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

by Unknown

  "I'm afraid it isn't very difficult. They wanted money to go the pace," said Eden. "They weren't the sort to keep within their means. It's a pity."

  "I should have thought they could have made it like the rest of us. If they were as keen on it as all that. Or do you mean, they didn't care a cherub's apron for the way the money comes? With all due respect, I don't see them quite that way. God knows, I don't think much of them-----"

  "I've sometimes thought," said Eden, "that the greatest single difference between our generation and theirs is the way we look at money. It doesn't mean anything like the same as it did when we were starting. You can't altogether blame them, when you look at the world that's coming."

  "That's not true," I said, "of two of them at least. George Passant always had strict views about financial honesty, though he throws his own money about. And Olive--she would be perfectly sensible and orthodox about it."

  "I've generally found that people who are loose morally -are loose the other way too," said Eden.

  "You're meaning Cotery was the centre of the piece?" Getliffe said to me.

  "I've always rather taken to him." Eden put in. "He's a bit weak, that's all. He's the sort of man who'd have done well in different company. Somehow I can't see him just sweeping the other two along."

  "Can you, L. S.?" Getliffe said.

  "As for Passant," Eden went on, "you've always had too high an opinion of him, you know. As you get older, you'll lose your illusions about human nature. I dare say he did have strict views about financial honesty--when people he disliked were making the money."

  "I believe," I said, "that he's been as ashamed of the money part as you would have been yourself."

  "I must say," said Getliffe, "that it makes more sense if you take our host's line. It looks as though Passant went in up to the neck right at the beginning. He had no sooner talked to this man Martineau than he was ready to cook his figures. It doesn't leave you much to stand on, L. S."

  I told him, as I had done before, that I believed George's own account; somehow Martineau had let him take away the idea of a large circulation. We had already arranged for him to press this story of George's on Martineau himself. At first Getliffe had welcomed it as a glimmer of hope: tonight he did not pretend to accept it.

  "There's only one chance of excusing them that I've been able to keep," said Eden. "That is, Martineau may have been vague when Passant approached him. You must remember he was slightly eccentric at the time. You'll see for yourself soon. You'll find him a very likeable fellow, of course. But, you know, I've been trying to keep that doubt in their favour--and, between ourselves, I can't credit it for a minute. Martineau was always a bit queer--but he was the sharpest man on money matters I ever knew. It's very peculiar, but there -there's nowt as odd as fowk. I don't believe he had it in him not to know exactly what the paper was doing--even if he was going to give it away."

  "And if he was vague--you can't really console yourself with that," said Getliffe. "There's too much difference altogether. Passant would have to misunderstand on purpose."

  For a time they talked about the Farm. "If I'd been Porson, I would have given us more of that little business. Just our friends raising money, that's all," said Getliffe.

  Just before ten, I went up to my room. I heard Martineau being received below a few minutes afterwards. Getliffe had told me to be ready to join the interview; nearly an hour passed, but they did not send for me. At last footsteps sounded on the stairs. I opened my door, and from below heard Eden saying: "Good-bye, Howard. We shall see you tomorrow, then."

  I went back into my room, and walked up and down, unable to keep still. On his way to bed, Getliffe looked in.

  "It wasn't worth while bringing you down. I didn't get anywhere," he said. He looked jaded and downcast.

  "What happened?"

  "I couldn't get anything out of him."

  "Did you tell him Passant's story? Did you let him see that some of us believe it?"

  "I went as far as anyone could," said Getliffe.

  "Shall I see him?"

  "I told him you'd satisfied yourself about Passant's version. I tried to make him believe I had too. But"--Getliffe's voice was tired--"he simply didn't seem interested. He didn't remember it very well. It was all hazy. He couldn't have told Passant anything but the real figures. Even though he didn't have any recollection of it now."

  "You mean, he's going to deny Passant's story?"

  "As near as makes no matter," said Getliffe. "All I can do is try to make him say that he's forgotten." He added: "I never thought Passant's side of it would hold water for a minute."

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THE GARDENS REVISITED

  After Getliffe left me, I tried to read. Then I heard the front-door bell ring below: it was just before midnight. There was a long delay: the bell rang again. A maid scampered down the stairs. In a moment a heavy tread ascended towards my door. George came in.

  "Has Martineau been?"

  "Yes."

  "What did he say?"

  "I didn't meet him."

  "Why not?"

  "He saw George," I said. " Getliffe couldn't get anything out of him. It seems--unpromising."

  "I must see him tonight," said George. "I should like you to come too."

  It was the first time George had visited me since the inquiries began. For weeks before the trial he had scarcely left his lodgings. Now his angry questions seemed like life stirring in him again--but a frightening, persecuted life. As we walked from Eden's house into the town, he said twice: "I tell you I must see him tonight." He said it with an intensity such as I had never heard from him before.

  Since the preliminary inquiries he had shown only rare moments of anything like open fear. Instead, he had been sunk into the apathetic despair which many of us had noticed. For much of the time, he was shut away from any other person. He had been living with his own thoughts; often with reveries of the past, the meetings of the group at the Farm; "justifications" still came to his mind, and even sensual memories. In his thoughts he sometimes did not escape quite trivial shames, of "looking a fool" to himself.

  But tonight he could no longer look inwards. His thoughts had broken open, and exposed him to nothing but fear.

  George made for Martineau's old house. There was a light in what used to be the drawing-room: the housekeeper opened the door.

  "I want to see Mr. Martineau," said George.

  "He's not in yet. I'm waiting up for him," she said.

  "I'm afraid that it's essential for us to see him tonight," said George. "I shall have to wait."

  Then she recognized him. She had not seen him since the morning we came to bid Martineau good-bye.

  "It's you," she said. "When I heard of your goings-on, I said that I always knew you'd driven him away."

  "I shall have to wait," said George.

  She kept her hand on the latch. She would not ask him into the drawing-room. "I'm alone,"' she said, "and until he tells me, I can please myself who I let in-----"

  We argued; I tried to calm her, but she had brooded on losing Martineau all these years; she took her farcical revenge, and we had to wait outside in the raw night.

  We walked up and down the end of the Walk. From the. public gardens we could see the gate of Martineau's and the light in the drawing-room, just as we had done that night of Jack's confession.

  George, his eyes never leaving the path to the house, began to talk. He had heard, not many minutes after Eden, of the intention to dismiss him from the School. It had leaked out through an acquaintance on the staff; his friends at the School already knew. Then I told him what Eden had said on his position in the firm. He hardly listened.

  "You might as well see something. Another sheet of paper," he said.

  I had to light a match to read it. As the flame smoked, I thought of the other sheet of paper, the bill of the little plays which Jack had produced in these gardens. But he did not mean that. He meant the sheet of paper on which he had wr
itten down his statement on the circulation--the sheet of paper which lay before the court.

  In the matchlight, I read some of this letter.

  Dear George,

  We are writing in the name of twelve people who have known you at the School, and who are indignant at the news tonight. We wish there was something we could do to help, but at least we feel that we cannot let another day go by, without saying how much you have meant to us all. Whatever happens or is said, that cannot be taken away. We shall always remember it with gratitude. We shall always think of you as someone we were lucky to know.....

  There were four signatures, including those of a young man I had met at the Farm in September.

  "They mean it," I said.

  "It's too late to be written to now," said George. With desperate attention he still watched for Martineau. "Though I don't entirely accept Jack's remarks on the letter."

  "What were they?"

  "That the people who wrote it didn't realize that he and I weren't so very different nowadays-----"

  Without interest, George mentioned a quarrel over the letter. Jack had laughed at George's devotion to his protégés; he took it for granted, he expected George to take it for granted also, that it was just a camouflage to get closer to the women.

  George was listening only for footsteps: he had no more thought for Jack's remark. Yet he had resented it little--suddenly, in those gardens where he might have finished with Jack, I saw their relation more closely than I had ever done.

  Jack's power over George had grown each year. It was not the result of ordinary affection or admiration. It did not owe much to the charm which Jack exercised over many people. At times, George actively disliked him. But now, in the middle of this night of fear, George submitted to having his aspirations mocked.

  The fact was, from the beginning Jack had never believed in George's altruistic dreams. For a time--until he had been an intimate friend for years--Jack entered into them, and in George's company talked George's language. But it was always with a wink to himself; he judged George by the standard of his own pleasures; by instinct and very soon by experience he knew a good deal about the erotic life. He saw the sensual side of George's devotion long before George would admit it to himself. Jack thought none the worse of George, he took it as completely natural--but he was often irritated, sometimes morbidly provoked, by the barricade of aspirations. He had spoken of them tonight as "camouflage"; he had never believed they could be anything else. As soon as George"got down to business"--his affair with FredaJack showed that he both knew and had suspected it all along.

  From then onwards, in their curious intimacy, George seemed to be almost eager to accept Jack's valuation--to throw away all "pretence" and to share his pleasures with someone who was a rake, gay, frank, and unashamed.

  That mixture of intimacy and profound disbelief was at the root of Jack's power over George. George was paying a sort of spiritual blackmail. He was, in a fashion, glad to pay it. Very few men, the Georges least of all, are secure in their aspirations; it takes someone both intimate and unsympathetic, to touch one's own doubts--to give one, for part of one's life at least, the comfort of taking oneself at the lowest terms. At times we all want someone to destroy our own "ideals." We are ready to put ourselves in the power of a destructive, clear-eyed and degrading friend.

  The light in the drawing-room went out. Immediately George ran to the house, rang the bell, hammered on the door.

  "Where is Mr. Martineau? I've got to see him," he shouted. His voice echoed round the Walk.

  A light was switched on in the hall. The housekeeper opened a crack of door, and said: "He's not coming home tonight."

  "Let me in," George shouted.

  "He's rung up to say he's sleeping somewhere else."

  She did not know where, or would not say. I thought she was speaking the truth, and did not know.

  George and I were left outside the dark house.

  "Why didn't you see Martineau? Why wasn't I sent for myself?" George cried.

  Afraid myself, I tried to give him reasonable answers.

  " George was absolutely clear on the importance. We were talking about it at dinner."

  "With Eden?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you think I'm going to be deluded for ever? You can't expect me to believe that Eden is devoted to my best interests. I tell you, I insist on being certain that George is aware of the point at issue. And that someone whom I can trust must be present with George and Martineau when this point is being made. You ought to see that I'm right to insist on that. Are you going to desert me now?"

  "You don't believe we've missed anything so obvious," I said. "I know George was going to ask Martineau about the figure. He's very good at persuading people to say what he wants them to say. It's his chief-----"

  "And he doesn't think that he's persuaded Martineau?"

  "No."

  "Don't you think he would if there had been any serious attempt on my behalf? You come to me saying he's so good -and then apparently he wasn't interested enough to get the one essential piece of information. And then you think I ought not to insist that he's taken every step to get it."

  "It's no use-----"

  "You know what depends on it," George cried. "Do you think I don't know what depends on it?"

  "We all know that."

  "But none of you will lift a finger," he said. "I'm beginning to realize why Eden imported George-----"

  "That's nonsense."

  "I'm not going to listen to that sort of defence. There's one thing more precious than all your feelings," he shouted. "It's got to be settled tonight."

  "What do you want to do?"

  "I want to hear George and Martineau discuss the figure of the circulation. With you and myself present."

  I repeated the arguments: it had all been done. We did not know where Martineau was. He attacked me with bitterness and violence. At last, he said: "I knew you would do nothing. I can't expect any help."

  We argued again. He began to repeat himself. He accused me of taking everyone's side against him. Nothing I said could bring him even a moment's relief.

  THIRTY-SIX

  MARTINEAU'S DAY IN TOWN

  When I turned out of-----Street towards the court next morning, George and Martineau were standing on the pavement, outside a newspaper shop. Martineau cried: "Ah, Lewis! You see I've come! I ran up against old George two minutes ago!" His cheeks were sunburnt and halfhidden by a rich brown beard. His skin was wrinkled with laughter, and his eyes looked clear and bright. In George's presence his gaiety was oppressive; I began a question about his evidence, but he would not reply; I asked quickly about the journey, how did he travel, how was the "settlement"?

  "They're shaking down," he said. "Soon they will be able to do without me. I might be justified in making a move-----"

  To my astonishment, George laughed; not easily--by the sound alone, one would have known him to be in distress -and yet with a note of genuine amusement.

  "You don't mean that you are going to start again?"

  "I'm beginning to feel I ought, after all."

  "What ought you to do? What more can you do along those lines? There's simply nothing left for you to give up-----"

  "It doesn't seem to me quite like that-----" Martineau began.

  I had to leave them, as I saw George climbing the hall steps. The court was not so full as the afternoon before. George opened, and from his first words everyone felt that he was worried and dispirited. He told the jury more than once that "it may be difficult for you to see your way through all the details. We all feel like that. Even if you've been forced to learn a bit of law, you often can't see the wood for the trees. You've got to remember a few pieces of suspicion don't make a proof."

  Much of his speech was in that dejected tone.

  The first witnesses before lunch were customers of the advertising agency. Getliffe's questions did not go beyond matters of fact; he was untidy and restless; several times he too
k off his wig and the forelock fell over his brows. Porson, resting back with his eyes half-closed, did not cross-examine.

  As I met the three at lunch, Jack said: "How was that?"

  "He's trying to begin quietly, and go all out in the last speech. It's his common-man technique," I said.

  Olive looked into my face.

  "Why are you lying?" she cried. "Is it as bad as that?" Jack said: "It's got no worse. What do you expect him to say?"

  "It's your own examination that matters most," I said. "Not anything he says. You've got to be at your best tomorrow-----"

  "We can put a face on it. If you tell us the truth," she said.

  "You've got to be at your best," I said to George, "you above all."

  He had not spoken to the others. Once he looked at a stranger with a flash of last night's fear. On the outside, his manner had become more indrawn than before. It was seconds before he replied to me: "It's scarcely worth while him putting me on view."

  After lunch there was one other witness, and then Martineau was called.

  "Howard Ernest Martineaul" The call echoed in the court, and was caught up outside: it occurred to me inconsequently that we had never before heard anyone use his second name. When he mounted into the box he apologized with a smile to the judge for being late. He took the oath and stood with his head a little inclined; he was wearing a suit, now creased, dirty, and old-fashioned, that I thought I had seen in the past.

  "Mr. Martineau, you are a qualified solicitor?"

  "Yes."

  "You've practiced in this town?"

  "Yes."

  "How long were you in practice here?"

  "Quite a long time." Martineau's voice made a contrast to the quick, breathless question; he seemed less self-conscious than anyone who had spoken in the court. "Let me see, I must think it out. It must have been over twenty--nearly twenty-five years."

  "And you gave it up a few years ago? How long ago, exactly?"