Free Stephen Morris by Nevil Shute

‘I’m afraid so,’ he said humbly.
    There was an expectant pause.
    ‘The Silver Churn,’ said Wallace to nobody in particular.
    ‘You see,’ said Morris apologetically, ‘this is
commercial
aviation.’ He brightened a little, and rubbed his hands together. ‘We can do you a very nice line in joy-rides over London,’ he said, ‘at only twenty-five shillings a head. We find these very popular in the summer months.’
    ‘Jimmie,’ said the girl, ‘I don’t think I like yourfriends. Come and talk to him yourself.’ She moved away and Wallace took her place; they began to chat of common interests and acquaintances.
    One by one the results of Schools had appeared, but Morris had missed most of them. Christie had ploughed and had vanished into the Argentine with the Christie Steam Plough. Wallace had taken a pass. Johnnie, to everybody’s surprise, had come out with a distinction in English Literature; a circumstance which savoured to Morris of gross impertinence, making a mock of the humanities. He knew that Johnnie had no real interest in life other than motor-cycles. Lechlane had got his First in Law as the result of five terms’ work after the war, but then that was Lechlane all over.
    ‘And by the way,’ said Wallace, ‘you heard about Lechlane?’
    ‘What’s that?’ asked Morris. He had never been much interested in Lechlane.
    ‘Came in for a young fortune the other day – I saw it in the legacy report in
The Times.
Over a thousand a year, it came to. Some people have all the luck – he never spends a penny. No motor, no friends … ’ One of his guests flipped a morsel of biscuit at him.
    ‘Oh well,’ said Morris cheerfully, ‘I dare say he’ll go to the dogs now. No, but I’m glad he’s got that; he’s not a bad man and it’ll help him a lot in his profession. One needs money to get on in politics, I believe.’
    ‘Lechlane won’t have much difficulty in getting on,’ said Wallace reflectively. ‘He’s not that sort.’

    No, Lechlane was not that sort.
    It was safe enough to make that sort of statement about Lechlane. Lechlane was a finite quantity; a man whose course through life could be predicted with considerable accuracy. There was never the very slightestdoubt as to what Lechlane would do under any given conditions. Lechlane would do the right thing, and there was an end of it.
    It was a hereditary gift.
    He was connected in a way with the Rileys; a connection not close enough to involve him in any unpleasant intercourse with the disreputable Malcolm. In point of fact his aunt was Helen’s stepmother. There had never been very much connection between the Lechlanes and the Rileys; political differences had held them apart as much as the hearty geniality of old Sir James Riley in his younger days. To the Rileys politics were an occupation; to the Lechlanes a profession. The Lechlanes were Liberals to a man; they did not hit it off with the more hearty elements of the Conservative Party.
    There was a curious atmosphere about all the Lechlanes that tended further to the divergence of the families. They were at the very heart of that close corporation of Liberal families who have ruled the country for so many years. Integrity was their hall-mark, yet it was undeniable that, while engaging in no other occupation than politics, money somehow found its way to them all; they all prospered together.
    When Roger Lechlane had decided to embark upon a political career, it had merely been a question as to who should secure him his first appointment. He would commence, of course, as a private secretary. That could have been arranged with the greatest of ease by apprenticing him to one of his uncles, but that was not the way things were done in that family. No, he must have a wider outlook than that afforded by the family. He should go as a secretary to somebody quite detached, preferably, even, somebody in the Opposition.
    Roger Lechlane, then, to the intense surprise of the writers of the