The Rise of Henry Morcar (28 page)

Harington came in, peevish about some adventure on the Underground. He had recently taken silk and became more and more pompous and snobbish with each successful stage of his advancing career. He bent down and kissed his wife's cheek. Anyone with a single thought to spare from himself would have observed Christina's distress, thought Morcar angrily, but the barrister had no such thought, which was after all a mercy in the
circumstances. Christina resuming her usual social grace mentioned that she was tired, that they had had no tea and needed drinks, that a friend had rung up on some photographic matter and asked Harington to ring him up before dinner. Harington showed a disinclination to leave the hearth, whereupon to draw his attention from his wife Morcar asked him in a doubtful tone whether he considered the cupboard genuine seventeenth-century. Harington, on whose recommendation they had attended the sale, defended the purchase strongly, remembered an illustration in a book in his study of a similar cupboard and went downstairs to seek it. The moment he was out of earshot Morcar began:

“Christina, this can't go on. We must arrange an address where you can receive private letters from me. You must agree.”

“No. I should have to destroy each one before I brought it home, and I might forget. I'm so careless nowadays.”

It was true; her carelessness, her preoccupation grew on her; Morcar thought with horror that he now saw the reason, in the emotional disturbance and distress she had revealed. He paced up and down the room, bitterly angry with himself, his thoughts turbulent, confused. But there was no time to arrange them, to think of soothing phrases—there was never any time for anything but physical love, thought Morcar with a flash of insight, in illicit relationships. He halted in front of her.

“Christina, will you leave Harington and come to me?”

“You've been a long time saying that, Harry,” said Christina softly, looking away from him into the fire.

“The more fool I. Will you come?”

“How can I? The children—you wouldn't want to hurt them.”

“No, of course not. They're your children. Besides,” added Morcar with truth: “I'm too fond of them for their own sake, especially Jenny. But it might not hurt them—I sometimes think they'd be happier with me. It isn't as though I couldn't provide for them,” he concluded, not without some pride.

“But we shouldn't have them with us, Harry,” said Christina earnestly, her beautiful face turned up to his. “The law would see to that. Edward would see to that. He'd keep them away from me.”

“Well—children grow up, they leave home, they marry. Harington couldn't keep them from you when they are over twenty-one. Will you come to me then?”

“What's the use, Harry my darling? You know you yourself are not free.”

“I'll get free.”

“I don't see how you can,” murmured Christina softly. She
turned to the fire again, and her body fell so naturally, so inevitably, with such an effect of custom, into the pose of grief-stricken resignation that the phrase
acquainted with grief
came into Morcar's mind and his heart swelled with sorrow for her.

“I reckon I'd better get a Counsel's opinion,” he said in a savage tone.

Christina exclaimed. “Don't be angry with me, Harry,” she pleaded, looking up at him, her blue eyes wide. “I can't bear it if you are angry with me, really I can't.”

“My darling, I am never angry with you,” began Morcar, but before he could repeat the assurance in more convincing terms, Harington entered the room.

Immediately Morcar reached Annotsfield next day he went to Nasmyth and consulted him on the prospects of obtaining a divorce from Winnie. The lawyer, who was obviously astonished by Morcar's revelations about his wife, shook his head unhappily and thought the prospects poor. On the one side, it was fifteen years or more since Winnie's alleged adultery, for which Morcar had no evidence save her admission to him—and this, made without witnesses, she could simply deny. On the other side, looked at from Winnie's point of view: her husband had given her evidence of adultery—but it was some twelve years ago and she had taken no action, thus condoning the offence; he had deserted her, true, but then he had supplied her with a steady income. If steps had been taken sooner …

“But at this stage it would all have to be done over again, I fear,” said Nasmyth. “You would need to come together and live under the same roof, and then fresh evidence would have to be offered. Of course if your wife were willing to—er—assist, by bringing a suit, Mr. Morcar—indeed she will have to be willing, or I fear nothing can be done.”

“We might buy her assistance with money,” said Morcar grimly. Nasmyth gave an exclamation of professional horror. “Or on the other hand, we might not. It rather depends on the state of Prospect Mills, I'm afraid.”

“As far as I know,” said Nasmyth, looking down his nose: “Mr. Shaw is doing rather well just now. But I can in no case lend myself——”

“If Mr. Shaw is prosperous I shan't ask you to,” said Morcar.

“If you came together and then parted,” proffered Nasmyth.

“I couldn't risk that—she's too clever,” said Morcar, thinking of the day when Winnie and he became engaged. “Even if I could stand it personally—which I couldn't for a moment.”

“If you were to see your wife—in a solicitor's presence, of course,” began Nasmyth.

Morcar shook his head.

“Then a letter should be written,” said the lawyer.

Morcar hesitated, then agreed.

“You'd better let me compose it,” said Nasmyth. “If you write it yourself, you know, you are sure to say something inadvisable.”

Morcar again agreed.

The letter was duly composed, copied, signed and despatched.

While he waited for the reply Morcar lived in a strange dreamlike world. The thought of undergoing a divorce suit was exceedingly unpleasant to him, the more so as he was sure that Winnie would contrive to make him look a fool. But when he considered that by these means he might eventually secure Christina for his wife, bring her and the two children to Stanney Royd to live, the foundations of his world seemed to disintegrate and form themselves afresh into something resembling an earthly paradise. He spent some of the nights when he could not sleep in planning a delicious little sitting-room for Christina on the second floor in one of the rooms with a row of mullioned windows. The view, an endless recession of folding hills, was very fine, if one waived a mill chimney or two towards Annotsfield. It should be a delicate feminine room, an adaptation of the old to the modern, in white and that strange twilight blue which he associated with Christina—fringed white taffeta silk hovered agreeably at the back of his mind. The children could be accommodated in this room and in that; Edwin should have a car in a year or two—there was ample space in the garage. Morcar began to imagine himself strolling round the Stanney Royd garden with his wife on his arm, discussing domestic detail, flower-beds, chintz, the need for extra hot-water-rails in the bathrooms. He would show Syke Mills to Christina, he would show her Annotsfield. Happy laughter in the background would indicate the presence of Edwin and Jenny, still calling him Uncle Harry but with the shadow of sullen fear lifted from their faces. It was possible—very possible, thought Morcar cheerfully—that he and Christina would have children of their own. That these happy dreams would be obliged to wait until Jenny reached the age of twenty-one, Morcar did not for a moment believe. Let him once be free to marry, and he would make Christina leave her husband, come away with him; he could trust his strength of will to overpower her own, thought Morcar, smiling. Once she left her husband, Harington's pride would ensure the necessary divorce. Morcar paced his room, sleepless, through the night, revolving all these delightful plans, and rang up Nasmyth almost before his office opened next morning.

It was not Nasmyth, however, who eventually received Winnie's reply. One morning about a week after the despatch of the
letter Morcar, entering Syke Mills, thought that his clerks eyed him queerly, and on going into his private office found the reason. On his blotter, open, lay a sheet of cheap notepaper headed
Hurstcote, Hurst Bank, Annotsfield
. The blood rushed to Morcar's face as he picked it up—how like Winnie to embarrass him by sending the letter to his business address, where all his letters were opened by his secretary; she had probably not even troubled to mark the envelope personal. He read in Winnie's vehement chaotic black-stroked hand:
I shall never divorce you, Harry. W. M.

A black rage blotted Morcar's vision. His dreams of a happy life with a wife of his own choosing crashed to earth. A boy's ingenuous loyalty had impelled him to a decision which the cynicism of his middle years had confirmed, and this decision was not revocable except by a protracted struggle through acres of mud and scandal, with no certainty of reaching freedom at the end. That Winnie should bear his name, sign herself with his initial, seemed the last intolerable insult. As he tore the letter savagely into shreds Morcar experienced, beside his bitter disappointment at the blow to his personal happiness, a sense of humiliation, of shame. It seemed to him that he stood convicted lately of sins of omission for which all the prosperous order of Syke Mills could not atone.

The Sunday air was full of martial music, and on their way to the Palatine the party continually encountered processions of small boys marching along with a ferocious air which sat oddly on their childish faces. Christina shuddered when she saw them.

“Italian boys now belong to the State from the age of six,” she said. “Imagine taking little boys of six away from their mothers and teaching them to be soldiers!”

“Your little boy has been taken from his mother and taught to be a sailor,” said Harington.

“But Edwin went because he wanted to go and he's seventeen, Daddy,” objected Jennifer.

“I was joking, my dear Jenny,” said her father coldly. “Seriously, Christina, these Wolf Cubs are similar in organisation to our own Boy Scouts.”

“I don't think they are like Boy Scouts at all, Daddy,” said Jenny clearly. “They don't have to do a good deed a day or anything like that. Do they?” she asked, appealing to the guide, who spread out his hands and said: “I do not know,” in a reserved manner.

“It seems strange he doesn't know a detail like that,” said Christina—though she admitted the guide's real erudition she disliked him because he fixed his glowing brown eyes on her too admiringly and held Jennifer's elbow too long when helping her over Roman ruins.

“Of course he knows, my dear,” said Harington irritably: “But he doesn't wish to answer. How often have I to tell you that he is anti-James and therefore has to be particularly careful?”

“James” was the name some of the English people in Rome gave to Mussolini, so as to be able to express their views of him with safety and freedom.

“I shall be glad to be back in England again,” said Morcar suddenly.

“I'm sorry you're not enjoying the trip. It's your own fault you came—art and antiquities don't agree with Annotsfield, I suppose,” said Harington.

“I don't enjoy the antiquities much because I don't know the history they represent, but I enjoy the art better than you do, Edward,” retorted Morcar. He had long since made up his mind that he would always call Harington's bluff and never accept an insult even in joke from him—he would not buy Christina's company by complaisance of that kind. Since he knew he would never break this rule he was always able to keep his temper and speak pleasantly, and Harington did not resent his sparring. “It's just that I don't care for dictators. I don't like being in a country where people daren't speak their minds.”

“You'll probably find it necessary to overlook a few little details of that kind in post-war Europe,” suggested Harington in his smoothest and most sophisticated tone.

“Why? I shan't if I don't want to. We don't believe in that sort of thing in England.”

“Who told you that?” enquired the barrister.

“English history,” interpolated Jennifer neatly.

At this moment the guide luckily began to elucidate the
Domus Liviae
in one of his admirable historic sketches—he was not the ordinary kind of guide one hired for a few lire a day through a travel agency, but an especially knowledgeable man of high attainments and high fees, whom Harington had secured for the benefit of his daughter.

Jennifer, now sixteen, was revealing herself as a quite exceptional daughter, in whom her father took great pride. In appearance she was beginning to be very handsome, even in her schoolgirl navy blue; her thick golden hair, brushed till it shone and arranged very simply, her aquiline features, not small but admirably
shaped and proportioned, her pure clear fine skin, her large grey eyes, dark-lashed, spaced well apart, her generous mouth with its candid friendly smile, the lift of her head on her strong white neck, gave her a really noble, really classic beauty. She moved with a natural grace in a rather slow and quiet way except on the tennis-court and hockey-field, when she was swift and devastating. In addition to these advantages she seemed to possess a first-class brain; her career at school was exceeding even her father's expectations, and it was already settled that she should go up to Oxford. Harington's ambitions for his daughter varied, but were always high; at one time he thought she should marry an ambassador, at another that she should become a barrister. (He disapproved strongly of women in any profession, and especially in law, except when the woman concerned was his own daughter.) Hints on the subject of marriage were received by Jennifer with anger, on the subject of the law with grave consideration; she was in love with history at the moment, and had not decided yet, she remarked calmly, whether she would go in for law or no. It was Christina's present care to defer her husband's ambitions reaching crystallization before her daughter's; if this could not be achieved she feared a terrible contest of wills. She gave Morcar an imploring glance now; he interpreted it as he had interpreted many similar glances lately, as an appeal to him to keep Jennifer away from her father if he could manage it without appearing to do so. For unluckily Jennifer and her father seemed already to disagree on almost every subject. Jennifer had her mother's integrity and sympathy, her father's obstinacy; head-on collisions between them occurred every day. Morcar could not but admire the young girl's spirited resistance to Harington, for he often longed that Christina should show the same; at the same time he often felt vexed with Jenny because her independent manner troubled her mother so greatly. This morning things went fairly well except for a protracted argument on the character of Augustus Cæsar, whom Harington admired and Jenny denounced as mean and cold-hearted—a worse danger to liberty than bloodier tyrants, she observed shrewdly, because he made dictatorship seem respectable. Harington's pride in the capacity of his young daughter to make such an observation rather dimmed his irritation at being contradicted; he muttered a little but squeezed her arm in a friendly way—it was one of the moments when Morcar liked him.