Hildebrand, named for the famous Cardinal, came next, a difficult, striking, handsome figure, sullen and secretive, capable of sudden expansion when he blossomed as unexpectedly and beautifully as a miracle or a flower, but among his own people dark, silent, and morose. From childhood he had caused his father anxiety; he was original, headstrong, and hot-tempered, and had early cut himself off from all sympathetic communication with his family, who were antipathetic to his ideals and intentions, and responded with the utmost ungraciousness (reasonable enough in the circumstances) to his perennial demands for financial assistance. He was seldom mentioned to their acquaintances by any of them, and eked out a wretched, cramped existence with the woman he had chosen to marry and their trail of drab, unattractive children, in a little house near the Fulham cemetery.
The last child, Ruth, had been married for eight years to Miles Amery, a promising young lawyer whose career had, unfortunately, stopped short at the promise. Richard and Eustace were both enraged and disgusted by this wilful relative, who seemed devoid of ambition, and did not even want to bring kudos to the family into which he had married. He pursued his obscure way with apparent satisfaction, never even aiming at anything higher. He seemed to think that a moderate income and a middle-class house in an unexceptionable district were the culmination of any man’s desire. If you asked him how he was, he said very fit and having lots of fun.
“Fun!” said Eustace in a sepulchral tone, as Chadband might have said, “Drink!” and believing it every whit as sinful.
“Fun!” intoned Richard, vexed and outraged at what seemed to him a wanton flinging away of opportunity. “What’s fun?”
They might well ask. Ruth could have told them. It was the house in St. John’s Wood, and the two little girls, Moira and Pat, and all the satisfactions of their happy, full, rich life with one another.
3. Richard
I
On the morning of Christmas Eve, 1931, that was to close so tragically, Richard Gray and his wife, Laura, travelled to King’s Poplars in a first-class carriage. After a long silence, Richard lifted his haughty, melancholy face from the pages of The Times, and remarked in tones as cold and polished as a brass door-handle, “I beg of you, Laura, to remember my father’s views on the question of tariffs. It is most important that he should not be upset before I have an opportunity of discussing the position with him. You know how heated these political dissensions leave him.”
Richard invariably spoke as though he carried a reporter in his waistcoat pocket.
Laura, a tall, handsome woman, very beautifully gowned, said lightly, “You can rely on my discretion. I, too, know how important it is that he shouldn’t be upset. After all, I want to have a title quite as much as you want to buy it for me.”
Richard frowned and returned to his paper. He considered his wife’s remark in bad taste. Laura had, in fact, been one of his least profitable investments. As a young man, even before he had completed his term at the University, Richard had decided to make a success of his life. He had worked hard, cultivated a wide acquaintance, travelled, read extensively, taught himself to appreciate golf, spent wet afternoons watching a ball being kicked round and round a slimy field, and even, in certain company, lost money on horses. The result was that, within ten years, he had achieved a reputation. He had started on his political career, and its early honours were falling thick upon him. Flushed with pride and ambition, he extended his circle of acquaintances, and at thirty he met Laura Arkwright. She was three years his junior, handsome, an heiress, possessed an influential circle of relations, was cultured, urbane, and a well-known amateur pianist. She was, in short, in every way suited to be the wife of a rising M.P.
Richard, well pleased with his perspicacity, awaited the enriching of his life through this new tentacle he had put out. In almost every direction he met with bitter disappointment. Owing to ill-advised speculation, his wife’s fortune was largely dissipated; she gave up her piano-playing comparatively soon after her marriage, on the extraordinary ground that she objected to commercial art. Richard brooded over that for some time—he was already very like his father—and at last was driven by injured curiosity to ask her what she meant. Laura said lightly it meant that she didn’t want to play to his friends any more, and that she’d always been sorry for nice dogs exhibited at shows, another cryptic and absurd remark that Richard failed to understand. But he had had enough of asking for explanations, and took other means of showing his displeasure.
His greatest disappointment, however, was their childlessness. He had meant to have sons—a daughter or two later, perhaps, since, though daughters were negligible in themselves, they might make advantageous connections for a father by marriage. But they had never even experienced the customary scares and hopes of a young couple. Richard, of course, blamed his wife; sometimes, in very intimate male society, if he felt sufficiently sore, he would acknowledge that she was a cold woman. He was perpetually surprised at the number of quite important people who appeared to think it worth their while keeping up with
