Читать книгу Heirs Apparent - Philip Gibbs - Страница 9

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Cyril Buckland stayed to dinner without being invited, to the evident displeasure of Mr. Perryam, who was cold in his manner to the son of his proprietor.

“He seems to be making a home of the place,” said Julian to his mother in a tone of extreme annoyance, as he went up to his room to change again and put on a dinner jacket. His vexation was not entirely due to the complete defeat he had suffered on the tennis court from Cyril’s punishing serves and rapid work at the net with a rather supercilious smile every time he secured a point and his final triumphant enquiry of “What about that village in the Midlands?”

Mrs. Perryam answered her son’s protest with a cheery laugh.

“He’s all right!”

She hesitated a moment and then spoke with an amusing little wink.

“I think he’s rather taken with Janet.”

“Obviously,” said Julian. “But if I have anything to say about it, Janet’s not going to get fond of him. I couldn’t stick such a blighter for a brother-in-law.”

Mrs. Perryam showed a complete disregard for his ruffled feelings.

“That’s for Janet to decide, and it hasn’t got as far as that yet, or anything like it. Your father is dreadfully prejudiced against the poor boy simply because he happens to be Victor Buckland’s son.”

“Very wise of the governor,” said Julian.

“Not at all,” answered his mother calmly. “With Cyril as his son-in-law it would consolidate his position on The Week. It would make me feel much more secure. I’ve suffered enough from the uncertainty of journalism. Up to-day and down to-morrow.”

Julian stared at his mother with angry surprise.

“Good Lord, what a horrible idea! I didn’t know you were so mercenary, mother. Putting Janet up for sale!”

Mrs. Perryam thrust her fingers through his hair.

“Now then, my lad! None of your Oxford superiority! I’m not taking any. See?”

Julian mumbled something like an apology.

“Sorry, mother. But it’s a disgusting idea, it seems to me.”

He went up to his room gloomily, and decided to tell Janet what he knew of Cyril’s private character. The fellow was perfectly poisonous, non-moral to the last degree. Dash it all, Janet had a right to know before making a little ass of herself.

At dinner he was distinctly cold to Cyril’s conversational efforts and disliked the way in which Janet played up to them and laughed at little idiotic remarks which Cyril Buckland seemed to mistake for brilliant wit. He noticed that Janet looked more grown-up than when she had last come back from her convent school in Switzerland. She was wearing an evening frock, cut rather low at the neck, and with bare arms, and her hair was done in a new style which made her look a little like Gladys Cooper. He realised with a shock of surprise that she was extremely pretty, with those coils of fair hair, and blue eyes with long lashes, and a laughing kind of mouth. She was no longer the child he had treated with lofty disdain and brotherly condescension. She was the sort of girl that would send Stokes Prichard off the deep end and make him quote poetry by the yard. And she was getting impudent, too, and considerably bumptious. When Julian opposed some statement of Cyril’s about the right way to hold a tennis racket, she turned to him with a flash of temper and said, “After your dismal display this afternoon you needn’t pose as a tennis champion, old boy! Allow some one else to express an opinion.”

“It isn’t a question of opinion,” answered Julian. “It’s a matter of scientific fact.”

“Good old Oxford!” said Janet scornfully. “Always so knowing!”

Mr. Perryam sat at the head of the table rather silently, with an absent-minded look. Now and then he made an effort to be bright, and passed unnecessary things to Cyril Buckland or Janet, and made some obvious remarks with rather forced cheerfulness about the weather. Nobody paid much attention to him, as usual, and he relapsed into silence again. Once he looked over at Julian and said, “What’s the general opinion in Oxford, old boy, about the international situation?”

Julian smiled with a little secret amusement. It was rather like one of Grandfather’s interruptions.

“They’re not worrying about it, sir.”

“Then they ought to,” said Perryam. “It’s having a disastrous effect on trade.” He raised his head, as though to give expression to some pent-up ideas, but seeing that nobody was prepared to listen—Cyril Buckland was making a rabbit out of his table-napkin and pretending to bite Janet’s bare arm with it—he only sighed.

Grandfather chewed his meat with grim pertinacity and once nearly choked over a bit of gristle, so that Janet had to thump him on the back.

After dinner Cyril and Janet went into the billiard room for a game of “pills,” as Cyril called it—he would, thought Julian—and Mrs. Perryam went to write some letters.

“Come into my study, Julian,” said his father.

It was Julian’s turn to sigh. Indeed he gave a little groan. The Governor wanted explanations, of course. And he wouldn’t understand, and he would be irritable and angry and plaintive and affectionate, and make Julian feel constrained and untruthful and ungrateful, and all that.

That was exactly what happened.

Mr. Perryam offered Julian a fat cigar and protested that he was over-smoking himself and hoped Julian was putting a limit on tobacco. It was certainly not good for the heart. He made a few remarks about the neighbourhood. Everything was going down owing to high taxation. The Bellairs had given up their old house and park. The family had been there for five hundred years. Many other old places were up for sale—White Cross, General Langley’s place, the Mervyns’ estate near Westcott, old Oliver’s, Lord Culross’s. The Government was crippling Capital. That super-tax was iniquitous. The Middle Classes, to say nothing of the old aristocracy, were being ground to dust. Business was in a bad way.

It was quite a time before the inevitable question happened. Julian smiled faintly when it came. He had been expecting it a long while ago.

“What about this idea of leaving Oxford, old boy? Surely you’re not serious?”

“Perfectly serious. I’m fed up with it. I’ve got all I want out of it.”

“But my dear lad, it’s a disgrace to leave it like that.”

“Disgrace?” said Julian blandly. “Oh, Lord, no!”

“Sent down. Without a degree. I’m desperately disappointed.”

“What’s the use of a degree?” asked Julian. “It doesn’t mean anything. Any fool can get it, and lots do. Surely you don’t imagine it’s a guarantee of scholarship or intellectual attainment?”

“To some extent,” said Mr. Perryam, “surely?”

“Good Heavens, no! That’s a hopelessly old-fashioned notion.”

“Then I’m hopelessly old-fashioned,” said Mr. Perryam, with an uneasy laugh. “I’ve always had a respect for a man who could put B.A. after his name. My education has been so slipshod, so hugger-mugger. I’ve had to pick it up all myself, and even now I know very little of the classics except what I’ve read in translations, like Gilbert Murray’s. I’d give a lot to read Horace in the original—and Æschylus.”

Julian laughed at him.

“My dear Governor, do you think the average fellow who takes a degree can read Greek and Latin with any freedom or pleasure? He only comes away from Oxford with the deep conviction that there are such languages, after painful swotting over a few cram books with the handy crib.”

“Then what do you learn?” asked Perryam patiently. “Do you mean to tell me the whole University system is a fraud?”

“Not quite that,” said Julian, with judicial impartiality. “One has a good time, of course—though it bored me stiff after a bit. One makes some very decent friends, one gets a bit of atmosphere, a little smattering of ancient learning, utterly useless, but not unamusing, and one learns how to tie a decent bow, how to handle a punt, how to hold a golf club or a cricket bat, how to tip a waiter with easy nonchalance, and many expensive and agreeable tastes. Oxford stamps one with the hall mark of a social caste recognised by an affected accent, superior manners, and the snob instinct.”

“There’s more in it than that, old boy,” said Perryam. “I’m afraid you’ve got into the wrong set.”

“On the contrary,” said Julian, “I was lucky in avoiding the æsthetes with their side whiskers, doped cigarettes and cult of immorality. I also gave a miss, more or less, to the husky crowd who drink four cocktails before dinner and go up the river for deliberate drunks. I consorted with the normal crowd who’ll soon be down looking for a job in life without a notion what it’s going to be and with an Oxford education as their handicap.”

“I’m afraid you’ve been cultivating cynicism, old boy,” said Mr. Perryam.

“The privilege of youth,” said Julian with a faint smile.

His father rose from his chair and flung his half-finished cigar into the fire-grate as at tea-time he had thrown another into a flower-bed.

“The privilege of youth,” he repeated. “Cynicism! ... Frankly I don’t understand what’s happened to young men after the war. Poor dear Jack wasn’t like that. What’s come over you all, Julian? You seem to have lost zest. You’re all hard in your ideas and slack in your habits. Fearfully slack. The fellows in my office have their eye on the clock all the time. I used to work night and day as a young journalist, and think nothing of it.”

“It doesn’t seem worth while these days,” said Julian.

“The standard of value has altered, I suppose. We think more of life and less of money-making.”

Mr. Perryam cleared his throat huskily.

“I don’t find young men scornful of money, old boy. Not a bit of it. More wages for less work. Look at Labour. My God—look at Labour!”

“What’s the matter with it?” asked Julian.

“Don’t you study the question at Oxford?” asked Mr. Perryam. “Don’t you know that Labour with its socialistic programme is going to complete the ruin of England which the War began? Why, they’ll tax people like me till we might as well throw up the sponge. What’s the good of individual initiative, enterprise, the struggle for success? Unless you fellows fight it, Julian, you’re going to see Socialism reduce England to the level of a Boer Republic.”

“It’s Labour’s day out,” said Julian. “They’ve got most of the brains and all the arguments. A nuisance, I admit, for people like ourselves.”

“If we take it lying down,” said his father. “If the young men of to-day don’t care a damn they’ll find themselves in Queer Street before long. And they don’t seem to care. That’s what bothers me.”

“We’re not worrying,” said Julian. “What’s the use?”

His father answered with a touch of irritation.

“No. You’re not worrying! It’s we older folk who have to do the worrying. Look at my life. A continual struggle, ceaseless worry, desperately hard work. I’ve known the ups and downs of a journalist’s life, the frightful insecurity of tenure, the serfdom of ‘the Street.’ I’ve been turned out of good jobs by the whim of an editor, or a change of proprietorship. I’ve known the terrors of a free-lance, writing articles, stories, advertisements, to pay the weekly bills, and agonising when all one’s ideas give out, and worry causes sleepless nights and incapacity for work. Your mother and I have known hard times, old boy, before success came! But I never showed the white feather. I’ve fought hard for my present position—and I have to fight hard to keep it, I don’t mind telling you! That fellow Buckland— However, you don’t worry! You young men are not worrying! That’s the trouble.”

“What’s the trouble?” asked Julian coldly. “Why worry? What’s the use?”

Mr. Perryam was silent for a few moments and glanced at his son wearily once or twice.

“Perhaps I worry too much,” he said presently. “I’ll admit that. The fact is I’m becoming obsessed with the international situation. I don’t like the look of it. God knows I played up during the war, and all that.... But this Peace! It seems to me nothing but an armed truce. ... And we’re raking up the old hatreds again, creating new enemies. France instead of Germany, or Russia as well as Germany. I can’t stand, privately, for French policy in the Ruhr. It’s asking for trouble in the near future. Anyhow it doesn’t make for European recovery or the spirit of peace. I confess I’m afraid of what’s boiling up in Europe again. Not for my own sake. I’ve had my innings. But for young fellows like you, Julian—the younger brothers of the elder brothers.... But you’re not worrying!”

He repeated Julian’s phrase for the third time as though it had fascinated him.

Julian looked at his father with amusement, and spoke with irony.

“It’s a pity your private views conflict with your public policy. I mean the blood and thunder patriotism of the dear old Week. ‘To Hell with the Huns.’ ‘Why should France be supreme in the Air?’ ‘Are we going to lie down to America?’— That sort of thing doesn’t make for peace, I imagine?”

Mr. Perryam coloured slightly and laughed uneasily.

“I have to carry out Buckland’s policy. They’re not my views. I’m not a free agent, old boy.”

“A bought man!” said Julian coldly.

His father started in his chair, and for the first time answered angrily.

“I don’t like that phrase, Julian! I’d advise you not to use it again.”

“Sorry, sir,” said Julian, amiably, but not ruffled.

Mr. Perryam recovered his good humour with an effort.

“In a way we’re all bought men. We all have to compromise with our ideas in order to earn a livelihood or establish a career. The barrister pleads from a brief, much in the same way as I do. Advocates a case without necessarily believing in it. In the Army a man has to carry out orders even if they lead to death and disaster.”

“Yes, but not to the degradation of the human intellect or the loss of his own soul,” said Julian in his best Union manner.

His careless words seemed to hit his father like a blow in the face, though he was unaware of the hurt he had inflicted, and tapped a cigarette on a silver case before putting a match to it.

Mr. Perryam became pale, and the lines under his eyes darkened. But once again he forced himself to smile at this handsome boy of his upon whom all his ambition had been set.

“I hope I haven’t sold my soul to the devil because I take old Buckland’s salary,” he said with a forced laugh. “Don’t forget this, old boy: The Week, with all its faults—and I don’t say it’s nobler than its rivals—maintains this household in something like luxury and supported you rather handsomely at Oxford.”

“That’s so,” Julian admitted graciously. “In that way it serves a useful purpose, perhaps. The individual gains at the expense of the community, as usual.”

Mr. Perryam regarded his son’s handsome profile with secret admiration. Much as this boy’s words hurt at times his youthful arrogance was not deliberately unkind nor—alas!—entirely unjustified.

“Well,” he said, after a pause, “I didn’t bring you in here for controversial purposes. What do you propose doing now you’ve left Oxford? Any idea?”

“A few vague ideas,” said Julian cautiously.

Mr. Perryam laughed good-humouredly again. “Vague ideas won’t carry you far, old boy. Haven’t you any ambition? The Law? The Foreign Office? The Indian Civil?”

“No,” said Julian decidedly. “The Law’s overcrowded, and the Civil Service would bore me to death.”

“What about journalism?” asked Mr. Perryam reluctantly. “I could get you a job on The Week. It’s a good training, and with all its faults Fleet Street still holds out prizes to men of talent. Only you would have to begin at the bottom of the ladder, as I did.”

Julian rose from his chair impatiently, with a sudden flush on his face.

“No, I’m damned if I do! Not the stunt press, with its divorce news and fabricated lies and dirty politics and split infinitives and hopeless vulgarities. Not after Winchester and Balliol.”

“Why not?” asked Mr. Perryam coldly. “Do you think we haven’t Balliol men in Fleet Street? Why, I refuse jobs to them every other day!”

“Anyhow, I’d rather sweep a crossing, father. It’s cleaner, from what I’ve seen.”

Mr. Perryam looked rather crushed. His eyes avoided Julian’s cold and contemptuous gaze.

“There are other papers besides The Week,” he answered humbly. “Still, I don’t want to force you into journalism, old boy. I’d rather you went into business, or anything else, not because I despise my profession—I don’t!—but because I know its difficulties and disadvantages only too well. But what’s your alternative?”

Julian thrust his hands into the pockets of his dinner jacket.

“Is there any immediate hurry? I suppose my allowance goes on as usual?”

His father smiled at him, rather ironically.

“Oh, The Week will help to pay for it, if you’ll condescend to take such filthy money.”

Then as though repenting of his sarcasm, he spoke seriously and tenderly.

“What’s your scheme, Julian? I’ll back anything for your happiness, as long as you set to work. I’d hate to see you lounging—at a loose end—like so many fellows to-day. I couldn’t bear that.”

“I want to take my time,” said Julian. “I’ve an idea of writing.”

“Writing?”

His father was frankly astonished.

“Isn’t that the same thing as journalism?”

“No,” said Julian. “Utterly different. I mean Literature. Plays, novels, verses.”

“Literature, eh?”

His father shook his head and smiled.

“I had that idea once. Then I became a journalist and earned my living.”

“Some fellows make pots of money,” said Julian. “Barrie, Galsworthy, Shaw, Compton Mackenzie. Not that I’m out for money.”

Mr. Perryam laughed with real enjoyment this time.

“It’s useful. I find it necessary. Still if you happen to be a genius, old lad, you may be able to support me in my old age.”

“I don’t pretend to genius,” said Julian modestly, “but I have a few ideas, and perhaps a touch of style. Anyhow I can but try.”

“Certainly,” said Mr. Perryam. “And there’s always Fleet Street as a last resource. Or even the workhouse, or the unemployment dole.”

He repented again of satire. This boy of his was so young, so self-confident, so unwounded by life’s disillusions. How he envied him! He put his hand on Julian’s shoulder.

“I’ll be proud of any success you make, old lad. Be sure of that. I can at least put the reviewers to work. ‘Published to-day. Brilliant first novel.’ There’ll be no holding your mother down.”

“Oh, well, it mayn’t come off,” said Julian. “I don’t buck in advance.”

Janet’s voice rang out from the garden path through the French windows of Mr. Perryam’s study.

“Coming to have a game of Bridge, you two?”

“Coming, Kiddy,” answered her father.