Time of Hope

by C. P. Snow

  47: Another Night In Eden’s Drawing-Room

  George’s friends had sent for me because I was a lawyer. Before I had talked to him for half an hour that night, I thought it more likely than not that he would be prosecuted. I was relieved that I had something to do, that I was forced to think of professional action. It would have been harder just to listen helplessly to his distress.

  He was both massive and persecuted. He was guarding his group: sometimes he showed his old unrealistic optimism, and believed that this ‘outrage’ would blow over. I could not be certain how much he was concealing from me, though he was pathetically grateful for my affection. Even in the fear of disgrace, his mind was as powerful and precise as ever. It was astonishing to listen to a man so hunted, and hear a table of events, perfectly clear and well ordered, in which he and Jack Cotery had taken part for four years past.

  I did not understand it all until near the end of the trial; but from George’s account, in that first hour, I could put together most of the case that might be brought against them.

  George and Jack had been engaged in two different schemes for making money; and the danger was a charge of obtaining this money by false pretences, and (for technical reasons) of conspiracy to defraud.

  The schemes were dissimilar, though they had used the same financial technique. After giving up his partnership with Eden, Martineau had played with some curious irrelevant ventures before he finally made his plunge and renounced the world; one of those was a little advertising agency, which had attached to it the kind of small advertising paper common in provincial towns.

  Jack Cotery had persuaded George that, if they could raise the money and buy out Martineau’s partner, the agency was a good speculation. In fact, it had turned out to be so. They had met their obligations and made a small, steady profit. It looked like a completely honest business, apart from a misleading figure in the statement on which they had raised money. No sensible prosecution, I thought both then and later, would bring a charge against them on that count – if there existed one single clinching fact over the other business.

  They had gone on from their first success to a project bigger altogether; they had decided to buy the farm and some other similar places and run them as a chain of youth hostels. In George’s mind it was clear that one main purpose had been to possess the farm in private, so as to entertain the group. Jack had ranged about among their acquaintances, given all kinds of stories of attendances and profits, and on the strength of them borrowed considerable sums of money. I could imagine him doing it; I had little doubt that, whatever George knew of those stories, Jack Cotery had not kept within the limits of honesty, though he might have been clever enough to have covered his tracks. From the direction of the first inquiries, there seemed a hope that nothing explicitly damning had come to light. Looking at the two businesses together, however, I was afraid that the prosecution would have enough to go on. I went from George to Eden’s house, where I was staying the night; and there, by the fireside in the drawing-room, where I had once waited with joy for Sheila, I told Eden the story to date, and what I feared.

  ‘These things will happen,’ said Eden, with his usual impenetrable calm. ‘Ah well! These things will happen.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘You’re right, of course, we’ve got to be prepared.’

  His only sign of emotion was a slight irritability; I was surprised that he was not more upset about the credit of his firm. ‘I must say they’ve been very foolish. They’ve been foolish whatever they’ve been doing. They oughtn’t to try these things without experience. It’s the sort of foolishness that Passant would go in for. I’ve told you that before–’

  ‘He’s one of the biggest men I’ve met. That still holds after meeting a few more,’ I said, more harshly than I had ever spoken to Eden. For a moment, his composure was broken.

  ‘We won’t argue about that. It isn’t the time to argue now. I must consider what ought to be done,’ he said; his tone, instead of being half-friendly, half-paternal, as I was used to, had become the practised cordial one of his profession. He did not like his judgement questioned, especially about George. ‘I can’t instruct you myself. My firm can’t take any responsible part. But I can arrange with someone else to act for Passant. And I shall give instructions that you’re to be used from the beginning. That is, if this business develops as we all hope it won’t…’

  I wanted to take the case. For, above all, I knew what to conceal.

  I knew that the case might turn ugly. George was frightened of his legal danger: he was a robust man, and it was the simple danger of prison that frightened him most; but there was another of which he was both terrified and ashamed. The use of the farm; the morals and ‘free life’ of the group; they might all be dragged through the court. It would not be pretty, for the high thinking and plain living of my time had changed by now. The flirtations which had been the fashion in the idealistic days had not satisfied the group for long. Jack’s influence had step by step played on George’s passionate nature. Jack had never believed in George’s ideals for an instant; and in that relation there could only be one winner. George had his great gift for moral leadership, but he was weak, a human brother, a human hypocrite, uncertain of the intention of his own desires. With someone like Jack who had no doubt of his desires or George’s or any man’s, George was in the long run powerless. And so it happened that he, who was born to be a leader, was in peril of being exposed to ridicule and worse than ridicule as the cheapest kind of provincial Don Juan.

  I tried to think of any tactic that would save him. Back in London I sat over the papers night after night. Sheila was in her worst mood, but I could do little for her, and made nothing of an attempt. I could not drag myself to her room, if it only meant the usual routine. For once I prayed for someone who would give me strength, instead of bleeding away such as I had.

  For some days Hotchkinson, the solicitor to whom Eden had deputed the case, sent me no news. I had a fugitive hope that the police had found the case too thin. Then a telegram arrived in Chambers to say ‘clients arrested applying for bail’. It was the middle of December, and term would soon be over. After that morning, the next hearing in the magistrates’ court was fixed for 29 December. I had no case in London till January; I thought I could be more use if I lived in the town for the next fortnight.

  I went home to Chelsea to tell Sheila so. I wondered if she would perceive the true reason – that only away from her could I be free enough to work for them all out. I could suffer no distraction now.

  She was quiet and sensible that morning, when I told her of the arrests.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I suppose it’s been worrying you.’

  I smiled a little.

  ‘I did my best to warn you,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve been a bit – caged in.’ It was the word she often used; she was ruthless in talking of herself, but sometimes she wanted to domesticate her own behaviour.

  I said that I ought to stay at Eden’s until the New Year.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I must win this case.’

  ‘Will it help you? Going away like that?’ She was staring at me.

  ‘It’s rather a tangled case. Remember, they’ll tell me everything they can–’

  ‘Is it more tangled than all the others? You’ve never been away before.’

  She said nothing more, except that she would go to her parents for Christmas Day. ‘If you think that my father won’t find out that you’re staying at Eden’s,’ she said with her old sarcastic grin, ‘you’re very much mistaken. I’m not going to make your excuses for you. You’d better come over at Christmas and have a shot yourself.’

  In the next fortnight I spent much of my time with George, and I saw Jack whenever he wanted me. Step by step they came to feel secure, as though I were still among them. George learned to believe that I had not altered, and both then and always was on his side. So far as I had altered, in fact, it was in a dir
ection that brought me nearer to him in his trouble. When I was younger and he had known me best, I was struggling, but failure was an experience that I neither knew nor admitted as possible for myself. I believed with a hard, whole, confident heart that success was to be my fortune. I had the opaqueness of the successful, and the impatience of the successful with those so feeble and divided that they fell away. Since then, in my weeks of illness, I had acknowledged absolute surrender – and that I could not forget. I had known the depth of failure, and from that time I was bound to anyone who started with gifts and hope, and then felt his nature break him; I was bound not by compassion or detached sympathy, but because I could have been his like, and might still be. So, in those threatening days, I came near to George.

  And yet, as I walked from Eden’s to George’s through the harsh familiar streets, I was often hurt by the changes in his life – not the fraud, but the transformation of his ideal society into a Venusberg. I wished that it had not happened. I was hurt out of proportion, considering the world in which I lived. Did I, who thought I could take the truth about any human being, wish to shut my eyes to half of George? Or was I trying to preserve the days of my young manhood, when George was spinning his innocent, altruistic, Utopian plans, and I was happy and expectant because of the delights to come?

  It was that pain, added to George’s, which led me into an error in legal tactics. I knew quite well that the prosecution’s case was likely to be so strong that we had no chance of getting it dismissed in the police court on the 29th. The only sane course was to hold our defence and let it go to the assizes; on the other hand, if the lucky chance came off, and we defended and won in the police court, we might keep most of the scandal hidden. It was a false hope, and I was wrong to have permitted it. But George’s violence and suffering over-persuaded me: if the prosecution in the police court was weaker than we feared, I might risk going for an acquittal there.

  It did no positive harm to hold out such a hope. But I had to explain it to Eden and Hotchkinson. They were cool-headed men, and they strongly disagreed. It was much wiser, they said, to make up our minds at once. The case was bound to go to the assizes. Surely I must see that? Eden was troubled. I was young, but I had a reputation for good legal judgement. Both he and Hotchkinson thought I had been a more brilliant success at the Bar than was the fact. They treated me with an uneasy respect. Nevertheless, they were sound, sensible solicitors. They believed that I was wrong in considering such tactics for a moment; they believed that I was wrong, said so with weight, and firmly advised me against it.

  That discussion took place on Christmas Eve. During my stay so far, I had not felt like visiting my relations and acquaintances in the town, and after the disagreement I felt less so than ever. But I wanted to avoid attending Eden’s party, and so I went off to call on Aunt Milly and my father. I had to tell them about the case, which had already been mentioned in the local papers. Aunt Milly, very loyal when once she had given her approval, was indignant about George. She was sure that he was innocent, and could only have been involved through unscrupulous persons who had presumed on his good nature and what she called his ‘softness’. Aunt Milly was now in the sixties, but still capable of vigorous and noisy indignation. ‘My word!’ said my father, full of simple wonder that I should be appearing in public in the town. ‘Well, I’ll be blowed!’ He was just about to slink out of Aunt Milly’s house for a jocular Christmas Eve going round singing with the waits. Getting me alone for two minutes, he at once asked me to join the party. ‘Some of these houses do you proud,’ said my father, with an extremely knowing look. ‘I know where there’s a bottle or two in the kitchen–’

  I spent next day at the Knights’. It was the most silent time I had known inside that house. The four of us were alone. I was hag-ridden by the case.

  When I looked at Sheila, I saw only an inward gaze. She had not made a single inquiry throughout the day. We walked for a few minutes in the rose garden. She said that she would have liked to talk to me. Not one word about the case. I was angry with her, angry and tired. I could not rouse myself to say that soon I should have time, soon I should be home refreshed and ready to console her.

  All that day I wanted to get her out of my sight.

  Mrs Knight was unusually quiet. She knew that something was wrong with our marriage, and, though she blamed me, it was out of her depth. As for Mr Knight, he would scarcely speak to me. Not because his daughter was miserable. Not because I was so beset that my voice was dead. No, Mr Knight would not speak to me for the simple reason that he was huffed. And he was huffed because I had chosen to live in Eden’s house and not in his.

  No explanation was any good – that I must see George and the others night and day, that I could not drive in and out from the country, that, whatever happened, even if we got them off, Eden was George’s employer and it was imperative for me to keep his good will. No explanation appeased Mr Knight. And, to tell the truth, I was too far gone to make many.

  ‘No one bothers to see me,’ he said. ‘No one bothers to see me. I’m not worth the trouble. I’m not worth the trouble.’

  He only broke his dignified silence because his inquisitiveness became too strong. No one loved a scandal, or had a shrewder eye for one, than Mr Knight. Despite being affronted, he could not rest when he had the chief source of secret information at his dinner table.

  I drank a good deal that night, enough to put me to sleep as soon as we went to bed. When I woke, Sheila was regarding me with a quizzical smile.

  ‘The light’s rather strong isn’t it?’ she said.

  She made me a cup of tea. There were occasions when she enjoyed nursing me. She said ‘You got drunk. You got drunk on purpose.’ She stared at me, and said: ‘You’ll get over it.’

  As I kissed her goodbye, I reminded her that the case came up on the 29th. In a tone flatter and more expressionless than she had used that morning, she wished me luck.

  In the police court, I had not listened to the prosecutor’s speech for half an hour before I knew that Eden and Hotchkinson had been right. There was no chance of an acquittal that day. There never had been a chance. I should have to reserve our defence until the assizes. At the lunch break I said so, curtly because it was bitter to wound him more, to George.

  When I told Eden, he remarked: ‘I always thought you’d take the sensible view before it was too late.’

  The next night Eden and I had dinner together in his house. He was at his most considerate. He said that I had been ‘rushing about’ too much; it was true that I was worn by some harrowing scenes in the last twenty-four hours. He took me into the drawing-room, and stoked the fire high in the grate. He gave me a substantial glass of brandy. He warmed his own in his hands, swirled the brandy round, smelt and tasted, with a comfortable, unhurried content. Just as unhurriedly, he said ‘How do you feel about yesterday?’

  ‘It looks none too good.’

  ‘I completely agree. As a matter of fact,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I’ve been talking to Hotchkinson about it during the afternoon. We both consider that 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?’

  I knew what was coming.

  Eden’s voice was grave and cordial. He did not like distressing me, and yet he was enjoying the exercise of his responsibility.

  ‘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 resp
onsibility of leaving you by yourself–’

  Eden entered on a disquisition about the unpredictable behaviour of juries, their quirks and obstinacies and prejudices. I wanted to be spared that, in my impatience, in my wounded vanity. Soon I broke in ‘What do you suggest?’

  ‘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.’

  Now I was savage.

  ‘It’s sensible to get someone,’ I said with violence, ‘but Getliffe – seriously, he’s a bad lawyer.’

  ‘No one’s a hero to his pupils, you know,’ said Eden. He pointed out, as was true, that Getliffe was already successful as a silk.

  ‘I dare say I’m unfair. But this is important. There are others who’d do it admirably.’ I rapped out several names.

  ‘They’re clever fellows.’ Eden gave a smile, obstinate, displeased, unconvinced. ‘But I don’t see any reason to go beyond Getliffe. He’s always done well with my briefs.’

  I was ashamed that the disappointment swamped me. I had believed that I was entirely immersed in the danger to my friends. I had lain awake at night, thinking of George’s suffering, of how he could be rescued, of plans for his life afterwards. I believed that those cares had driven all others from my mind. And in fact they were not false.

  Yet, when I heard Eden’s decision, I could think of nothing but the setback to myself. It was no use pretending. No one can hide from himself which wound makes him flinch more. This petty setback overwhelmed their disaster. It was a wound in my vanity, it was a wound in my ambition. By its side, my concern for George had been only the vague shadow of an ache.