The Conscience of the Rich

by C. P. Snow

  ‘I’m sorry, but that doesn’t matter.’

  Suddenly Katherine cried out: ‘Father, why ever didn’t you make him independent? When he wanted to marry? I told you at the time it wouldn’t be the same between you. Do you remember?’

  Mr March turned towards the fireplace, and rounded on her with fury: ‘I only consider it necessary to remind you of what my Uncle Justin said to his daughter.’ For a second all his anger was diverted to her. ‘I reproach myself that I allowed you to make representations between myself and my son.’

  ‘She did her best,’ said Charles. ‘She tried to bring us together. She tried her best to keep me in your will.’

  ‘Charles!’ Katherine cried. He had spoken with indifference: but she cried out as though he had been brutal. Mr March ignored her, and returned to face Charles.

  ‘I should never have spoken of money,’ he said, ‘if I could have relied on your affection.’

  For the first time, as they stood there, Charles’ face softened.

  ‘My affection was greater than you were ever ready to admit,’ he said. ‘Did you hear me speak to you, the night Ann was taken ill? That was true.’

  Mr March’s voice rang in our ears: ‘There’s only one thing you can say that I’m prepared to hear.’

  Charles had not recovered himself. He said: ‘That’s impossible for me.’

  ‘Do you consider it more impossible than destroying my family? And showing your utter ingratitude as a son? And condemning yourself to squalor now and after I am dead? And leaving me with nothing to live for in the last years of my life?’

  Charles did not answer. Mr March went on: ‘Do you consider it is more impossible than what you’re bringing about?’

  ‘I’m afraid it is,’ said Charles.

  The tone of that reply affected Mr March. Since he appealed to Charles’ affection, he had reached his son. As though interpreting Charles’ reply, which was loaded with remorse, Mr March spoke of Ann.

  ‘If you hadn’t married your wife,’ Mr March said, ‘you would have given a different answer. She is responsible for your unnatural attitude.’

  Immediately Charles’ manner reverted to that in which he had begun; he became hard again, passionate, almost gay.

  ‘I am responsible for everything I’ve done,’ he said. ‘You know that. Don’t you know that?’

  ‘I refuse to accept your assurance.’

  ‘You know that it’s true,’ said Charles.

  ‘If she hadn’t begun this outrage, you would never have believed it possible,’ Mr March exclaimed. ‘If she had desisted, you would have been relieved and–’

  ‘If she had died, you mean. If she had died.’ The word crashed out. ‘That’s what you mean.’

  Mr March’s head was sunk down.

  ‘You were wrong. You’ve never been so wrong,’ said Charles. ‘I tell you this. If she had died, I wouldn’t have raised a finger to save you trouble. I should have let it happen.’

  The sound died away. The room rested in silence. Charles turned from his father, and glanced indifferently, slackly, across the room, as though he were exhausted by his outburst, as though it had left him without anger or interest.

  As Charles turned away, Mr March walked from the window towards us by the fireplace. His face looked suddenly without feeling or expression.

  He settled in an armchair; as he did so, his foot touched the tea-table, and I noticed the Tinker-Bell reflections, set dancing on the far wall.

  Mr March said, in a low voice: ‘Why was it necessary to act as you have done? You seem to have been compelled to break every connection with the family.’

  Charles, still standing by the window, did not move or speak.

  ‘You seem to have been compelled to break off at my expense. It was different with Herbert and my father. But you’ve had to cut yourself off through me.’

  Mr March was speaking as though the pain was too recent to feel; he did not know all that had happened to him, he was light-headed with bereavement and defeat. He spoke like a man baffled, in doubt, still unaware of what he was going to feel, groping and mystified. He forgot Ann, and asked Charles why this conflict must come between them, just because they were themselves. A little time before, he had spoken as though he believed that, without Ann, he and his son would have been at peace. It was inconsistent in terms of logic, but it carried the sense of a father’s excessive love, of a love which, in the phrase that the old Japanese used to describe the love of parents for their children, was a darkness of the heart.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr March, ‘you found it necessary to act against me. I never expected to have my son needing to act against me. I never contemplated living without my son.’

  ‘Believe what I said to you at that last party,’ said Charles quietly. ‘I want you to believe that. As well as what I’ve said today.’

  Mr March asked, not angrily, but as though he could not believe what had happened: ‘You’ve counted the cost of this intention of yours? You’ve asked people what it’s like to be penniless?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charles.

  ‘You’re ready to put yourself in the shameful position of living on your wife’s money?’

  Charles had been answering listlessly. He gave a faint smile.

  ‘I may even earn a little myself.’

  ‘Pocket-money. I disregard that,’ said Mr March. ‘You’re prepared to live on your wife?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re not deterred by my disgrace in seeing you in such a position?’

  ‘No,’ said Charles.

  ‘You’re not deterred by the disgrace your wife’s action will inflict upon my brother and my family?’

  ‘I thought I’d made myself clear,’ said Charles with a revival of energy.

  ‘You’re not deterred by the misery you’re bringing upon me?’

  ‘I don’t want to repeat what I’ve said.’

  Without looking at Charles again, Mr March said: ‘So, if this calamity happens, you’re requiring me to decide on my own actions?’

  Even now he was hoping. He could still ask a question about the future.

  ‘Yes,’ said Charles.

  Charles came into the middle of the room, and said: ‘I might as well go now. I told Ann I would see her before I left.’

  We heard him run upstairs. Katherine spoke to her father: ‘It’s no use. I wish I could say something, Mr L, but it’s no use. There’s nothing to do.’ Her mouth was trembling. She added: ‘I’ve never seen him like that before.’

  Though she was supporting her father, there was something else in her voice. It dwelt more gently on Charles than any word she had said while he was there. She had made her choice; she could not help but take her father’s side. But that remark was brimming with regret, with admiration, with the idolatrous love she bore Charles when she was a girl.

  43: Red Box on the Table

  During most of October there was no more news. I saw Francis regularly in Cambridge, but he and Katherine knew no more than I. Charles had already cut himself away from them. We heard a number of rumours – that Sir Philip had seen Charles and threatened a libel action whatever the consequences, that Mr March had visited Ann, convalescing by the sea, that Ronald Porson had visited her, that Charles would not have her back unless she broke with the Note.

  There were many more rumours, most of them fantasies; but it was true that Sir Philip had seen Charles. Charles mentioned it himself, when I was dining with him on one of my nights in London. He mentioned it with indifference, as though it were a perfectly ordinary occurrence, as though his concerns were as pedestrian as anyone else’s. He wanted to regard them as settled; he did not want to see that there was a part of his nature, even yet, after all he had said and done, waiting in trepidation, just as the rest of us were waiting.

  The final article in the Note was published in the fourth week of October. I did not subscribe to the Note, but a colleague of mine used to send it round to me; it was brought to my rooms in coll
ege by the messenger, on his last delivery, at ten o’clock on a Friday night. For two Fridays past I had raced my eyes over it, before looking at my letters. On this Friday night I did the same; and, as soon as I had unfolded the sheet, I knew this was it. Though I was prepared, I felt the prick of sweat at my temples.

  It was the second item on the first page (the first was a three-line report of a meeting between Edward VIII and the Prime Minister, and it read:

  Armament Share Scandal

  Note can now give final dope about scandal of Ministers, Ministers’ stooges, lurkmen in Whitehall, Inns of Court, official circles, making profits from prior knowledge of armaments programme. Back references (Note May 26, August 10, August 24, for background, see also…). In ’29 Tory Government laid contract of £3,000,000, engine development, with Howard & Hazlehurst (Chairman Sir Horace (Cartel-spokesman) Timberlake; on board of Howard & Hazlehurst is Viscount Talland, cousin of Alex Hawtin). Alex (Britain First) Hawtin, Under-Secretary of…, rising hope Tory party, groomed for cabinet in immediate future, bought £20,000 – approx. – Enlibar shares. Enlibar subsidiary of Howard & Hazlehurst. Sir Philip March, Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of…, ex-banker, ex-director 17 companies, ex-President Jewish Board of Guardians, bought £15,000 Enlibar shares. Shares in parent firm – quantities not known to nearest pound but over £10,000 – bought by G L and F E Paul, brothers-in-law of Herbert Getliffe, KC, legal consultant Hawtin’s ministry. Shares also bought by S…, H… Profits on these transactions (approx.):

  Hawtin £35,000

  March £46,000[1]

  G L and F E Paul £11,000

  S… £ 5,000

  H… £ 3,000

  ’35, aircraft programme, same story, contract laid with aircraft firms… Details of investments not to hand, but Hawtin and March repeated gambit. G L and F E Paul not concerned this round – Getliffe no longer consultant to ministry. S…, H… took a rake-off, possibly cat’s-paws for bigger players, but Note not in position to confirm this. Hawtin, March still in Government. Hawtin due for promotion. ‘Friend of Franco’ speech, Oct. 16, Liverpool; ‘Franco is at any rate a Christian’ speech, Oct. 23, Birmingham.

  That was all.

  The effects did not come at once. Mr March referred to it in his weekly letter to Katherine, but briefly and without comment. She went to comfort him, but on her return reported that he was composed, strangely passive, almost glad that the words were down on paper; there was nothing to imagine now. He showed no sign at all of taking action. He seemed to have feared that, the instant the words appeared, he would be surrounded by violence and disgrace: but no one except Sir Philip spoke to him about the article for several days. In that time-lag, he had a last hope, strong and comforting, that it would all be forgotten: if he stayed in his house, hid away from gossip, this would pass over, as everything else had done.

  We had, in fact, all expected that there would be a blaze of publicity from the beginning. That did not happen; partly because there was another scandal going round the clubs, and people were not to be distracted from Mrs Simpson and the King. The Note attack had gone off half-cock. A member of the extreme left asked a question in the House, and demanded a select committee. A few eccentric liberals and malcontents of various kinds (including a conservative anti-semite) occupied a committee room for some hours, but could not agree on a plan of action. There was a leader, so stately and stuffed that it was incomprehensible unless one knew the story, in one of the conservative papers.

  Some of the column writers made references. One or two weekly papers, on the extreme right as well as the left, let themselves go. It did not seem to amount to much.

  About three weeks after the article came out, however, there were rumours of changes in the government. The political correspondents began tipping their fancies. No one suggested that the changes had anything to do with the Note’s article; it was not even explicitly denied. In private the gossips were speculating whether Hawtin would be ‘out’ or whether he would lose his promotion. He was disliked, he was cold and self-righteous; but to put him out now, after his stand on Spain, would look like a concession to the left. As for Sir Philip, his name was not canvassed much. He had never been a figure in politics; he was old and had no future. The only flicker of interest in him, apart from the scandal, was because he was a Jew.

  Meanwhile, Herbert Getliffe was showing the resource and pertinacity that most people missed unless they knew him well. He had a streak of revengefulness, and he was determined that his enemies should pay. He knew that neither Hawtin nor Philip March would bring an action; nor could the Pauls without more damage to himself. So Getliffe concentrated on the minor figures, S…, H… He worked out that there was a good chance of one of them bringing an action which need involve no one else.

  He wrote to Sir Philip, suggesting that they should promote an action in H…’s name. Sir Philip replied curtly that the less said or done, the better. Despite the rebuff, Getliffe approached Mr March, to persuade him to influence his brother; and, leaving nothing to chance, he sent me the outline of the case.

  Mr March and Sir Philip each snubbed him again. Getliffe, suggestible as he was when one met him face to face, was utterly impervious when on the make. He wrote to them in detail; he added that I should be familiar with the legal side, if they wanted an opinion; he wrote to me twice, begging me to do my best.

  The March brothers were not weak characters, but, like most men, they could be hypnotized by persistence. Ill-temperedly Mr March arranged for me to meet him one morning at Sir Philip’s office – ‘to discuss the proposals which Getliffe is misguidedly advancing and which are, in my view, profoundly to be regretted at the present juncture’.

  That morning when I was due to meet them, a drizzling November day, I opened The Times and saw, above a column in the centre page, ‘Changes in the Government’. Sir Philip’s name was not among them. Hawtin was promoted to full cabinet rank; to make room for him, someone was sent to the Lords. A Parliamentary Secretary and an Under-Secretary were shelved, in favour of two backbenchers. It was difficult to read any meaning into the changes. Hawtin’s promotion might be a brushing-off of the scandal, a gesture of confidence, or a move to the right. The other appointments were neutral. At the end of the official statement, there was a comment that more changes would be announced shortly.

  I arrived at the room of Sir Philip’s secretary a little before my time. He was pretending to work, as I sat looking out at the park. The rain seeped gently down; after the brilliant autumn, the leaves had not yet fallen and shone dazzlingly out of the grey, mournful, misty morning. I heard the rain seep down, and the nervous, restless movements of the young man behind me. He was on edge with nerves: Sir Philip’s fate did not matter to him, but he had become infected by the tension. He was expecting a telephone call from Downing Street. Soon he stopped work, and in his formal, throaty, sententious voice (the voice of a man who was going to enjoy every bit of pomp and circumstance in his official life) asked me whether I had studied the government changes, and what significance I gave them. He was earnest, ambitious, self-important: yet each time the telephone rang his face was screwed up with excitement, like that of a boy who is being let into an adult’s secret. As each call turned out to be a routine enquiry, his voice went flat with anti-climax. As soon as Mr March came in, Williams showed us into Sir Philip’s room. Before we entered, Mr March had time only to shake hands and say that he was obliged to me for coming – but even in that time I could see his face painful with hope, his resignation broken, every hope and desire for happiness evoked again by the news that Hawtin was safe. Sir Philip’s first words were, after greeting us both:

  ‘I suppose you saw in the papers that Hawtin’s still in? They’ve given him a leg-up.’

  ‘I was considering what effect it would have on your prospects,’ said Mr March.

  ‘It won’t be long before I know. This means they’re not going to execute us, anyway,’ said Sir Philip, with a cackle which did not conce
al that he too felt relief, felt active hope. ‘As for Alex Hawtin, he’s doing better for himself than he deserves. Still, he can’t be worse than old…’ Sir Philip broke off, and looked at us across his desk. He had dressed with special care that day, and with a new morning suit was wearing a light-blue, flowing silk tie. It was incongruous, against the aged yellow skin. Yet, even about his face, there was something jaunty still.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I wanted to consult you about this fellow Getliffe. He’s got hold of someone called Huff or Hough – who must be a shady lot himself, judging from the book of words – and they want to bring a libel action if they can get financial support – I needn’t go over the ground again. You’ve seen it for yourselves, I gather.’

  ‘I received another effusion from Herbert Getliffe yesterday,’ said Mr March, ‘which I regret to say I have omitted to bring. It did not add anything substantial to his previous lucubrations.’

  ‘And you’re familiar with it, Eliot?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Sir Philip suddenly snapped: ‘I don’t want to have anything to do with the fellow. No good can come of it. I won’t touch anything he’s concerned with.’

  Anxiety and hope had made his temper less equable.

  ‘I concur in your judgement,’ said Mr March. ‘The fellow is a pestilential nuisance.’

  ‘I want to stop his damned suggestions,’ said Sir Philip. ‘Where are they? Why isn’t the file here?’

  He pushed the button on his desk, and the secretary entered. Sir Philip was just asking for the Getliffe file when in the outer office the telephone rang. ‘Will you excuse me while I answer it, sir?’ said Williams officiously, once more excited. After he went away, we could hear his voice through the open door. ‘Yes, this is Sir Philip March’s secretary… Yes… Yes, I will give him that message… Yes, he will be ready to receive the letter.’