Circles of Time by Phillip Rock

in their lives they had found it necessary to avoid touching on certain subjects so as to avoid rancor. By an unexpressed agreement she never mentioned her concern for her numerous, and much loved, relatives in Germany. And he did not verbalize his wish that all Germans, her cousins or otherwise, should be blown from the face of the earth by British shells.
    As the war had progressed year by year into increasing frightfulness, as the casualty lists bloated past all human understanding, other differences had grown between them. She became sympathetic toward the pacifist movement and its goal to end the war at any price. He endorsed the more popular attitude of war to the knife. But these opposite beliefs were never discussed for fear of destroying that one constant value in a vortex of chaos—their love for each other. They had, unwittingly and foolishly, woven a habit of avoiding the unpleasant by discoursing on the superficial. It was a habit to which they still adhered. Alexandra’s return from Canada had sent them retreating into private reflections on the matter, with only infrequent and brief clashes over its numerous ramifications. The morning sunlight streaming into the room could not penetrate their separate shells.
    â€œThere was a murder in Bournemouth, of all places,” the earl said. “A sordid little affair involving a chauffeur and a rich widow.”
    â€œWho murdered whom?”
    â€œHe did her in—for forged gain in a will. He’ll swing for it, I suppose. Waste of a good driver.”
    A footman brought in the mail, separated it on the hall table, and carried two round silver trays bearing envelopes into the breakfast room. The letters addressed to Lady Stanmore far outnumbered those for the earl. Early in 1919, Paul Rilke had written from Chicago to gleefully inform his sister that the net profits of various companies—which Paul controlled and in which she owned substantial shares—had come to several million dollars in fiscal 1918. The news had shocked her to the bone. Because most of the money had been earned by the manufacture of shell casings, cannon mounts, machine-gun barrels, and bomb racks for airplanes, she had suffered nightmares for a week, seeing in her dreams ditches filled with the bony cadavers of men who had died for no greater purpose than to increase her bank account. Her impulse had been to give her share of the profits to charity, but her fortune was not hers to control. Her millions were managed by her husband, or locked into a trust set up by her father before his death in 1902 and administered by a consortium of law firms and banks in Chicago and London. The best she had been able to do was to persuade Anthony and the trustees to increase her personal allowance by thirty thousand pounds a year. She gave this money to a variety of organizations dedicated to the welfare of wounded soldiers or to the destitute families of dead ones. As the honorary chairwoman of half a dozen charities, her daily mail was prodigious.
    The earl finished a second helping of grilled kidney and gammon rashers, poured himself another cup of tea, and began to open his slight pile of envelopes.
    â€œNote from Dick Bates. Wishes you well. Says he saw a five-year-old jumper at Tattersall’s that I might be interested in. Thinks I could get him for sixty guineas.”
    Hanna sifted through her mail, most of the envelopes bearing the imprints of various charities. She put those to one side and opened the remainder.
    â€œWe’ve been invited to a cocktail party at Bouchard’s on Thursday evening,” she said.
    â€œBouchard’s?”
    â€œThe gallery in Old Burlington Street. A showing of contemporary art to raise money for the Slade.”
    â€œI’m not overly fond of contemporary art—or the Slade School, for that matter. I don’t know why we should teach the artists of this country to paint like Frenchmen. There hasn’t been a decent