Crescendo by Phyllis Bentley Page A

breast. “It’s Jerry. He asked me to tell you. He says he doesn’t want to go into the mill.”
    It was certainly a blow. For a moment Arnold’s long hard struggle seemed a useless waste of time. His world seemed to crumble beneath his feet. Yes, for a moment he certainly felt daunted. He sat down heavily. Meg sat down beside him and took his hand.
    â€œBut why didn’t Jerry tell me himself?” said Arnold at length, perplexed.
    â€œI think he’s a little afraid of you, darling,” said Meg.
    â€œAfraid of
me?”
exclaimed Arnold, astounded. “What on earth for? Has he been getting himself into a scrape of some kind?”
    â€œNo. He’s just a little afraid of you. You can be rather fierce at times, you know, darling,” said Meg with a smile.
    â€œCan I?” wondered Arnold.
    He considered himself for a moment. Possibly his long years of struggle had in fact made him a trifle tough. But that his son, Meg’s son, should be so afraid of him as not to venture to tell him his ambitions, wounded him deeply. It was so unnecessary too. He voiced his views.
    â€œHe’d no need to worry,” he said, a trifle drily. “God knows I don’t want to force anybody into textiles if they don’t want to go. I’ve had too much trouble in them myself. I didn’t particularly want to go into them as a lad, so I could hardly blame Jerry for feeling the same. Besides, it may be better for the boy not to have all his eggs in one basket. He can earn an income outside Holmelea, and still draw the interest from his Holmelea shares.”
    â€œHolmelea shares?” said Meg, wondering.
    â€œAfter I’m dead, I mean,” said Arnold irritably.
    â€œYou’re so good, Arnold,” said Meg.
    As always during the last twenty-six years, Arnold felt soothed, strengthened, supported, by Meg’s love.
    â€œWell, what does Jerry want to do, then?” he said in a cheerful, sensible tone. “Some profession? Medicine, like your father?”
    He gave a mental grimace as he contemplated the further long years of fee-paying which in that case lay ahead, but did not blench.
    â€œNo. Oh, no,” said Meg.
    â€œLaw, then?”
    Like most business men, Arnold detested the legal profession as an establishment devised on purpose to prevent business men from doing sensible things, but he admitted that one had to employ lawyers in order to keep out of trouble from silly regulations, and lawyers always seemed to flourish.
    â€œNo.” Meg hesitated. “It seems to be something to do with literature and the arts,” she said at length.
    â€œLiterature and the arts!” exclaimed Arnold in capital letters. “But has Jerry shown any talent for that sort of thing?”
    Meg said nothing.
    â€œBut, Meg, he hasn’t. You know he hasn’t,” said Arnold, now really troubled. “I mean to say—look at his reports! That fellow what’s-his-name, that play-writer, you know, was at school with me and you could see at once that he was out ofthe ordinary. Always at the top in English, and writing poems for the school magazine, and so on. A perfect fool in everything else, of course. Jerry hasn’t done anything of that kind! Or has he?” he added, suddenly remembering how little he really knew about his son.
    Meg shook her head. Slowly and reluctantly, with head averted, she brought out that there was some young man whom Jerry had met in London while staying with his school friend there, who was engaged in doing everything that Jerry wanted to do, and Jerry wanted to go off to London with him and do it too.
    â€œBut good lord!” exclaimed Arnold, aghast. “
What
is it he wants to do?”
    â€œI don’t know,” said Meg.
    She turned towards her husband, and Arnold saw that tears stood in her eyes and her lips were trembling. Arnold had seen tears in his wife’s eyes on only one occasion before