When they had all left – as they did very soon, with none of the jollity that the Blakes had afterwards – she found herself again in the hall with Mr Ferguson alone. But this time, with no irreverent tongue-protruding clock to disturb his temper, he linked his arm in hers, a thing he had never done before, and steered her slowly back towards the drawing-room.
‘Well, this is your first New Year with us, Cordelia. I trust it will be a very happy one for you and for us all.’
‘Thank you, Mr Ferguson. I hope so.’ She was not a bit at her ease with him.
‘I hope we shall be a happy and united household. If you’re ever in doubt or difficulty, come to me – always come to me. We can discuss it in a friendly way. A problem shared …’
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘I bear Dan Massington was here this afternoon. Did you see him?’
I told Brook and Brook has told you. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He stayed to tea. He came for something of his sister’s, a letter-case or a satchel.’
‘I suppose he gave us a very bad name, eh?’
‘He has a sort of grudge.’
‘I see you’ve summed him up perfectly. I shall come to respect your judgments, my dear.’
Flattery, she thought. But I mustn’t be unfair, I mustn’t bear a grudge too.
Mr Ferguson said: ‘Some day I’ll tell you about the Massingtons.’
They went into the drawing-room.
‘Eh, but I’m proper tired,’ said Aunt Tish. ‘We’ve had a real good evening, Frederick. But I must say I couldn’t make head or tail of that Mrs Thorpe’s reciting. What was she talking about: something in the snow?’
Mr Ferguson said to Cordelia: ‘Have you ever had singing lessons, my dear?’
‘No – except what Mother taught me and what I’ve learned in the choir.’
‘You must miss singing in the choir. Would you like to take lessons?’
Some pride in her would not allow her to be too eager. ‘ I should like that very much.’
‘Brook!’
‘Yes, Father?’
‘On your way to Town in the morning call at Madam Herbert’s Academy. Ask her to come here and see Mrs Ferguson. Arrangements for singing lessons. She has a very sweet voice, and–’
‘Much better than that Griffin girl,’ said Uncle Pridey, rubbing down his cello. ‘She draws breath like a tired horse.’
‘Kik – kik, kik – kik!’ Aunt Tish sniggered. ‘ That’s true. That’s true, an’ all.’
‘Personally,’ said Mr Ferguson, ‘before speaking of other people’s imperfections I like to feel sure that I know my own.’
Cordelia glanced at the other man, but Pridey had got his straggly imperial bent over the cello and he did not reply. No one in this house, it seemed, ever did reply to Frederick Ferguson.
A little later she stood alone and warmed herself before her bedroom fire. Dimly she sensed that she was being subjected to the same process which had reduced everyone else in this house: a mixture of intimidation and cordiality. Dimly she suspected that even the trouble over the clock was not so much a matter of principle as an opportunity he had seized for asserting and establishing a preliminary mastery. Now this was the second stage.
Yet, against her better judgment, she found herself responding. The value Mr Ferguson put upon himself had its implicit effect on everyone he came in contact with; when he chose to unbend, one was flattered by his unbending. Cordelia was a modest girl; she had lived too much in the midst of a large and poor family to have any distorted ideas of her own importance. She was half unwillingly gratified and happy at her father-in-law’s attitude tonight. If only Dan Massington had not made his disconcerting call …
How to judge, and where to find the truth? She wished she were older, more certain of her own mind. Sometimes these last two months she had thought despairingly that she had no opinion or judgment of her own at all but was a bundle of obvious responses, returning affection for affection, excuse for rebuke, anger for anger, gratitude for kindness, loyalty for esteem. She wished so much that she were the ‘strong’ character some of her family thought her.
Brook came in, but she did not at once look up. (Brook should be the quadrant, the compass by which she might see and steer. But Brook, she already knew, was affected by the magnet of his father’s presence and pointed steadily in one direction only.)
Yet she was very fond of him. She had found no bad in him except the surface failings: they’d been happy together, listening to music, reading books aloud, walking in the fields, driving to church down the leafless country lanes.
He said: ‘I ate too much supper. I think I’m going to have one of my bouts of indigestion.’
She got up at once. ‘ Let me make you something to drink. I can easily run down to the kitchens.’
He sat down looking depressed, and wiped his nose. ‘No, thanks, dear, I’ve already drunk too much. There’s nothing much to be done about it. I often get an attack after a cold.’
She sat beside him. Her carping mood of the last few days had gone and she saw nothing ludicrous in his complaints.
He said: ‘I didn’t play the F Sharp Nocturne too well tonight.’
It was a familiar gambit to her. It was not that he was terribly conceited but that his nervous self-doubting mind needed constant reassurance.
‘I wish I could play it half as well.’
He smiled at her, his thin-lipped friendly smile.
‘Perhaps you’ll soon be able to. I don’t see why you shouldn’t have piano lessons as well.’
‘I’d love that!’
‘I’ll ask Father about it in the morning.’
She said quietly: ‘Couldn’t we do it without asking your father? He wouldn’t mind?’
A shadow crossed his face, and she instantly saw the same pit yawning. ‘Well … I don’t suppose he would. It’s only that–’
‘I mean,’ she said, sticking to her guns, ‘we shall pay for the lessons, shan’t we? You will, out of your salary?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I don’t want to offend him again. It’s only just – you do see, don’t you, Brook, that perhaps it isn’t good for us not to have any independence of our own?’ She waited.
‘Yes … Of course you’re quite right. I don’t look on it that way, as I’ve lived with him all my life, but I see what you mean.’
She hesitated. ‘ Margaret’s brother said that Margaret and your father were quarrelling all the time. He made it out that it was your father’s fault she was unhappy here and ill.’
‘Uh! You don’t believe that, do you?’
She touched his hand. ‘Not if you tell me it wasn’t so. But either way it doesn’t matter to me, Brook. I have to do with the present, not the past – it’s my life, not hers. Whether she was happy or not …’
There was silence. She could see that he was unconvinced about the piano lessons. She had begun to say, ‘Whether she was happy or not I intend to be.’ But if she intended to be, why this hidden revolt? She struggled with her own feelings, wrestled as with the devil, and won.
She said: ‘Perhaps you’re right. Ask your father first and see what he says.’
‘I think it’s the best way, Delia. It saves the risk of giving him offence, and it will amount to much the same thing in the long run.’
She said impulsively: ‘Margaret didn’t get on with your father, did she?’
‘Well – no. Not altogether. There were times.’
‘Well, I intend to. I – married you. We have to live with him. He’s got little peculiar ways; but we all have. I’m going to try and please him – why shouldn’t I? It’s little enough. That’ll be my New Year resolution. I’ll set myself out to do everything I can to please him. It shouldn’t be too hard. Don’t you think it a good idea?’
‘I think you’re sweet. And it’s a splendid idea.’
She got up, breathing out some of the emotions that had gathered in her. ‘All right. That’s settled then.’
>
He said: ‘ You look lovely in that frock.’
‘Do I? Well, you bought it me.’
He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her, and she kissed him in return. She had a deep regard for him at that moment. He kissed her again and she put her hands up to smooth his hair. Affection for affection, she thought; gratitude for kindness; loyalty for esteem?
The following day Stephen Crossley arrived in Manchester.
BOOK TWO
Chapter One
More than twelve months passed before he heard of the Fergusons or they of him, and then it was through Mr Slaney-Smith that the contact was made.
The tea-taster’s leisure hours were arranged to a set programme. On Wednesday and Friday evenings he lectured to earnest and anaemic young men on biology and evolution, on Tuesdays and Thursdays he supped with Mr Ferguson, and on Mondays and Saturdays he visited one of the music halls of the town. (Sundays he spent with his wife and family and read aloud to them from Mill, Darwin, and Charles Bradlaugh.)
Music halls had an irresistible fascination for him. There was nothing more liberating to the spirit, he found, than to stand at a silver, shiny bar and sip a scotch and splash and listen to ‘Villikins and His Dinah’ or to discuss with his friends the merits of Tom Maclagan and Harry Liston. As he was unable to cut the habit out of his life because it was beneath him, he tried to elevate it to the same level as the rest by making a science of it, and there was no one who could talk more learnedly about the ‘singing assemblies’ and ‘night cellars’ of the eighteenth century. Many times he’d tried to interest Mr Ferguson, but Mr Ferguson was not to be lured away from righteousness.
Though he had been known to visit the Lancashire Stingo, a low place hidden in the wilds of Deansgate, Mr Slaney-Smith’s usual haunt was the old Variety Theatre, at the corner of York Street and Spring Gardens. This had recently come under new management, had been redecorated and reseated in a very genteel style; those walls which seemed likely to fall down had been propped up, and the place was making a bid to attract the aristocracy of the profession, both on the stage and off.
Mr Slaney-Smith soon got to know the Crossleys, father and son. The father, a plump, short-tempered, business-like little London-Irishman, had interests all over the provinces and lived in London; the son managed his father’s local affairs. He was twenty-six.
One did not stay long in Mr Slaney-Smith’s company without the Jolly Roger of atheism being hoisted. Stephen Crossley was too young and happy-go-lucky to care a great deal either way, but he listened with amusement to the older man’s embellishments, which seemed to suggest a campaign for going into every church in England carrying the spear of pure reason and winkling out the fat clerics who skulked there.
The name of Frederick Ferguson came up.
‘There, my dear boy,’ said Slaney-Smith, pressing his long moustache downwards on each cheek with a yellow silk handkerchief, ‘there you have the perfect example of an intelligent man ruined by Christianity; this age-old superstition, this monstrous survival of the totem pole, what? has so got hold of him that one comes to suspect all his ordinary behaviour. Is he enlightened, does he do good deeds, does he help his fellow men, because his mind so directs him, what? or because he is driven on by fear – fear of hell-fire, fear that if he does not do so he won’t earn a future life and sit among the company of angels in sublime and asinine vacuity?’
Stephen Crossley laughed.
‘Does it matter why he does it, so long as he does do it?’
Mr Slaney-Smith was shocked and said so. For him the springs of conduct were more important than the conduct itself.
‘Aside from this,’ he said, ‘my friend Mr Ferguson’s whole life is dominated by religion, by prayers, by Sabbath observances. It’s unwholesome. He’s a slave, not a free man at all. I tell him so. Superstition and fear rule him as surely as they do the African Hottentot.’ Mr Slaney-Smith took another sip. When he had finished with his handkerchief he added: ‘Lamentable.’
‘Bring your Mr Ferguson along some time,’ said Crossley good temperedly. ‘There’s no doubt we should be able to broaden his mind.’
‘Ah. Quite impossible. He wouldn’t enter a music hall. Again I’ve tried.’
‘Tell him to come along any day the week after next. The Great Clodius will be here then. I’ll get him to read his fortune. Couldn’t be fairer than that, could we, Char?’
‘I should think not,’ agreed the barmaid, leaning her thick body against the bar.
‘I wish it was possible,’ said Slaney-Smith. ‘Ah, yes. Ah, yes.’
‘What’s ’e like, this friend of yours?’ asked Char, polishing a glass.
‘Some time I’ll give you a precise description,’ said Slaney-Smith. ‘He owns Ferguson’s Dye Works and lives south of the city in a considerable house. I visit there regularly. He depends on me for advice in most of the important decisions he has to make.’
‘But you can’t cure him of religion?’ Stephen said.
‘I confess the failure. Was that the bell?’ asked Mr Slaney-Smith.
‘Don’t worry. Morris will come and tell me before the curtain goes up.’
‘One evening,’ said Slaney-Smith, ‘ one evening also you should come to one of my lectures at the Carpenters Hall. I flatter myself that at this important moment in the history of man I am helping in the battle to defeat ignorance and prejudice. One sees ahead new vistas of education and progress. Even though the over-all picture is dark. It is inspiring – far more inspiring than a slavish reliance on the age-old superstitions – to visualize the mind of man progressing through a darkened universe unaided and alone. One doesn’t need to be interested in biology. I take the broader issues–’
Major Morris put his head round the door.
‘All ready at the starting post, Stephen. Shall I keep your seat?’
‘No, let Mr Slaney-Smith have it,’ said the young man, ready enough for the interruption. ‘I’ll not be coming in tonight.’
But a week or so later he went with his new friend to the Fergusons’ to supper. Mr Slaney-Smith meant nothing to him and he wasn’t much interested in the owner of Grove Hall, but he knew the value of goodwill in the right quarters.
So he went prepared to be agreeable in a good cause and came away caught in a net of his own weaving.
It was nearly all his own fault.
The house was much what he had expected, but the people came as a surprise. Slaney-Smith had not prepared him for Mr Ferguson’s size and presence, and for a little while it put him off his balance. The man was so big and imposing and so vigorous with it that Stephen forgot that cool inner detachment he usually held to when meeting people less cosmopolitan than himself. He found himself unwillingly submitting to an influence so obviously regnant in its own sphere. The other old people were nonentities and the son an anaemic shadow of his father. But the daughter-in-law …
She came in just before supper, wished him good evening in a pleasant voice, but hadn’t much to say during the meal, though once or twice she spoke to the servants.
He carried on a conversation with Mr Ferguson and Mr Slaney-Smith; but his eyes kept straying in her direction. Forgetting the past, he thought: I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful. She was like a pale golden glory that had suddenly come into his life, into the room, into the dull talk, the dreary business of making oneself agreeable, someone totally unexpected and exciting whose presence caught at your throat and made your heart beat again. He began to talk better, to talk with greater gusto and charm and with something of the wit of his Irish forefathers. Afterwards he could hardly remember all that had been going on, but Mr Slaney-Smith said that a meal had seldom passed so quickly. When the girl left them things lagged. Stephen wondered if he would have the luck to see her again. Two or three times he’d caught her listening intently, and once specially when the future of the theatre was in question. But he’d had to change the subject because he saw that Mr Ferguson didn’t approve. And if he were to be i
nvited here again he couldn’t afford to offend his host.
Mrs Ferguson, to his delight, later rejoined them; and he had a better chance of seeing her as she moved across the room and took a seat before the fire. He couldn’t imagine where she’d come from or, for that matter what she was doing here. He tried to draw her into the conversation, but his efforts were usually side-tracked by one of the others. The two older men did not expect her to talk at one of their evenings. He itched to hear her voice more, to find out what she was really like.
Partly out of curiosity, he turned the talk towards religion, wondering if the two men would fly at each other’s throats. But it didn’t happen that way. He saw that they were like two old hands at fencing; they had fought together so often that they parried thrust for thrust, knowing each other’s moves so well. With one eye on the girl, he fed them with innocent questions, trying to provoke them, but finding only himself provoked by the importance they attached to their own views.
Presently Mr Slaney-Smith deviated to speak of the woman who had given an exhibition of thought-reading and telepathy at the Variety a month ago. This was on Stephen’s own ground and he gratefully accepted the opening. But again he was talked down.
Brook said: ‘It was interesting at the Athenaeum last night. A pity you couldn’t come.’
‘Oh, this new-fangled spiritualism–’
‘This new-fangled spiritualism,’ said Mr Ferguson. He explained to Stephen Crossley: ‘A conversazione was held to – ah, what were the terms of reference? – ‘‘for the purpose of arriving at some safe conclusion about table-turning’’. The whole discussion was on a high intellectual level, and some experiments were tried.’
‘With success?’ said Slaney-Smith.
‘With some success. Not sufficient to convince me of the claims put forward by the advocates of the movement. But with some success.’
‘What happened?’ Cordelia asked. ‘Brook didn’t tell me.’
‘Oh, well – I confess – the table certainly moved, and moved quite vigorously, but the conclusion the meeting came to was in agreement with Dr Carpenter’s theory. That is that, when a number of people are gathered round a table, a force he calls idea meter power comes into being and can move a lightly portable table about the room.’
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