified from my pocket and stuffed it in his hands without a word. John looked at it, sighed, threw it down on the desk beside me and walked over to the office window, where he stood with his back to me, looking out, and jingling the keys and money in his trouser pockets.

  “Nay, Chris,” he said at length, without turning: “This is a bad do, eh?”

  I said “Yes,” in a choked tone.

  “I don’t know what we’re going to do with you, Chris, lad, I’m sure,” continued John. I shared his perplexity.

  “You aren’t going to set the Thames on fire, that’s clear.”

  “Perhaps I shall manage to pass the exam next year,” I thought it my duty to say, though my heart sank at the awful vista of tedium and effort which it implied.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said John in a kindly but resigned tone, turning at last towards me: “I don’t expect it would be much use you going on at the Tech, do you?”

  This was my own opinion, but that John should value my chances so low turned the knife in the wound.

  “Do you? Eh?” persisted John.

  I called my pride to my assistance, tossed back the lock of hair which in those days lay over my forehead, and steadied my voice. “No, I don’t really,” 1 said.