Family Matters

by Anthony Rolls

  Nothing is unimportant in a reasoned theory of causation. A mere hint, the shadow of a thought, is enough to start a blaze of jealousy, enough to change or subvert the whole course of a life. This innocent extension of Bertha’s visit, a thing of no visible consequence, flung a fatal spark into the mind of Robert Arthur.

  Chapter V

  1

  Mr. Kewdingham had received a telegram from his wife informing him that she would not return until Friday afternoon. That was all very well, but when he came down to breakfast on Friday morning he was decidedly annoyed. His father had breakfast in his own room, but it was only a few days before Christmas and his son Michael was home for the holidays. The table was, therefore, laid for two.

  Mr. Kewdingham gloomily opened his Daily Post, and what should he see in it but a long article by John, with a portrait of the author. The article was called “A One-Way Universe”, and it was a popular version of John’s theory of cosmic expansion. As he looked at this article, at the portrait, at the big headlines, Mr. Kewdingham felt suddenly angry.

  All this talk of cavity-radiation, of spectroscopic velocities, of orbital planes and so forth—what infernal nonsense! Any man versed in the wisdom of Atlantis would reject these ideas without hesitating for a moment. Those who built the Pyramids, they were the men who knew the secret of the stars; and pray, what did they care for cavity-radiation? It was not by such a vain effusion of words that a man could penetrate the mysteries of the Universe. A “One-Way Universe”, indeed! What a shoddy, debased conception of the supreme realities!

  Mr. Kewdingham, disciple of Paracelsus and of Swedenborg, read the article with many snorts of rage. What could be in more execrable taste than John’s libellous picture of the Universe? And what could be more offensive than his style, at once condescending and arrogant? Look at this, for example:

  “I must ask my readers to consider for a moment the nature of atomic nuclei. It is not easy to get a mental image of a thing so infinitely minute, yet so inconceivably energetic. Think of the Haymarket Theatre, and imagine, inside the auditorium, a swarm of a dozen lively bees…”

  How could a man write such twaddle? The whole thing was an outrage, a bit of cheap advertisement. “Mr. John Harrigall, who is well known as the author of The Marble Onion…”

  The idea of John advertising himself by means of the Universe was too much for Mr. Kewdingham. A dark stream of accumulated hostility began to filter through all the crevices of his mind, a whole mob of nasty thoughts began to jostle about in the obscurity of subliminal slush.

  Michael came clumping down the stairs.

  With a gesture of crazy spite, Robert crumpled up the paper and flung it away.

  “What are you staring at, you silly oaf?” he said to Michael. “To look at you, nobody would think your father was a gentleman.”

  2

  When he came back to his own house, Bertha had returned. He could hear her talking to Michael in the drawing-room.

  Kewdingham stood for a moment outside the drawing-room door. That ridiculous article had disturbed him unreasonably. He slipped on the mat, and when he recovered his balance he was trembling most uncomfortably. He went to the bedroom. There was an open suitcase on the floor, and he savagely pulled away a mass of crumpled paper that lay in the bottom of it. What was he looking for? Heaven knows. He felt ashamed of his own crazy impulse. He told himself that he was being a fool again. What he needed, clearly, was a sedative.

  So he went to his medicine-cupboard, and presently there was a tinkling among glasses and bottles and a swish of water running through the basin. Robert Arthur swallowed his potion, looked at himself in the mirror, tugged his neck-tie straight, coughed harshly, and walked across the landing to the drawing-room.

  Not liking the appearance of his father, Michael scuttled away.

  But Robert Arthur said nothing. He went to the window and stared out of it, standing with his back to the room. He had not even glanced at Bertha.

  For soldiers at night, sailors in a fog, and women at all times, nothing is more terrible than silence. Bertha had not yet taken off her hat and coat; she stood by the fire, clasping and unclasping her fingers nervously. She wanted to run away. She did not know how to begin the conversation. Robert was in a strange new mood, and one that she was incapable of explaining. He appeared to be angry. Well!—They had better have it out, whatever it was. She braced herself for a scene.

  “Anything wrong, Bobby?”

  “Ha!” cried Robert Arthur, jerking himself round with a snap, as though discovering with surprise that he was not alone. “What? I forgot to ask you—did the man bring the coal the other day?”

  “Yes: half a ton, I think.”

  “Good.”

  “Phoebe is anxious to know if you have heard from Mr. Sundale.”

  Robert Arthur did not reply. He walked fiercely to one of his cabinets, opened a drawer and thrust it back, jarring and rattling. He took the lids off three of his cardboard boxes. With glum curiosity he poked his nose into a tinful of expiring beetles, and then he dropped them on the carpet. It was amazing how finely he kept himself under control.

  Old father Kewdingham, awake somewhat earlier than usual after his nap, came into the room. Robert Arthur, hunched up on his knees, was recovering the beetles. Bertha stood by the fire-place. The old man, with his lean, red face, his withered arrogance, was yet real and alive and human. Bertha smiled at him pleasantly. At least he was more of a man than the other, fumbling and fiddling over his tin box.

  “The traveller has returned—yeh? Home is home, be it never so homely.”

  Father Kewdingham clicked his teeth as if he was chewing sand.

  “A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there—yeh? Well, my dear, I hope you enjoyed yourself in London.”

  “Very much indeed, thank you,” said Bertha. And for the first time in her life she felt really grateful to the old man. There he was, tall and vital in spite of his age, disliking her with a real human sincerity; and this real dislike was a hundred times more desirable than Bobby’s horrible evasions and pretences.

  As for the other, he was still hunched up on the carpet, looking small and mean and futile as he fumbled about with his tinful of expiring beetles.

  3

  It was curious, how often Doctor Wilson Bagge met Mrs. Kewdingham. He came now and then to see Robert professionally, for Robert’s inside often gave him trouble. But he kept on meeting Bertha in the town, and he had more than once taken her out in his car. Indeed, people were beginning to talk.

  Then the doctor went a step farther. He asked Mrs. Kewdingham to help him in the choice of new carpets and curtains, new papers, new chair-covers, a new scheme of interior decoration. She came to his house and spent a long time with him, looking at the rooms. Her taste was excellent and her suggestions were of immense value.

  They measured the walls and the floors, each holding an end of the tape. They stood together, absorbed in considering the arrangement of chairs and tables, of pictures or piano. The dapper little man twittered and fluttered in shy sparkles of delight; he perched on a rickety step-ladder like a sparrow on a twig; he cocked up his neat little head and waved a two-foot rule in his hand, briskly running here and there as though he was a fairy carpenter with a magic wand, a fairy carpenter at work on Titania’s palace.

  Somehow or other, Mrs. Kewdingham was frequently seen going in and out of the doctor’s house. Patterns had to be examined. Papers were held up on the walls. Bits of chintz were pinned on the backs of chairs. Demure draperies were flung over the nakedness of the piano. Even the kitchen was explored, greatly to the annoyance of the elderly females, Doctor Bagge’s cook and housekeeper. “And she a married woman and all!” they said. “Did you ever see the like of it? Ah! little he knows what folk do be saying.”

  But the doctor was always correct, seldom quitting the tone of unbending formality.
He never said anything that he would not have said in the hearing of all Shufflecester. Only sometimes, as when his fingers lightly touched by accident those of Mrs. Kewdingham, that curious blue electric fire quivered for a moment in his eyes.

  What was he thinking about? Was he amorous? Or was he only behaving with a lack of discretion? People talked about him, but they could not say that he was being immoral. He was just as neat, kind, formal and reliable as ever. Good old Mrs. Poundle-Quainton shook her venerable head, but she did it in a whimsical way, with little smirks of gentle amusement. It was good for dear Bertha, she said, to have an interest outside her own home; she could see no harm in it, as long as Bertha was careful.

  Robert Arthur, of course, saw nothing. He had unlimited confidence in Doctor Bagge, and his jealousy pointed in another direction. But the old man, guided by the vigilant hostility of the aged, saw a good deal, and suspected more than he could see.

  He fired off a number of venomous quotations at Bertha, including a spicy bit from Othello, and made a senile joke about “An apple a day”. It was thus, by proverb or quotation, that he showed his disapproval; he did not like Doctor Bagge, he preferred his own doctor, young Matthews.

  One day, as Bertha was busy with her needlework in the drawing-room, the old man came in. He looked at her sternly. Evidently he had prepared a quotation and was about to fire it off. She knew the look: he was assembling his words before he launched them, for the effect of a quotation is lost if it does not flow steadily from the lips. Bertha was partly amused and partly irritated.

  “’Tis beauty that doth oft make women proud; ’Tis virtue that doth make them most admir’d.” The old gentleman snapped his jaws together and gave her a penetrating glance.

  Bertha laughed. She could not help enjoying these attacks. After all, he had the sense never to say anything that was directly offensive.

  “Yes, daddy,” she said, “but the first line doesn’t apply to me, because I’m not beautiful.”

  4

  Early in the New Year there was a dreadful scene, catastrophic and decisive, between Robert Arthur and his wife.

  It was the day of Michael’s party. Some little boys and their mothers were coming to tea.

  On the previous evening Robert Arthur had been sadly rattled. He had gaily unfurled the Pacific Ocean upon the hearthrug, and then he had begun to chatter, with unwonted confidence, about Mr. Sundale and the shark business. It was the happy chance of a lifetime. Pamela Chaddlewick had assured him that he was the very man for this adventure, and he was fool enough to say so. Perhaps he wanted to show his wife that he talked about everyday things with Pamela in a spirit of candour and of innocence.

  “You see, my dear, I should go out and get everything ready, and then I would send for you and Michael.”

  “Thank you!” said Bertha.

  “Well—I mean—naturally you would have to go where I went. I am sure that you would find the life extremely congenial. There’s a French colony at Nukahiva—charming people, so I am told.”

  “So we have to obey orders, do we?” Unhappy woman!—She could not listen with patience, could not humour the fantasy.

  “But how on earth do you expect—”

  “How on earth do you expect Michael is going to be educated?”

  “Educated? Educated for what? He can go into the business. What’s the use of turning him into a bookworm? He will have no need to be ashamed of business if his own father isn’t. Life out there will make a man of him.”

  “And where is all the money coming from?”

  “Money! That’s how you women always look at things. No enthusiasm; no encouragement. You ought to back me loyally in this—not leave me to fight my way alone. I want my wife by my side, ready to—to—”

  “To mend your clothes and cook your dinner.”

  “Do you think it’s clever, to sneer like that? You were talking about money. Well, I am assured that the factory managers will draw anything up to two thousand a year.”

  “And suppose I would rather stay at home?”

  “But you can’t. It’s impossible.” He flicked an inquisitive spider off the edge of his blue Pacific. “A woman can’t stay away from her husband.”

  “Indeed! And may I ask why you should want me?”

  “Good Lord!” cried Robert angrily. “Why do you talk like this? You and I have got to stick to each other, through thick and thin, to the bitter end. Can’t we give way to each other now and then, if it’s necessary?”

  He spoke with some reason, for Bertha had never understood the meaning and use of compromise, she had never learnt how to manage her husband instead of fighting him.

  “Well, it’s a cheerful prospect, isn’t it? But I can’t see that it matters very much, anyhow. You know quite well that you won’t get much nearer to the Pacific Ocean than you are at present—so why need we argue? It’s foolish to lose our tempers over a mere fantasy. There are quite enough real things to worry about.”

  She was brutal, and she knew it. Her nerves and her patience were giving way. So when Robert got up the next morning he was already cross and ruffled.

  5

  After lunch on that fatal day Robert Arthur went for a walk. It was about half-past three when he returned. His walk had not been enjoyable. He had been driven off a potato-patch, after some altercation with a rude lout; and he had fallen into a muddy ditch. He was therefore charged with high explosive, approaching the climax of a mental disturbance which had been going on for several days.

  Bertha was in the dining-room, preparing the table for the party. Michael was in his room, tidying himself. Martha was changing her dress. The old man had gone out to have tea with a neighbour.

  Robert Arthur walked into the dining-room, and the awful scene began abruptly, without a sound or a signal of warning. No casual observer could possibly have said how or why it started.

  Kewdingham looked at his wife. She was arranging a little pile of crackers, brightly-coloured flimsy things, in the middle of the table. Her head was bent, and the light from the window fell on her mass of coppery hair, making it look almost crimson. Robert Arthur stood by the door. He said nothing, but all at once he began to tremble with insane anger. She looked up at him.

  “Why, Bobby—”

  A flush of hot blood came into her cheeks and then faded out again. She held a yellow cracker in her hand, gay with frills of silver tinsel, and having, in the middle, the grotesque image of a policeman.

  “Bobby, what’s the matter with you?”

  Robert Arthur was dithering. Had it not been for a nasty animal quality in his rage he would have been ridiculous. He looked as though he would shake to pieces, and he was grinning with anger. In a high keckling voice he spluttered out:

  “What right had you to throw away money on all that frippery?”

  He pointed unsteadily to a number of little toys and a few pretty decorations at the corners of the table.

  She stared at him blankly. For the first time, he was making her feel afraid.

  “Well! Answer me, can’t you?”

  “I don’t understand. Why are you so unreasonable, Bobby? It’s Michael’s party, and we have all these people coming in. You knew all about it, didn’t you?”

  “You—pff!—you whippety-snippety little nothing! Who the devil gave you leave to throw all that money away? Who are you, to play the grand lady with your presents and your kickshaws? I won’t have it, I tell you! Pff!—” The words blew out of him in a kind of puthering spray.

  Bertha’s incipient fears were overcome by a rush of anger.

  “Surely, when I am entertaining people in my own house—”

  “Your own house! Your own house!” He raised a jerking arm and swung it vaguely in the air. “Your house, did you say? Let me assure you, my lady, this house isn’t yours; it’s mine; and so is all the money you have been flingi
ng about. If you want money to spend, you had better get it some other way. You had better go to your dear John Harrigall and ask him—”

  “How dare you, Bobby!” She was glowing with a swift, uncontrollable hatred. “How dare you speak to me in such a way! Your insult is foolish, if it is not unforgivable. I cannot say, but I feel now that I shall never forgive you. And so you tell me that I am nothing! At any rate, I am the mistress of the house—not a position to be proud of, God knows! But one that does give me definite rights. We are supposed to be a civilised people. I tell you frankly, when I am entertaining my friends—”

  “Entertaining! What the devil have you to do with entertaining? I suppose it’s John who puts all these fine ideas into your head. Why don’t you go—”

  “I shall not stay any longer in this house, at any rate, if you persist in behaving like a lunatic.”

  “Very well, then—go! Get out of it! Get out of it, you little devil! Do you suppose I care?”

  He came towards her with his fist raised to the level of his shoulder, and then for a moment they stared at each other without moving or speaking.

  A door was gently closed in the upper part of the house, and there came a sound of shuffling feet on the staircase. Martha had come down to the landing, afraid to come any lower, but listening with intense excitement. Her sympathies, up to this point, had been sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other.

  Suddenly, with a downward fling of his arm, Kewdingham struck heavily the edge of the table. In that action the psychologist may discern a compromise, and perhaps a lucky one. Two of the little toys, a tin motor-car and a clockwork rabbit, fell on to the floor and were broken.

  He laughed gruesomely.

  “I’ll teach you who’s master here. You f-f-fool. You can go and tell him all about it, if you like. You—pff!—”