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I have about Mrs. Rainier—that he's hiding something."
"Maybe they're hiding something together?" His smile was of
within was a second garden, not much bigger than a large room, but so enclosed by trees and carpeted with flowers that one could hardly have believed it to exist in the middle of a London borough. "It's a secret," she confided. "I only show it to close friends—or to those who I hope are going to be."
really help Charles— apart from just office work. He needs the right sort of companionship sometimes—he has difficult moods, you know. Or perhaps you don't know
alone—like men you sometimes see outside their cottages in the country—at peace. He never is, you know."
"They're probably not really at peace at all—just too old and tired to worry about things any more."
There's a REAL secret garden there—I mean one that everybody knows about."
equilibrium, for if there is one thing more mentally upsetting to a family than death, it must be (on account of its rarity) resurrection. All of which Charles either deduced from or read between the lines
One morning at breakfast, while he was in the midst of reading Sheldon's latest assurance that things were still about the same, a page-boy brought a wire informing him at a glance that things were no longer the same at all. His father had died suddenly a few hours before.
Charles asked for details of his father's death and received them; then, alone, he went upstairs and entered the room where the old man lay. The numbness in his heart almost stirred; he touched the dead hand, feeling a little dead himself as he did so. Then he went downstairs to meet the others of the family, among them three recent arrivals, Jill with Kitty, and Julian. Jill was a heavily built, smartly dressed woman in her late forties, the eldest of the family and the widow of a civil servant who had left her with a daughter by an earlier marriage of his own. Kitty was fourteen and
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During the difficult interval between death and the funeral it was Sheldon who took control like some well-built machine slipping into a particularly silent but effective gear.
opprobrium,
way you can always tell the time by him, and the way he always catches the train—at least I hope he does, in case somebody like you goes round his firm dismissing everyone who's late... Oh, but what's going to happen, Uncle Charles—eventually?" "You mean will he stop running?" "Yes, or will the train stop running, or will he stop kissing his wife, or will you stop being able to dismiss people?—I don't know, it all seems so fragile—the least touch—" "I've had that feeling." "Oh, you HAVE?" Then pleadingly: "Don't make a joke about too much to drink, or lobster for supper. Please don't make a
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There were few positive signs that his job could be regarded as approaching an end, and it was small satisfaction to know that without his efforts the whole concern would have already foundered like a waterlogged ship.
As it was, the pumps were just a few gallons ahead of the still-encroaching ocean.
effort; he was giving the job so much that he had to give it more, because "if you work hard enough at something, it begins to make itself part of you, even though you hate it and the part isn't real." He wrote that in a letter to Kitty, explaining why he would have to postpone returning to Cambridge for another term.
He was still at his desk in the Rainier office when Kitty left Newnham in 1924. The desk was the same, one of
in Old Broad Street within a few yards of the Stock Exchange,
Much had happened since 1921. He had pulled Rainier's out of the depths into shallow water; there had even, during the second half of 1923 and first few months of 1924, been a few definite pointers to dry land. The preference dividend was now being paid again, while the ordinary shares, dividendless and without sign of any, stood at twelve shillings and were occasionally given a run up to sixteen or seventeen.
and they were all comfortably off by any standards except those of the really rich.
1924. The ancient Irish problem had apparently been settled;
By 1924 Charles also had changed a little. It was not so much that he looked older—rather that he seemed to have reached the beginnings of a certain agelessness that might last indefinitely.
he was satisfyingly known as the kind of man who gave no trouble, drank little, tipped generously but not lavishly, and always appeared to be wearing the same perfectly neat but nondescript suit of clothes. The fact that he was head of the Rainier firm merely added, if it added at all, to the respect they would have felt for such a
"Oh, Uncle Charles, did you mind? I felt I must call—I feel so sad, I don't know what to do with my life—I've said good-bye to so many people there seems nobody left in the world but you!"
"No, NEVER do that. Be yourself—as you were in all those letters. And if you'd rather have the Cambridge life than run the firm, then give it up—before it's too late!"
The little college girl, treasuring letters from the beloved uncle who saved the family from ruin... But haven't you FINISHED that yet? Haven't you done enough for us? You pulled the firm through the worst years—now trade's improving, Chet says, so NOW'S your time to get free! Don't you realize that?
"Managing the firm, increasing the dividends, refloating the companies, a regular Knight of the Prospectus, Saviour of the Mites of Widows and Orphans
another attempt to harness a vague shape of things to come with the even vaguer shapes of things that had been.
fellows"); their favourite conclusion to an argument the opinion that, "Ah, well, these things'll probably right themselves in time."
solve; the week-end trek to the coasts and country through the bottle-necks of Croydon and Maidenhead; the blossoming of the huge motor coach, and the mushrooming of outer suburbs until London almost began where the sprawling coast towns left off—while in bookshops and theatres the rage was for Michael Arlen and Noel Coward, two men whose deft orchestrations of nerves without emotions, cynicism without satire, achieved
a success that must have increased even their own disillusionment. In this same
"The day will come when men may be KILLED for laughing." "And that will also be the day when men laugh at killing."
the curious English custom by which a political majority decides the dogmatic beliefs of a religious minority. And during the next year, 1928, the House of Commons again turned down the Revised Prayer Book, as if it tremendously mattered. But this flurry of against-ness was soon exhausted, and Englishmen, including Members of Parliament, resumed their benevolence towards most things that continued to happen throughout the world.
he remained vaguely troubled whenever he thought of Roland Turner and Kitty; he slightly disapproved of that young man, and felt avuncular in so doing. He did not see them again that year, for they were abroad most of the time, and he himself had many other things to worry about.
"You mean you WANT to stay with the firm? It's still a game, as you said in one of those letters—a game you want to win even if it isn't worth playing? Haven't you won enough?... Or maybe it's more than a game now —it's become the life-work?"
that. But then, when I began to look into things personally, I found it kept a good many other families going. Over three thousand, to be precise."
"I see. Responsibility. Uncle Atlas." "You can laugh at me if
nonsense. But there IS a responsibility, no use denying it, in owning a three-thousand-family business. If I can contrive a little security for those people—"
"But there ISN'T any security—as you said yourself when I asked you about your thousand a year. It's an illusion put up by banks and insurance companies and lawyers and building societies and everybody who goes without what he wants today because he thinks he'll enjoy it more later on. Supposing some day we all find out there isn't any 'later on'?"
"Then you try to comfort those three thousand families by encouraging them to believe in a future that doesn't exist?"
What I DO comfort them with, since you put it that way, is enough of a regular wage to buy food and pay their rent and smoke cigarettes and go to the local cinema. That keeps them satisfied to go on waiting." "For the big grab?"
"Your other ex-fiancé put it even more simply, my dear, when he said I didn't believe in a damn thing."
Just talking to you freely like this makes the difference, though you don't talk to ME freely—there always seems a brake on—I can hardly believe you once sent me those letters."
"I haven't said I don't." "Oh NO!" "Would it be so very incredible?" "It would be FANTASTIC!" "Then it IS fantastic."
"There's the oddest thing in my mind for us to do—if it's all real and not a dream. Let's go down the Danube in a canoe, as you always wanted."
like." His face was very pale. "I'll take a year off—from the firm and the City and the three thousand families and everything else. Let someone else have his turn..."
a little bemused at so many decisions made all at once, somewhat startled that they must all have been his own, yet ready to accept them with a loyalty that might well become more enthusiastic when he had had a chance to think them over. At breakfast he compared
he assured her laughingly that he had and did, and immediately happiness blazed across the rolls and honey between them as they planned the trivial details of
The future was still fantastic to talk about, even to think about, and they agreed for the time being not to give themselves the even heavier task of explaining it to others.
And so began an interlude that might have been in another world, and almost was.
