Scales of Justice

Colonel Cartarette stood on the landing and watched them go in.

Lady Lacklander was already at her husband’s bedside. Mark supported him with his right arm and with his left hand kept his thumb on a bell-push that lay on the bed. Sir Harold’s mouth was open and he was fetching his breath in a series of half-yawns. There was a movement under the bedclothes that seemed to be made by a continuous flexion and extension of his leg. Lady Lacklander stood massively beside him and took both his hands between hers.

I’m here, Hal,’ she said.

Nurse Kettle had appeared with a glass in her hand.

‘Brandy,’ she said. ‘Old-fashioned but good.’

Mark held it to his grandfather’s open mouth. ‘Try,’ he said. ‘It’ll help. Try.’

The mouth closed over the rim.

‘He’s got a little,’ Mark said. ‘I’ll give an injection.’

Nurse Kettle took his place. Mark turned away and found himself face-to-face with his father.

‘Can I do anything?’ George Lacklander asked.

‘Only wait here, if you will, Father.’

‘Here’s George, Hal,’ Lady Lacklander said. ‘We’re all here with you, my dear.’

From behind the mask against Nurse Kettle’s shoulder came a stutter. ‘Vic – Vic … Vic,’ as if the pulse that was soon to run down had become semi-articulate like a clock. They looked at each other in dismay.

‘What is it?’ Lady Lacklander asked. ‘What is it, Hal?’

‘Somebody called Vic?’ Nurse Kettle suggested brightly.

‘There is nobody called Vic,’ said George Lacklander, and sounded impatient. ‘For God’s sake, Mark, can’t you help him?’

‘In a moment,’ Mark said from the far end of the room.

‘Vic …’

‘The Vicar?’ Lady Lacklander asked, pressing his hand and bending over him. ‘Do you want the Vicar to come, Hal?’

His eyes stared up into hers. Something like a smile twitched at the corners of the gaping mouth. The head moved slightly.

Mark came back with a syringe and gave the injection. After a moment Nurse Kettle turned away. There was something in her manner that gave definition to the scene. Lady Lacklander and her son and grandson drew closer to the bed. She had taken her husband’s hands again.

‘What is it, Hal? What is it, my dearest?’ she asked. ‘Is it the Vicar?’

With a distinctness that astonished them, he whispered: ‘After all, you never know.’ And with his gaze still fixed on his wife he then died.

II

On the late afternoon three days after his father’s funeral, Sir George Lacklander sat in the study at Nunspardon going through the contents of the files and the desk. He was a handsome man with a look of conventional distinction. He had been dark but was now grizzled in the most becoming way possible with grey wings at his temples and a plume above his forehead. Inevitably, his mouth was firm and the nose above it appropriately hooked. He was, in short, rather like an illustration of an English gentleman in an American magazine.

He had arrived at the dangerous age for such men, being now fifty years old and remarkably vigorous.

Sir Harold had left everything in apple-pie order and his son anticipated little trouble. As he turned over the pages of his father’s diaries it occurred to him that as a family they richly deserved their too-much-publicized nickname of ‘Lucky Lacklanders.’ How lucky, for instance, that the eighth baronet, an immensely wealthy man, had developed a passion for precious stones and invested in them to such an extent that they constituted a vast realizable fortune in themselves. How lucky that their famous racing stables were so phenomenally successful. How uniquely and fantastically lucky they had been in that no fewer than three times in the past century a Lacklander had won the most famous of all sweepstakes. It was true, of course, that he himself might be said to have had a piece of ill-fortune when his wife had died in giving birth to Mark but as he remembered her, and he had to confess he no longer remembered her at all distinctly, she had been a disappointingly dull woman. Nothing like … But here he checked himself smartly and swept up his moustache with his thumb and forefinger. He was disconcerted when at this precise moment the butler came in to say that Colonel Cartarette had called and would like to see him. In a vague way the visit suggested a judgment. He took up a firm position on the hearthrug.

‘Hallo, Maurice,’ he said when the Colonel came in. ‘Glad to see you.’ He looked self-consciously into the Colonel’s face and with a changed voice said: ‘Anything wrong?’

‘Well, yes,’ the Colonel said. ‘A hell of a lot actually. I’m sorry to bother you, George, so soon after your trouble and all that but the truth is I’m so damned worried that I feel I’ve got to share my responsibility with you.’

‘Me!’ Sir George ejaculated, apparently with relief and a kind of astonishment. The Colonel took two envelopes from his pocket and laid them on the desk. Sir George saw that they were addressed in his father’s writing.

‘Read the letter first,’ the Colonel said, indicating the smaller of the two envelopes. George gave him a wondering look. He screwed in his eyeglass, drew a single sheet of paper from the envelope, and began to read. As he did so, his mouth fell gently open and his expression grew increasingly blank. Once he looked up at the troubled Colonel as if to ask a question but seemed to change his mind and fell again to reading.

At last the paper dropped from his fingers and his monocle from his eye to his waistcoat.

‘I don’t,’ he said, ‘understand a word of it.’

‘You will,’ the Colonel said, ‘when you have looked at this.’ He drew a thin sheaf of manuscript out of the larger envelope and placed it before George Lacklander. ‘It will take you ten minutes to read. If you don’t mind, I’ll wait.’

‘My dear fellow! Do sit down. What am I thinking of. A cigar! A drink.’

‘No, thank you, George. I’ll smoke a cigarette. No, don’t move. I’ve got one.’

George gave him a wondering look, replaced his eyeglass and began to read again. As he did so his face went through as many changes of expression as those depicted in strip-advertisements. He was a rubicund man but the fresh colour drained out of his face. His mouth lost its firmness and his eyes their assurance. When he raised a sheet of manuscript it quivered in his grasp.

Once, before he had read to the end, he did speak. ‘But it’s not true,’ he said. ‘We’ve always known what happened. It was well known.’ He touched his lips with his fingers and read on to the end. When the last page had fallen on the others Colonel Cartarette gathered them up and put them into their envelope.

‘I’m damned sorry, George,’ he said. ‘God knows I didn’t want to land you with all this.’

‘I can’t see now, why you’ve done it. Why bring it to me? Why do anything but throw it at the back of the fire?’

Cartarette said sombrely: ‘I see you haven’t listened to me. I told you. I’ve thought it over very carefully. He’s left the decision with me and I’ve decided I must publish’ – he held up the long envelope –’this. I must, George. Any other course would be impossible.’

‘But have you thought what it will do to us? Have you thought? It – it’s unthinkable. You’re an old friend, Maurice. My father trusted you with this business because he thought of you as a friend. In a way,’ George added, struggling with an idea that was a little too big for him, ‘in a way he’s bequeathed you our destiny.’

‘A most unwelcome legacy if it were so but of course it’s not. You’re putting it altogether too high. I know, believe me, George, I know, how painful and distressing this will be to you all, but I think the public will take a more charitable view than you might suppose.’

‘And since when,’ George demanded with a greater command of rhetoric than might have been expected of him, ‘since when have the Lacklanders stood cap in hand, waiting upon the charity of the public?’

Colonel Cartarette’s response to this was a helpless gesture. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he said; ‘but I’m afraid that that sentiment has the advantage of sounding well and meaning nothing.’

‘Don’t be so bloody supercilious.’

‘All right, George, all right.’

‘The more I think of this the worse it gets. Look here, Maurice, if for no other reason, in common decency …’

‘I’ve tried to take common decency as my criterion.’

‘It’ll kill my mother.’