The Rise of Henry Morcar Read online

  The next stage in the intimacy came when Morcar was invited to their home, a small but well-proportioned house in a quiet old Kensington square. It had a graceful iron balcony, festooned with wisteria; the house-door, the old-fashioned shutters, were painted a glossy deep bright blue. Within, all the walls were parchment-coloured; the floors of polished wood were sparsely but finely covered with Indian rugs, which it seemed had belonged to Christina’s father. The furniture consisted of choice “pieces”—it was a word Morcar had never heard before but soon picked up though without venturing to speak it—bought one by one at auctions, country farmhouses, secondhand dealers’. Christina’s drawing-room upstairs was a place of beauty and repose, with its light walls, its delicate Indian rugs in which blue predominated, its fine old furniture mixed with a few comfortable chintz-covered armchairs, the small cherished Sickert over the mantelpiece, the group of old family silhouettes displayed on a screen, the great jars and bowls of flowers, the low white bookcases, the solitary photograph, a fine strange seascape of Harington’s production, the agreeable ornaments, some of soft blue gilt-patterned glass. There were a good many objects of Indian art of one kind or another scattered about the Haringtons’ house: Kashmire shawls, small brass statuettes of fine workmanship, silk panels, lacquered boards, garlanded lamps, diagrams of Rangoli picture patterns (which fascinated Morcar particularly).

  Christina’s father, it seemed, had been something rather high up in the Indian administration—governor of some province, perhaps; Morcar was uncertain, and Christina did not enlighten him. This seemed in some curious way to entitle Harington (not Christina) to a knowledge of India, and he often expressed strong views which might be summed up in his frequent exclamation: “Those damned natives don’t know when they’re well off.” Nothing made Morcar recall his Liberal ancestry so clearly as to listen to Harington’s tirades about India, which Harington was apt to conclude: “I’m sure your father, Christina, would have thought the same.” Morcar was convinced of few things more emphatically than that Christina’s father, a noted administrator whom, as he understood, Christina much resembled and greatly loved, would have thought nothing of the kind; and he was confirmed in this by Christina’s silence on these occasions. She was not prepared to sacrifice her father or her children to agreement with her husband, Morcar noticed; everything else with a too generous, too lavish, too eagerly yielding hand, she threw away for his sake. “Never mind,” she said in her tone of loyal, loving consolation to all her husband’s innumerable complaints: “Never mind. We’ll do——” something of a remedial nature, which would sacrifice her own leisure and pleasure to his incessant requirements.

  Christina’s father had been widowed early, and she had spent her childhood in a country vicarage in Kent, the home of her father’s oldest friend, who was Edward Harington’s father. Morcar drove down with the Haringtons to Bersing one weekend, and found Canon Harington a small silver-haired widower, dignified, simple, an Oriental scholar. The vicarage was large and well tended; in the centre of its smooth green lawn, lined by rosy Canterbury bells and pink sweet williams, stood a cedar tree so old its lower branches were supported by stakes and chains. The sweet green country, so warm and mild, its fruitful fields sheltered by tall windbreaks, astonished Morcar, accustomed to the harsher West Riding mould, as much as the hat-touching politeness of the villagers. (For himself, he greatly preferred the straightforward bluntness of, say, Nathan—Nathan was his Daisy foreman—but it was interesting to see these southern manners.) An old castle stood in Bersing parish; with the people who owned the castle, descendants of those who built it in Norman times, the Haringtons had a distant but clear relationship. It was at Bersing that Morcar discovered, from a chance remark of the Canon’s, that the poverty, the narrowed circumstances, which Harington continually deplored, included a united unearned income, from bequests of Christina’s father and Edward’s mother, which approached four figures. Doubtless such a sum did not go far when one lived in London, had a son designed for the navy—the navy was traditional in the Harington family; Edward’s eldest brother had perished at sea in the War—and a daughter to follow her mother at Roedean; but looking at it from the point of a man who had to “make” every penny he had, Morcar thought Harington quite well placed and lucky. Harington on the other hand seemed to imagine that when one had a mill money rolled in upon one without further effort—“your workmen go on making cloth all the time you’re away, Morcar,” he said, when urging Morcar once to extend his stay in London.

  Every time Morcar saw Harington and Christina he witnessed some violent outbreak of temper from the barrister, similar to that against the unlucky waiter at their first meeting, or some blighting comment which mildewed the company’s enjoyment. There was the morning when the marmalade on the breakfast-table was not of the thick peel-crowded variety known as “Oxford”; there was the Saturday noon when he brought Morcar home unexpectedly and found nothing for lunch except a couple of meagre chops. There were the awful weeks after a judge at some provincial assize rebuked him for insufficient preparation of a case; there was the time when the laundry had over-stiffened his dress-shirt button-holes. There were continual clashes with theatre attendants, taxi-drivers, porters, waiters, ticket-inspectors. Morcar thought he began to see a motive, a pattern, so to say a theme-song, in Harington’s rages. On the surface, they were caused by some material discomfort, but beneath that lay the deeper cause, a hurt to Harington’s pride. This pride was a pride of class. The Oxford marmalade represented to him his University, his social standing, his way of life, his claim; he quarrelled with all who by a lack of service, a frustration of his desires, seemed to deny this claim. This was confirmed for Morcar on the evening when, dining in Notens Square, he first met the Harington children and saw them beneath the lash. The family had been away to the sea for their summer holiday; Morcar, who remembered every detail he heard about Christina, knew the dates of this holiday very accurately and contrived to be in town a week or so after their return. He rang up Harington to offer entertainment, but received instead a jovial invitation to come to Notens Square that night and dine off a brace of pheasants which one of the Castle relatives had sent from their September shoot.

  “The children are at home,” concluded the barrister. “I believe Christina would like you to see them. Don’t be late.”

  Morcar rang the bell punctually and was rewarded by finding Christina alone in the drawing-room with her two fair children. The boy in Etons, the girl in softly coloured printed silk, short-sleeved, very full and childish in its folds, rose on his entrance; they gave him the effect of gathering about their mother and gazing at him from large hostile eyes. Edwin’s were blue, though not of Christina’s rich tint; Jennifer’s were grey, but warm and fine, not pale like her father’s. The girl was serious and handsome; the boy, a pleasant lad enough, seemed more commonplace. Their manners were excellent, courteous but unaffected and easy, as he had expected from Christina’s children. Jenny poured the sherry very seriously and carefully; Edwin seriously and carefully handed it. Harington came in, late but affable; he drew Jenny towards him, and while joking about the peer’s peerless pheasants, fondled her. Morcar watched him.

  “Perhaps you don’t care for children, Morcar?” exclaimed Harington abruptly, evidently struck by his sombre expression.

  “I don’t know any,” said Morcar.

  Harington’s perceptions were keen enough when not blinded by anger; he dropped the subject and they went down to dine.

  It was his custom on informal occasions to carve at a side table. He did so tonight, or rather began to do so, for on the first impact of carving-knife and bird he exclaimed angrily:

  “Christina! This bird is ruined! It’s not cooked! It’s red raw!”

  “Try the other, dear,” said Christina hastily.

  “The other’s just the same. Ruined! Raw! Come and look at them! Come and see for yourself. Come and look, I say!”

  The unhappy Christina was obliged to ri
se and inspect the birds, even, at her husband’s command, to prod them. Harington by now was quite out of his command; his face was crimson, words poured from his lips in a scathing torrent. Christina, still holding in one hand her table-napkin, stood before him like a scolded schoolgirl. The fact that the scene was comic as well as tragic in its implications made Morcar all the more furious; it occurred to him to look at the children who, he felt sure, must be Christina’s chief concern. The boy sat with hanging head, flushed, his lower lip quivering; the girl seemed cut in stone, pale and erect, gazing ahead with a look of contempt as though chiselled on her face.

  “Perhaps you omitted to inform the cook of the dinner-hour?” said Harington sarcastically.

  “Perhaps Cook doesn’t know how to cook pheasants, Daddy,” piped up Edwin suddenly in defence of his mother, in his shrill young tones.

  “Be silent, sir!” roared Harington.

  The make-believe fury in his voice was now coloured by a real rage, and Morcar suddenly understood that his vexation over this mishap with the pheasants arose because it seemed to indicate that his cook was not of the kind used to dealing with game—not the kind of cook his castle cousins had. His cook was not commensurate with his class; he had lost prestige, face.

  “Never mind,” said Christina in her lovely soothing tone: “I’ll send them out to be recooked.”

  “And what shall we do meanwhile? Sit and twiddle our thumbs?”

  “If you could possibly develop those sea-prints you spoke of, I could have a look at them before I go north,” suggested Morcar easily.

  “Develop in a dinner-jacket,” criticised Harington scornfully. “Suitable, very.”

  The matter was settled so, however. Harington took his son to the dark-room in the basement; Christina, Morcar and Jenny went up to the drawing-room. Christina paused, one foot on the lowest stair.

  “Go downstairs, children dear, and ask Cook to give you both a thick slice of bread and butter, to carry you on,” she said.

  “I’m not hungry, Mummy,” said Jenny coldly.

  Edwin seemed to wish to emulate this refusal, but his flesh was too strong for his spirit and he was soon munching, to judge from his father’s petulant comments on the dark-room threshold, which echoed up through the house.

  “I’m so sorry for this confusion and delay,” apologised Christine when they reached the drawing-room. She looked flushed and weary. “You must be very hungry, Mr. Morcar.”

  “Perhaps he’d like a slice of bread and butter too,” suggested Jenny in a tone not unlike her father’s at his most sardonic.

  Morcar laughed. He was genuinely amused and laughed whole-heartedly. It saddened him, however, to see how the two faces watching him brightened at the sound.

  “Put on one of the new records, Jenny,” said Christina.

  The three sat in happy silence for nearly an hour, listening to sweet music. Morcar heard little of it, but was content to sit and gaze at Christina’s face.

  When at last it was reported that the birds were done, Harington could not leave the dark-room, and they spent another hungry fifteen minutes. At last they were all reassembled round the board; the table-napkins, re-folded, had lost some of their pristine freshness and Harington scowled at them, but all else was fresh and newly-set, so he passed them by. Christina joked bravely about the unusual gap between soup and game, the children smiled dutifully and Harington, who was clearly ashamed of the delay he had caused by his photographic process though not at all of his bad temper, played up well. He stuck in the fork; it was a moment of suspense.

  “Ah!” he said. “Christina, Cook may be congratulated.”

  Three sighs of relief came from the listening family, and in spite of himself Morcar could hardly avoid breathing a fourth. As he looked about, smiling, after doing so, he met Jenny’s eye fixed on him intently. They stared at each other with great solemnity for a long moment, then Morcar, greatly daring, winked at her. Jenny’s thick fair eyebrows rose in astonishment; she seemed stunned, appeared to ponder; then suddenly her face changed as Christina’s sometimes did, into a sunny, joyous smile.

  After this incident—as it seemed to Morcar strangely enough—the Haringtons took him more closely to their family bosom. Perhaps it was a relief, an amelioration of their private nightmare, to feel that Morcar had seen them at their worst and still liked them—he was at pains to proffer an invitation very shortly after. Perhaps Harington was grateful for someone to patronise. Morcar guessed sardonically—for he sometimes heard echoes in the children’s speech—that Harington spoke of him to other friends as my wool man, my satanic millowner, my rich Yorkshire tyke—he smells of money; not out of the top drawer, of course, but a good fellow all the same. Morcar submitted to this; he submitted too to let Harington pick his brains and achieve a reputation for industrial knowledge on the pickings. If it came to that, Morcar admitted honestly, the picking was not all on one side. The two men had a certain common interest in their æsthetic faculties, on Morcar’s part undeveloped except as regards textiles. Morcar genuinely admired the barrister’s photography, and took an initiated interest in his lighting and composition effects. Morcar learned from the Haringtons’ pictures, their rugs, their chintz, their prints, from Harington’s still-lifes and Christina’s careless elegance, even from the children’s party charades. Soon the three adults were on first-name terms; Morcar gladly endured Harington’s version of his name, which his suave drawl turned into something resembling Herry, in exchange for the privilege of uttering the magic syllables Christina.

  For the children, what deep thoughts went on in their young minds he could not know, but they soon called him Uncle Harry and treated him as a very present help in trouble, a staunch friend who could be relied on to take their side.

  That Christina should feel him always at her hand to help her, a comforting, sustaining presence, was Morcar’s aim. “This will be better perhaps,” he said mildly, adjusting the position of a lamp or the angle of a chair. “We can easily telephone,” said Morcar when some difficulty arose and Harington’s anger threatened: “We can run over and fetch it—we can have it sent by rail—I can drop round and change the tickets in the morning.” Harington’s surface manners to his wife were of course those of a gentleman; he never omitted to rise when she rose, to open doors, to carry coats, to give her precedence; he taught his son to do the same under threat of fearful penalties and reviled (at considerable length) the low-bred behaviour of all who did otherwise. But he was apt to emerge from the small room downstairs used as his study and shout: “Christina!” and when she hurried to him to discover that he wanted a sheet of notepaper from the bureau or an invitation which was staring him in the face over his mantelpiece. Morcar intervened whenever he could to spare Christina the tasks which her husband’s egoism thus dumped on her, against which her nature was too generous to rebel. She grew, he hoped and believed, to rely on him when he was present, turning quickly towards him in any difficulty, without ever asking for his help or admitting that she needed it. This situation, where Morcar was half in her confidence, half out, was unlikely to last, and Morcar did not intend that it should; it would come to all or nothing in the way of confidence between them, and he meant it should be all.

  One of the familiar scenes of Harington’s exacting temper gave him the chance he wished. It was winter and during the children’s term-time; the Haringtons were entertaining guests for cocktails; Morcar, arriving early for the party by request, found the maid wearing an embarrassed air. He stood waiting while she hung his coat in the closet, taking as it seemed an unconscionable time about this simple act; then the sound of voices from upstairs told him what was wrong. He went up swiftly, and found that some error over the drinks had excited Harington’s rage. He was scolding furiously; Christina, trying to soothe, succeeded only in adding fuel to the flames. Even as Morcar entered, the doorbell rang below. A look of deepened misery flashed across Christina’s lovely face. Morcar had a moment’s view of what it must mean to a wom
an to have guests arriving in her home while her husband raged. The social exposure imminent in such a situation must be hell to her.

  “Hullo, Edward, good-evening, Christina,” said Morcar briskly, affecting to notice nothing strained in their manner. “I’m first, but only just, I gather; two legal luminaries are on my heels.”

  Harington’s face changed at once; an ambitious man, he was exceedingly susceptible to the good opinion of his professional colleagues. He put on a host’s countenance and greeted his guests with suave affability, and the party, a large one flowing into every room, passed off well. Towards its close, Morcar found an opportunity to ask whether he and Christina would come out and dine, in view of the disruption which parties inevitably caused in domestic arrangements. Harington accepted, provided Morcar could wait awhile; he thought of taking a cottage in Cornwall for the coming summer from one of his colleagues then present, with whom he wished to begin preliminary negotiations. When all the guests save this one had gone, Harington withdrew with him into the study, and Morcar went upstairs to Christina.

  She was alone in the room, standing by the fire, her arms outstretched to the mantelpiece, her dark head bowed. In that pose, her long filmy black draperies flowing about her, she looked weighted down with griefs too heavy for her strength, and Morcar’s heart swelled with pity.

  “Christina.”

  “Oh—Harry. You startled me,” said Christina, at once changing her pose. She turned to him, spoke in a cheerful tone and smiled, but Morcar saw that tears stood in her blue eyes. “Have another drink? A cigarette?”