The Conscience of the Rich (24 page)

For his seventieth birthday party, we were each invited, not only by a call from Mr March in person, but also by a long letter in his own hand. Presents were prohibited with violence. None of us knew how large the dinner was to be until we arrived at Bryanston Square; the house was brighter than I ever remembered it, lights streaming on to the square, cocktails, which Mr March had not allowed there before, being drunk in the drawing-room. Mr March was moving from one young relative to another, his coat-tails flapping behind him. Wherever he went one heard noise and laughter.

As we waited for dinner, there were about fifty people standing in the room. None of Mr March’s contemporaries was there; by another caprice of Mr March’s, none of them had been invited. Perhaps, I thought, he did not want to be reminded that his generation of Marches was dying.

Since Charles married, Herbert and his wife had both died, and Caroline’s husband. Hannah was still alive, but bed-ridden. Of Mr March’s contemporaries, only Philip and Caroline were left at Friday nights.

At the birthday party, Margaret March and I seemed to be the oldest of the guests, and we were just over thirty. The majority of them were Mr March’s youngest nephews and nieces and second cousins. To make up the number which he had set himself, Mr March had asked several to bring their young men and women.

Mr March walked among them, cordial to everyone, lingering once or twice appreciatively by the prettier girls. His spirits were not damped by Katherine’s absence; she had had to cry off at a few hours’ notice, since one of her children had measles. ‘I should see no reason to anticipate serious consequences at this stage,’ said Mr March, ‘if it were not for the practitioners whom they insist on employing. They are reported to be competent, but I refuse to accept responsibility for their performances. I thought it wise to send my daughter an account of their careers, so far as I could discover them from the professional records, and draw special attention to those features I did not consider up to snuff.’

He added: ‘I have to admit that I have not yet discovered a practitioner whose record appeared to me to be up to snuff in all respects.’

He returned to a knot of nephews and nieces in order to answer their chaff about presents. Why had he refused to allow us to give him any? Because the material objects offered on these occasions were always of singular uselessness. Books? All the books approved of by young persons of cultivated taste produce nothing but the deepest depression. Had he really received no presents from anyone? ‘Well,’ said Mr March, ‘my second-cousin-once-removed Harry Stein didn’t obey my instructions. He ignored the hint and sent me a box of cigars. If the fellow wants to be civil, I suppose I can’t deprive him of the pleasure.’

Instead of receiving presents on his birthday, Mr March had decided to give some. Someone asked him whether this was true, and he said: ‘I refuse either to deny or confirm.’ Under pressure, he admitted that ‘the juvenile members of the family had received a contribution towards their confectionery’ that morning. But he became his most secretive when people wanted him to say exactly what he had given, and to how many. It came out later that each person under twenty-one in the March family, that is the March family in its widest sense, had found waiting for them at breakfast that morning a cheque for ‘
Seventy Pounds Exactly
’.

Mr March stood in his drawing-room, retorted to the questions of his nieces, sent the footmen hurrying about the bright room with trays of cocktails, sipped a glass of sherry. As I watched him, I thought how well preserved he still looked. His moustache had whitened in the last few years, the wings of hair above his ears were scantier and greyer, the veins on his temples stood out; but his step, his brusque, quick, clumsy movements, the resonance of his laughter, were still a robust man’s.

He seemed gayer than I had seen him for a long time. Even the entrance of Ann did not seem to produce any strain. It was a long time since she had been inside his home. There had been no break, but since Mr March made his last unconceding answer to Charles before their marriage, she had without a word spoken slipped away. That night, as she went up to shake hands with Mr March, he greeted her in a curt, matter-of-fact fashion. His manner seemed to suggest, not that they only met on the most formal occasions within the March family life, but simply that there was no need of explanations between them. He asked Margaret March to introduce her to a group in the corner of the room, and despatched a footman after her.

He kept Charles by him a little longer, and teased him affectionately and without rancour. ‘May I enquire about the vital statistics of Pimlico and similar unsalubrious neighbourhoods?’

‘They’re not much affected yet,’ said Charles, also with good humour.

‘I refuse to take responsibility for any deterioration,’ said Mr March.

‘Well, that will be bad for everyone’s morale, won’t it, Mr L?’ Charles replied.

Mr March chuckled. Just listening to them, no one would have guessed their story. Then Mr March moved off to meet Caroline’s grandchildren.

For a second Charles was left alone, until two cousins joined him. He stood there, in the centre of his father’s drawing-room, looking a little older than his age: his forehead had lined, but his expression was keen, healthy, and settled: his face had taken on the shape it would wear until he was old.

His father’s reference to ‘Pimlico and similar unsalubrious neighbourhoods’ meant that, not long after he graduated as a doctor, Charles had bought a partnership in a practice down by the river. Whether he bought it with Ann’s money, none of us knew. It was certain that Mr March had made no contribution.

Charles himself was lighting a cigarette for a girl and as he straightened himself he looked at Ann. I followed his eyes. She had altered less than most of us; she had kept her open, youthful good looks. She was listening to a young man with the attention, gentle, friendly, and positive, that I remembered so well. As he watched, there was a spark in Charles’ eye. Their love had stayed not only strong but brilliant. For them both, except that they had still had no child, it had turned out the best of marriages.

There were two tables laid in the dining-room, and the butler went to Charles and told him that he and Ann were expected to preside at the smaller. Mr March was left free to have two bright, pert, pretty nieces sitting one on each hand. Between the two tables stood four standard lamps, brought in for the occasion; Mr March caused a commotion by demanding that two of them be removed, as soon as we had sat down. ‘This room has been appallingly dark during my occupancy of thirty-eight years,’ he said loudly. ‘It was even darker in my uncle Francis’ time. Now the first time it’s ever been properly lit, the confounded lights are arranged so as to obscure my view of half my guests.’

The lights were removed. Mr March surveyed the whole party with a satisfied, possessive, and triumphant smile. There were fifty-seven people in the room. Mr March announced, and again over the fish, that he had reserved one and a half rows of the stalls at ‘some theatre whose name you will be informed of in due course’.

Margaret teased him about this sudden burst of secrecy: she produced the theory that he refused to go to the sort of play admired by his children’s ‘intellectual friends’, and so was luring us somewhere of his own choice.

‘No! No!’ said Mr March. Other members of the family joined in, shouting and laughing. Mr March’s voice rose above them.

‘No! No! My motives are being misinterpreted. But I will say this, if any of you want to be depressed tonight, you’d better stay in the house and read one of the books approved of by your literary friends. Not that I don’t admire ’em–’ he said to me, ‘but now I’m getting old I find I don’t want to be reminded of the unpleasant circumstances which afflicted me when I was young.’

‘So that you find that you worry less than you used to, do you?’ said one of the bright, pretty nieces.

Several people in the know were chuckling, for the night’s celebration had been arranged with an expenditure of anxiety unusual even for Mr March.

‘I worry dreadfully,’ said Mr March complacently. ‘I’ve never known anyone worry more dreadfully than I do.’

‘Not so badly as you used to, though,’ said Margaret.

‘Worse. Much worse,’ said Mr March. ‘I’ve learnt to control myself, that’s all.’

He chuckled, as loudly as anyone. ‘I’ve also learned to avoid occasions that I dislike. The only advantage of getting old,’ said Mr March, ‘is that you’re not faced by so many occasions that you’re bound to dislike, if you’re too shy and diffident a person.

‘There are a corresponding number of disadvantages, of course,’ Mr March went on. ‘I shall shortly have to abandon my club because the people I know are dropping off one by one, and it’s an unnecessary strain on the memory to burden yourself with new faces – a very ugly face, by the way, that fellow possesses that my brother Philip has just got into the club. It’s an unnecessary strain to burden yourself with new faces for a period of time that can’t be worth the effort. It’s curious also how soon people are forgotten in the club when they’re dead. When I die they’ll discontinue my special brand of tea-buns next day.’

For a few moments the reflection sobered him. Before the end of the meal, he was enjoying himself again. On the way to the play, which turned out to be a revival of one of Lonsdale’s, he enjoyed marshalling the cars, re-collecting the party on the steps of the theatre, taking the middle seat of the second row of the stalls. In the first interval he came out with Margaret March, and said with the utmost gratification: ‘I call it a very mediocre play.’

Margaret protested, but Mr March overbore her in his most sincere and genial manner: ‘It is extremely mediocre.’ He turned to me thoughtfully. ‘I believe you could write a play not much worse than that.’

While he was talking, Margaret noticed her Aunt Caroline coming down from the circle by herself. We saw the gleam of her lorgnon as she sighted her brother. She had become enormously fat, and her flesh shook as she made her way down.

‘I heard from a good many quarters,’ she said to Mr March, ‘that you were giving yourself a spree tonight. So I decided to come and inspect you.’

She could not resist the time-honoured joke about his meanness: was that why he had not invited the older Marches? Mr March grinned, but his manner was defensive.

She protruded a large silver ear-trumpet at him as he replied.

‘Birthday parties have always been understood to come into a special category,’ he said. ‘I’ve never had any of you to my house on my birthday since I was married – except Hannah, and, needless to say, she invited herself.’

Just before we returned to our seats, Caroline said casually in her loud voice: ‘By the way, I had dinner with Philip. The poor fellow would have been here with me, but he’s afraid he’s got his gout coming on. He gave me a message for you. He said that, in case I missed you, you’d find the same message waiting at your house.’

As she rummaged in her handbag for an envelope, she did not seem specially interested, nor Mr March specially concerned. But, as he read the note, his face darkened with anxiety, and he said to his sister:

‘I shall need your company in the next interval.’

Mr March was on his feet in the stalls as the curtain came down at the end of the second act. He met his sister, and I watched them walk back and forth on the far side of the foyer. She walked slowly, with her ponderous tread, and her silver trumpet flew to and from her ear.

To my surprise, Mr March beckoned me to them. Their conversation had looked comic from a distance: at close quarters there was nothing comic in Mr March’s expression.

‘I wanted to ask you, Lewis, whether you have any recent knowledge of the activities of my daughter’s brother-in-law? I mean the fellow Herbert Getliffe.’

The question was unexpected: Mr March asked it in a flat and heavy tone.

‘No, I’ve not seen much of him lately,’ I said. ‘I’ve dined with him once or twice, but that’s all.’

‘You can’t give us any information upon how he can be affecting the position of my brother Philip?’

I was astonished. I said that I could not imagine it.

‘So far as I can infer from the only information I possess,’ said Mr March, ‘this preposterous situation is connected with certain gossip which was circulating at the time of my daughter’s marriage. You may remember that there was a certain amount of gossip at that time.’

I nodded. ‘But that was five years ago.’

‘I do not pretend to any greater enlightenment than you do. My brother has however sent a note asking for my advice, which is an entirely unprecedented occurrence. I have been trying to discover the reason for this occurrence from my sister, but she has not proved illuminating.’

Caroline caught this last sentence.

‘I still think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill,’ she boomed.

‘You said that twice about my son,’ said Mr March. He was silent for a moment, then turned to me with a sad, friendly, and trusting smile. ‘I rely on you for the discretion and kindness you have always shown towards my family.’

The second bell sounded, and Mr March began to walk into the theatre. He said to me:

‘I should be obliged if you would find my son’s wife. I should like a word with her.’

I brought Ann to him in the aisle of the stalls. Without any explanation, he asked her: ‘Do you still see Ronald Porson?’

‘Do you know him?’ she asked.

‘Do you still see him?’

‘Very occasionally.’

He began to ask her another question, something about Ronald Porson and Getliffe, in a voice which had become low but intensely angry. As he did so, the lights of the theatre were dimming, and Ann left to find her seat.

After the play was over, when we stood outside the theatre, Mr March was no calmer. He did not attempt to ask more questions, he just let his temper go. It was raining, the fleet of cars in which his party had arrived could not get round to the front of the theatre. Mr March watched car after car drive up to the pavement, and his temper grew worse.