The Naylors by J.I.M. Stewart Page A

pleased that it should be supposed to be so. She was going to have serious talks with Uncle George. Meantime, there was no harm in thinking of him as an old dear, although he was only in what is called early middle age. It would be a precaution against any sense of annoyance. Charles and Henry were probably going to experience just that with their uncle, particularly since he had more or less brought along the man Hooker.
    ‘I have to be on the look out’ – George said with telepathic effect – ‘not to be harping on my own affairs. I expect you’ve heard about them.’
    ‘Yes, I have.’
    ‘In Oxford an engaging young woman handed me something about atom bombs.’ Uncle George didn’t seem to offer this as an inconsequent remark. ‘It’s a bit frightening, all that. Yet the magnitude of a possible catastrophe is not its true measure.’
    ‘How do you mean, uncle?’
    ‘Or the mere neutral magnitude of the universe as science – which means no more than your brains and mine – has revealed it. The distance between star and star has no significance in itself.’
    ‘Hasn’t it?’ They were now on the high road, but Hilda slowed down a little. ‘Pascal . . .’
    ‘Yes, of course.’ Uncle George was pleased. ‘Pascal was scared, certainly. But it wasn’t the immensities, you know. It was the silence in them. A quality, not a dimension. Dear me! We’ve got on tricky ground, Hilda.’
    They drove on, silent for some time. Hilda, like Uncle George, was now pleased. There were serious talks ahead of them. The last time Uncle George had ‘lost his faith’ she had been too young to make much of it. There would be a difference this time. She was curious about religious feeling, and particularly about its apparent compulsiveness in some people and its total absence in others. But more interesting than that was its coming and going in a single individual – and here her uncle appeared to be a classic case. But she must be chary of taking any initiative in probing the matter. That, in present circumstances, would be indelicate. She must just watch out for a promising lead in. One had almost turned up already in that piece of chat about Pascal. And now, after the silence that had succeeded it, her uncle moved a little away from what he had called tricky ground.
    ‘When I tumbled out of Oxford,’ he said, ‘and I mean not today but twenty years ago, I tumbled straight into the church. What are you now going to tumble into, Hilda?’
    ‘A job, I suppose, if I can find one. But’ – and Hilda took a plunge that surprised her – ‘I want to try to write.’
    ‘Excellent,’ Uncle George said. He seemed no more surprised than if she’d said she was going to take a course in cookery.
    ‘Only I haven’t told anybody at home yet.’
    ‘Then they won’t get it out of me.’ Uncle George said this so cheerfully that one fear that had been in Hilda’s mind was dispelled. He wasn’t going to moan and groan.
    ‘The snag, uncle, seems to me that I’ve seen so little. I keep telling myself that I need experience. Experientia docet .’
    ‘My dear child, you’ve got that wise saw wrong. Experientia docet stultos is what the chap said. The less stupid you are, the less you have to knock around for what you need. Not that knocking around isn’t great fun. I wish I’d managed more of it. Have you any plans which that way incline?’
    ‘Not really. Only I’m just back from three weeks in Italy.’ Hilda felt this wasn’t much of a claim. ‘With another girl,’ she added. This made it sound feebler still.
    ‘Where did you go?’
    ‘Florence, and then Arezzo . . .’
    ‘And San Sepolcro?’ her uncle asked.
    ‘Yes, we took a bus there.’
    ‘Good! Where else?’
    ‘Just Siena. As a matter of fact, it was something there that has chiefly stuck in my head.’
    ‘Not that fancy-dress horse race?’
    ‘Of course not. It wasn’t happening, anyway, during our week there. It was something in San Domenico.