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

by Unknown

  It was in the following autumn that they bought the agency. Many conversations with Jack were recorded in the diary, most of them about the society. George's references to the group in the next two years became far more varied: at times impatient, moved by Jack, "urging me on to his own freedom. Wanting me to destroy the only thing I have ever made. Yet he is a lover of life, he has given me his warm companionship for years, he looks into the odd corners of living" ( November 17th, 1928).

  During that autumn, also, a girl called Katherine Faulkner entered the society--usually referred to in the diary as K. For some time she was only mentioned casually.

  A NEW VENTURE

  OCTOBER 16, 1928

  Today Jack, Olive and I took over the agency, that curious stage in Martineau's mad progress. It is to be hoped it does well. Money is a perpetual nuisance: why should I, who care so little for it, have it always dragging round my neck? I have hopes that Jack will win us new comforts. Of course, I am not as optimistic as they all think. I remember his bad luck and bad management with that absurd first attempt of his. But he is still capable of success: it is time we had the luck on our side. CONTRACT SIGNED DECEMBER 2, 1928 Jack is busy and active and full of ideas. A little money has come in already. Today it struck me as strange that Jack, of all my friends, should have been close at my side for the longest time. He was indulging in one of his new attacks on the group. "Why don't you see what people really want?" He does not trouble to conceal that he includes me among them. He does not pretend to share my hopes nowadays: he would like me to follow him with his suburban girls. Yet all this sadistic nonsense of his does not seem to interrupt our alliance. JACK AGAIN DECEMBER 4, 1928 Jack brought in a friend tonight who made a fierce emotional case for immortality. Lewis, in the old days, would have shrugged his shoulders, but I enjoyed the talk. On the train afterwards, going to this petty little case--I'm tired of being foisted off with Eden's drudgery--I remembered that it was the first argument with a stranger for many months. The group is taking up all my energy--more even than it did in the first flush of youthful zeal, religious years that are not quite repeated now. If Jack were not obsessed with his own pleasures, he would see how that answers his attacks. AGREEMENT.

  DECEMBER 6, 1928

  I thought it was perhaps a mistake not to keep a tiny fraction of my interests away from the "little world." I sometimes wish that Lewis were here for a day or two. So on the train I read some calculus with immense excitement. Why wasn't I told about these things at school? Also "Clissold"; Wells is childish in politics, but there are moments when he feels for the whole common soul of man. A FEW HOURS SNATCHED FOR MYSELF Yet I have little time for anything outside the group now.

  During the next few weeks, he wrote those entries about the circulation which Daphne had showed me at first. I put them aside to think over again.

  FEBRUARY 22, 1929

  I appeared before the School Committee, asking for money for the brightest man since Lewis's day. It was a horrible fiasco. Cameron was unnecessarily offensive. The cleric Martineau scored at my expense. I am not so effective as I used to be. I can still hear that grotesque display, and I feel like blinding all the damned night through. COLLAPSE.

  I COME TO GRIPS AGAIN

  MARCH 1, 1929

  Things have not been perfect. I have not quite the usual satisfaction of work well done. The debacle of my appearance before the committee, another storm of lust, Jack's contempt for the "hole and corner" way in which I indulge my passions, have all played their part. Jack hints also that Olive has begun an affair with Morcom of all people, to whom I have scarcely spoken a private word for months. It may take her away from our little business venture, and it's a piece of wanton irritation. However, I ought to be able to ignore it. The sight of K., smiling at the Farm, a different person from what she was three months ago, is enough to remove any memories of Olive as anything more than a friendly, competent person, who is some help to Jack and myself. TOO EASILY DOWNCAST.

  After a walk in the beautiful rain-sodden evening, I have felt again the essential urge to live among these people. My course is set and my mind made up. Jack's friendship is valuable, but his influence must be despised. I see it clearly now.

  MARCH 2, 1929

  K. and the others made this the most perfect weekend I have ever known. They were alive, we were all on terms of absolute confidence. I was overwhelmed with happiness, unqualified happiness, such happiness as comes unawares and only in rare moments. I was bathed in the warmth of joyous living, so that any trouble seemed incredible.

  APRIL 18, 1929

  Next weekend, so I have just heard, some clod has rented the Farm and we cannot be accommodated. Why in heaven should I be denied what is my food and life by the sheer inconsequent whim of some unknown fool?

  Although he did not admit it for some months, it was probably about this time that he became engrossed in Katherine--in love with her, perhaps. Never before, at any rate, had any girl in the group meant as much: Mona, now married to an acquaintance of Jack's, had only been one of his many "fancies." In the diary about this date he dismissed her: "She was a bright little thing. I could have slept with her if my theory had permitted it--I suppose Jack did not feel any scruples." There had been another girl, Phyllis, who had by this time finished her training as an elementary schoolmistress, and taken a job in the county; George had toyed half-heartedly with the idea of marrying her, a couple of years back.

  But Katherine moved him far more deeply: she came upon him when he was trying to maintain all his ideals over the "little world."

  I never met her, or knew much of her, except that she was very poor and possessed the delicate and virginal beauty which most excited George. He struggled against recognizing the passion. After that outburst over the Farm, he tried to miss the group's meetings there. He found himself in one of his whirls of womanizing, unusually long-drawn out.

  RELAPSES

  MAY 7

  Somehow I have not got the School and the group in my bones as I used to have. This is strange after the promise of a month ago. I am in a tangle of desires, scattering money more frantically than I ever did. I met Winnie in Oxford Street: she is one of the nicest girls I have managed to know. Curious--her face comes and goes. Why? ( Peggy's went long since. Dorothy's went, also the Cambridge girl, and the Bear Street one. It needs some effort to recall Hilda.) FACES IN LONDON.

  (The names were all of women he had picked up on the streets.)

  MAY 21

  I am still a libido, though I get some joy from life. No moralizing; things happen well when they do happen. Last night it was the old crowd in Nottingham. Some of the old hands are in trouble. Connie owes to a money-lender, poor soul. Thelma sees financial ruin coming. I told her that the "good wife and mother stunt" is off. Why am I so attracted by prostitutes? I finished up with Pat, Connie's successor and the best of all.

  JUNE 3

  I have wrestled with repentance. Late though it be, I am wholly in love with the group again. I came back to a weekend at the Farm--my first for a month--with extraordinary gratitude that they should receive me with a show of happiness and admiration. Jack was not there, and I am ashamed to say that made me easier in mind. They seem to respect me. Little do they know that I am really the prodigal son. RETURN TO THE GROUP.

  JUNE 4

  I think I am in love with K. I cannot write until I have thought it out.

  JUNE 6

  I still cannot see my way clear. For hours I have rehearsed renunciatory speeches to myself. Yet I know I shall never make them. About one thing I must be certain, now and whatever happens in the future; nothing must impair any single person near me. I am beginning to think I have never been in love before -in my purely selfish life, it is the greatest thing that has happened. But that is a trifle beside the people I can still look after. If I neglect that work, there is nothing left of me except an ordinary man and a handful of sensations.

  JUNE 10

  I met K. by accident to-nig
ht. She shook hands as we parted. Her touch is like no other touch. In the whispering air I rode home to a quiet house.

  From the diary one gained no clear impression of K. She was probably a complex and sensitive person, easily hurt and full of self-distrust. Her relation with George was strained and unhappy, almost from the beginning: "the only time I have been utterly miserable over a woman," he wrote. With the odd humour that came less often in his diary than in speech, he added on July 24th: "K. let me hold her hand: but that may have been because there was no feeling in her arm."

  His distress and "longing" (a word which entered frequently that summer) drove him more completely into the group. He resigned from the one or two organizations in the town to which he still belonged--five years before, he had taken part in many. He kept protesting against "extra work for Eden."

  "I am a solicitor's clerk. I do not consider I am under any obligation to do more than a competent solicitor's clerk usually does. He has no call on me outside office hours."

  He ceased to mention his law lectures, in which he used to take so great a pride.

  The same summer--Daphne, who was then nineteen, and Freda (the F. of the accounts which George showed me early in the investigation) joined the group.

  SEPTEMBER 8, 1929

  Last night saw what may be--what ought to be--the concluding stage in the K. business. She let everyone see what she thought of me. Perhaps she will not come near us again. Jack, Rachel and Olive came to see me tonight. Rachel was all sympathy, and Olive did not disguise her own affair. When Rachel had gone, however, Olive got down to some of the agency's accounts. They are rather good, though the trickle of money does not relieve my financial doldrums. It gives Jack a living, though. He was fine and highhanded about K. Either I ought to make love to her, he insisted, or she ought to be thrown out. I think that he was being genuinely warm-hearted, he was thinking only of my peace of mind.

  But it is all very well for them to brandish their freedom. They have got to realize that I am in a different position. They say I have created the position and difficulty for myself. That makes it all the more essential.

  SEPTEMBER 14

  The meek don't want the earth. Yet I have thought of her all day. Is it possible that she is anxious not to give herself away too cheaply? Or does she simply hate and despise me?

  If I am not to have her, let me clear the lumber out of my heart and regain the old freedom. If I could only fall in love with Rachel--but this K. business spoils every other relation.

  SEPTEMBER 17

  Martineau called in for an hour or two. He still wanders on his lonely, meaningless crusade, and remains his gentle self. I told him the agency was going adequately on. He did not seem in terested. In the circumstances, I thought it unnecessary to say more. The family this evening asked me for more money: finance will soon be disastrous again.

  SEPTEMBER 28

  Perhaps K. has gone for good. I have never keen in so many troubles. I am baying at the moon. Sometimes the group itself seems like a futile little invention of my own. I am thoroughly despondent. The root of the trouble is a discontent which is not confined to me. There is money, which still harasses me. Apart from K., I begin to think the major cause of my present discontent lies in ambition. It will not be so easy to die in obscurity as I once thought.

  OCTOBER 3

  K. is in a state of semi-return. Last night was the second weekend running in Nottingham, but if K. comes back I need not go again. Pat's face is too often a disembodied smile, wickedly turned up, saying "all right" or "whisky."

  OCTOBER 11

  We have had a good weekend at the Farm. The people there were all living more abundantly than if I had never happened. I have despaired too easily. I still believe in them and myself, in spite of occasional tremors. In any case, what else could there be in life?

  OCTOBER 13

  K.'s essence still comes between me and everything. Yet tonight I was infuriated by a blasted business acquaintance of Olive's disregarding my presence and ignoring my intelligence. I cannot admit inferiority. It is an essential to my present poise that I should be supreme in intellect over anyone I meet.

  OCTOBER 17

  K. is hardly apologetic over her refusal to attend another Farm party. She would not explain, and now avoids me. I transferred a little of my affection to Freda, whose smile is sometimes like a faint reflection.

  OCTOBER 23

  K. looked through me with cold eyes. I can't pretend that I still have any hope. (later the same night)

  I shook myself out of this absurd and humiliating affair and took the train to Nottingham. Pat was as delightful as ever a girl of this kind could be--and, damn it, I like these girls better than any others.

  OCTOBER 30

  One of the best parties we have had, and sometimes I have managed to put K. out of mind. The group is far better, I am afraid, with Jack not present.

  Freda told me that my "half-closed" eyes were (a) concerning K. and Jack, * and (b) to Rachel's feeling about me. As for Rachel, she chose her way and I am sure she likes it best.

  NOVEMBER 3

  I find myself longing, as I never longed before. For all my fantasies, I do not suppose I should take her as a mistress, even if she would let me near her. I could not help walking the streets round her house, in the hope of seeing her by accident. I walked through a gathering fog, getting for a moment a feeling of exultation as I sped through the mist, weaving my dreams. Of course I did not see her: I went back to the old cafÉ, played four games of draughts, then came home and raved.

  That was a couple of hours ago. Since then I have been reading some of the diaries of recent years. It has brought back some of the pleasure and hope I have gathered from these people. Some of them have gone before now, without being helped. But others are free people, a nucleus of friends, thinking and acting and living as no other group I am likely to know again.

  That is my achievement, and nothing can take it from me. Jack and Olive, for all their faults and defections: Lewis Eliot, away in London--Phyllis and--and--and--: they're all different for having known me and from my being able to spend my devotion. Well, that must go on--whatever distracts me by the way. Are there many men who have twenty better lives to their credit?

  So let us not be sad. Personal misery is grotesque: and who am I to complain of losing one when there are so many to occupy my life? Really, I do not often worry about myself at all.

  But the passion lasted--different from any in his life, and nearer to others' experience. The same pattern of unhappiness, desire for freedom and return to K., ran through the diary for months.

  ____________________

  * This seems to have been quite baseless.

  DECEMBER 13

  I take too little notice of people about me. By this wretched affair, I have hurt Rachel. Apart from business I scarcely ever see Olive. I am vexed with ever absent money, tension about K., no fame. But K. seems to have hinted to Jack that she would like to be reconciled: which news filled me with wild joy, though I was intensely annoyed by Jack's remark--"She may think you too mad and dangerous."

  I am a little afraid of Jack at times.

  This afternoon Freda said of K. and me: "When you take a dislike to a person, imagination does the rest."

  JANUARY 5, 1930

  I wish I could feel for Freda instead of K. Sometimes I think I could: at least I could get comfort from her. But there again I should have other problems to face. I cannot control myself all these years, resist being laughed at by Jack, only to crash all my aspirations by my own deliberate action.

  Anyway the question does not arise. With K. it is an ache, a slow corroding pain.

  I went off to see Pat, sick at heart. I had quite a pleasant time with her.

  JANUARY 14

  Tonight K. broke her silence. I saw her quite by chance in Rachel's flat--who, good soul, made a sarcastic remark and then went out. K. began to talk. She did not apologize. After making myself incredibly late for every
thing else that evening, I went. But not before I had seen her smile, and felt a happiness that seemed unsensuous and perfect.

  At times, by the way, she was wearisome and showed signs of being shallow--but I could hardly think of that.

  The after effect has been to make me dream of Freda.

  MY HAPPIEST DAY

  JANUARY 15

  BZALIZING IT. It is very difficult to think of her as tangible.

  The reconciliation and their "ethereal" relations continued all that spring. It occupied much of the diary; for the rest he wrote far less of the constructive side of the group--with occasional reiterations that it was still "my major interest."

  Instead, he became more explicit about his "sensations"-- to begin with, the nights in Nottingham and London were minutely described. Then: " Jack and I are narrowing our attention to the libido. It is a long time since we talked of our friends in any other way. For myself, I still cannot limit my interest as he does in his frank fashion. Yet no man has lived more freely than Jack. I know they have often thought him a superficial person by the side of some of us. Perhaps that is not just."

  MARCH 24