Noble in Reason (28 page)

“No,” said I. “I'll give you the money myself.”

“What, a sum like that? Have you got it?” exclaimed John.

“Yes. I take it hard you didn't tell me all this before, instead of letting me play about like a fool up here,” said I in a loud angry tone—I was so choked with shame that I could not utter at all unless I shouted. “And how's father through it all? From what you said to old Hodgson he's ailing?”

“Well, if you must know, he was so upset when I told him about the spinner that he had a bit of a stroke. Oh, you needn't take on,” said John crossly as I exclaimed. “It wasn't a bad one; he's recovering. But you can imagine, what with him and Uncle Albert both, poor Edie's having a bit of a picnic.”

“I'll come back with you to Hudley tomorrow,” said I.

“There's no need.”

“I shall come all the same.”

“You'll do as you please, I suppose,” said John, shrugging his shoulders. “I daresay father'd be glad enough to see you. He's always talking about you nowadays—I get fair sickened of it, if you want to know. But the important thing is the money.”

“I'll make out a cheque now,” said I stiffly.

A certain grim humour, as well as a considerable inner drama, attaches itself to my memories of our journey north together next day. John and I sat side by side in silence, our arms tightly folded across our chests, gazing straight ahead and scowling at our own thoughts. In retrospect I see that we must have looked the very picture of one of those pairs of brothers, familiar in northern anecdote, who quarrel over some trivial matter and do not speak to each other again for fifty years—for ironically enough, as it seemed to me then, by this time we were
in outward appearance emphatically brothers; we had grown physically much alike.

As the country rolled past the train windows hour after hour, the green midlands giving place to the sombre industrial landscapes of the north and the weather gradually darkening, in a manner I found only too symbolic, from a bright sunny morning in London to a dark wet afternoon in Yorkshire, the thoughts I have already recorded about the necessity of a lofty aim for the re-integrated character, were churned out in my mind. I still experienced the humiliation which had stung me the night before; I was ashamed of the selfish indifference I had shown towards my family's fortunes and determined to repair this wrong, though the prospect of revisiting Hudley was a gloomy one to me. But when at last the first mill chimney rose above the horizon as we entered Yorkshire, to my astonishment I felt a certain angry satisfaction.

I delved about in my mind to find the reason for this, but for a time it remained obscure. I knew that I was profoundly right to return to Hudley, but could not altogether see why. It was not a question, I thought, of preferring Yorkshire to London, or a province to a metropolis, or even a birthplace to a place where one had no roots. Perhaps it was a question of one's true home being the place where one confronts, as opposed to the place where one escapes, one's responsibilities.

With this I had to be for the time content. It was not till several years later, when I was removing from Ashroyd, that I found the full answer. Sorting out some books to take with me to my new home, I came across the row of old
Strand Magazines
which I had read as a child, and at once began to seek out a story which I now realized had haunted me ever since. The tale was taken from the Persian and had delicious illustrations by R. H. Millar. A certain prince, on inheriting his father's throne, found that by ancient custom an indispensable preliminary to coronation was a fight with a large red lion
kept in the palace den. Azgid, afraid, fled the country rather than fight the lion. In three different countries he found agreeable homes; a horse, a friend, a love. But just as he stretched out his hand to accept these boons, in each case he found that a lion had first to be encountered. So he decided to return home and fight the lion there, whereupon all he had desired was added unto him. The moral, of course, which Azgid inscribed over the door of his palace in letters of gold, was:
Never run from the lion.

Hudley and my family were the point of defeat, the original large red lion, for me; until I conquered there I conquered nowhere.

“Why are all those men standing outside that building?” I said idly to John as the taxi drove along the Hudley main street.

“That's the Labour Exchange.”

“But what are they waiting for?” I persisted, puzzled.

“Look, Chris,” said John in a tone of exasperation: “Now you're in the West Riding, for heaven's sake have some sense. Don't go about asking silly questions. Use your eyes and read the newspapers—you'll learn soon enough. Things are very far from grand here, let me tell you. We're having a bit of a slump, you may have heard.”

I asked no more questions, and maintained a silence as grim as his own until we had drawn up at the gate of Ashroyd and were walking up the sloping path side by side. My spirits sank at the sight of the familiar path and steps, the lace-curtained windows and the yellow glass knob on the door. The house badly needed a coat of paint, I thought. Looking over its whole façade to check that impression, I saw that the blinds in the front bedroom were partly lowered.

“But how is father really?” I exclaimed.

“As a matter of fact you're going to get a bit of a shock when you see him, Chris,” said John. “But he's all right, you know; he's coming round.”

A moment later I stood at my father's bedside. He was lying flat, hardly visible among his pillows, with closed eyes. John pulled up a blind and the cold rainy afternoon light struck across the room; my father frowned and turned his head aside. He looked small and shrivelled; his once crisp flaming hair was dim and untidy, the crumpled collar of his old-fashioned striped flannel nightdress revealed his thin lined neck. His eyelids appeared white and defenceless without their sheltering glasses. A sudden rush of pitying love for this weak and helpless being filled my heart. One of his bony hands lay outside the coverlet; I covered it with my own; he clasped it feebly in his fingers but did not open his eyes.

“Here's Chris come to see you, father,” said John loudly.

My father's eyes flew open and he stared at me.

“Well, now then!” he said in a thin high tone but with evident pleasure. “Chris, eh?” Then his look changed from welcome to anxiety, and he slightly shook his head. “We're having a bad do at Hilbert, Chris,” he said.

“Never mind, father,” said I soothingly. “John will pull it round.”

My father gave a weak but derisive snort.

“Have you come to stay with me for a bit, then, Chris?” he said.

His voice had that peculiar West Riding intonation which is rough because its owner does not wish to appear to plead, and I was moved. I answered:

“Yes.”

“Just till I get on my feet again, eh?”

“Yes.”

In the event I remained with him five years.

It was a protracted ordeal. He was slowly slipping down the
incline towards death, but his excellent constitution, his great spirit and his natural tenacity made this a long process, with many pauses by the way, so that he experienced frequent alternations of hope and disappointment, very painful to share. He soon recovered, as far as recovery was possible, from this first attack, and in outward appearance looked much as before, though a trifle thinner. But his strength was variable; he could sometimes do the most unlikely things with ease— especially when those in charge of him had tried to veto them —and at other times could hardly perform the simplest service for himself. This was profoundly troubling for him, and perplexing for those about him, whose decisions were always being made to appear wrong.

Sometimes, for example, during our first few months together, my father would insist on going to the mill, and appear so well that it seemed a mistake to try to prevent it, only to be brought home in John's car an hour later, looking utterly exhausted.

“Can't you keep him at home, Chris?” said John crossly on these occasions. “There's nothing for him to do at Hilbert —he only goes looking round and finding out things he'd much better not know.”

It was right, I felt, that in his herculean efforts to avoid economic catastrophe, John should be left as unhampered as possible; on the other hand, when my father burst into my room beaming, to say he was just going down to Hilbert for an hour, there was a point beyond which dissuasion seemed cruel; moreover, if I did not take him in my car, he was capable of walking off alone. Sometimes, too, old customers, not realizing his state of health, would ask to see him on some point or other, or manufacturing friends would ask for his advice, or our finishers, blamed for a damaged piece of cloth, would grumble that if old Mr. Jarmayne saw it he'd take a different view. Then John, who liked to give him pleasure when it was compatible
with business, would arrange an appointment for him, and I would arrange to drive him there. But on such days I had to abandon all hope of doing any work. He rose earlier than usual, and finding time heavy on his hands, would burst into my room two or three times, excitedly enquiring whether proper arrangements for our excursion together had been made. Sometimes this preliminary excitement was too much for him, and at the last moment he would cry off the appointment; once we were halfway there when he announced mournfully that I must turn round and go home. Sometimes when we arrived, he declined to get out of the car and sent me in to take his place; the interview I have previously recorded, between my old schoolfellow Atkinson and myself, took place on one of these occasions.

At the end of the first three months, however, he was ill again. He had seemed so much better lately that I had begun to entertain hopes of returning to London. His illness postponed any such return, and when at last he came downstairs again, he appeared so frail, his clothes hung on him so loosely, his shoulders were so bent, his face so haggard, his blue eyes so dim, that my heart sank, for he was clearly not fit to be left alone. I congratulated him on his convalescence. My father snorted, and after a moment observed:

“I suppose now I'm better you'll be off back to London, eh?”

I perceived that my previous hopes of return had been visible to him, and might even have caused his attack. I sighed.

“Would you like me to stay with you, father?”

“How do you mean, stay?”

“Give up my flat and live here with you.”

“Of course I should like you to stay!” exclaimed my father in a belligerent tone. “What nonsense you talk, Chris! As if you didn't know! But could you earn your living from here, eh?”

“I can earn it anywhere nowadays.”

“Well then!” said my father crossly.

I gave up my flat and settled down at Ashroyd. My uncle Alfred was now living with John and Edie, and his housekeeper, a faithful old retainer who had served the Ashworth Jarmaynes in many capacities for many years, was persuaded by Edie to come and look after us. She gave us splendid service, and though she and my father quarrelled heartily at times, she humoured his foibles as no-one else could. But there were some services he would not allow her to render. Proud and prudish, he could not bear a woman to dress or undress him; he required a son for this purpose. If I could not be present, he insisted on the attendance of John. John thought this an unnecessary fuss, but came punctiliously enough; the trouble was that on these occasions they always fell to discussing textiles and thence into a vehement quarrel, when my father expressed strong distrust and disapproval of the way John was managing the mill, and threatened to come down to Hilbert next day and take the reins into his own hands. So that whenever I returned home from a brief stay in London for professional affairs, or from a rare visit to the theatre, John always greeted me gloomily with: “He's been on about those reins again.” At first I feared my father might really burst into Hilbert Mills and make a scene on these lines, but after his second illness he never again demanded to be taken there; he evidently realized that his strength was inadequate to the effort.

Occasionally, however, while Mrs. Womersley was busy upstairs and I was working, he would suddenly put on his hat and coat and go tottering off down Walker Lane.

“He's off again, Mr. Chris,” said Mrs. Womersley, putting her head round my door.

As he was not fit to be out alone in traffic, I had to leave my work and go out in search of him at once. It is vexing to
be broken off in the middle of a paragraph, and I was not always as agreeable as I should have been when I found him. One morning after what my father's grandchildren now jokingly called
a rein night,
he disappeared in this way. I sought him in all his ordinary Walker Lane haunts—there were several small shops where he liked to call; I would find him sitting on a high chair beside the counter discussing the price of carrots or buying an unwanted pound of mixed biscuits, for the shopkeepers were kind to him. He was not in any of these, however, and had not been seen in their neighbourhood; a shower had begun to fall and I felt genuinely anxious about him, as well as experiencing the irritated sense of responsibility natural to these occasions. I returned to Ashroyd but he was not there; I telephoned Hilbert Mills to see if he had at last acted on his threat, but he was not there. John shared my alarm; he sent out a couple of office staff to search and himself drove slowly along the route which my father might have taken, scanning vehicles and interrogating conductors at bus-stops. Mrs. Womersley and I meanwhile ran up and down Walker Lane, enlisting the help of passers-by. After almost an hour of this vain search I decided to inform the police, and was hurrying up the Ashroyd path in order to telephone when I heard a knocking on the next door window. A pleasant young couple with small children now inhabited the Darrells' house, and it was the wife who knocked and beckoned. I turned to her door, where she met me.