Read Online James Hilton: Collected Novels by James Hilton - Free Book Online
Authors: James Hilton
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began, a moment later, she was curiously aware that her mother was showing little interest in the story; nor did she seem angry, or startled, or impressed, or any of the other things that Livia, aged four, had ideas but no words for. Her mother merely said: “Livia, you’re wet through—you must have a bath and change all your clothes as soon as you get home.”
Nor later on was there any crossness even from Sarah, but instead a strange unhappy vagueness, as if she were thinking of something else all the time. When Livia retold her yarn, Sarah answered disappointingly: “It’s only a story, Livia, you mustn’t really believe it. There aren’t any such things as ghosts.”
“Isn’t there the Holy Ghost?” Livia asked, remembering religious instruction imparted by Miss Fortescue, who came to the house every weekday morning, and seemed already to Livia the repository of everything knowable that one did not particularly want to know.
“That’s different…Go to sleep now.”
Not till the following morning was Livia told that her father was dead; and this was not true.
She had been a baby at the time of her father’s trial and sentence, so that the problem of how much to tell her, and how to explain his absence or her mother’s distress, had not immediately arisen. The year had been the last one of the nineteenth century or the first of the twentieth (according to taste and argument); events in South Africa had gone badly, and men were being recruited for the least romantic, though by its supporters and contemporaries the most romanticized, of all England’s wars. Emily Channing, who was a romanticist about that and everything else, had concocted a dream in which her husband obtained his release to enlist, and eventually, on kop or veldt, “made good” by some extraordinary act of gallantry which would earn him the King’s pardon and possibly a V.C. as well. It was an absurd idea, for British justice is unsentimental to the point of irony, preferring to keep the criminal fed, clothed, and housed in perfect safety at the country’s expense, while the noncriminals risk and lose their lives on foreign fields. Channing knew this, and was not in the least surprised when the appeal his wife had persuaded him to make was turned down. But Emily was heartbroken, the more so as she had already told Livia that her father was “at the war.” It was a simple explanation in tune with the spirit of the times; Emily had found no difficulty in giving it, but Livia was really too young to know what or where “the war” was, and only gradually absorbed her father’s absence into a private imagery of her own.
A couple of years later, however, the South African War was history, and there came that gray October day in 1903 when even a prison interview between husband and wife could not avoid discussion of the matter. For John Channing, after several years to think things over, was in a somewhat changed mood. Till then Emily and he had always comforted each other with talk of her waiting for him and the ultimate joys of reunion; but now, during the half hour that was all they were allowed once a month, he suddenly told her they must both face facts. And the facts, he pointed out, were that with the utmost remission of sentence for good conduct he would not be released until 1913, by which time he would be fifty, she would be thirty-eight, and Livia fourteen.
But Emily (as before remarked) was a romanticist, and the interview was distressing in a way that no earlier one had been. Sincerely loving her husband, she could accept only two attitudes as proof of his continued love for her; that he should, as heretofore, expect her to wait for him, or that he should melodramatically beg her to “try to forget” him. And now, in this changed mood, he was doing neither. He was merely advising her that she should live her life realistically, feel free to make any association elsewhere that might at any time promise happiness, and
Nor later on was there any crossness even from Sarah, but instead a strange unhappy vagueness, as if she were thinking of something else all the time. When Livia retold her yarn, Sarah answered disappointingly: “It’s only a story, Livia, you mustn’t really believe it. There aren’t any such things as ghosts.”
“Isn’t there the Holy Ghost?” Livia asked, remembering religious instruction imparted by Miss Fortescue, who came to the house every weekday morning, and seemed already to Livia the repository of everything knowable that one did not particularly want to know.
“That’s different…Go to sleep now.”
Not till the following morning was Livia told that her father was dead; and this was not true.
She had been a baby at the time of her father’s trial and sentence, so that the problem of how much to tell her, and how to explain his absence or her mother’s distress, had not immediately arisen. The year had been the last one of the nineteenth century or the first of the twentieth (according to taste and argument); events in South Africa had gone badly, and men were being recruited for the least romantic, though by its supporters and contemporaries the most romanticized, of all England’s wars. Emily Channing, who was a romanticist about that and everything else, had concocted a dream in which her husband obtained his release to enlist, and eventually, on kop or veldt, “made good” by some extraordinary act of gallantry which would earn him the King’s pardon and possibly a V.C. as well. It was an absurd idea, for British justice is unsentimental to the point of irony, preferring to keep the criminal fed, clothed, and housed in perfect safety at the country’s expense, while the noncriminals risk and lose their lives on foreign fields. Channing knew this, and was not in the least surprised when the appeal his wife had persuaded him to make was turned down. But Emily was heartbroken, the more so as she had already told Livia that her father was “at the war.” It was a simple explanation in tune with the spirit of the times; Emily had found no difficulty in giving it, but Livia was really too young to know what or where “the war” was, and only gradually absorbed her father’s absence into a private imagery of her own.
A couple of years later, however, the South African War was history, and there came that gray October day in 1903 when even a prison interview between husband and wife could not avoid discussion of the matter. For John Channing, after several years to think things over, was in a somewhat changed mood. Till then Emily and he had always comforted each other with talk of her waiting for him and the ultimate joys of reunion; but now, during the half hour that was all they were allowed once a month, he suddenly told her they must both face facts. And the facts, he pointed out, were that with the utmost remission of sentence for good conduct he would not be released until 1913, by which time he would be fifty, she would be thirty-eight, and Livia fourteen.
But Emily (as before remarked) was a romanticist, and the interview was distressing in a way that no earlier one had been. Sincerely loving her husband, she could accept only two attitudes as proof of his continued love for her; that he should, as heretofore, expect her to wait for him, or that he should melodramatically beg her to “try to forget” him. And now, in this changed mood, he was doing neither. He was merely advising her that she should live her life realistically, feel free to make any association elsewhere that might at any time promise happiness, and
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