The Rise of Henry Morcar Read online

  “You needn’t put on your party face for me,” said Morcar.

  Christina raised her eyebrows. “I wasn’t aware of doing so,” she said haughtily. Her lips quivered, however.

  “Don’t try to hide from me, Christina,” said Morcar. “I understand—I understand everything. You’re very unhappy. If only I could do something to help you, my dear. But at least you needn’t trouble to hide from me. You can trust me.”

  Christina stood silent, her eyes averted. She stooped and snatched a cigarette, tapping it nervously against her hand. Morcar held a match for her.

  “Is it so obvious to you?” said Christina suddenly. “My unhappiness, I mean? It’s a nightmare to me to feel that people in the street look at me and say: ‘That woman’s unhappy in her marriage.’ I feel ashamed. You won’t understand that. It’s a woman’s feeling.”

  “On the contrary I understand it perfectly,” said Morcar grimly. “For years I’ve felt that way myself.”

  “You?” said Christina, astonished. Her beautiful face changed on an instant, softening from lines of wretchedness to her customary lovely look of sympathy, compassion. “Are you unhappily married, Harry?” she said softly. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” She looked round, sank to a chintz-covered settee, threw away her cigarette. “Tell me,” she said.

  Then Morcar, seating himself beside her, looking away, leaning forward, clasping his hands between his knees, told her about his wife. His words poured out, incoherent, jerky, commonplace, but revealing. As he spoke, it struck him that he had never told anyone, anyone at all, anyone in the world, of the true reason for his separation from Winnie. After a silence of almost ten years, it was an infinite release to speak of it, and yet an agony; he suffered in the telling, his muscles twitched, his body was drenched with sweat. “I’ve never seen her from that day to this. ‘He’s not your son,’ she said, ‘he’s not your child. Don’t you understand, he’s not your child.’ I’ve never known whose child he was,” said Morcar, turning to Christina. “I couldn’t bring a divorce suit—or, at least, I felt I couldn’t,” he amended: “Because of her brother, Charlie. My friend. My lifelong friend. I’ve never known whose child he was. At first I used to look in every man’s face to see if there was a likeness. I still do sometimes. I’ve never known. Not even guessed. Charlie was killed in the war. We were on patrol together. I’ve never seen her from that day to this.”

  The sorry story was ended, and he fell silent. Christina did not speak.

  “So you see,” said Morcar after a while, making an effort to sound normal, looking down casually at his hands: “About feeling ashamed of being unhappy—wanting to conceal it—I understand.”

  “Poor children!” exclaimed Christina.

  Morcar was astonished. At first he could not fathom her meaning, turned to her questioningly. Her blue eyes, veiled in tears, the whole curve of her body, her woman’s nature, seemed to offer him such a soft and loving sympathy that he could hardly restrain himself from kneeling before her and burying his face in her hands.

  “Poor children,” repeated Christina softly.

  This time Morcar understood. “Yes, I expect that’s just what we were,” he said, soberly considering. “Children. We knew nothing of life. Winnie had lived in such a narrow restricted kind of way, you know. I see that now. Uneducated. Ignorant. She left school at fourteen. I was ignorant too, in spite of my war service. Just a raw lad.”

  “You didn’t think of forgiving her, Harry?”

  “Somehow it never entered my head. Besides,” continued Morcar—with difficulty, for this was the last, the deepest, the unforgivable wound: “She didn’t want me to forgive her, you know.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Christina. She dropped the words out slowly and softly.

  “You at least have your children,” said Morcar, not without bitterness. “They should console you.”

  “Yes, oh yes!” cried Christina with her lovely smile. “Yes, indeed!” She added in a whisper, turning away her head as though it was not for him to hear: “But it’s their happiness I’m afraid for.”

  “Count on me for help—for friendship,” said Morcar earnestly. He dared not say: “For love,” but added: “For anything you like and need.”

  “I will,” said Christina. She smiled, rose, and as he stood up, offered him her hand. “It’s a promise,” she said. “If you will promise me to believe that you have a home with us.”

  “I promise,” said Morcar.

  After that day confidence was complete between them; they felt themselves in a sense companions in misfortune. Gradually they told each other all their histories. Morcar spoke of his parents, his cloths, Mr. Shaw, Daisy Mills, Winnie, Charlie; Christina spoke of her able and brilliant father, very dearly loved, of her happy childhood in Bersing, her schooldays happy in learning, of her father’s death in India, and Edward’s elder brother. It was clear to Morcar that Christina had loved this brother (drowned at Jutland) though perhaps she was too young then to know it. Edward arriving back on leave from France with all the prestige of heroism and danger just after her father’s death, urging her to abandon her scholarship to Somer-ville and marry him, marry him, had called out all her generous responsiveness, and given direction, as she had thought then with schoolgirl earnestness, to a life lost in a maze of grief. On her side, Christina indicated to Morcar her conviction that he had never loved Winnie as a lover should, but only as a brother. Morcar smiled a trifle grimly when she laid this idea before him; he knew its truth so well, so very well, now, for his love for Christina had taught it to him.

  During the following summer the Haringtons rented for some months the Cornish cottage of which mention had first been made at their cocktail party. Morcar shared this expense with them, and came to the remote little village by the sea for a couple of weeks in August and as many weekends as he could conveniently spare. The result of this life in common was to rouse in him a mingled pity and desire for Christina which he found intolerable. On the one hand the holiday offered, as holidays are apt to do, innumerable opportunities for irritation to Harington. The Harington car broke down—in Morcar’s opinion Harington was a wretched driver; he expected miracles from his machine and wrenched angrily at the wheel when they were not accomplished. The express bringing Edwin part-way on his cross-country journey was late, and minor inconveniences resulted. The cottage—really a house—which Morcar thought charming, stood on the flank of a steep hill, so that to return to it was always tiring. The domestic labour was variable in quantity and quality, and Christina’s housekeeping, always a little sketchy (at least by the solid north-country standards to which Morcar was accustomed), suffered in consequence. The bathing pool, a natural hollow in the rocks, was too small for Harington to display his diving talents. The weather was too calm for the sailing in which he and his son delighted, and the sky too vacantly blue to make good background for his photographs. Jennifer did not win the children’s tennis tournament in the seaside resort along the coast, as her father had expected, observing calmly, when reproached, that her victorious opponent had won because she played better. The weather was a blaze of sunshine, the high cliffs sheltered the village from any land breeze; Harington’s fair skin suffered from acute sunburn and his temper was equally irritated. As usual when Christina was bowed beneath her tyrant’s verbal lash, Morcar’s pity, his wish to rescue, to defend, burned within him.

  On the other hand, the romantic little harbour, haunt of artists, was of a singular and most bewitching beauty, a beauty which strangely matched Christina’s own. The towering hills sweeping down in grace and strength to the white-sanded coves, the black rocks, the blue sea, the misty aureole which encircled the pier lantern, rosy in the twilight—all these seemed designed to stress by repetition Christina’s dark curls, her blue eyes, her milk-white skin and rich carmine mouth. Morcar and Christina were together all day, sometimes in company, sometimes alone; he helped her over rocks, down fern-grown paths, into rocking boats, through the white s
urf of breaking blue waves; they leaned over the bridge together, walked through gorse among the blue butterflies. The sun blazed down; Christina went hatless in thin light frocks. They talked continually; he touched her hand a hundred times a day. Cornwall seemed a very long way from Annotsfield; the Cornish fisher-folk with their lilting speech seemed to make this an earlier, more primitive, remote and romantic world. Jumping Jennifer down from a high jagged boulder as they clambered down towards a cave, she fell into his arms and Morcar kissed her, the child hugging him in return warmly. When it came to Christina’s turn down the boulder he kissed her lightly too.

  “Harry!” laughed Christina rebukingly, in the tone she used to the children when they made a forgiveable gaffe which however must not occur again. “Dear me!” She ran away across the beach and kneeling, became very busy about their picnic tea.

  Morcar with the touch of her lips on his knew that he could not leave Cornwall without making her his own.

  For the next few days she seemed to avoid him, which maddened him yet gave him a subtle pleasure; she knew of his love, he argued, her avoidance was a recognition of its power. If her eyes met his, his burning heavy glance left her surely in no doubt of his feeling. Embarrassment, consciousness, grew between them, as Morcar meant it should; Christina looked down at his approach, she spoke to him unevenly; for his part he haunted her path so that she found him at every turning, silent and sombre.

  On the last night before Morcar’s departure an entertainment was given in the village by visitors. The two children were eager to go to this, for entertainments were rare in the quiet little place; they had been promised the treat and tickets had been bought. Christina however at the last moment excused herself. It had been a trying day; Edwin, entrusted with the printing of some recent negatives, had allowed them to become too dark; Jenny, commanded by her father to eschew the society of some children whom he thought not quite the thing, had been seen playing with them in a nearby cove, and when scolded had replied calmly that they were nice children and she liked them. A highly uncomfortable scene had followed this, for Jenny, usually calm and happy in disposition, was when roused as fierce and stubborn as her father. Harington, as always when you stood up to him, reflected Morcar, was defeated and retired abashed; later he became positively genial and actually helped to set the table for the evening meal, the day being one when no domestic help was available. But Christina did not recover so easily; she looked white and tired and said with more determination than usual that she meant to stay at home. Morcar suspected that she was at the end of her endurance and meant to give herself the relief of tears.

  Accordingly he accompanied the party to the entertainment, meaning to excuse himself presently on the ground of his long journey on the morrow. Such being his plan, he did not attend much to what was happening on the platform, but schooled himself to sit through a few items. Almost at once, however, he found himself listening to a song:

  Through the long days and years,

  What will my loved one be,

  Parted from me?

  Through the long days and years.

  Always as then she was,

  Loveliest, brightest, best,

  Blessing and blest.

  Always as then she was.

  Never on earth again

  Shall I before her stand,

  Touch lip or hand.

  Never on earth again.

  But while my darling lives,

  Peaceful I journey on,

  Not quite alone.

  Not while my darling lives,

  While my darling lives.

  The words kindled his passion; he could no longer endure inaction. He rose and made his excuses. As the concert promised to be long and probably mediocre, Harington thought his departure natural enough, and Morcar returned alone to the house.

  He entered very quietly, and treading lightly in his crêpesoled seaside shoes, found Christina in the kitchen and stood in the doorway watching her without her knowledge. She was arranging great sprays of blue anchusa in a honey-coloured vase. She hummed a little to herself; Morcar found it touching to see her thus calmly happy, ministering to the joy of others, alone. A movement betrayed him. Christina turned. A warm colour flooded her lovely face. She turned quickly to the flowers again.

  “What are you doing here, Harry?” she said in her courteous social tone. “Where are the rest?”

  “They’re at the hall—I came to see you,” said Morcar. He added: “My darling,” and drew her strongly into his arms.

  For a moment she lay there passive, her head on his shoulder, her hand on his breast. It seemed as if she rested against his strength, at peace and happy, and Morcar rejoiced, for he knew himself loved. He kissed her tenderly, caressing with his hand her slender white throat.

  “No, no!” murmured Christina. She raised her head and strove to draw away. “Harry, we can’t do this.”

  “Yes, we can.”

  “But the children!”

  “They won’t know.”

  “Have you no scruples?” murmured Christina. “No feeling that it is wrong?”

  “None!” said Morcar strongly.

  “We shouldn’t,” murmured Christina, weeping. “Harry, we shouldn’t.”

  Morcar kissed her with passion. “My darling, I love you,” he said.

  “And I love you, Harry,” whispered Christina.

  Morcar put back her rich curls and murmured his plea into her ear.

  “No, no!” said Christina, starting. “No, Harry!”

  “Yes, Chrissie, yes,” said Morcar.

  Later, when she lay in his arms, he told her about the blue frock.

  “I knew you were mine when you wore it; I loved you then, my lovely girl,” he said.

  Christina traced the line of his thick fair eyebrows with one finger. “Then I loved you first, Harry,” she said. “I loved you before I wore your blue frock.”

  “When?”

  “When I first saw you.”

  “Thank you, my darling,” said Morcar. “Thank you.”

  He spoke with ardour; for Christina had thus healed him of the wounds dealt him by Winnie, who had never, it seemed, given him love. He did not then perceive that he was revenging himself on Winnie by compelling Christina to the course for which he had repudiated his wife.

  24. Nadir

  Morcar felt lonely now when he was away from Christina. He loved her, and she was the only person in the world with whom he could be completely himself. Besides this true and loving pleasure in their love, which was real and lasting, he rejoiced also that he was now as other men, with a woman of his own; nor did it displease him, since it was in the fashion of the times, that she was a mistress and not a wife. Christina wrote to him sometimes in her graceful and individual but careless hand, but he could not safely reply to her on Harington’s account—nor would he in any case have known how to express himself in writing. He needed to see her, to hear her voice, to touch, to hold. Accordingly he looked forward to his visits to London as a boy looks forward to play after school, and became daring and skilful in arranging secret meetings. But he had no intention or inclination to allow his work to suffer from his play, and never went to town unless his work took him there. He would have regarded any such indulgence as silly, unmanly, excessive.

  His work at present needed the greatest possible skill and attention, for the economic situation was going from bad to worse. The British manufacturers, condemned by England’s return to the gold standard in 1925 to lose overseas either their profit or their market, after trying for some years to walk the razor-edge between the two fell on to one side or the other and began to draw on their capital to prevent them from falling to the bottom of the abyss. One by one they found their assets dwindling, incurred overdrafts and saw all they owned wrenched piece by piece from their hands into the banks’ safes to provide “security.” They cut down expenses and discharged workpeople; the purchasing power of the community diminished, the home market shrank; they incurred
further overdrafts and discharged more workpeople and the market shrank still more. In 1929 a Labour government came into power, which Morcar, who had languidly voted Liberal out of habit, saw as an embodiment of high taxes, high wages, lower profits and a general disregard of the manufacturers’ overseas problems. A great many other manufacturers felt the same; enterprise or initiative was at a discount, they decided, caution and economy were required. They cut down expenses and discharged workpeople; the purchasing power of the community diminished and the market shrank as before. Looms fell silent, queues at Labour Exchanges lengthened; bankers who had seemed good fellows all their lives now suddenly appeared harsh tyrants; a look of worry began to line every West Riding face.

  Morcar, however, continued to prosper. He had no large hereditary mills, no long-standing commitments, no incompetent but deserving old retainers impossible to dislodge, to drag him down. No too-numerous shareholders’ dividends, no bunch of expensive family households, no Excess Profits Tax still unpaid from the War, drained his profits; no huge inherited mansion built in the days before McKinley, no costly hobby of horse or plane or yacht, ate their way like moths into his substance. He was spending more in one way than ever before in his life, for in everything to do with the Haringtons he wished to be generous, lavish; but his personal expenditure in Annotsfield was particularly small, for now that he had Christina he felt satisfied and did not need to seek the drug of incessant pleasures. On the positive side, his machinery was up-to-date, his premises were small though neat—indeed they were rather too small, and certainly too widely scattered, Morcar told himself restively at times. His product was a speciality, new, adapted to the needs of the age, commanding a wide popularity in home and overseas markets. It was not now entirely his own, of course, for several other merchants and manufacturers in several countries, including England, had had the same idea as Mr. Butterworth and Morcar. But in his case it was continually refreshed by his own original talent which, Morcar felt with a modest confidence (never mentioned to anyone save Christina but the core of his life) very few designers anywhere could really excel. Accordingly, he prospered—not without anxious moments but steadily—while frowns of worry deepened on other manufacturers’ brows.