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

by Unknown

  Materially, he was not much better off. Eden paid him £325 a year now; he still lectured at the School. But there was one surprising change--so surprising to me that I disbelieved it long after I ought to have been convinced. He had joined, as a concealed partner, in some of Jack's money-making schemes.

  They had actually bought the agency and the advertising paper from Martineau and his partner Exell, a year or so after Martineau joined his brotherhood. When Olive returned, the three of them had invented more ambitious plans, and in 1931 raised money to buy the Farm and run it as a youth hostel.

  These stories were true enough, I found: and they appeared to be making some money. As Olive wrote: "Of course, with Jack and me, we're just keen on the money for its own sake. But I still don't think anyone can say that of George. He gets some fun out of working up the schemes--but really all he wants money for is to leave him freer with his group."

  George had come, more thoroughly as each year passed, to live entirely within his group of protégés. He still carried young people off their feet; he still gave them faith in themselves; he was still eager with cheerful, abundant help, thoughtless of the effect on himself. Jack was only one out of many who would still have been clerks if they had not come under his influence. And there were others whom he could not help practically, but who were grateful: Olive quoted Rachel as saying: "Whatever they say, he showed us what it's like to be alive."

  That went on: but there was a change. This was a change, though, that did not surprise me. It had been foreshadowed by Jack years ago, that night of our celebration in Nottingham. When I heard of it, I knew that it had always been likely; and I was curiously sad.

  I heard of it, as it happened, from Roy Calvert, whom I met at a dinner-party in Cambridge. He was then twenty- one, polished and elegantly dressed. He talked of his cousin Olive. He was acute, he already knew his way about the world. Then he mentioned that George was attracting some gossip. George was, in fact, believed to be making love to girls within the group.

  Roy had no doubt. Nor had I As I say, it made me curiously sad. For I knew what, in earlier days, it would have meant to George.

  I thought of him often after that piece of news. I had no premonition of danger; that did not reach me until a year later, until Morcom's call in the summer of 1932. But I often wished that George's life had taken a different curve.

  During one case which regularly kept me late in chambers, so that I walked home through a succession of moonlit nights, those thoughts of George would not leave me alone. He was a man of more power than any of us: the only one built on the lines of a great man. So I thought with regret, almost with remorse, walking in London under the moon.

  I wished that I had been nearer his own age: I might have been more use to him: or that I had met him for the first time now.

  Time and time again, I thought of him as I had first known him.

  TWENTY-TWO

  RETURN FROM A HOLIDAY

  It was one of the last days of the Trinity term of 1932 when Morcom visited me. I had just arrived in my flat, after an afternoon in court.

  "I was passing through on my way back," he said. "I thought I'd call--"

  He had been sailing, he was tanned from the sea; but his face was thinner, and a suspense seemed to tighten his voice.

  We had dinner, and then I asked if anything was wrong.

  "Nothing much," said Morcom. He paused. "As a matter of fact," he said, "I'm worried about the people at--" He used the name of the town.

  "Is there any news?" I asked.

  "No news," he replied. "I've been away from them. I've been able to think. They'll finish themselves with a scandal," he said, "unless something is done."

  "What sort of scandal?"

  "Money," he said. "At least, that seems to be the dangerous part."

  "What do you mean?" I said.

  "Rumours have been going round for months," he said. "I couldn't help hearing them. As well as--private knowledge. When I got away, I realized what they meant."

  "Well?"

  "There's no doubt they've been working up some frauds. I've known that for some time. At least I knew they were pretty near the wind. I've only just begun to think that they've gone outside the law." He paused again. "That's why I came in tonight."

  "Tell me what you're going on."

  "I don't think I'm wrong," said Morcom. "It's all sordid. They've been spending money. They've invented one or two schemes and persuaded people to invest in them. On a smallish scale, I expect. Nothing very brilliant or impressive. They've done the usual tricks--falsified their expectations and got their capital from a few fools in the town."

  I was invaded by a strange "professional" anxiety; for, although exact knowledge of a danger removes some fears, it can also sharpen others. A doctor will laugh, when another young man comes to him fearing heart disease--but the same doctor takes an excessive care over the milk his children drink. So I remembered other frauds: quickly I pressed Morcom for the facts.

  What had happened? What were their schemes? What had been falsified? What was his evidence? Some of his answers were vague, vague perhaps through lack of knowledge, but I could not be sure. At times he spoke with certainty.

  He told me, what I had already heard from Olive, of the purchase of Martineau's advertising agency, and the organization of the Farm and another hostel. But he knew much more; for instance, that Miss Geary--who had taken George's part in the committee meeting years ago--was one of the people who had advanced money.

  "You may still be wrong," I said, as I thought over his news. "Stupidity's commoner than dishonesty. The number of ways people choose to lose their money is remarkable -when everyone's behaving with perfect honesty."

  Morcom hesitated.

  "I can't tell you why I'm certain. But I am certain that they have not behaved with perfect honesty."

  "If you're right--does anyone else know this?"

  "Not for certain. As far as I know." He added: "You may have gathered that I see very little of any of them--nowadays."

  His manner throughout had been full of insistence and conviction; but it was something else which impressed me. He was angry, scornful, and distressed; that I should have expected: but, more disquieting even than his story, was the extraordinary strain which he could not conceal. At moments--more obvious in him than anyone, because of his usual control--he had been talking with hysterical intensity. At other moments he became placid, serene, even humorous. I felt that state was equally aberrant.

  "You haven't told me," I said, "who 'they' are? Who is mixed up in this?"

  "Jack," he began. I smiled, not in amusement but in recognition, for about the whole story there was a flavour of Jack Cotery--"and George," Morcom went on.

  I said: "That's very difficult to believe. I can imagine George being drawn to a good many things--but fraud's about the last of them."

  "I don't know," said Morcom indifferently. "He may have wanted the money more than usually himself--"

  "He's a man of conscience," I said.

  "He's also loose and self-indulgent," said Morcom.

  I began to protest, that we were both using labels, that we knew George and it was useless to argue as though he could be defined in three words; but then I saw Morcom ready to speak again.

  "And there's Olive Calvert," said Morcom.

  I did not reply for a second; the use of her surname (for as long as I remembered, she had been "Olive" to all our friends) made me want to comfort him.

  "I should have thought she was too sensible to be let in." I made an attempt to be casual. "She's always had a sturdy business sense."

  Morcom's answer was so quiet that I did not hear the words for certain, and, despite my anxiety, I could not ask him to repeat it.

  As we walked away from the restaurant, Morcom tried to talk of indifferent things. I looked at him, when we had gone past the lamp in a narrow street. In the uneven light, faint but full of contrast as a room lit by one high window, his face was over-
tired. Yet tonight, just as years before, he would take no pity on his physical state; he insisted on walking the miles back to my flat. I had to invent a pretext to stop on the way, at a night-club; where, after we had drunk some whisky, I asked: "What's to be done?"

  "You've got to come in--and help," said Morcom.

  I paused. "That's not too easy. I'm very much out of touch,"

  I said. "And I don't suppose they'd like to tell me this for themselves. I can't go with your confidence--"

  "Naturally you can't," said Morcom. "It mustn't be known that I've said a word. I don't want that known."

  "In that case," I said, "it's difficult for me to act."

  "You understand that anything I've said is completely secret. Whatever happens. You understand that."

  I nodded.

  "You've got to stop them yourself. You've done more difficult things," he said. "Without as much necessity. You've never had as much necessity. It comes before anything else you must see that."

  "You're sure you can't take control yourself?"

  "I can only sit by," he said.

  He meant, he could do nothing for her now. But I felt that he was shutting himself away from release. With a strain that was growing as acute as his own, I begged him to act himself.

  "It's the natural thing," I said. "It would settle it--best. You've every reason to do it--"

  He did not move.

  "See her when you go back. You can still make yourself do that."

  "No."

  "See George, then. It wouldn't be difficult. You could finish it all in a day or two--"

  "I can't. There's no use talking any further. I can't."

  He suddenly controlled his voice, and added in a tone light and half rueful: "If I did interfere, it would only make things worse. George and I have been nominally reconciled for years, of course. But he would never believe I wasn't acting out of enmity." He was smiling good-naturedly and mockingly. Then his manner changed again.

  "If anything's to be done, you've got to do it," he said. "They're going to be ruined unless you come in."

  "I can't help thinking you're being too pessimistic," I said, after a moment. "I don't believe it's as inevitable as all that."

  "They've gone a long way," said Morcom.

  "It's possible to go a long way in making dishonest money," I said, "without being any the worse for it. Still, if I can be any use------"

  Then I made one last effort to persuade him to act himself. I looked into his face, and began to talk in a matter-of-fact, callous manner: "But I shall be surprised if you're not taking it too tragically. First of all, they probably haven't managed anything criminal. Even if they have, we can either finish it or get them off. It's a hundred to one against anything disastrous happening. And if the hundredth choice came off, which I don't believe for a moment, you'd be taking it too tragically, even then. I mean, it would be disastrous, but it wouldn't be death."

  "That's no comfort."

  "I don't mean it wouldn't be unpleasant. I was thinking of something else. I don't believe that being convicted of swindling would be the end of the world for either of us. It's only ruin--when people crumble up inside, when they're punishing themselves. Don't you agree? You ought to know through yourself just now--in a different way. If you went back and protected them--if you weren't forcing yourself to keep away--you would be happier than you are tonight."

  There was a silence.

  "You know perfectly well," he said, "that everything you've said applies to George. It would be ruin for him. In his own eyes, I mean, just as you've been saying. And the others--she's not a simple person------" He paused. "And there's more to it than the offence. You've got to realize that. It means the break-up of George's little world. It also means that the inside of the little world isn't going to be private any longer. You know--that isn't all high thinking nowadays."

  I remembered what Roy had told me, and what I had gathered for myself.

  "Yes," I said.

  For a few moments he broke into a bitter outburst unlike anything I had heard from him--against idealists who got tangled up with sensuality in the end. His words became full of the savage obscenity of a reticent man. Then he stopped suddenly.

  "I'm never fair to that kind of indulgence," he said, in his ordinary restrained tone. "They seem to me to win both ways. They get the best of both worlds."

  Then he said: "That isn't a reason for leaving them alone." But he would not let himself help them. I accepted that now, and we discussed the inquiries that I might make. Soon he insisted that he must return to the town by the last train; I remembered that, not long after his arrival, he had agreed to stay the night.

  The morning after that visit, I wrote to George, asking if he could stay with me in London: I was too busy to leave. I had no reply for several days: then a letter said that he and "the usual party" were on holiday in the north. I could do nothing more for the time being, and in August, a fortnight after Morcom called, went to my own holiday in France.

  There I thought over Morcom's story in cold blood. He had heard something from Olive--that was clear. And still loving her, he could make a trivial fact serve as a flare-up for his own unspent emotion. He wanted to worry about her--and had seized a chance to do it on the grand scale.

  That must be true: but I was not satisfied. Then often I consoled myself, as one always would at such a time, by thinking "these things don't happen." Often I thought, with genuine composure, "these things don't happen."

  In the end I cut my holiday short by a few days, telling myself I would go to the town and set my mind at rest. Across the sea, in the mist of the September evening, I felt the slight anxious ache that comes, lightly and remorselessly--as I first noticed after an examination--whenever one has been away and is returning home. I was no more depressed than that, no more than if I had been away for a few days and was now (on a cool evening, the coast in sight) on my way home.

  TWENTY-THREE

  SIGHT OF OLD FRIENDS

  George wrote, when I suggested paying him a visit: "We shall be out at the Farm that week-end. If you can come over, I'll organize it immediately. You can meet some of the original party and some of the new blood that we've brought up------"

  Neither there nor in the rest of the letter was there any symptom of uneasiness. It sounded like George for so long, absorbed and contented in the little world.

  On the Saturday afternoon a week after my return, I arrived at Eden's house. About a year previously, just as I was beginning to find my feet at the Bar, he had sent me a couple of cases, and since then several invitations to "stay in your old haunts." In the drawing-room, where we had argued over Martineau's renunciation, Eden received me cordially and comfortably. He was in his arm-chair, lying back in golf suit and slippers after an afternoon walk.

  "You've done very well," he said. "You've done very well, of course. But I heard you weren't well last year. You must take care of that," he said. "You won't get anywhere without your health. And unless you learn to be your own doctor by the time you're thirty, you never will afterwards."

  I had always enjoyed his company; he was hospitable and considerate. "If you want to talk to your friends while you're staying here, just consider the study upstairs as your private property." He got talking about "those days," his formula of invocation of his youth; and it was later after dinner than I intended when I caught the bus to the Farm.

  As I walked across the fields, lights were shining from several of the Farm windows. George came to the door.

  "Splendid," he said, with his hand outstretched. "I was wondering whether you'd lost your way." In his busy, elab orate fashion he took my coat. "I knew you wouldn't stay any longer at Eden's than decency compelled you." The door of one room was open, and there was a hubbub of voices: a smell of fresh paint hung in the hall, and I noticed the stand and chairs were new.

  George whispered: "There are one or two people here you don't know. They'll be a bit awkward, of course. You'll be prepared to mak
e allowances." He led the way, and, as soon as we were inside the room, shouted in his loud voice, full of friendly showmanship: "I don't think you've all met our guest. He used to come here a few years ago. You've all heard of him------"

  The room was fogged with smoke and on the air there floated the smell of spirits; some bottles glistened on the table in the light of the two oil-lamps, and others lay in the cushions near the loudspeaker. There was the first dazzling impression of a group of unknown faces, flat like a picture without perspective. I recognized Rachel in one of the window seats, sitting by Roy Calvert, and a girl whom I remembered meeting once.

  "You'll have to be introduced all round," said George from behind, as I went to talk to Rachel. She had aged more than any of us, I was thinking; lines had become marked under her eyes, in the full pale cheeks. Her voice as she said: "Well, Lewisl" was still zestfully and theatrically rich.

  As George took me round the room, Roy caught my eye for a moment. I wondered what he was doing there.

  I was introduced to a couple of youths on the sofa, both under twenty: a girl and young man in the opposite windowseat to Roy.

  "Then here's Daphne," said George. "Miss Daphne Jordan------", he added a little stiffly; she was quite young, fullbreasted, with a shrill and childish voice. George's manner bore out the rumours that she was his present preoccupation. Her face was plump, square at the cheek-bones; her upper lip very short, and eyes an intense brown, sharp and ready to stare up at mine.

  "What are you doing, George?" she said. "Why don't you give the poor man a drink?"

  "I'm sorry, won't you have something?" George said to me, and with a gust of laughter for the girl: "I'm always being nagged," he said.

  I went back to the window, near Roy and Rachel. Roy whispered: "Don't you think Daphne is rather a gem?" He was a little drunk, in the state when he wanted to exaggerate anyone's beauty. "She is quite a gem," he said.