The Elderbrook Brothers (42 page)

‘What makes me laugh,' Felix would say, ‘is your
notion that you're not a Christian. If ever there was a man——'

‘—stuffed and overflowing with virtue,' said Jakes, ‘that man is myself, you would say. You ought to know better by now, but even if it were so, it wouldn't make me a Christian. Christianity doesn't consist in washing behind the ears and being a good kind boy. It's a creed, Elderbrook, a creed——'

‘A creed and a way of life,' said Felix. ‘They stand or fall together.'

‘Not at all. The creed is distinctive. Confused but distinctive. The way of life that should but doesn't go with it is not. It's not specifically Christian at all. It was preached, long before Christ, by Taoists and Buddhists and Confucians and Atheists and the benighted heathen generally; and since the miserable experiment of man was started, God knows how long ago, I dare say as many as a hundred and fifty individuals have even practised it. I wouldn't put the figure higher than that. And they weren't all Christians.'

‘The experiment of man? Whose experiment?'

‘Experiment is a figure of speech,' said Jakes, ‘and the answer to your question is another figure of speech: God. Call me a Christian, would you? Then trot out your articles of faith and I'll dispute them all. No—all but one.'

‘Which is that?'

‘I'm a great believer, Elderbrook, in original sin. Do you know Schopenhauer's doctrine, the world as will and idea? Sound stuff, even though it
is
only a gloss on a more ancient wisdom. The will to live, that's the original sin, and the source of all misery. And you and I, my boy, are conspicuous sinners, because we're not only alive ourselves, which argues very bad taste in us, but we help others to live, and that's downright cruelty…. Have you been taking that medicine I sent you?'

‘I believe I did, once or twice.'

‘You're overworked and under-nourished, my lad. Why the devil don't you take more care of yourself?'

ONE day in 1920, having announced himself by telegram, Felix paid a flying visit to Upmarden. He made no doubt of his welcome, and he was right. Why then had scarcely any preparations been made for him? And why was he greeted by Matthew with a sort of dazed surprise?

It was not his first visit since the war's end, but he was rather guiltily conscious of its being only the second. In that last leave, a year ago, Minsterbourne Stanton Upmarden had been the order of his pilgrimage. Ann had been unfeignedly glad to see him; but she was ill, Matthew was preoccupied, an uneasy silence hovered in the house, and he had stayed for one night only. This second visit followed naturally upon a series of conversations with his friend Jakes, who for months had been conspiring with circumstances to persuade him to resign his arduous job into the hands of a stronger man. The wounded leg was always giving trouble, sometimes more and sometimes less. As though it had a will of its own it was always demanding, with menaces, the long rest that Felix wouldn't or couldn't concede to it: wouldn't because he resented the tyranny, couldn't because the work (he said) must be done, the endless visiting, the walking in all weathers, the climbing of evil-smelling stairways. His stubbornness cost him, during the twelvemonth, two or three periods of sheer prostration, brief but significant, and, said Jakes, damned salutary. Jakes, until the very end, avoided a frontal attack; he was content at first to drop small seeds of suggestion, hoping to see them flower into a plan which he would then greet as Felix's own idea; nor did he know that others, away in Stanton, were working to the same end as he. But, the seed falling on stony places, he at last resorted to plain speaking.

Felix heard him at first coldly, then with an indignant warmth.

‘You want me to desert my post,' he said.

‘Why the military metaphor?' Jakes retorted.

‘Because,' said Felix hotly, ‘I'm still, in some sense, a soldier. So are you, though you won't admit it, and in the same army
too. But never mind that. Drop the metaphor. The plain fact is that I've taken on this job and until I get my marching orders I've got to stick to it.'

‘Your next marching orders,' said Jakes, ‘(so glad we've dropped metaphor, by the way) will take you to the cemetery if you don't mend your ways.'

‘You want me to sneak off and make myself cosy elsewhere.' Felix laughed. ‘It's the kind of advice you yourself wouldn't dream of taking.'

‘Who says I wouldn't?'

‘Well, would you? Will you? Come, my dear fellow, it's time you had a change,' cried Felix, in a rapture of irony. ‘What's your age? Fifty-something? That means, doesn't it, that you've given the best twenty years of your life to these wretched people. Now, consider, isn't that enough? It's true they all depend on you, and for a great deal more than merely medical attention. It's true you're their father and their mother as well as their doctor. But who cares? You've made your pile out of them; you've extorted sixpence or even a shilling from one in every ten of your deluded patients; so why not dip into your swollen money-bags and buy yourself a snug little practice in Berkeley Square? Or do you fancy Bournemouth?'

‘Loud applause,' said Jakes. ‘If you weren't such a damned, obstinate, ungrateful dog, Elderbrook——'

‘Ungrateful?' said Felix protestingly.

‘—biting the hand that feeds you with bottles of nice coloured medicine,' Jakes inexorably continued, ‘you'd spare a thought for your poor infidel friend, Richard Jakes.' His smile suddenly faded out. He scowled at distance. ‘It won't be much fun for me when you're gone, you know. We've had some gorgeous quarrels,' he said wistfully.

Felix stood silent, embarrassed by the affection which it would have embarrassed him still more to give expression to.

‘Not quarrels,' he said at last, lamely enough. ‘But I know what you mean.' He tried a more confident note. ‘And since
I've not the least intention of going we'll have plenty more, d' you see?'

Jakes gave him a mischievous grin. ‘I daresay you'll find yourself in these parts again, some day.'

‘Thank you for your kind advice, doctor. But I propose to stay.'

‘Man proposes, God disposes, Master Parson. You ought to know that.'

‘True,' Felix admitted.

True it was, and a truth very congenial to his way of thought, as indeed to his way of life too, for it was a rule with him nowadays to take no large decisive action until, not by thought alone but by a passive waiting, a stillness in the mind, he should be persuaded of its Tightness for him. Though in no crude or obvious sense, it was a sign he waited for, whether it took the form of an inward conviction or of events falling into a pattern which he by his action could harmoniously complete. Such a sign came to him in the offer of a curacy at Stanton. He was ready enough to regard it as an insidious temptation, promising a measure of comfort, a useful (perhaps) but comparatively easy life, and a beautiful environment, in return for the betrayal of a trust. But in time, after due waiting, he came to see it otherwise, as his true and right destiny. And if it should prove not to be so, that too would be in time made plain to him. A feature of the plan that helped to reconcile him to it was the meagreness of the stipend he would receive: the pill of unwanted comfort was at least sugared with penury.

And so Jakes, with a wry face, had his wish at last, and Felix, glancing back in wonder at the stages of his long journey, Stanton, Minsterbourne, Recruits Depot, wartime France, East London, and now Stanton again, had come full circle, back to his starting-point. But hadn't there been an earlier starting-point? And, now he came to think of it, hadn't he a brother called Matthew? It was natural, since the aged Mr Mullion was in no great hurry for him, that he should break his journey and spend a few days at Upmarden before going on.

STANDING in the sunlit road Felix stared in wonder at the house of his childhood, the wonder being both that something so intimately his own had gone on being itself in his long absence, just like this, and that it was yet so much smaller than he had remembered it. For, though he had seen the place only a year ago, the picture engraved in memory belonged to a much earlier time. If there were differences he was unaware of them. The yew hedge neatly clipped, the flagged path, the patch of grass, the flint and stone texture of the house itself, the familiar front door, even the curtains in the windows of that little-used front room: all this, but for the new smallness, was incredibly unchanged. Yet change there was, in himself, in his blood, in everything except what his eyes saw, and in that too if he looked deep enough. The place was here, solid and definite, but the time it still pictured for him, the living time, had flowed away and vanished, leaving nothing of itself but an elusive fragrance, as of an old story. Since no one had come to meet him, and there was still no sign of habitation, he indulged his whim to walk a few yards further along the road and approach the house through the wide cobbled yard, with its barn and granary and cowsheds which he remembered so well. The clucking of hens and a remoter snuffle of pigs were audible, and signs of occupation were not lacking; but the emptiness of the yard, the absence of human voices, struck a momentary chill in him when he stopped to consider the situation; he almost wondered whether he should find the house itself empty and abandoned. The noise of himself crossing the yard brought no welcome from the house. He concluded that his telegram had miscarried.

Thoughtfully he made his way into the house, half-open doors readily admitting him, and stood at last in the kitchen doorway staring with astonished eyes at his brother Matthew.

‘Hullo, Matt!'

Matthew, deeply abstracted, was standing very still in the
middle of the room, his gaze fixed on distance. At sound of a voice he slowly turned his head.

‘Hullo!' Recognition was not quite instantaneous. ‘Why, it's Felix!'

‘Weren't you expecting me?'

‘Were we? Yes, of course. We had your wire yesterday. But …'

Felix smiled. ‘You'd forgotten all about it,' he said tolerantly.

‘No, not really,' Matthew protested. ‘Well, in a way, yes. It's very nice to see you, old boy.'

Now that he had had time to take stock of him, Felix was shocked by the change in Matthew since his last visit. In twelve months he had become grey and gaunt. His smile was as warm and kindly as ever, but there was something else there as well, and the smile vanished too quickly, leaving a sombre, wintry look. And Felix was conscious that even now, confronted by a forgotten guest who was also his brother, he had only half his attention to give.

‘Is anyone ill, Matthew?'

‘Not exactly. I wouldn't say that. Look, Felix, you mustn't think I'm not glad you've come. Dash it, it's like old times again. I was only a bit … occupied.'

Leaping to a wrong conclusion, ‘How's Ann?' said Felix quickly.

‘Fine,' said Matthew. ‘Much better, Ann is. That trip to hospital put her right once and for all, seemingly. How have you been doing all this time?'

‘Pretty busy,' said Felix, and left it at that, judging the question to be a mechanical one.

‘Any more trouble with the leg? You never write, you scoundrel.'

‘Whereas my dear brother Matthew is never parted from his pen,' said Felix. ‘I
have
had a certain amount of trouble with it. That's partly how I come to be here.'

‘Oh?'

‘It's a long story, Matt. But I'm changing my job. In fact I'm on my way to take up a curacy at Stanton.'

‘That's good, isn't it? I mean you'll like it, won't you, better than London? Funny you being a clergyman.'

‘Extremely comic,' Felix agreed. The unreality of the conversation made him feel slightly lightheaded.

‘Mother always wanted it,' Matthew said. ‘Or at least that was Father's story. And neither of them lived to see it. Queer how things turn out.'

Felix looked consideringly at his brother, wondering what it was he was waiting, listening for.

‘Is Ann … at home, Matt?'

‘Yes. She'll be down in a minute. She's … hovering about upstairs, I think.'

‘Hovering?'

‘That's right. Yes. Seen anything of Guy lately?'

Felix smiled patiently. ‘Once. We had a cup of tea together, in his office. He's still at the Ministry, you know.'

‘Ah, he is, is he. What's his wife like? Funnily enough, we've never met her. You know, the war, and one thing and another.'

‘I know. Nor have I. We're not a very clannish family, are we? Guy did talk about fixing a day for me to run over and see them. But somehow it didn't get followed up. He's … changed a good deal, you know.'

‘Rather wrapped up in his career, eh?' said Matthew.

Both brothers were conscious of thin ice. And Felix was determined not to betray what a painful surprise Guy's attitude had given him.

‘Well, yes. You might say so. But I suppose I'm as bad.'

‘And I'm worse,' said Matthew. ‘So it seems we're a bad lot, we Elderbrooks.'

‘You're the best of us, Matty. You do your job without fuss and palaver. You're not ambitious like Guy, nor introspective like me. Your sort of chap is the salt of the earth, I'd have you know.'

‘Here! Draw it mild!' Matthew grumbled. A look of extreme discomfort had come over his face. He seemed to shake himself, as though coming to a decision. ‘Look, Felix, you'll have to know, sooner or later. The fact is, there's a woman upstairs … in labour.'

‘My dear chap! Why in the world didn't you tell me? Do you mean——?'

‘No, no. I don't. That's just the point. Not Ann. The child is
my
child, do you see? And the mother is not Ann.'

‘I see,' said Felix slowly. Having chewed the cud of this strange revelation he glanced at Matthew with a shy smile: ‘And Ann is … hovering, eh?' His eyes shone. ‘Thank God for Ann.'