The Rise of Henry Morcar (29 page)

As they were returning, talking in cheerful open voices, along the Via dei Cerchi, Morcar glancing around saw that the wide road had suddenly become very empty. Supposing that the lunch hour had arrived he glanced at his watch.

“Yes, you will be late, you will be late if you do not hurry,” urged the guide.

In fact they had ample time to reach their hotel and Morcar turned to the man to make a mild remonstrance, when he saw that the guide had real fear in his eyes.

“It will be better to go this way,” he said, suddenly plunging off the road into some excavated ruins which lay below road level on their left. “Circo Massimo. I pray you to hasten.”

Morcar glanced around again; the road now held not a single passer-by with the exception of a series of men in great-coats with soft hats pulled over their eyes, who walked slowly along the edge of the pavement towards them, at about fifty yards distance each from the other. Similar men similarly patrolled the opposite side of the road. These men, who all carried their right hands in a most sinister fashion in their pockets, resembled so exactly the Chicago gangsters whom he saw when he took Edwin to the films that Morcar felt really alarmed for the safety of Christina and Jennifer, and hurried Jenny down the white wooden steps energetically. Christina meekly followed; Harington however hung back and began expostulations.

“I can't see another forum before lunch,” he said.

“It is not that—I fear that Signor Mussolini is coming,” whispered the guide, his olive face mottled. “He often drives this way, very quickly, towards the drained marshes, the Pontine.”

“Oh, good! We can see him,” cried Jenny, skipping up the steps again.

“No, no—it is not only difficult to see, but dangerous,” urged the guide. “Last month an American lady stayed to see, and took out a camera. While she—she—” he sketched in gesture the act of getting a range—“she moved backward and tripped over a stone, and all these men”—he waved towards the plain-clothes bodyguard—“thought she made a diversion while others threw a bomb. She was arrested. They were not gentle with her. After a while she left Rome.”

Harington's face changed, he took his daughter's arm and turned her down the steps again. The guide hurried them rapidly across the uneven ground between mounds of ruined masonry and broken pillars; they made a detour and reached their hotel without mishap.

The incident was only one of a number which spoiled Morcar's enjoyment of this Italian holiday and made him glad to return home. Otherwise his enjoyment would have been very great, for beside the pleasure of Christina's company and of sightseeing he found that he could learn much for his work, not only from some textile displays and trade journals which he dis
covered, but also simply from the forms and colours of the landscape, whether of country or city, in this joyous, vivid, southern land.

“Joyous! It's not joyous now,” objected Christina when he mentioned something of this. It was the day before their departure; the party were sitting in Faragli's drinking tea; the music covered their conversation. “I have heard only one man singing in the streets since I came. In the pre-James era everyone sang.”

“Don't make Harry more anti-James than he is already,” Harington warned her.

“I'm already completely anti-James, anti-Hitler, anti-dictators of all kinds—nothing could make me more so,” said Morcar, his feeling crystallizing as he spoke.

“Well—you're entitled to your opinion, of course,” said Harington.

“I certainly am,” said Morcar hotly. He was puzzled by the barrister's attitude of apparent tolerance for the James régime, which seemed to him incomprehensible; he could not believe it genuine, yet could perceive no motive which might dictate the pretence of it.

“If you're going to quarrel with all the dictators in Europe, you'll have a full plate,” said Harington. “Germany's rearming, has already introduced conscription. If we want to support France against Germany—I say ‘if,' mind—we shall need James at our side to help us.”

“England won't ally herself with a dictator,” said Morcar. Jennifer looked at him gratefully.

“She won't have anybody else but dictators to ally herself with, my lad.”

“Let us hope this Stresa conference will tidy it all up,” said Christina soothingly.

“If the conference finishes this weekend, as they say it will, we shall have an uncomfortable journey home, let me tell you,” said Harington.

His forebodings were justified. The conference terminated officially that night, and as they journeyed north on Sunday evening, they saw that all the bridges and level crossings were guarded by soldiers—it was evident that high personages, possibly James himself, were expected. When the train drew in to Stresa, they found the station crowded with soldiers, flags of many nations waving, a military band playing; the scene was lively and colourful, and though their compartment was far in advance of the centre of activity, Morcar and Jennifer leant out and watched it eagerly. Presently to their amused delight the band broke into a florid version of
God Save the King;
it was clear,
though invisible to their physical eye, that the train had taken aboard some British great ones from the conference—members of the Baldwin National Government then in power, with their attendant diplomatic staffs.

This became clearer still when the party attempted to procure some dinner. When they had managed to push along the now crowded train to the dining-car, they found every place taken, though they had purchased tickets for the first service long before. Some ten or a dozen other travellers, mostly Italian, were in the same predicament. Harington expostulated angrily, Morcar mildly, with various waiters, and tipped them; they shrugged and bade the party return later, perhaps about nine. Hungry, tired and a trifle cross, they returned at the hour named, to find the car crammed as before, and the same ten or dozen other travellers still sharing their plight. They leaned against the side of the corridor, gazing wistfully into the car of which they caught glimpses from time to time as the door opened. After a long wait the head waiter suddenly beckoned; all surged forward, to find that only two seats were vacant. Edward and Christina were already seated in these when the shortage was discovered, so Morcar and Jenny returned to their previous waiting-places in hopeful mood.

The April evening outside was cool, for they were now in Switzerland, but the crowded dining-car had become very warm and the door was wedged open, so the waiting file had the doubtful pleasure of a continual view of the diners within. The prospect of watching others eat disheartened Jenny, and she turned with a sigh to gaze out of the window, but the night was falling and she turned back to the car. Immediately she became very still. Morcar himself was standing in a stiff and tense position.

A party of minor diplomats, unmistakably British by dress, manner and speech, filled all the seats within their view. The dishevelled napkins, the dirty glasses and plates on the tables before them, showed that they had long since dined; they sat comfortably smoking, drinking, ordering more drinks, with the hungry, queue outside well within their sight. At first Morcar simply could not believe his eyes—or his ears; either eyes or ears must be faulty, he thought, for English people, especially people in responsible positions, did not behave like that.

“They're a trifle lit up, Uncle Harry, if you ask me,” murmured Jenny in his ear.

Morcar felt relieved; yes, they were drunk perhaps and did not see, or did not perceive the significance of, the hungry waiting line. It was bad enough certainly for English Foreign Office staff to be “lit up” in a public dining-car in a strange
country, but not as bad as for them to be in their senses and deliberately keep hungry people waiting while they enjoyed an extra drink. If they realised the queue's plight, doubtless they would move at once. With this in mind Morcar fixed his eyes persistently on a man who faced him, in order to gain his attention. He achieved it, and was rewarded by a lift of the eyebrows and a conscious, exceedingly arrogant and perfectly sober stare.

Morcar coloured deeply. The incident was trifling, of course, but all the same he felt profoundly ashamed. The two ladies behind him, mother and daughter, the mother aged and resigned, the daughter explosively muttering; the young advocate with the sensitive dreamy face who was next in the line; the fat jolly old man, the thin young man who made tiresome jokes; the young girl with the aunt and the merry little boy with a red white and blue scarf, named Umberto; all these people, and more behind, wanted food and were being kept from it by a handful of selfish arrogant officials who, as all those waiting knew, for the word
Inglese
was often on their tongues, represented England.

“They don't represent me,” thought Morcar angrily. “I'm damned if they represent me.”

“Uncle Harry,” Jenny was whispering earnestly in his ear: “Don't let us go in first. Let us go away and come back later, so that we shall be at the end of the line? I should like it better.”

Morcar, bending to listen to her with his hands in his pockets, nodded gravely and the two moved away down the train. A gleam of hope lighted all the faces they passed, and the queue pushed up very promptly into their vacant places.

About half-past ten all the waiting passengers at last found seats in the dining-car. Unfortunately some of them, Jenny and Morcar amongst these, were due to descend in Lausanne in ten minutes' time, so in spite of the tired waiters' good-natured efforts, their meal proved scanty.

Morcar was very silent as the party stood on the dark platform while a porter passed their hand-luggage through the window. Jenny shivered a little in the night air; Christina proffered a scarf and urged her to draw her coat-collar closer; Harington asked whether she had made a reasonably good meal, why they had been so belated, and so on. Jenny's answers were monosyllabic, and Morcar did not come to her aid as usual. He was preoccupied, troubled, deeply uneasy. If those damned officials could behave like that over the small matter of keeping twelve people waiting unnecessarily to suit their own selfish pleasure, could they be trusted to behave properly over the great matters of European politics? A faint whiff of Biblical phraseology floated to him across the years; if they are not faithful in little things, he de
manded, ought they to have charge of great things? They don't represent England, he said to himself angrily. They don't represent me. They don't see things as I see them. They don't intend what I intend. We need to keep an eye on them, and I haven't troubled to do so.

It was a small matter; but as Morcar said to himself, a small sound can wake a sleeper, and when he is once wakened, he is awake. Morcar never again felt the carefree irresponsibility, the happy certainty, about British foreign policy which he had hitherto taken for granted as his birthright.

“Mr. David Oldroyd to see you, sir.”

“The boy who jumped off the train,” thought Morcar, startled. He felt a repulsion to Francis Oldroyd's son, a reaction against the injustice of that feeling to a lad not responsible for his father's sins, a liking for the boy's spirit and a sympathy for him because he had to see a stranger sitting in his father's place, all at once. Morcar's private office was very different from what it had been in Francis Oldroyd's time; he had banished the mahogany and installed very large plate-glass windows, blue and white paint, and furniture of unvarnished oak, chromium and blue leather, in a fine modern design. “It will be painful for him,” thought Morcar, saying aloud: “Show him in.” He bent to finish the signing of some letters which the typist had brought in, and when he looked up David Oldroyd was already in the room.

It was not a schoolboy, however, who stood before him, but a young man fully grown, tallish, broad at the shoulders, slender at the hips, who carried himself without self-consciousness and smiled at him pleasantly. Dark crisp hair with chestnut glints, blue eyes, strong dark eyebrows and eyelashes, olive complexion, a head broad at the temples narrowing to a determined chin. His suit of dark grey check was quite as handsome as Morcar's, and he wore (of course, thought Morcar) an old school tie. In spite of this Morcar liked him at once, whoever he was, for he had a look of such lively intelligence, such merry friendliness, such vigorous gusto, that it was really very taking. But who was he? Morcar wondered.

“I hope this is not an inconvenient time for me to call, Mr. Morcar,” said young Oldroyd, colouring under the older man's stare: “Perhaps I should have asked for an appointment? I chose Saturday morning because I thought you might be less engaged.
But if it's inconvenient I'll take myself off immediately. Perhaps you'd let me come another time?”

He said
orf
where Yorkshiremen said
off
and used the broad
a
and other southern modes of pronunciation, like Christina, and altogether showed he had received what was known, thought Morcar with his customary scepticism on this subject, as a gentleman's education.

“Oh, it's quite convenient this morning,” said Morcar. “I apologise for my surprise, but I was expecting the boy who jumped off the train.”

“Ah! My romantic past,” said David lightly. “But that's nearly six years ago now, you know, Mr. Morcar.”

“I suppose it is,” said Morcar. “You're ashamed of it now, eh?”

“No!” exclaimed David, colouring fiercely. “Why should I be ashamed? I'm not in the least.”

Morcar indicated a chair and pushed forward the box of cigarettes.

“And what can I do for you?” he said.

“You'll think I'm a sentimental ass, no doubt,” said David pleasantly. “But I'm collecting and editing family papers in my spare time—that is, when I have any. And I find we have no photographs of Syke Mills. I came to ask your permission to have some taken. I thought I should come at once, before major alterations are made in the premises. I'm too late in some respects already, I see,” he added with an engaging grin, looking at the chromium.