The Only Problem Read Online Free PDF Page A

alone, neither of them would have suggested it out
loud, although it would certainly have occurred to them, so eager were they to
know what Harvey had settled on Effie in this letter to his solicitors. They
would have left the letter and their secret desires unopened. They were still
somewhat of the curate and his wife, Ruth and himself.
    But
Nathan seemed to serve them like a gentleman who takes a high hand in matters
of form, or an unselfconscious angel. In a way, that is what he was there for,
if he had to be there. He often said things out of his inexperience and
cheerful ignorance that they themselves wanted to say but did not dare.
    ‘Open
it?’ said Ruth.
    ‘Oh, we
can’t do that,’ said Edward.
    ‘You
can steam it open,’ suggested Nathan, as if they didn’t know. ‘You only need a
kettle.’
    ‘Really?’
said Ruth.
    Nathan proceeded,
very know-all: ‘It won’t be noticed. You can seal it up again. My mother
steamed open my aunt’s letters. Only wanted to know what was in them, that’s
all. Then later my aunt would tell a lot of lies about what was in the letters,
but my mother knew the truth, of course. That was after my father died, and my
mother and my auntie were living together.’
    ‘I don’t
know that we have the right,’ said Ruth.
    ‘It’s
your duty,’ Nathan pronounced. He turned to Edward, appealing: ‘In my mother’s
case it wasn’t a duty, although she said it was. But in your case it’s
definitely a duty to steam open that letter. It might be dynamite you’ve been
carrying.’
    Edward
said, ‘He should have left it open. It might be really offensive or something.
It was ill-mannered of Harvey. I noticed it at the time, in fact.’
    ‘You
should have objected,’ Nathan said. Edward was now delighted that Nathan was
there with them that evening.
    ‘It’s
difficult to object,’ Ruth said. ‘But I think we have a right to know what’s in
it. At least you do, Edward, since you’re the bearer.’
    They
steamed open the letter in the kitchen and stood reading it together.
     
    Dear Stewart,
    This letter is being brought to you by Edward Jansen, an old friend
of mine from university days. I don’t know if you’ve met him. He’s a sort of
actor but that is by the way. My wife Effie is his sister-in-law. He came to
see me about Effie’s divorce. As you know I’m not contesting it. She wants a settlement.
Let her go on wanting, let her sue.
    The object of this letter is to tell you that I agree the date of Job is post-exile, that is, about 500 BC, but it could be the middle of the 5th
century. It could easily be contemporaneous with the Prometheus Bound of
Aeschylus. (The Philoctetes of Sophocles, another Job-style work, is
dated I think about 409.)
    Yours,
    Harvey
     
    ‘I won’t
deliver it,’ Edward said.
    ‘Oh,
you must,’ said Nathan. ‘You mustn’t let him think you’ve opened it.’
    ‘There’s
something fishy about it,’ Edward said. He was greatly annoyed.
    ‘Calling
you a sort of actor,’ Ruth said, in a soothing voice that made him nearly
choleric.
    ‘It’s
Effie’s fault,’ said Ruth. ‘She’s brought out this quality in Harvey.’
    ‘Well,
I’m too busy tomorrow to go in person to Gray’s Inn,’ Edward said.
    ‘I’ll
deliver it,’ said Nathan.

 
     
     
     
     
    THREE
     
     
     
    It was October. Harvey sat
at his writing-table, set against the wall of the main room in his little
house.
    ‘Job 37, 5,’ he wrote, ‘God thundereth marvellously with
his voice.’
    ‘I
think we’ll have to send to England for some more cretonne fabric,’ said Ruth,
looking over his shoulder.
    It was
at the end of August that Ruth had moved in, bringing with her Effie’s baby, a
girl. The baby was now asleep for a merciful moment, upstairs.
    Harvey
looked up from his work. ‘I try to exude goodwill,’ he said. ‘You positively
try to sweat it,’ Ruth said, kindly. And she wondered how it was that she had
disliked and resented Harvey for so many