Snow, C.P. - George Passant (aka Strangers and Brothers).txt

by Unknown

  Tonight Jack told me some of the stories of his conquests. Some I knew, of course; Mona, in the old days, and--. But Olive! I was astonished at that--though now it makes her Morcom adventure (which is probably ending) more explicable. And he made other hints--I was angry, I told him he had betrayed any decent code of friendship. But I cannot only be jealous. Haven't I inveighed, time after time, against irrational conventions? I must think of his behaviour in the light of reason.

  APRIL 4

  Last night at the Farm I arranged that Freda and I be left alone. And, of course, I made love to her. I felt an altogether marvellous delight--more of the mind than the flesh perhaps, but that was to be expected.

  Today I am still in a state of joy--but sometimes not quite easy. I must reassure myself once for all. No one is a penny the worse. It will not interfere with my influence with them, for none of them will know. I am prepared to believe that I could not bring them on as in the past, if this were common property. For many of them, the news would be altogether bad. But Freda, by herself, it can have done nothing but good. She was longing for the substance of freedom, not only the words. She is older than twenty, in everything that matters: she wanted to begin a life that will be different from all that I have tried to rescue her out of. I am now a completer means of escape. That is all.

  Yet tonight I am not altogether tranquil. The years of the group, the continual presence of K.--it all seems strange and not entirely real. I used to think I should not stay in this town for long. Now I am past thirty. I have been at Eden's nearly nine years. Sometimes it seems too long a time.

  JUNE 1

  It has proved unnecessary to keep my change of attitude secret from the group. I must readjust some of my old values--founded probably on the family and my early upbringing. I am now convinced that it is easy to combine the greatest mental activity with a general view more like Jack's than mine. We are all the better for real freedom. No unnecessary internal restraints--and one has more appetite for constructive good. Of course there are times when I cannot always live up to what seems intellectually established: then I have hankerings after the old days.

  JUNE 4

  Daphne was at a Whitsun party at the Farm, which was remarkable for the afterglow it left.

  JUNE 30

  Money is desperately short again. The trickle from the agency is lessening. I shall have to borrow. What does that matter in this fin de siècle time?

  JULY 15

  The high meridian of freedom is on us now. In our nucleus of free people, anyway--and sometimes I think on the world.

  AUGUST 7

  I tried uselessly to explain to the family some indication of my changed views. With no result, except great fatigue and bitter distress--though they could not understand all my statements. I am more worn than I have been for years. Old habits are the strongest: and still, at my age, nothing tires me to the heart so much as a family quarrel.

  SEPTEMBER 2

  K. came unexpected to the Farm this Saturday. After tea -Daphne, Iris R. ( Mona's half-sister, who used to be a "regular" and has now come back) and several others were there--K. began to talk to me, then stopped. Suddenly I saw tears running down her face. It upset me a little, though not as much as a possible absence of Daphne or Freda.

  DAPHNE ALONE

  SEPTEMBER 9

  This makes a pale shadow of all the others. Words are too soft for some delights... coloured seas and ten million gramophones.

  SEPTEMBER 23

  There is sometimes too much indiscretion. In a hostile world, a scandal would be dangerous. We cannot ignore it. The raking danger I can sometimes forget, but it returned with an unpleasant scare last week. A fool of a girl thought she might be pregnant. Fortunately it has passed over, but we cannot be too careful.

  On the practical issue, Jack insisted that we think of buying the Farm. There would be great advantages from every point of view. Jack is certain it could be made to pay. It would make discretion easier. And I insist we have a right to our own world, unspied on and in peace of mind.

  Also we must have money. Perhaps I have neglected it too long.

  OCTOBER 1

  Last night I crawled the pubs in the town. I don't remember ever doing this before. I have always kept these steam-blowing episodes for Nottingham. But what obligations do I owe Eden, after all? After my nine years' servitude.

  Anyway, Roy Calvert and I and--(a young man in the group) got drunk and started home. By the Post Office we saw K. She hurried cringing down a side street. I stopped her. "Yes--I know, you're drunk," she said. The vision passed; and I was walking wildly, yelling with Roy, cheering--as we ran round the lampposts and crossed the streets.

  Through 1931 the diary showed him more and more engrossed with Daphne, although it was not till the middle of the year that he broke off finally from Freda. The references to the purchase of the Farm were continued: "We have to go ahead. I have no alternative."... "I propose to leave the whole business in Jack's charge, far more than I did the agency. There is no reason to occupy myself unnecessarily with it: now it is started, I have better things to do." These entries both occurred in the autumn of 1931; after that time, during the nine months down to the last entry in my hands, he did not mention the Farm business again.

  I was forced to compare this silence with the long arguments to himself about the agency; I turned back to those pages which had given Daphne a reason for coming: DECEMBER 16, 1928 Tonight I went over the figures of the first month's business under the new regime (i. e. of the agency). They are satisfactory, and we shall be able to pay our way--but I still find the difficulty which has puzzled me before. *

  ____________________

  * There was no previous reference in the diary to this "difficulty."

  JANUARY 16, 1929

  The agency is going well. Our profits are up by 10 per cent in the first month. At last Jack is justifying my faith in him (how it would have changed things if he had followed my advice four years ago and entered a profession. Even now I still feel I was right. I should not be fretted by this uneasiness which I cannot quite put aside).

  JANUARY 17, 1929

  I cannot bear this difficulty any longer. There is no doubt that Martineau's statement of the circulation was fantastically exaggerated. On seeing our own figures there is no doubt at all. We are doing better business than they ever did; and we have not disposed of 1,100 copies of the wretched rag. This puts me in a false position. It devolves upon me to consider what is right for the three of us to do.

  If I were to be censorious with myself, I should regret not acting on my earlier suspicions. I was amazed by the figure when Martineau first told me. But after all, I had his authority. What reasons could possess him, of all men, to deceive me? There was no justification for inquiring further. I was within every conceivable right in using his statement to help raise our money. There was one period when I came near to investigating the entire matter--that night, a fortnight before we actually completed the purchase, when I mentioned the circulation to Jack and Olive. Jack laughed, and would not explain himself. Olive said nothing. I began to take steps that night; but then it seemed unnecessary, and I decided to go ahead. I can still feel justified that I was right.

  After all, what is the present position? We have borrowed money for a business. We have placed information about the business in front of those we persuaded to lend. All that information was given us on the best of authority; we transmitted it, having every rational ground to consider it true. Most of it was true; on one rather inconsiderable fact, it turns out that we were misled ourselves.

  It would be an untenable position, of course, if this accidental misrepresentation had been a cause of loss to our creditors. That providentially is the converse of the actual state of affairs. Our creditors are safely receiving their money, more safely than through any similar investment I can imagine. They have done pretty well for themselves.

  So what is to be done? There seems only one answer. No one is losing; f
or everyone's sake we must go on as we are. I do not consider it necessary to raise the subject with Jack. I have disposed of the moments of uneasiness. My mind is at rest.

  JAN .18, 1929

  I am now able to feel that the difficulty is resolved. But there is one problem which I cannot settle. Why ever should Martineau have made a false statement in the first place? Can it have been deliberate? It seems unthinkable. I remember his curious manceuvres about Morcom's flat just before he left the firm. But I could not believe that was done from selfish motives; still more I cannot believe anything so ridiculous of him now. After all, he did not touch a penny of the price we paid. He went straight off to his incredible settlement. Since then he has scarcely had a shilling in his pocket.

  I suppose he was simply losing his grip on the world, and it is useless to speculate as though he were a rational being.

  As soon as I read George's words, I did not doubt that his account of Martineau's statement was true. I wondered what Martineau had really meant; whatever underlay it all, his evidence might be essential now. On the whole, though, I was more distressed than before I knew as much.

  Two things struck me most. George had certainly suspected the statement while they were still borowing money; he had managed to shelve his misgivings for a time. Then at last he put his "mind at rest." I was not altogether surprised by his self-explanation; but it become full of meaning when we compared it to his silence over the Farm.

  He believed himself caught accidentally in a fog of misrepresentation over the agency--what about the other business? I could not help but imagine--was it something he could not reconcile himself to? Something he tried to dismiss from his thoughts?

  And I knew what George's feeling for Jack had now become. The mention of the circulation, and Jack's laughter; George afraid, when struggling with his doubt, to speak to Jack again--those hints endowed some of George's words with an ironic, an almost intolerable pathos: "It devolves on me to consider what is right for the three of us to do."

  THIRTY-ONE

  CONFIDENTIAL TALK IN EDEN'S DRAWING-ROOM

  I read the diary all evening. At dinner Eden and I were alone, and he was kindly and cordial. We went into the drawing-room afterwards; he built up the fire as high as it had been the night of Morcom's slip; he pressed me to a glass of brandy.

  "How do you feel about yesterday?" he said at length.

  "It looks none to good," I said.

  "I completely agree," he said deliberately, with a friendly smile to mark my judgment and to recognize bad news. "As a matter of fact, I've been talking to Hotchkinson about it during the afternoon. We both consider we shall be lucky if we can save those young nuisances from what, between ourselves, I'm beginning to think they deserve. But I don't like to think of their getting it through the lack of any possible effort on our part. Don't you agree?"

  "Of course," I said. He was sitting back comfortably now, his voice smooth and friendly, as though I was a client he liked, but to whom he had to break bad news. He was sorry, and yet buoyed up by the subdued pleasure of his own activity.

  "Well then, that's what Hotchkinson and I have been considering. And we wondered whether you ought to have a little help. You're not to misunderstand us, young man. I'd as soon trust a case to you as anyone of your age, and Hotchkinson believes in you as well. Of course, you were a trifle over-optimistic imagining you might get a dismissal in the police court, but we all make our mistakes, you know. This is going to be a very tricky case, though. It's not going to be just working out the legal defence. If it was only doing that in front of a judge, I'd take the responsibility of leaving you by yourself, if they were my own son and daughter. But this looks like being one of those cases where the legal side isn't so important--" he chuckled--"and it'll be a matter of making the best of a bad job with the jury. That's the snag."

  "Almost all my work's been in front of juries."

  "Of course it has. You'll. have plenty more. But you know, as we all know, that they're very funny things. And in this case I should say from my experience of them that they'll be prejudiced against your people--simply because they're of the younger generation and one or two stories will slip out that they've gone the pace at times--"

  "That's obviously true."

  "Well, I put it to Hotchkinson that they'd be even more prejudiced, if their counsel was the same kind of age and a brilliant young man. They'd resent all the brilliance right from the start, Eliot. You'd only have to make a clever suggestion, and they'd distrust you. They'd be jibbing from all the good qualities of your generation--as well as the bad, but they'd find the bad all right. The racketiness that's been the curse of these days--they'd find that and they'd count it against them in spite of anything you said. Anything you could say would only make it worse."

  "What do you suggest?" I said.

  "I want you to stay in the case. You know it better than anyone already, and we can't do without you. But I believe, taking everything into consideration, you ought to have someone to lead you."

  "Who?"

  "I was thinking of your old chief--Getliffe."

  "It's sensible to get someone," I broke out, "but Getliffe -seriously, he's a bad lawyer."

  "No one's a hero to his pupils, you know," said Eden.

  I persisted: "I dare say I'm unfair. But this is important. There are others who'd do it admirably." I gave some names of senior counsel.

  "They're clever fellows," said Eden, smiling as when we argued about George. "But I don't see any reason to go be. yond Getliffe. He's always done well with my briefs."

  When I was alone, I was surprised that my disappointment should be so sharp. There was little of my own at stake, a brief in a minor case--for which, of course, I had already refused to be paid. Yet, when it was tested through Eden's decision, I knew--there is no denying the edge of one's unhappiness--that I was more wounded by the petty rebuff than by the danger to my friends.

  I was ashamed that it should be so. But for some hours I could think of little else. Despite the anxieties of the case, the chances of Jack running, their immediate fate: despite being present at a time when George needed all the strength of a friend. Often, in the last days, I had lain awake, thinking of what would happen to him. But tonight I was preoccupied with my own vanity.

  I went to London next morning and saw Getliffe. He said, alert, bright-eyed and glib after skimming through the documents: "You worked with Eden once, of course."

  "I know him well," I said.

  "You've seen this case he's sent us?"

  "I've watched it through the police court," I answered.

  "Well, L. S.," his voice rose, "it'll be good fun working together again. It's been too long since we had a duet, I'm looking forward to this."

  The preparation of the brief gave me a chance to be more thorough than if I had been left alone. For there was the need to sit with Getliffe, to bully him, to ignore his complaints that he would get it up in time, to make him aggrieved and patronizing. At any cost, he must not go into court in the way I had seen him so often, flustered, with no more than a skipped reading, a half memory behind him, relying in a badgered and uncomfortable way on his inventive wits, completely determined to work thoroughly in his next case, fidgeting and yet getting sympathy with the court--somehow, despite the mistakes, harassment, carelessness, sweating forehead and nervous eyes, keeping his spirits and miraculously coming through.

  I kept the case before him. He was harder-working than most, but he could not bear any kind of continuity. An afternoon's work after his own pattern meant going restlessly through several briefs, picking up a recognition-symbol here and there so that, when a Solicitor came in and mentioned a name, Getliffe's eyes would be bright and intelligent--"You mean the man who--"

  He left me to prepare the witnesses. One of my tasks was to trace Martineau; it took a great deal of time. At last I found a workhouse master in the North Riding, who guffawed as I began to inquire over the telephone.

  "You mean Old Jesus
," he said. "He's often been in here." He added: "He doesn't seem mad. But he must be right off his head."

  He was able to tell me where "that crowd" had settled now.

  I returned to the town at the weekend. I had not been back an hour before Roy rang up to say that Jack seemed to have disappeared. For a day or two he had been talking of a "temporary expedition" to Birmingham, to survey the land for a new business as soon as the trial was over. Today no one could find him.

  A few minutes after the call, Roy brought Olive and Rachel to Eden's house. For the whole afternoon Eden left us to ourselves.

  Rachel was desperately worried. Roy also believed that Jack had flown. Of us all, Olive alone was unshaken.

  "If you knew him better," she said, "you'd know that he fooled himself with his excuses--as well as you. He's really planning a new business. And he also thinks it's a good dodge for getting a few miles away."

  "He needn't stop there," said Roy.

  "I don't believe he's gone near Birmingham," said Rachel.

  "I think you'll find he has," said Olive.

  "I know I'm thinking of George all the time," cried Rachel. "We've got to sit by and watch Jack ruin him. And Olive, it's wretched to see you--"

  "Go on."

  "I must speak now. I know it's hopeless," Rachel went on. "But if only you could see Jack for a minute just as we do--"

  "You think he's a scoundrel. That he doesn't care a rap for me. And that he'll only marry me because he can't get money some other way. Is that what you mean?" Before Rachel replied Olive added: "Some of it's quite true."

  "You don't know what a relief it would be--to get you free of him," Rachel said. "Is there any chance? When this is over?"