Violet said “Really, Humphry, I see no need to disgust and upset the children.”
“Don’t you?” said Humphry. “I hope they will remember, and remember again when they are choosing how to live.”
The boys and girls listened. Tom tasted the plum kernels and oats in his dry mouth. He knew he would sleep badly. Philip wrinkled his brow and backed away. Those lives held up to horrify were his life. He was one of the many who were poor. And he had left his poor mother, and made his sisters poorer. He felt dully angry—not with Basil, the rich man, but with Humphry, who had made him into an object, had appropriated his hunger.
Charles Wellwood was truly affected. He had a logical mind and a Christian upbringing. In school chapels and Sunday services, chaplains and parsons in speckless surplices repeated Christ’s injunction. “Sell all thou hast and give to the poor.” Charles thought this was quite clear, and his mentors and family were either foolish or sinful not to understand. The Christian message was levelling and anarchic. Nobody appeared to hear it. Except possibly his uncle Humphry, who was possibly also writhing with discomfort about the creature comforts that lay about him. He thought he might ask Humphry, one of these days, what was to be done. Out of earshot of his parents. His mother was a good and fearful Lutheran, who gave away both time and money, visiting hospitals for the poor, organising bazaars and clothing collections. But she ate from Meissen porcelain with silver spoons. There were hideous inconsistencies.
Dorothy said to Griselda “Let’s go away and look at the lanterns in the orchard. You’ll have to mind your nice shoes.”
“Silly shoes,” said Griselda, following her cousin.
Geraint automatically sympathised with anyone who was not shouting. He admired Basil’s self-restraint. He loved the sheen on his waistcoat and the sparkle of his studs. There was a mystery in correct dress. There was a mystery in money. He was sick of homespun and home-made. He had secreted a glass of champagne behind the black lacquer puppet-boxes, and thought it was delicious and complex, cold bubbles bursting on his tongue, the mist on the glass, the transparent gold liquid. Some people had this every day. Some people did not sleep under a leaky roof in an old mansion with a cold wind blowing through it, for the sake of mounds of clay and visions of glazed vessels. Money was freedom. Money was aesthetic. Money was Arab stallions, not rough cobs. Money was not being shouted at. (Even though Humphry was shouting at Basil.) Money was freedom. Money was life. Something like that, Geraint thought. The brothers had always stepped back from the brink of a real rift. They sparred, and grumbled, and spoke of something else. No one supposed, when Humphry provocatively mentioned Barney Barnato, that this time would be different.
Barnato was a genial, smooth-talking East Ender, who had made a fortune in the diamond fields of Kimberley. He was a founding member of a club in Angel Court, off Throgmorton Street, which was jokingly known as the Thieves’ Kitchen. Barnato had moved from diamonds to gold mines, and was in the process of founding his own bank. He generated a fever of greed and excitement and risk. Basil had invested in his enterprises, and was uneasy about it. An article had appeared in a satirical paper, the
The March Hare had played elegantly with that giveaway blush. Humphry made the mistake of quoting Bunyan in the argument with Basil. This reminded both of them of The March Hare’s accusations. But Humphry quoted further into
Basil said “You know your text very well.”
“We all know the
“We do not all have it at our fingertips, to quote in libellous articles, to which we dare not put our name.”
The accusation had been made. Humphry could neither bluster, nor deny.
“You cannot deny the argument has weight? That the warnings in it need to be heard?”
“A man should not do one kind of work by day, and stir up mud by night, to stick on his colleagues. And to harm his family,” Basil added.
Humphry sneered. He did not feel like sneering—he felt he was himself on the brink of a pit. But the form of the quarrel required him to sneer.
“You cannot have been so foolish as to implicate yourself—or your family—in any of Barnato’s gambles?”
“You do not know what you are talking about. You purvey malicious chatter which can
“I do what my conscience leads me to do.”
“Your conscience is a will o’ the wisp, leading into a bog,” said Basil, rather cleverly, twisting the metaphor his way.
Violet said “Let us talk about something else. Let us make peace.”
Basil said “I think I cannot stay in this gathering any longer. Come, Katharina. It is time to leave.”
Katharina said “Very well.” She was conscious that it was hard to sweep out when your spare clothes were in your host’s bedroom. She said to Charles
“Fetch Griselda.”
“She’ll not be happy,” said Charles,
Dorothy and Griselda were fetched back from the orchard. Katharina told Griselda they were going home. “Why?”
“Never mind. We are going home. Put on your cloak, please.”