Noble in Reason (33 page)

“You ought to have let well alone,” says John sardonically to me sometimes. “You should have stopped there, Chris.”

To this I reply with an emphatic negative. But it is true that Henrietta—Rie, as we call her—has caused us infinitely more trouble than the other two put together, and may perhaps continue to do so for the rest of her life. After the ordeal of producing twins, Hermia thought the bearing of a single child would be easily accomplished, but the birth proved difficult and she was seriously ill for several weeks. This was a bad beginning, and Rie has kept up this maximum anxiety ever since. Of delicate constitution, always ailing—I remember now with what a pang I saw the lines of her little ribs clearly visible in her thin body as Hermia rubbed her chest—stormy and sullen by turns, sallow, with her father's large nose and untidy fair hair, Rie was in her early years a really difficult
child. Devoted to me, she was apt to be fiercely jealous of Hermia, and though Hermia diminished this to some extent by being so quietly good that there were no aggressive spikes or moral hollows in her behaviour on which the claws of jealous criticism could fix, the problem remained. There was another problem, too, with which Rie confronted us: her jealousy of the twins. Nicholas and Christabel are heartily fond of Rie, indeed they cherish her most carefully against all the dangers to which her delicacy exposes her. But being much older, they have interests to which they cannot as yet introduce her, and as twins they have an especial biological bond which nothing can diminish. All this matters the more because Rie is a child of sensitive and deep affection; storms of feeling rage across her and can be seen reflected in her plain but mobile little face.

In the hurly-burly of the first decade of my family life, the continual effort required by the “bringing-up” of my children, two lines of thought constantly pressed themselves upon me.

The first concerned my childhood life at Ashroyd. I perceived now that there had been a warmth, a decency, an honest affection, an unselfishness, an absence of the coarse and the false, in our home life then which I only hoped my own home would emulate—if Hermia and I did half as well as my parents, I should congratulate myself. Yet what misery I had then experienced! To imagine that my own children, beneath their smooth fresh faces and springing hair, were suffering such agony as I went through, was a source of great anxiety to me. Chrissie I am sure has always been happy; she is rather like Netta in her joyous acceptance of life. But of Nick, who is very properly and naturally devoted to his mother, I have never been so sure. However, one day in his early teens we had a discussion on the subject of my writings, which I hope may have set the tone of our relationship. Someone having
mentioned my books to Nick at school, he asked me with an air of some distaste whether I expected him to read them.

The answer which sprang to my lips was a negative, but on reflection it seemed to me that both Nick and I would be running from our lions if we shirked this problem. Since Azgid and his story were a commonplace of reference in our household, I said so.

“But I can't read them all one after the other now,” objected Nick in his quiet polite tones. “There are too many, really.”

“No. All the same I think I shall lay down a parental command on this point,” said I. “You must have read them all by the time you're twenty-one. But I leave the time, place and manner of the reading to your discretion, and no report on your opinion of them is demanded.”

“Fair enough,” said Nick, nodding judicially.

No comment on my behaviour from my son could have given me more satisfaction, and we parted smiling amicably. (By the way, I don't think Chrissie ever managed to finish a book of mine, while Rie of course devoured them all at an early age.)

The second train of my thought at this time, started no doubt by the first, consisted of an intense interest in the child-parent relationship as I saw it in other families, and thus in the personalities of my own nephews and nieces, to which I had never given much attention before.

John's twins, sardonic, efficient, energetic, well-meaning and bossy, with reddish hair, seemed born to be the hospital matrons they now were, while Anne, though prettier and more attractive to men, was also sufficiently well equipped with aggressive qualities. I surmised that Edie might have had trouble in their teens with three such bouncing daughters and ventured to ask her if this was so, basing the question, of course, on my need for advice about my own children. Edie agreed
that her girls had been a handful, but she had not the words to tell me whether she had suffered from a jealous devotion on their part to John, or how she had coped with this and managed to retain, as she undoubtedly had, a strong position of command in the family. I noticed, however, with a painful sense of life's ironies, that it was Robert on whom she chiefly relied, and indeed he played the part of a most devoted and loving son to her.

Robert was by this time the handsomest of the Jarmaynes; a strong, tall, fair fellow, with a line of head and hand more elegant than John's other children, and a good deal of wit, he married so young that it was clear he had a great desire for a home of his own. Though his own family rapidly increased, he was always extremely kind to my children, whom of course he regarded as his half-brother and sisters, and for some reason had an especial feeling for Rie, who always seemed more at ease with him than with anybody else. She loved to go to Hilbert Mills and walk round the various departments with him, holding his hand. Indeed I could almost have felt some jealousy of her affection for Robert, if she had not flown to me and clung to me as soon as I appeared. I sometimes wondered whether this too open announcement of her preference for her father wounded Robert, for I noticed certain signs of discomfort in him on these occasions; he was not a man who showed feeling easily, but a slight heightening of colour and an avoidance of my eyes were visible.

Presently, however, this malaise on Robert's part was elucidated in a way which surprised me. One winter—it was the year my twins first went away to school—poor Edie slipped on a damp pavement, broke her leg, contracted pneumonia and died. Hermia and I were both extremely sorry; I respected and liked Edie, and Hermia, who had turned for help to her practical good sense through all the infant ailments of our children, had a warm affection for her. John and his children
mourned Edie very sincerely, and Robert was quite heartbroken.

Her death necessitated various financial rearrangements—a remaking of John's will, and so on—in which the Hilbert Mills shares were concerned, and accordingly John, Robert and myself, wearing black ties, met in the mill office on the Monday afternoon following her funeral, for discussion. These plunges into family affairs were always very distasteful to me, and the office at Hilbert Mills, though nowadays handsomely redecorated, recalled too many wretched scenes in my youth for me to be at ease there. Also, I was anxious as always to get back to my own work. So I daresay I was rather brusque and snappy, arid more eager to finish the proceedings quickly by agreeing to everything suggested than to listen with proper care to the explanations of the other two. After one of my hasty affirmations Robert, who was clearly still feeling sore and upset about Edie's death, suddenly lost his temper.

“This is a bit of a change, isn't it, father?” he said.

“What do you mean?” said I testily.

“You agreeing like this to all these arrangements which benefit me.”

“No, I don't think so, Robert,” said I more mildly, perceiving that we were on dangerous ground.

“Yes, it is. You've never shown any care for my interests before.”

“Now, Bob, that's enough,” said John sharply.

“I know you don't care for me as you do for Nick and Chrissie,” persisted Robert to me in a rough angry tone. “I say nothing about Rie—she's delicate, that's different, I understand that. But Nick and Chrissie—everything's done for them, nothing's for me. You don't care about me at all, you never did. Whatever I did, good or bad, you never expressed an opinion one way or the other, never gave me any advice. Those
letters you used to write me at school—they were like lumps of ice.”

“That's not fair, Robert,” I said. “I didn't want to write you commanding letters, I didn't want to interfere.”

“A father ought to want to interfere in his son's life,” grumbled Robert. “I bet you don't write letters like that to Nick and Chrissie.”

But the Jarmaynes have been here before, we are starting the tragedy of my father and Uncle Alfred all over again, I thought in horror; Robert is really jealous, and unhappy about our relationship. I exclaimed:

“But, Robert—you are not my son.”

“What do you mean?” said Robert, springing to his feet.

“My first wife was your mother, but you are not my son.”

“Whose son am I, then?”

“I don't know,” said I, uncertain whether I ought to speak the truth or not.

“Yes, you do. It's Uncle John, I suppose,” said Robert angrily, scowling at his father. John, who was sitting with his arms folded, made no reply, but steadily met his gaze.

“Well, I think you've both behaved like a couple of children,” said Robert in a scolding tone. “You ought to have told me long ago. What do you think I am? A child, or what? Are we still living under Queen Victoria? I might have wanted to marry Anne or something; and then where would you have been? I never heard such nonsense in my life! You can settle all this business by yourselves without me,” he went on, nodding angrily towards the company's books and certificates which lay on the desk, and moving towards the door: “If you don't trust me with my own father's name you needn't trust me with this; you can do all the work yourselves.”

“Now, Bob,” said John in a soothing tone.

“Oh, go to hell!” said Robert, slamming the door behind him.

“Well, we've been ticked off properly, Chris, it seems,” said John with a grin.

“I hope he won't—perhaps I shouldn't,” I stammered. “I'd no idea he cared about me at all.”

“Good heavens, Chris! He adores you. He's made a sort of fairy tale hero out of you. If you think I've enjoyed that, Chris, you're wrong. That's why he's so fond of your Henrietta, because he thinks she's so like you.”

“I hope he won't think he ought to rush off and leave Hilbert,” I said anxiously.

“Oh, he'll calm down. He's my son, not yours, Chris,” said John sardonically. “It's best he should know for certain, and now poor old Edie's gone there's no reason he shouldn't. I daresay he's had some idea before.”

At this point Robert suddenly returned, looking tight-lipped and bad-tempered. He sat down at the desk and drew the papers towards him with a determined air.

“Well, let's get this finished,” he said angrily. “Those shares that were bought for me with Uncle Chris's money—I don't want to have them.”

I myself had come to Hilbert in a bad temper, which the revelations by Robert and John had exacerbated. I now let it off the leash.

“Oh, shut up, Robert!” I exclaimed. “If I adopted you as my son, I did it with my eyes open because I was attached to your mother, and I'm not going to have any nonsense from you about it now.”

John gave a snort of laughter at this explosion and Robert, though he coloured, smiled and fixing his eyes on the papers set amicably to work. From that time onwards he and I were good friends, for our mental conflicts about each other were resolved.

Stephen was a very different kettle of fish. Neurotic, perplexed, uncertain, typical of the generation which found life
a waste land full of shivering, guilty men, he did well at Oxford and began well in a Civil Service post, but would never, I thought, rise really high—already a certain sensitive fretfulness about his career appeared in his talk and letters. After old Mrs. Graham died, Netta shared a flat in Hampstead with Stephen, and I occasionally saw them when professional affairs took me to town. Stephen's relations to his mother were painful to witness; he nagged, Netta suffered and adored. On one occasion when I had called to take Netta out to dine, while I waited for her to put the finishing touches to her hair— she was usually late for any appointment nowadays—Stephen unexpectedly came in.

“Stephen!” exclaimed Netta in dismay.

“Well, what's the matter, mother? Good evening, Uncle Chris.”

“You said you weren't coming in to dinner.”

“I changed my mind. I'll just have a snack here.”

“I do wish you'd told me earlier, darling, then I could have had something ready for you,” said Netta, throwing off her coat in a .flutter and diving towards the kitchen.

“We shall be late for the theatre, Netta, if you delay long,” said I.

“There's no need for her to delay at all,” said Stephen angrily. “I can get something for myself.”

“It won't take me a minute,” called Netta, her head in a cupboard.

“Leave me alone, mother, do!” exclaimed Stephen in a rage.

I felt strongly vexed, and words of rebuke rose to my lips. But suspecting that my irritation with Stephen rose in part at least from my old jealousy and fear of his father, which might still perhaps be not quite dead, I commanded myself, and throwing a cordiality I did not quite feel into my tone, said: “You'd better come and dine with us, Stephen.”

“No, thank you, Uncle Chris,” said Stephen. “I won't spoil your tête-à-tête.”

There was passion in his voice, and it occurred to me that, having no father on whom to vent his spleen, he was visiting the sins of both parents on the head of one, feeling towards Netta both a jealousy of her affection and a resentment of her authority. Netta now came out of the kitchen and stood looking at the pair of us with a perplexed, uncertain and helpless air which wrung my heart.

“Don't let two rivals for your company worry you, Netta,” I said on a jocular note.