George Passant

1: Firelight on a Silver Cigarette Case

THE fire in our habitual public house spurted and fell. It was a comfortable fire of early autumn, and I basked beside it, not caring how long I waited. At last Jack came in, bustled by the other tables, sat down at mine, and said: ‘I’m in trouble, Lewis.’

For an instant I thought he was acting; as he went on, I believed him.

‘I’m finished as far as Calvert goes,’ he said. ‘And I can’t see my way out.’

‘What have you done?’

‘I’ve done nothing,’ said Jack. ‘But this morning I received a gift—’

‘Who from? Who from?’

‘From young Roy.’

I had heard Roy’s name often in the past two months. He was a boy of fifteen, the son of the Calvert whom Jack had just mentioned and who owned the local evening paper; Jack worked as a clerk in the newspaper office, and during the school holidays, which had not yet ended, the boy had contrived to get to know him. Jack, in his easy-natured fashion, had lent him books, been ready to talk; and had not discovered until the last few days that the boy was letting himself be carried in a dream, a romantic dream.

With a quick gesture Jack felt in his coat pocket and held a cigarette case in front of the fire. ‘Here we are,’ he said.

The firelight shone on the new, polished silver. I held out my hand, took the case, looked at the initials J C (Jack Cotery) in elaborate Gothic letters, felt the solid weight. Though Jack and I were each five years older than the boy who had given it, it had cost three times as much as we had ever earned in a week.

‘I wonder how he managed to buy it,’ I said.

‘His father is pretty lavish with him,’ said Jack. ‘But he must have thrown away every penny—’

He was holding the case again, watching the reflected beam of firelight with a worried smile. I looked at him: of all our friends, he was the one to whom these things happened. I had noticed often enough how women’s eyes followed him. He was ready to return their interest, it is true; yet sometimes he captured it, from women as from Roy, without taking a step himself. He was not handsome; he was not even specially good looking, in a man’s eyes; he was ruddy-faced, with smooth black hair, shortish and powerfully built. His face, his eyes, his whole expression, changed like quicksilver whenever he talked.

‘You haven’t seen it all,’ said Jack, and turned the case over. On this side there was enamelled a brilliant crest, in gold, red, blue and green; the only quarter I could make out contained a pattern of azure waves. ‘He put a chart inside the case to prove these were the arms of the Coterys,’ Jack went on, and showed me a piece of foolscap, covered with writing in a neat, firm, boyish hand. One paragraph explained that the azure waves ‘are a punning device, Côte for Cotery, used by a family of Dorset Coterys when given arms in 1607 by James I.’ I was surprised at the detail, the thoroughness, the genealogical references, the devotion to heraldry as well as to Jack; it must have taken weeks of research.

‘It’s quite possibly genuine,’ said Jack. ‘The family must have come down in the world, you know. There’s still my father’s brother, the Chiswick one—’

I laughed, and he let the fancy drop. He glanced at the chart, folded it, put it carefully away; then he rubbed mist from the case and studied the arms, his eyes harassed and half-smiling.

‘You’d better send it back tonight,’ I said.

‘It’s too late,’ said Jack. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said — that I’m finished as far as old Calvert goes?’

‘Does he know that Roy’s given you a present?’

‘He knows more than that. He happened to get hold of a letter that was coming with it.’

It was not till then that I realised Calvert had already spoken to Jack.

‘What did the letter say?’

‘I don’t know. He’s never written before. But you can guess, Lewis, you can guess. It horrified Calvert, clearly. And there doesn’t seem anything I can do.’

‘Did you manage to tell him,’ I said, ‘that it was an absolute surprise to you, that you knew nothing about it?’

‘Do you think that was easy?’ said Jack. ‘Actually, he didn’t give me much of a chance. He couldn’t keep still for nerves, as a matter of fact. He just said that he’d discovered his son writing me an — indiscreet letter. And he was forced to ask me not to reply and not to see the boy. I didn’t mind promising that. But he didn’t want to listen to anything I said about Roy. He dashed on to my future in the firm. He said that he’d always expected there would be a good vacancy for me on the production side. Now he realised that promotions had gone too fast, and he would be compelled to slow down. So that, though I could stay in my present boy’s job for ever, he would advise me in my own interests to be looking round for some other place.’

Jack’s face was downcast; we were both sunk in the cul-de-sac hopelessness of our age.

‘And to make it clear,’ Jack added, ‘he feels obliged to cut off paying my fees at the School.’

The School was our name for the combined Technical College and School of Art which gave at that time, 1925, the only kind of higher education in the town. There Jack had been sent by Calvert to learn printing, and there each week I attended a couple of lectures on law: lectures given by George Passant, whom I kept thinking of as soon as I knew Jack’s trouble to be real.

‘Well, we’ve got a bit of time,’ I said. ‘He can’t get rid of you altogether — it would bring too much attention to his son.’

‘Who’ll worry about me?’ said Jack.

‘He can’t do it,’ I insisted. ‘But what are we to do?’

‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ said Jack.

Then I mentioned George Passant’s name. At once Jack was on his feet. ‘I ought to have gone round hours ago,’ he said.

We walked up the London Road, crossed by the station, took a short cut down an alley towards the noisy street. Fish and chip shops glared and smelt: tramcars rattled past. Jack was more talkative now that he was going into action. ‘What shall I become if Calvert doesn’t let me print?’ he said. ‘I used to have some ideas, I used to be a young man of spirit. But when they threaten to stop you, being a printer seems the only possible job in the whole world. What else could I become, Lewis?’ He saw a policeman shining his lantern into a dark shop window. ‘Yes,’ said Jack, ‘I should like to be a policeman. But then I’m not tall enough. They say you can increase your height if you walk like this—’ he held both arms vertically above his head, like Moses on the hill in Rephidim, and walked by my side down the street saying: ‘I want to be a policeman.’

He stopped short, and looked at me with a rueful, embarrassed smile. I smiled too: more even than he, I was used to the hope and hopelessness, the hopes of twenty, desolately cold half an hour ago, now burning hot. I was used to living on hope. And I too was excited: the Cotery arms on the silver case ceased to be so pathetic, began to go to one’s head; the story drifted like wood smoke through the September evening. It was with expectancy, with elation, that, as we turned down a side street, I saw the light of George Passant’s sitting room shining through an orange blind.

At that time, I had known George for a couple of years. I had met him just through the chance that he gave his law lectures at the School — and that was because he wanted to earn some extra money, since he was only a qualified clerk at Eden & Martineau’s, not a member of their solicitors’ firm. It had been a lucky encounter for me: and George had already exerted himself on my behalf more than anyone I knew.

This was the only house in the town open to us at any hour of night. Jack knocked: George came to the door himself.

‘I’m sorry we’re bothering you, George,’ said Jack. ‘But something’s happened.’

‘Come in,’ said George, ‘come in.’

His voice was loud and emphatic. He stood just over middle height, an inch or two taller than Jack; his shoulders were heavy, he was becoming a little fat, though he was only twenty-six. But it was his head that captured one’s attention, his massive forehead and the powerful structure of chin and cheekbone under his full flesh.

He led the way into his sitting room. He said: ‘Wouldn’t you like a cup of tea? I can easily make a cup of tea. Perhaps you’d prefer a glass of beer? I’m sure there’s some beer somewhere.’

The invitation was affable and diffident. He began to call us Cotery and Eliot, then corrected himself and used our Christian names. He went clumsily round the room, peering into cupboards, dishevelling his fair hair in surprise when he found nothing. The room was littered with papers; papers on the table and on the floor, a briefcase on the hearth, a pile of books beside an armchair. An empty teacup stood on a sheet of paper on the mantelpiece, and had left a trail of dark, moist rings. And yet, apart from his debris of work, George had not touched the room; the furniture was all his landlady’s; on one wall there remained a text ‘The Lord God Watcheth Us’, and over the mantelpiece a picture of the Relief of Ladysmith.

At last George shouted, and carried three bottles of beer to the table.

‘Now,’ said George, sitting back in his armchair, ‘we can get down to it. What is this problem?’

Jack told the story of Roy and the present. As he had done to me, he kept back this morning’s interview with Calvert. He put more colour into the story now that he was telling it to George, though: ‘This boy is Olive’s cousin, you realise, George. And that whole family seems to live on its nerves.’

‘I don’t accept that completely about Olive,’ said George. Olive was one of what we called the ‘group’, the collection of young people who had gathered round George.

‘Still, I’m very much to blame,’ said Jack. ‘I ought to have seen what was happening. It’s serious for Roy too, that I didn’t. I was very blind.’

Then Jack laid the cigarette case on the table.

George smiled, but did not examine it, nor pick it up.

‘Well, I’m sorry for the boy,’ he said. ‘But he doesn’t come inside my province, so there’s no action I can take. It would give me considerable pleasure, however, to tell his father that, if he sends a son to one of those curious institutions called public schools, he has no right to be surprised at the consequences. I should also like to add that people get on best when they’re given freedom — particularly freedom from their damned homes, and their damned parents, and their damned lives.’

He simmered down, and spoke to Jack with a warmth that was transparently genuine, open, and curiously shy. ‘I can’t tell him most of the things I should like to. But no one can stop me from telling him a few remarks about you.’

‘I didn’t intend to involve you, George,’ said Jack.

‘I don’t think you could prevent me,’ said George, ‘if it seemed necessary. But it can’t be necessary, of course.’

With his usual active optimism, George seized on the saving point: it was the point that had puzzled me: Calvert would only raise whispers about his son if he penalised Jack.

‘Unfortunately,’ said Jack, ‘he doesn’t seem to work that way.’

‘What do you mean?’

Jack described his conversation with Calvert that morning. George, flushed and angry, still kept interrupting with his sharp, lawyer’s questions: ‘It’s incredible that he could take that line. Don’t you see that he couldn’t let this letter get mixed up with your position in the firm?’

At last Jack complained: ‘I’m not inventing it for fun, George.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said George. ‘Well, what did the sunket tell you in the end?’

George just heard him out: no future in the firm, permission to stay in his present job on sufferance, the School course cut off: then George swore. He swore as though the words were fresh, as though the brute physical facts lay in front of his eyes. It takes a great religion to produce one great oath, in the mouths of most men: but not in George’s, once inflamed to indignation. When the outburst had spent itself, he said: ‘It’s monstrous. It’s so monstrous that even these bellwethers can’t get away with it. I refuse to believe that they can amuse themselves with being unjust and stupid at the same time — and at the expense of people like you.’

‘People like me don’t strike them as quite so important,’ said Jack.

‘You will before long. Good God alive, in ten years’ time you will have made them realise that they’ve been standing in the road of their betters.’ There was a silence, in which George looked at Jack. Then, with an effort, George said: ‘I expect some of your relations are ready to deal with your present situation. But in case you don’t want to call on them, I wonder—’

‘George, as far as help goes just now,’ Jack replied, ‘I can’t call on a soul in the world.’

‘If you feel like that,’ said George, ‘I wonder if you’d mind letting me see what I can do? I know that I’m not a very suitable person for the present circumstances,’ he went on quickly. ‘I haven’t any influence, of course. And Arthur Morcom and Lewis here always say that I’m not specially tactful in dealing with these people. I think perhaps they exaggerate that: anyway, I should try to surmount it in a good cause. But if you can find anyone else more adequate, you obviously ought to rule me out and let them take it up.’

As George stumbled through this awkward speech, Jack was moved; and at the end he looked chastened, almost ashamed of himself.

‘I only came for advice, George,’ he said.

‘I might not be able to do anything effective,’ said George. ‘I don’t pretend it’s easy. But if you feel like letting me—’

‘Well, as long as you don’t waste too much effort—’

‘If I do it,’ said George, returning to his loud, cheerful tone, ‘I shall do it in my own style. All settled?’

‘Thank you, George.’

‘Excellent,’ said George, ‘excellent.’

He refilled our glasses, drank off his own, settled again in his chair, and said: ‘I’m very glad you two came round tonight.’

‘It was Lewis’ idea,’ said Jack.

‘You were waiting for me to suggest it,’ I said.

‘No, no,’ said Jack. ‘I tell you, I never have useful ideas about myself. Perhaps that’s the trouble with me. I don’t possess a project. All you others manage to get projects; and if you don’t George provides one for you. As with you, Lewis, and your examinations. While I’m the only one left—’ he was passing off my gibe, and had got his own back: but even so, he brought off his mock pathos so well that he disarmed me — ‘I’m the only one left, singing in the cold.’

‘We may have to consider that, too.’ George was chuckling at Jack; then the chuckles began to bubble again inside him, at a thought of his own. ‘Yes, I was a year younger than you, and I hadn’t got a project either,’ he said. ‘I had just been articled to my first firm, the one at Wickham. And one morning the junior partner decided to curse me for my manner of life. He kept saying firmly: if ever you want to become a solicitor, you’ve got to behave like one beforehand. At that age, I was always prepared to consider reasonable suggestions from people with inside knowledge: I was pleased that he’d given me something to aim at. Though I wasn’t very clear how a solicitor ought to behave. However, I gave up playing snooker at the pub, and I gave up going in to Ipswich on Saturday nights to inspect the local talent. I put on my best dark suit and I bought a bowler hat and a briefcase. There it is—’ George pointed to the hearth. Tears were being forced to his eyes by inner laughter; he wiped them, and went on: ‘Unfortunately, though I didn’t realise it then, these manoeuvres seem to have irritated the senior partner. He stood it for a fortnight, then one day he walked behind me to the office. I was just hanging up my hat when he started to curse me. “I don’t know what you’re playing at,” he said. “It will be time enough to behave like a solicitor if ever you manage to become one.”’

George roared with laughter. It was midnight, and soon afterwards we left. Standing in the door, George said, as Jack began to walk down the dark street: ‘I’ll see you tomorrow night. I shall have thought over your business by then.’

2: Conference at Night

THE next night George was lecturing at the School. I attended, and we went out of the room together; Jack was waiting in the corridor.

‘We go straight to see Olive,’ said George, bustling kindly to the point. ‘I’ve told her to bring news of the Calverts.’

Jack’s face lit up: he seemed more uneasy than the night before.

We went to a café which stayed open all night, chiefly for lorry drivers working between London and the North; it was lit by gas mantles without shades, and smelt of gas, paraffin and the steam of tea. The window was opaque with steam, and we could not see Olive until we got inside: but she was there, sitting with Rachel in the corner of the room, behind a table with a linoleum cover.

‘I’m sorry you’re being got at, Jack,’ Olive said.

‘I expect I shall get used to it,’ said Jack, with the mischievous, ardent smile that was first nature to him when he spoke to a pretty woman.

‘I expect you will,’ said Olive.

‘Come on,’ said George. ‘I want to hear your report about your family. I oughtn’t to raise false hopes’ — he turned to Jack — ‘I can only think of one way of intervening for you. And the only chance of that depends on whether the Calverts have committed themselves.’

We were close together, round the table. George sat at the end; though he was immersed in the struggle, his hearty appetite went mechanically on; and, while he was speaking intently to Jack, he munched a thick sandwich from which the ham stuck out, and stirred a great cup of tea with a lead spoon.

‘Well then,’ George asked Olive, ‘how is your uncle taking it?’

We looked at her; she smiled. She was wearing a brilliant green dress that gleamed incongruously against the peeling wall. Just by her clothes a stranger could have judged that she was the only one of us born in a secure middle-class home. Secure in money, that is: for her father lived on notoriously bad terms with his brother, Jack’s employer; and Olive herself had half-broken away from her own family.

She had taken her hat off, and her fair hair shone against the green. Watching her as she smiled at George’s question, I felt for an instant that there was something assertive in her frank, handsome face.

‘How are they taking it?’ George asked.

‘It’s fluttered the dovecotes,’ she said. ‘I’m not surprised. Father heard about it this morning from one of my aunts. They’ve all done a good deal of talking to Uncle Frank since then.’

‘What’s he doing?’ said George.

‘He’s dithering,’ said Olive. ‘He can’t make up his mind what he ought to do next. All day he’s been saying that it’s a pity the holidays last another week — otherwise the best thing would be to send the boy straight back to school.’

‘Good God alive,’ said George. ‘That’s a singularly penetrating observation.’

‘Anyway,’ said Olive, ‘the rest of the family seem to have worn him down. He’d made a decision of sorts just before I came along here. He’s sending a wire to Roy’s housemaster to ask if he can look after the boy—’

‘Has that wire been sent?’ George interrupted.

‘It must have been, by now,’ Olive replied.

‘Don’t you realise how vital that is?’ cried George, impatient that anyone should miss a point in tactics.

Olive did not answer, and went on: ‘That’s all he’s plucked up his courage to do. They couldn’t bully him into anything stronger. He tries to talk as though Roy was just a bit overworked and only needed a change of air. If I’d performed any of these antics at his age, I should have been in for the biggest hiding of my life. But his father never could control a daughter, let alone a son.’

George was preoccupied with her news; but at her last remark he roused himself.

‘You know it’s no use pretending to believe in that sadistic nonsense here.’

‘I never have pretended to believe in all your beautiful dreams, have I?’ she said.

‘You can’t take sides with those sunkets against me,’ said George.

His voice had risen. We were used to the odd Suffolk words as his temper flamed up. Olive was flushed, her face still apart from her full, excitable mouth. Yet, hot-tempered as they both were, they never quarrelled for long: she understood him by instinct, better than any of us at this time. And George was far more easy with her than with Rachel, who stored away every word he spoke and who said at this moment: ‘I agree, oh! of course I agree, George. We must help people to fulfil themselves—’

She was the oldest of us there, a year or more older than George: Olive was the same age as Jack and me. When Rachel gushed, it was disconcerting to notice that, in her plump, moon face, her eyes were bright, twinkling, and shrewd.

‘In any case,’ George said to Olive, ‘there’s no time tonight to resurrect matters that I’ve settled with you long ago. We’ve got more important things to do: as you’d see yourself, if you realised the meaning of your own words.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ve given us a chance,’ said George. ‘Don’t you see, your sunket of an uncle has taken two steps? He’s penalised Jack: in the present state of things he can do that with impunity. But he’s also sent messages to a schoolmaster about his son. The coincidence ought to put him in a distinctly less invulnerable position.’

‘He’s taking it out of Jack,’ she said. ‘But how can anyone stop him?’

‘It’s not impossible,’ said George. ‘It’s no use trying to persuade Calvert, of course: none of us have any standing to protest direct to him. But remember that part of his manoeuvre was to cut off Jack’s fees at the School—’ he reminded us that this step would, as a matter of routine, come before the committee which governed the affairs of students at the School — a committee on which Calvert served, as the originator of the scheme of ‘bursaries’. By this scheme, employers picked out bright young men as Calvert had picked out Jack, and contributed half their fees. The School remitted the rest.

‘It’s a piece of luck, his being on the damned committee,’ said George. ‘We’ve only got to present our version of the coincidence. He can’t let it be known that he’s victimising Jack. And the others on the committee would fight very shy of lending a hand.’

‘Would they all mind so much about injustice?’ said Rachel.

‘They mind being suspected of injustice,’ said George, ‘if it’s pointed out to them. So does any body of men.’

‘It can’t be pointed out,’ said Jack.

‘It can,’ said George. ‘Canon Martineau happens to be on the committee. Though he’s not a deeply religious man like his brother,’ George burst into laughter. ‘I can see that he’s supplied with the truth. Our Martineau will make him listen.’ (‘Our Martineau’ was the brother of the Canon and a partner in the firm of Eden & Martineau, where George worked.) ‘And also—’

‘And also what?’ said Olive.

‘I’ve a complete right to appear in front of the committee myself. Owing to my position at the School. It would be better if someone else put them right about Jack. But if necessary, I can do it.’

We were confused. My eyes met Olive’s; like me, she was caught up in the struggle now; the excitement had got hold of us, we wanted to see it through. At the same instant, I knew that she too felt sharply nervous for George himself.

There was a moment’s silence.

‘I don’t like it,’ Olive broke out. ‘You might pull off something for Jack. It sounds convincing: but then you’re too good at arguing for me.’

‘And you’re always too optimistic,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe that the Canon is going to make himself unpleasant for a young man he’s never met. Even if you persuaded his brother, and I don’t think that’s likely either.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ said George. ‘In any case, that doesn’t cripple us. The essential point is that I can appear myself.’

‘And how are you going to come out of it?’ Olive cried.

‘Are you certain that it won’t rebound on you, personally?’ asked Jack. He had turned away from Olive, angry that she made him speak against his own interest.

‘I don’t see how it could,’ said George.

From his inside pocket he took out a sheet of notepaper and smoothed it on the table. Olive watched him anxiously.

‘Look here,’ she said, ‘you oughtn’t to be satisfied with looking after your protégés much longer. We’re not important enough for you to waste all your time on us. You’ve got to look after yourself instead. That means you’ll have to persuade Eden and Martineau to make you a partner. And they just won’t do it if you’ve deliberately made a nuisance of yourself with important people. Don’t you see,’ she added, with a sudden violence, ‘that you may soon curse yourself for ever having been satisfied with looking after us?’

George had begun to write on the sheet of paper. He looked up and said: ‘I’m extremely content as I am. I want you to realise that I’d rather spend my time with people I value than balance teacups with the local bellwethers.’

‘That’s because you’re shy with them,’ said Olive. ‘Why, you’ve even given up going to Martineau’s Friday nights.’

‘I intend to go this Friday.’ George had coloured. He looked abashed for the first time that night. ‘And by the way, if I ever do want to become a partner, I don’t think there should be any tremendous difficulty. Whatever happens, I can always count on Martineau’s support.’ He turned back to writing his letter.

‘That’s true, clearly. I’ve heard Martineau talk about George,’ said Jack.

‘You’re not impartial,’ said Olive. ‘George, is that a letter to the committee?’

‘It isn’t final. I was just letting the Principal know that I might conceivably have a piece of business to bring before them.’

‘I still don’t like it. You’re—’

Just then Arthur Morcom entered the café and walked across to Olive’s side. He had recently started practice as a dentist in the town, and only met our group because he was a friend of Olive’s. I knew that he was in love with her. Tonight he had called to take her home; looking at her, he felt at once the disagreement and excitement in the air.

Olive asked George: ‘Do you mind if we tell Arthur?’

‘Not as far as I am concerned,’ said George, a little awkwardly.

Morcom had already heard the story of the boy’s gift. I was set to explain what George was planning. I did it rapidly. Morcom’s keen blue eyes were bright with interest, and he said ‘Yes! yes!’ urging me on through the last hour’s conference; I watched his thin, fine-featured face, on which an extra crease, engraved far out on each cheek, gave a special dryness and sympathy to his smile. When I had finished, he said: ‘I am rather worried, George. I can’t help feeling that Olive is right.’ He turned to Jack and apologised for coming down in the opposing camp. Jack smiled. When Olive had been trying to persuade George, Jack had been hurt and angry: but, now Morcom did the same thing, Jack said quite spontaneously: ‘I bear no malice, Arthur. I dare say you’re right.’

Morcom raised both the arguments that Olive and I had tried: would George’s intervention really help Jack? and, more strongly, wasn’t it an indiscreet, a dangerous move for George himself? Morcom pressed them with more authority than we had been able to. He and George were not close friends; neither was quite at ease with the other; but Morcom was George’s own age, and George had a respect for his competence and sense. So George listened, showed flashes of his temper, and defended himself with his elaborate reasonableness.

At last Morcom said: ‘I know you want to stop your friends being kept under. But you won’t have the power to do it till you’re firmly established yourself. Isn’t it worthwhile to wait till then?’

‘No,’ said George. ‘I’ve seen too much of that sort of waiting. If you wait till then, you forget that anyone is being kept under: or else you decide that he deserves it.’

Morcom was not only a more worldly man than George, he was usually wiser. But later on, I thought of George’s statement as an example of when it was the unworldly who were wise.

‘I shall soon begin to think,’ said Morcom, ‘that you’re anxious to attack the bellwethers, George.’

‘On the contrary,’ George replied, ‘I am a very timid man.’

There was a burst of laughter: but Olive, watching him, did not join in. A moment after, she said: ‘He’s made up his mind.’

‘Is it any use my saying any more?’ said Morcom.

‘Well,’ said George, with a shy smile, ‘I’m still convinced that we can put them into an impossible position…’

3: View Over the Gardens

OUR meeting in the café took place on a Wednesday; two days later, on the Friday afternoon, Olive rang me up at the office. ‘Roy has found something out from his father. George ought to know at once, but I can’t get hold of him. It’s his day at Melton, isn’t it?’ (The firm of Eden & Martineau had branches in several market towns: and George regularly spent a day a week in the country.) ‘He must know before he goes to Martineau’s tonight.’

Her voice sounded brusque but anxious; she wanted someone to see Roy, to examine the news. Jack was the obvious person, but him Roy was forbidden to meet. She asked me to go along to Morcom’s as soon as I was free; she would take Roy there.

I walked to Morcom’s flat in the early evening. The way led from the centre of the town, and suddenly took one between box hedges and five-storey, gabled, Victorian houses, whose red brick flared in the sunset with a grotesque and Gothic cosiness. But the cosiness vanished, when one saw their dark windows: once, when the town was smaller, they had been real houses: now they were offices, shut for the night. Only Martineau’s, at the end of the New Walk, remained a solid private house. The one next door, which he also owned, had been turned into flats: and there Morcom lived, on the top floor.

When I went into his sitting room, Olive and Roy had just arrived. Olive had brought Morcom a great bunch of deep red dahlias, and she was arranging them on a table by the window. The red blazed as one looked down over the park, where the New Walk came to an end.

Olive put a flower into place: then, turning away from the bowl, she asked Morcom, ‘Will they do?’

Morcom smiled at her. And he, the secretive and restrained, could not prevent the smile giving him completely away — more than a smile by Jack would ever do.

As though recovering himself, Morcom turned to Roy, who had stood quietly by, watching the interplay over the flowers. Morcom at once got him into conversation.

Happy because of Olive, Morcom was more than ever careful and considerate. They talked about books, and Roy’s future; he was just beginning to specialise at school. They got on very well. As it happened, Morcom need not have been so careful; for Roy surprised us both by being entirely self-possessed, and himself opened the real topic.

‘I’m sorry to give you all so much trouble, Mr Morcom,’ he said. ‘But I did think someone should know what they’re doing about Mr Passant.’

He spoke politely, formally, in a light, musical voice: so politely that sometimes there sounded a ripple of mischief. His face was good-looking, highly-strung, and very sad for a boy’s: but sad, I felt, as much by nature as by his present trouble. Once or twice he broke into a gay, charming smile.

‘I’ve told Olive already — but last night someone visited my father unexpectedly. I got Mother to tell me about it this morning. It was the Principal of — what Jack used to call the School. He had come to tell Father that a Mr Passant might be trying to make a fuss. Mother didn’t mention it, of course, but I guessed it was about Jack. And it was all connected with a committee, which I didn’t understand at the time. But Olive explained it this afternoon.’

‘I had to tell him what George decided to do on Wednesday,’ said Olive.

‘I shan’t let it out,’ said Roy. ‘I shouldn’t have told Olive what I found out this morning — if these things weren’t happening because of me.’

I tried to reassure him, but he shook his head.

‘It’s my fault,’ he said. ‘They wouldn’t have been talking about Mr Passant last night if it hadn’t been for me.’

‘Do you know anything they said?’ I asked.

‘I think the Principal offered to deal with Mr Passant himself. He was sure that he could be stopped from going any further.’

‘How.’

‘By dropping a hint to Mr Eden and Mr Martineau,’ said Roy.

I looked at Morcom: we were both disturbed.

‘You think that will soon happen?’ I said.

‘Mother expected the Principal to see them this morning. You see,’ said Roy, ‘they all seem more angry with Mr Passant than they were with Jack.’

He saw that our expressions had become grave.

‘Is this very serious?’ he said.

‘It might be a little uncomfortable, that’s all,’ said Morcom lightly, to ease Roy’s mind. But he was still watching us, and said: ‘Do you mind if I ask another question, Mr Morcom?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Are you thinking that it has ruined Jack’s chances for good?’

‘This can’t affect them,’ I said quickly, and Morcom agreed.

‘You mustn’t worry about that, Roy,’ Olive said.

Roy half-believed her; her tone was kind, she cared for him more than she had admitted on Wednesday night. He was still doubtful, however, until she added: ‘If you want to know, we were thinking whether they can do any harm to George Passant.’

The boy’s fears lifted; for a few moments his precocity seemed to leave him, and he teased Olive as though the other three of us were not still harassed.

‘Are you fond of Mr Passant, Olive?’ he asked, with his lively smile.

‘In a way,’ she said.

‘Are you sweet on him?’

‘Not in the least,’ she replied. She paused, then said vehemently: ‘But I can tell you this: he’s worth twenty Jack Coterys.’

A little later, they went away. Before they left, Roy shook hands with us both; and, as Morcom and Olive were talking together, Roy said quietly to me: ‘I’m being whisked off tomorrow. I don’t suppose I shall see you again for a long time, Mr Eliot. But could you spare a minute to send me word how things turn out?’

From the window, Morcom and I watched them walk across the gardens.

‘I wonder what sort of life he’ll have,’ said Morcom. But he was thinking, hopefully that night, of himself and Olive.

We stayed by the window, eating bread and cheese from his pantry, and keeping a watch on the road below; for we had to warn George before he arrived next door, on his visit to Martineau’s at home.

4: A Cup of Coffee Spilt in a Drawing-Room

THE lamplighter passed up the road; under the lamp by Martineau’s gate, the hedge top suddenly shone out of the dusk. Looking down over the gardens, Morcom was content to be quiet.

Just then, thinking how much I liked him, I felt too how he could never have blown so many of us into more richly coloured lives, as George had done. Where should we have been, if George had not come to Eden & Martineau’s?

Where should we have been? We were poor and young. By birth we fell into the ragtag and bobtail of the lower middle classes. Then we fell into our jobs in offices and shops. We lived in our bed-sitting rooms, as I did since my mother’s death, or with our families, lost among the fifty thousand houses in the town. The world seemed on the march, we wanted to join in, but we felt caught.

Myself, but for George, I might still have been earning my two pounds a week as a clerk in the education department, and wondering what to do with a legacy of £300 from an aunt. I should have acted in the end, perhaps, but nineteen is a misty age: while George gave me no rest, bullied and denounced me until I started studying law and reading for the Bar examinations. A month before Jack’s crisis I had at last stopped procrastinating, and arranged to leave the office at the end of this September.

And so with the others in George’s group — except Jack, who had been the unlucky one. George had set us moving, lent us money: he never seemed to think twice about lending us money, out of his income of £250 from the firm, together with an extra £30 from the School. It was the first time we had been so near to a generous-hearted man.

We became excited over the books he told us to read and the views he stood by, violent, argumentative, four square. We were carried away by his belief in human beings and ourselves. And we speculated, we could not help but speculate, about George himself. Olive certainly soon knew, and Jack and I not long afterwards, that he was not a simple character, unmixed, all of a piece. We felt, though, and nothing could shake us, that he was a man warm with broad, living nature; not good nature or bad nature, but simple nature; he was a man of flesh and bone.

I thought this, as I saw him at last walking in the lamplight, whistling, swinging his stick, his bowler hat (which he punctiliously wore when on professional business) pushed on to the back of his head.

I shouted down. George met us on the stairs: it did not take long to explain the news. He swore.

We went back to Morcom’s flat to let him think it out. For minutes he sat, silent and preoccupied. Then he declared, with his extraordinary, combative optimism: ‘I expect Martineau will get me to stay behind after we’ve finished the social flummeries. It will give me a perfect opportunity to provide him with the whole truth. They’ve probably presented us with the best possible way of getting it home to the Canon.’

But George was nervous as we entered Martineau’s drawing room — though perhaps no more nervous than he always felt when forced to go through the ‘social flummeries’, even the mild parties of Martineau’s Friday nights. He only faced this one tonight because of Olive’s nagging; while the rest of us went regularly, enjoyed them, and prized Martineau’s traditional form of invitation to ‘drop in for coffee, or whatever’s going’ — though after a few visits, we learned that coffee was going by itself.

‘Glad to see you all,’ cried Martineau. ‘It’s not a full night tonight.’ There were, in fact, only a handful of people in the room; he never knew what numbers to expect, and on the table by the fireplace stood files of shining empty cups and saucers; while in front of the fire two canisters with long handles were keeping warm, still nearly full of coffee and milk, more than we should ever want tonight.

Morcom and I sat down. George walked awkwardly towards the cups and saucers; he felt there was something he should do; he felt there was some mysterious etiquette he had never been taught. He stood by the table and changed his weight from foot to foot: his cheeks were pink.

Then Martineau said: ‘It’s a long time since you dropped in, George, isn’t it? Don’t you think it’s a bit hard if I only catch sight of my friends in the office? You know it’s good to have you here.’

George smiled. In Martineau’s company he could not remain uncomfortable for long. Even when Martineau went on: ‘Talking of my friends in the office, I think Harry Eden is going to give us a look in tonight.’

George’s expression became clouded, stayed clouded until Martineau baited him in his friendly manner. The remark about Eden had revived our warning: more, it made George think of a man with whom he was ill-at-ease; but no one responded to affection more quickly, and, as Martineau talked, George could put away unpleasant thoughts, and be happy with someone he liked.

We all enjoyed listening to Martineau. His conversation was gay, unpredictable and eccentric; he had a passion, an almost mischievous passion, for religious controversies, and he loved to tell us on Friday nights that he had been accused of yet another heresy. It did not matter to him in the slightest that none of us was religious, even in any of his senses; he was a spontaneous person, and his ‘scrapes’, as he called them, had to be told to someone. So he described his latest letter in an obscure theological journal, and the irritated replies. ‘They say I’m getting dangerously near Manichaeism now,’ he announced cheerfully tonight.

George chuckled. He had accepted all Martineau’s oddities: and it seemed in order that Martineau should stand in front of his fire, in his morning coat with the carnation in the buttonhole, and tell us of some plan for puzzling the orthodox. It did not occur to any of us that he was fifty and going through the climacteric which makes some men restless at that age. His wife had died two years before; we did not notice that, in the last twelve months, the eccentricities had been brimming over.

Like George, we expected that he would stay as he was this Friday night, standing on his hearthrug, pulling his black tie into place over his wing collar. I persuaded him to read a letter from a choleric country parson; Martineau smiled over the abusive references to himself, and read them in a lilting voice with his head on one side and his long nose tip-tilted into the air.

Then George teased him affectionately about his religious observances; which seemed, indeed, as eccentric as his beliefs. He had long ago left the Church of England, and still carried on a running controversy with his brother, the Canon; he now acted as steward in the town’s most respectable Methodist congregation. There he went with regularity, with enjoyment, twice each Sunday; but he confessed, with laughter and almost with pride, that he reckoned to ‘get off’ to sleep before any sermon was under weigh.

‘Did you manage to get off last Sunday, Mr Martineau?’ said George.

‘I did in the morning, George. But at night we had a stranger preaching — and there was something disturbing about his tone of voice.’

George beamed with laughter; he sank back into his armchair, and surveyed the room; it was a pleasant room, lofty, painted cream, with a print of Ingres’ Source on the wall opposite the fireplace. For once, he did not want his evening in respectable society to end.

And Jack, who came in for half an hour, guessed that all was well. He had been warned by Olive that pressure might be used upon George; but George was so surprisingly at home that Jack’s own spirits became high. He left early: soon afterwards the room thinned out, and only George, Morcom and I stayed with Martineau.

Then Eden came in. He walked across the room to the fireplace.

George had half-risen from his chair as soon as he saw Eden: and now stayed in suspense, his hands on the arms of his chair, uncertain whether to offer it. But Eden, who was apologising to Martineau, did not notice him.

‘I’m sorry I’m so late, Howard,’ Eden said affably to Martineau. ‘My wife has some people in, and I couldn’t escape a hand of cards.’

The dome of his head was bald; his face was broad and open, and his lips easily flew up at the corners into an amiable smile. He was a few years older than his partner, and looked more their profession by all signs but one: he dressed in a more modern, informal mode. Tonight he was wearing a comfortable grey lounge suit which rode easily on his substantial figure. Talking to Martineau, he warmed a substantial seat before the fire.

George made a false start, and then said: ‘Wouldn’t you like to sit down, Mr Eden?’

At last Eden attended.

‘I don’t see why I should turn you out, Passant,’ he said. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t really want to leave the fire.’

But George was still half-standing, and Eden went on: ‘Still, if you insist on making yourself uncomfortable—’

Eden settled into George’s chair. Martineau said: ‘Will you be kind, George, and give Harry Eden a cup of coffee?’

Busily George set about the task. He lifted the big canister and filled a cup. The cup in hand, he turned to Eden: ‘Will that be all right, Mr Eden?’

‘Well, do you know, I think I’d like it white.’

George was in a hurry to apologise. He went to put the cup down on the table: Eden, thinking George was giving him the cup, held out a hand: George could not miss the inside of Eden’s forearm, and the coffee flew over Eden’s coat and the thigh of his trousers.

For an instant George stood immobile. He blushed from forehead to neck.

When he managed to say that he was sorry, Eden replied in an annoyed tone: ‘It was entirely my fault.’ He was vigorously rubbing himself with his handkerchief. Breaking out of his stupor, George tried to help, but Eden said: ‘I can look after it, Passant, I can look after it perfectly well.’

George went on his knees, and attempted to mop up the pool of coffee on the carpet: then Martineau made him sit down, and gave him a cigarette.

Actually, if it was anyone’s fault, it was Eden’s. But I knew that George could not believe it.

Martineau set us in conversation again. Eden joined in. After a few minutes, however, I noticed a glance pass between them: and it was Martineau who said to George: ‘I was very glad to see your friend Cotery tonight. How is he getting on, by the way, George?’

George had not spoken since he tried to dry Eden down. He hesitated, and said: ‘In many ways, he’s doing remarkably well. He’s just having to get over a certain amount of trouble in his firm. But—’

Eden looked at Martineau, and said: ‘Why, do you know, Passant, I meant to have a word with Howard about that very thing tonight. I didn’t expect to see you here, of course, but perhaps I might mention it now. We’re all friends within these four walls, aren’t we? As a matter of fact, Howard and I happened to be told that you were trying to steer this young man through some difficulties.’

Eden was trying to sound casual and friendly: he had taken the chance of speaking in front of Morcom and myself, who had originally been asked to Friday nights as friends of George’s. But George’s reply was edged with suspicion: I felt sure that he was more suspicious, more ready to be angry, because of the spilt cup.

‘I should like to know who happened to tell you, Mr Eden.’

‘I scarcely think we’re free to disclose that,’ said Eden.

‘If that is the case,’ said George, ‘at least I should like to be certain that you were given the correct version.’

‘Tell us, George, tell us,’ Martineau put in. Eden nodded his head. Hotly, succinctly, George told the story that I had heard several times by now: the story of the gift, the victimisation of Jack.

Martineau looked upset at the account of the boy’s infatuation, but Eden leant back in his chair with an acquiescent smile.

‘These things will happen,’ he said. ‘These things will happen.’

George finished by describing the penalties to Jack. ‘They are too serious for no one to raise a finger,’ said George.

‘So you are thinking of protesting on his behalf, are you?’

‘I am,’ said George.

‘As a matter of fact, we heard that you intended to take up the matter — through a committee at the School, is that right?’

‘Quite right.’

‘I don’t want to interfere, Passant.’ Eden gave a short smile, and brought his fingertips together. ‘But do you think that this is the most judicious way of going about it? You know, it might still be possible to patch up something behind the scenes.’

‘I’m afraid there’s no chance of that. It’s important to realise, Mr Eden,’ George said, ‘that Cotery has no influence whatever. I don’t mean that he hasn’t much influence: I mean that he has no single person to speak for him in the world.’

‘That is absolutely true,’ Morcom said quietly to Eden in a level, reasonable tone. ‘And Passant won’t like to bring this out himself, but it puts him in a difficult position: if he didn’t try to act, no one would.’

‘It’s very unfortunate for Cotery, of course,’ said Eden. ‘I quite see that. But you can’t consider, Morcom, can you, that Passant is going the right way about it? It only raises opposition when you try to rush people off their feet.’

‘I rather agree,’ said Morcom. ‘In fact, I told Passant my opinion a couple of nights ago. It was the same as yours.’

‘I’m glad of that,’ said Eden. ‘Because I know that Passant thinks that when we get older we like to take the course of least resistance. There’s something in it, I’m afraid, there’s something in it. But he can’t hold that against you. You see, Passant,’ he went on, ‘we’re all agreed that it’s very unfortunate for Cotery. That doesn’t mean, though, that we want to see you do something hasty. After all, there’s plenty of time. This is a bit of a setback for him, but he’s a bright young chap. With patience, he’s bound to make good in the end.’

‘He’s twenty,’ said George. ‘He’s just the age when a man is desperate without something ahead. You can’t tell a man to wait years at that age.’

‘That’s all very well,’ said Eden.

‘I can’t bring myself to recommend patience,’ said George, ‘when it’s someone else who has to exercise it.’

George was straining to keep his temper down, and Eden’s smile had become perfunctory.

‘So you intend to make a gesture,’ said Eden. ‘I’ve always found that most gestures do more harm than good.’

‘I’m afraid that I don’t regard this as a gesture,’ said George.

Eden frowned, paused, and went on: ‘There is another point, Passant. I didn’t particularly want to make it. And I don’t want to lay too much emphasis on it. But if you go ahead, it might conceivably raise some personal difficulties for Howard and myself — since we are, in a way, connected with you.’

‘They suggested this morning that you were responsible, I suppose?’ George cried.

‘I shouldn’t say that was actually suggested, should you, Howard?’ said Eden.

‘In any case,’ said George, ‘I consider they were using an intolerably unfair weapon in approaching you.’

‘I think perhaps they were,’ said Eden. ‘I think perhaps they were. But that doesn’t affect the fact.’

‘If we were all strictly fair, George,’ said Martineau, ‘not much information would get round, would it?’

George asked Eden: ‘Did you make these people realise that I was acting as a private person?’

‘My dear Passant, you ought to know that one can’t draw these distinctions. If you — not to put too fine a point on it — choose to make a fool of yourself among some influential people, then Howard and I will come in for a share of the blame.’

‘I can draw these distinctions,’ said George, ‘and, if you will authorise me, I can make them extremely clear to these — to your sources of information.’

‘That would only add to the mischief,’ said Eden.

There was quiet for a moment. Then George said: ‘I shall have to ask you a definite question. You are not implying, Mr Eden, that this action of mine cuts across my obligations to the firm?’

‘I don’t intend to discuss it in those terms,’ said Eden. ‘I’ve been talking in a purely friendly manner among friends. In my opinion you’d do us all a service by sleeping on it, Passant. That’s all I’m prepared to say. And now, if you’ll forgive me, Howard, I’m afraid that I must go and get some sleep myself.’

We heard his footsteps down the path and the click of the latch. George stared at the carpet. Without looking up he said to Martineau: ‘I’m sorry that I’ve spoiled your evening.’

‘Don’t be silly, George. Harry Eden always was clumsy with the china.’ Martineau had followed George’s eyes to the stain on the carpet, and spoke as though he knew that, in George’s mind, the spill was rankling more even than the quarrel. Martineau went on: ‘As for your little disagreement, of course you know that Harry was trying to smooth the matter down.’

George did not respond, but in a moment burst out: ‘I should like to explain to you, Mr Martineau. I know you believe that I should be careful about doing harm to the firm. I thought it over as thoroughly as I could: I’m capable of deceiving myself occasionally, but I don’t think I did this time. I decided that it would cause a whiff of gossip — I admit that, naturally — but it wouldn’t lose us a single case. You’d have made the same decision: except that you wouldn’t have deliberated quite so long.’ George was speaking fervently, naturally, with complete trust. I wished that he could have spoken in that way to Eden — if only for a few words.

‘I’m a cautious old creature, George,’ said Martineau.

‘Cautious! Why, you’d bring the whole town down on our heads if you felt that some clerk, whom you’d never seen, wasn’t free to attend the rites of a schismatic branch of the Greek Orthodox Church — in which you yourself, of course, passionately disbelieved.’ George gave a friendly roar of laughter. ‘Or have you been tempted by some new branch of the Orthodox lately?’

‘Not yet,’ Martineau chuckled. ‘Not yet.’

Then George said: ‘I expect you understood my position right from the start, Mr Martineau. After Mr Eden’s remarks, though, I should like to hear that you approve.’

Martineau hesitated. Then he smiled, choosing his words: ‘I don’t consider you a man who needs approval, George. And it’s my duty to dissuade you, as Harry did. You mustn’t take it that I’m not dissuading you.’ He hesitated again. ‘But I think I understand what you feel.’

George listened to the evasive reply: he may have heard within it another appeal to stop, subtler than Eden’s, because of the liking between himself and Martineau. He replied, seriously and simply: ‘You know that I’m not going into this for my own amusement. I’m not searching out an injustice just for the pleasure of trampling on it. I might have done once, but I shouldn’t now. You’ve understood, of course: something needs to be done for Cotery, and I’m the only man who can do it.’

5: George’s Attack

THE meeting of the School committee was summoned for the following Wednesday. I knew before George, since the notice passed through my hands in the education office. And, by asking a parting favour from an acquaintance, I got myself the job of taking the minutes.

On Tuesday night, I thought that I might be wasting the effort: for a strong rumour came from Olive that Jack himself had pleaded with George to go no further. But when I saw George later that night, and asked, ‘What about tomorrow?’ he replied: ‘I’m ready for it. And ready to celebrate afterwards.’

I arrived at the Principal’s room at ten minutes to six the next evening. The gas fire was burning; the Principal was writing at his desk under a shaded light; the room seemed solid and official, though the shelves and chairs were carved in pine, in a firm plain style which the School was now teaching.

The Principal looked up as I laid the minute book on a small table; he was called Cameron, and had reddish hair and jutting eyebrows.

‘Good evening. I am sorry that we have to trespass on your time,’ he said. He always showed a deliberate consideration to subordinates; but from duty, not from instinct. At this time he probably did not know that I attended lectures at the School.

Then Miss Geary, the vice-principal, entered. ‘It was for six o’clock?’ she said. They exchanged a few remarks about School business: it was easy to hear that there was no friendliness between them. But the temperature of friendliness in the room mounted rapidly when, by the side of Canon Martineau, Beddow came in. He was a Labour councillor, a brisk, cordial, youngish man, very much on the rise; he had a word for everyone, including an aside for me — ‘Minuting a committee means they think well of you up at the office. I know it does.’

‘I suppose we’re waiting for Calvert as usual,’ said Canon Martineau, who had a slight resemblance to his brother, but spoke with a drier and more sardonic tang. ‘And can anyone tell me how long this meeting is likely to last?’

‘No meeting ever seems likely to last long until you’ve been in it a few hours,’ said Beddow cheerfully. ‘But anyway, the sooner we begin this, the sooner we shall get through.’

Ten minutes later, Calvert appeared, a small bald man, pink and panting from hurry. Beddow shook his hand warmly and pulled out a chair for him at the committee table.

‘I hope you won’t mind sitting by me,’ he said. He chatted to Calvert for a few moments about investments; and then briskly, but without any implication that Calvert was late, said: ‘Well, gentlemen, we’ve got a certain amount ahead of us tonight. If you don’t object I think we might as well begin.’

The City Education Committee was made up partly from councillors and partly from others, like the Canon: in its turn it appointed this one, ad hoc: and so Beddow took the chair. He, with Calvert on his right and the Principal on his left, sat looking towards the door, on the same side of the committee table: the Canon and Miss Geary occupied the ends of it. I worked at the smaller table behind theirs, and within reach of the Principal and Beddow.

The Principal read the minutes (I was there purely to record) and then Miss Geary interrupted.

‘Can we take No. 6 first, Mr Chairman?’ No. 6 on the agenda read: ‘J Cotery. Termination of Bursary.’ ‘I believe Mr Passant wishes to make a statement. And I noticed that he was waiting in the staffroom.’

‘I suggest that the first three items cannot conveniently wait,’ said the Principal promptly. Beddow looked round the table.

‘I think the feeling of the meeting is for taking those three items first,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Geary: we shan’t waste any unnecessary time.’

The three items were, in fact, mainly routine — fees for a new course in architecture, scholarships for next year. The clock on the Principal’s desk was striking the third quarter when Beddow said: ‘That polishes off your urgent business, doesn’t it? Well, I suppose we’re obliged to get No. 6 over some time. Perhaps this would be a convenient opportunity to have Mr Passant in.’

The Principal said nothing. Beddow went on: ‘But, before I do ring for him, I should like to say something that we all feel. We are all more than sorry that Mr Calvert should be put in the position of having to listen to criticism — criticism of whether he should continue to pay an employee’s fees or not. Perhaps he’ll let me assure him, as a political opponent, that he has the reputation of being one of the best employers in this city. We all know that he has originated the very scheme over which he is being forced to listen to — unfortunate criticism. Perhaps I can say that one of the compensations for educational work in the city is the privilege of meeting men like Mr Calvert — political opponents though they may be — round the same friendly table.’

The Principal produced a loud, deliberate ‘Hear, hear.’ Calvert gave a quick, embarrassed smile, and went on scribbling on the pad of foolscap in front of him.

Beddow rang the bell: George was shown in.

‘Ah, sit down there, Mr Passant. I’m sorry we’ve had to keep you so long,’ Beddow, with his brisk, friendly smile. His affability was genuine at the root, but had become practised as he found it useful. He pointed out a small cane-bottomed chair on the other side of the table. George sat down; he was isolated from the others; they all looked at him.

‘I’ll now ask the Principal,’ said Beddow, ‘to speak to this business of the bursary.’

‘This is really a very ordinary matter, Mr Chairman,’ said the Principal. ‘The Committee is aware of the conditions on which our bursaries are awarded. Owing to the inspiration of our benefactor, Mr Calvert’ — the Canon smiled across at Calvert — ‘various employers in the town have co-operated with us in paying the fees of young men of promise. No one has ever contemplated that this arrangement could not be cancelled in any particular case, if there appeared adequate reason to the employer or ourselves. There are several precedents. The present case is entirely straightforward. Cotery, the man in question, has been sent here by Mr Calvert; his course normally would extend over three years, of which he has completed one. But Mr Calvert has decided that there is no likelihood of his being able to use Cotery in a position for which this course would qualify him; and so, in the man’s own best interests, he considers that his bursary here should be discontinued. Several of these cases, as I say, have been reported to the committee in previous years. The committee has always immediately approved the employer’s recommendation.’

‘As the Principal has told us,’ Beddow said, ‘we have always taken these cases as a matter of form… But Mr Passant, I believe, is interested in this young man Cotery, and has asked permission to attend this business tonight. After the Principal’s statement, Mr Passant, is there anything that you want to say?’

‘Yes, Mr Chairman, there are some things that I want to say,’ said George. He had nowhere to rest his hands: he pulled down his waistcoat. But he was not resentful and defensive, as he had been with Eden the Friday night before. Four out of these five were against him: always ready to scent enemies, he must have known. Yet, now it had come to the moment, his voice was clear, masterful, and strong.

‘First, this committee is responsible for appointing Cotery and it is responsible now if his support is withdrawn. The only consideration which such a committee can act upon is whether a man is making good use of his opportunity. Cotery could not be making better. I sent a request to the Principal that a report from those supervising his work here should be circularised to the committee. If it has not arrived, I can say that they regard his ability as higher than anyone in their department for the last three years. You cannot ask more than that. If the committee allows itself to be coerced by an employer to get rid of such a man, it is showing itself singularly indifferent to merit. And it ought in honesty to declare that its appointments are governed, not partly but entirely, by employers’ personal vendettas.’

George’s voice rang round the room. Calvert’s sounded faint by contrast as he broke in: ‘I can’t allow — I mean, personal considerations have nothing to do with it.’

‘I should like to ask, through you, Mr Chairman,’ said George, the instant Calvert finished, ‘whether Mr Calvert maintains that personal considerations have not dictated his entire course of action?’

‘I protest,’ said the Principal.

‘It’s entirely a matter — the organisation of my firm, I mean, didn’t happen to give room for another man of Cotery’s age. I let him know — I think he realised during the summer. I certainly let him know.’

In the midst of George, Beddow and the Principal, all fluent in their different manners, Calvert was at a loss for words. His face was chubby and petulant, and quite unlike his handsome son’s. His irritation seemed naïve and bewildered; but I felt a streak of intense obstinacy in him.

‘I think,’ said George, ‘that Mr Calvert ought to be allowed to withdraw his last suggestion.’

‘I have no intention of — No,’ said Calvert.

‘Then,’ said George, ‘who knew that you wouldn’t have room for Cotery? and so intended to cut him off here?’

‘No one, except Cotery and myself. I don’t — it’s not necessary to discuss my business with other people.’

‘That is, no one knew of your intention until you wrote to the Principal some days ago?’ said George.

‘There was no need.’

‘No one knew of your intention, in fact, until another incident had happened? Until after you told Cotery that you had forbidden your son—’

Beddow interrupted loudly: ‘I can’t allow any more, Mr Passant. I’ve got to apologise again’ — he turned to Calvert — ‘that you’ve been compelled to listen to remarks that, giving Mr Passant every shadow of a doubt, are in the worst possible taste.’

‘I entirely concur,’ said the Principal. It was clear that he and Beddow, at any rate, knew the whole sorry story. ‘And, Mr Chairman, since a delicate matter has most regrettably been touched on, I wonder if Miss Geary would not prefer to leave the room?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Miss Geary; and settled herself squatly and darkly in her chair.

‘I take it,’ said George, ‘that to punish a man without trial is in the best possible taste. And I refuse to make this incident sound ominous by brooding over it in silence. Mr Calvert either knows or ought to know that Cotery is absolutely innocent; that the whole matter has been ridiculously exaggerated; that it was nothing but a romantic gesture.’

‘I believe that,’ said Calvert. A glance of sympathy passed between them; for a second, they were made intimate by their quarrel. Then Calvert said obstinately: ‘But it has nothing to do with it.’

‘I am a little surprised,’ said Canon Martineau, ‘that Mr Passant is able to speak with such authority about this young man Cotery. I confess that his standing in the matter isn’t quite so obvious—’

‘I have the right to appear here about any student,’ said George. Their hostility was gathering round him: but he was as self-forgetful as I had ever seen him.

The Principal seized a cue, and said: ‘Mr Passant has, as it happens, a right to appear about students with whom he is not connected. In fact, Cotery never attended any of your classes, Mr Passant?’

‘He presumably wouldn’t have done so exceptionally well in printing,’ George said loudly, ‘if he had attended my classes in law.’

‘Classes in law,’ said the Principal, rising to a cautious, deliberate anger, ‘which amount to two a week, this committee may remember. Like those given by twenty other visiting helpers to our regular staff.’

‘The committee may also remember,’ said George, ‘that they can terminate the connection at a month’s notice. That, however, does not affect the fact that I know Cotery well: I know him, just as I know a good many other students, better than anyone else in this institution.’

‘Why do you go to this exceptional trouble?’ asked the Canon.

‘Because I am attached to an educational institution: I conceive that it is my job to help people to think.’

‘Some of your protégés are inclined to think on unorthodox lines?’ the Principal said.

‘No doubt. I shouldn’t consider any other sort of thinking was worth the time of a serious-minded man.’

‘Even if it leads them into actions which might do harm to our reputations?’ said the Principal.

‘I prefer more precise questions. But I might take the opportunity of saying that I know what constitutes a position of trust: and I do not abuse it.’

There was a hush. Calvert’s pencil scribbled over the paper.

‘Well,’ said Beddow, ‘perhaps if—’

‘I have not quite finished,’ said George. ‘I am not prepared to let the committee think that I am simply intruding into this affair. I am completely unapologetic. I repeat, I know Cotery well: you have heard my questions: I regard my case as proved. But I don’t want to leave the committee under a misapprehension. Cotery is one out of many. You will be judged by what you make of them. They are better human material than we are. They are people who’ve missed the war. They are people who are young at the most promising time in the world’s history. If they don’t share in it, then it’s because this committee and I and all we represent are simply playing the irresponsible fool with our youngers and betters. You may take the view that it’s dangerous to make them think: that it’s wiser to leave them in the state of life into which it has pleased God to call them. I refuse to take that view: and I shall not, while I have a foot in this building.’

He stood up to go.

Beddow said: ‘If no one has anything more to ask Mr Passant…’

Until the door closed Beddow did not speak again, but his eyes moved from Calvert to the Canon.

‘Well, Principal,’ said Beddow, but his tone had lost (I was excited to notice) some of its buoyancy, ‘I take it that you have made your recommendation.’

‘I have, sir,’ said Cameron emphatically.

‘In that case, if no one has a motion, I suppose we accept the recommendation and pass on.’

Miss Geary leaned forward in her chair. ‘Certainly not,’ she said. ‘We’ve been listening to a man who believes what he says. And I want to hear some of it answered.’

There was a stir round the table. They were relieved that she had spoken out, given them someone to argue against.

‘Haven’t we been listening,’ said Canon Martineau, with his subtle smile, ‘to a man who has a somewhat exaggerated idea of the importance of his mission?’

‘No doubt,’ said Miss Geary. ‘Most people who believe in anything have a somewhat exaggerated idea of its importance. And I don’t pretend that he made the best of his case. Nevertheless—’

She was speaking from a double motive, of course; her dislike for the Principal shone out of her: so did her desire to help George.

It was still one against four, if it came to a vote; but there was a curious, hypercharged atmosphere that even the absolute recalcitrants, Calvert and the Principal, felt as they became more angry. Over Beddow and Martineau certainly, the two most receptive people there, had come a jag of apprehension. And when, after Miss Geary had competently put the position of Cotery again, and Calvert merely replied stubbornly: ‘He’s known for months that I didn’t intend to keep him here. Nothing else came into account. Nothing else—’ the Canon became restless.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘there are times when it’s not only important that justice should be done. Sometimes it’s important that justice should appear to be done. And in this case, unless we’re careful, it does seem to me possible that our Mr Passant may make a considerable nuisance of himself.’

‘I regret the suggestion,’ said the Principal, ‘that we should consider giving way to threats.’

‘That isn’t Canon Martineau’s suggestion, if I understand it right,’ said Beddow. ‘He’s saying that we mustn’t stand on our dignity, even when we’re being taught our business by a man like Passant. Because nothing would take the wind out of his sails like giving way a bit. And, on the other hand, it might do this young fellow Cotery some good if we stretched a point.’

‘The Chairman has put my attitude,’ said Martineau, ‘much more neatly than I could myself.’

‘I’m afraid that I still consider it dangerous,’ said the Principal.

‘Well,’ said Beddow, ‘if we could meet one condition, I myself would go so far as to stretch a point. But the condition is, of course, that we must satisfy Mr Calvert. We shouldn’t think of acting against your wishes,’ said Beddow to Calvert, in his most cordial and sincere manner.

Calvert nodded his head.

‘I can’t alter my own position,’ he said. ‘There’s no future — I can’t find a place for Cotery. I decided that in the summer. I don’t bear him any ill-will—’

‘I wonder,’ Canon Martineau looked at Beddow with a sarcastic smile, ‘whether this idea would meet the case? Cotery would normally have two more years: we pay half the cost, and Mr Calvert half. Mr Calvert, for reasons we all accept, can’t go on with his share. But is there anything to prevent us keeping to our commitment, and remitting — may I suggest — not the half, but all Cotery’s fees for just one year?’

‘Except that it would be no practical use to the man himself,’ said Miss Geary.

‘No,’ said Calvert. ‘He needs the whole three years.’

‘I’m not so desperately concerned about that,’ said the Canon.

‘He’d have to get the money from some other source. If he wanted to finish,’ said Beddow briskly. ‘I agree with the Canon. I think it’s a decent compromise.’

Miss Geary saw that it was her best chance.

‘If you’ll propose it, Canon,’ she said, ‘I’m ready to second.’

‘I deeply regret this idea,’ said the Principal. ‘And I am sure that Mr Calvert does.’

Canon Martineau and Beddow had judged Calvert more shrewdly, however, and he shook his head.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I can’t support the motion. But I shan’t vote against it.’ It was carried by three votes to one, with Calvert abstaining.

6: Results of a Celebration

I went straight from the committee to the Victoria, our public house, where George and Jack were waiting.

‘Well?’ cried George, as soon as I entered. I saw that Morcom was with them, sitting by the fire.

‘It’s neither one thing nor the other,’ I said. I told them the decision.

‘It’s a pretty remarkable result for any sane collection of men to achieve. I never believed that you’d drive them into it. But it doesn’t help Jack, of course.’

‘Nonsense,’ George shouted. ‘You’re as cheerful as Balfour giving the news of the Battle of Jutland. Your sane collection of men have been made to realise that they can’t treat Jack as though he was someone who just had to be content with their blasted charity. Good God alive, don’t you see that that’s a triumph? We’re going to drink a considerable amount of beer and we’re going to Nottingham by the next train to have a proper celebration. In the meantime, I’m going to hear every word that they found themselves obliged to say.’

Jack smiled, raised his glass towards George, and said: ‘You’re a wonderful man, George.’ Jack was shrewd enough to know already that, for himself, the practical value of the triumph was nothing: but it was his nature to rejoice with him who rejoices. (I was soon to see the same quality again in Herbert Getliffe.) He could not bear to spoil George’s pleasure.

George lived through my description of the meeting before he confronted them and after he left. He was furiously indignant with Beddow’s attempt to propitiate Calvert, more than with the Principal’s: ‘I suppose Cameron, to do him justice, is out to get benefactions for the institution. It’s true that he’s quite incapable of administering them, but we can’t reasonably expect him to realise that. But what Beddow, who calls himself a socialist, thinks he’s doing, when he tries to lick the feet of a confounded businessman—’ so George went on, drinking his beer, chuckling with delight at Miss Geary’s interventions, reinterpreting the Canon’s equivocal manoeuvres as directly due to the influence of Howard Martineau. ‘The Canon must have worked out his technique. To come in on our side without letting it seem obvious,’ said George. But he had no explanation of Calvert’s naïve defence that he formed his decision about Jack long before the incident with his son.

‘That’s just incredible,’ said George. ‘If I’d wanted to invent something improbable, I couldn’t have invented anything as improbable as that.’

Morcom said little; but he was amused by the change of sides, the choice of partners, before the vote. As I told the story, Jack illustrated it by moving glasses about the table; two glasses of beer representing the Canon and Beddow, a glass of water the Principal, a small square jug Miss Geary, and for Calvert Jack turned a glass upside down. When he moved them into their final places, George gave a loud satisfied sigh.

‘They couldn’t do anything else,’ he said. ‘They couldn’t do anything else.’

Morcom looked at him with a curious smile.

‘I doubt whether anyone else could have made them do it, George,’ he said.

‘I don’t know about that,’ said George.

‘But, to come back for a minute to what Lewis said, they’ve still left Jack in the air, haven’t they?’

‘They’ve recognised his position. He’s got time to turn round.’

‘He’s really in very much the same position,’ said Morcom. ‘It’s important you should keep that in mind, for Jack’s sake—’

‘Arthur,’ George cried, angrily and triumphantly, ‘you tried to dissuade me from breathing a word to the bellwethers. You don’t deny that, I suppose?’

‘No,’ said Morcom.

‘And now I’ve done it, you’re trying to deprive me of the luxury of having brought it off. I’m not prepared to submit to it. I’ve listened to you on most things, Arthur, but I’m not prepared to submit to it tonight.’

Half-drunk myself, I laughed. This was his night: I was ready, like Jack, to forget tomorrow. Yet, somewhere beneath my surrender to his victory, there crept a chill of disappointment. An hour ago, I had seen George in his full power and totally admired him; but now, knowing that Morcom was right, I was young enough to resent the contradiction between George in his full power and the same man sitting in this chair by the fire, shutting his eyes to the truth. He ought not to be sitting there, flushed, optimistic, triumphant, seeing only what he wanted to see.

‘In fact,’ shouted George, defiantly, ‘you’re not going to argue me out of my celebration. I dare say you don’t want to come. But the others will.’

Jack and I were eager for it. We left Morcom sitting by the fire, and ran across to the station. The eight-forty was a train to Nottingham that we all knew; for half an hour the lights of farms, the villages, the dark fields, rushed by. The carriage was full, but George talked cheerfully of the pleasures to come and how he first met Connie at the ‘club’; he was oblivious, as in all happiness or quarrels, to the presence of strangers; that night none of us cared.

We had a drink in a public house at the top of Parliament Street, and crossed over to another on the other side; it was a windy night, and the wind seemed very loud and the lights spectacularly bright. Jack, though he drank less than George and I, began demanding bowls of burning gold and going behind bars to help the maids: George kept greeting acquaintances, various men, whores, and girls from the factories out for a good time. He had met them on other night visits to Nottingham: for he went often, though he concealed it from Jack and me until we discovered by accident.

He knew the back streets better than those of our own town. He led us to the club by short cuts between high, ramshackle houses, and through ‘entries’, partly covered over, where George’s voice echoed crashingly. One such entry led to a narrow street, lit only by a single street lamp at the mouth. At the door of a tall house at the end remote from the light, George rapped three times with the brass knocker.

A woman climbed up from the area and recognised George. She told him to take us upstairs, the top door was unlocked. We went up the four flights of creaking wooden stairs, and met a new, bright blue door which cut off the attic storey from the landing.

A gramophone was wailing inside. George marched in before us: the room was half-full, mainly of women; as soon as he entered, a group of them gathered round him. He was popular there; they laughed at him, they were after the money which he threw away carelessly at all times, fantastically so when drunk; but they genuinely liked him. They did him good turns, and took their troubles to him for advice. With them, he showed none of the diffidence of a visit to Martineau’s respectable drawing-room; he was cheerfully, heartily enjoying himself, he liked being with them, he felt at home.

Tonight he burst into extravagance from the start. He saw Connie sitting with Thelma, her regular older friend; George put an arm round each of them, and shouted, ‘Thelma’s here! Of course, I insist that everyone must have a drink — because Thelma’s here!’

Connie told him that he was silly, then whispered in his ear; his eyes brightened, and he took out a couple of notes for Thelma to buy drinks round. George shouted to some women across the room, and in the same breath talked in soft chuckles to Connie. She was fair and quite young, with a pretty, impassive face and a nice body. She pretended to escape from his arm: at once he clutched her, and she came towards him: the contact went through George like an electric current, and he shouted jubilantly: ‘Make them have another drink, Thelma. Why shouldn’t everyone have two drinks at once?’

Soon George and Connie had gone away. The rest of us drank and danced. The floor was rough; there was nothing polished about the ‘club’ except the bright blue door on the landing. The furniture was mixed, but all old; the red velvet sofas seemed like the relics of a gay house of the nineties; so did the long mirror with the battered gilding. But there were also some marble-topped tables, picked up in a café, several wicker chairs and even two or three soap boxes. One of the bulbs was draped in frilly pink, and one was naked. Women giggled and shrilled; and among it all, the ‘manager’ (whose precise function none of us knew) sat in the corner of the room, reading a racing paper with a cloth cap on the back of his head.

Now and then a pair went out. The gramophone wailed on, like all the homesick, lust-sweet longing in the world. The thudding beat got hold of one, it got mixed with the smell of scent. After one dance, Jack spoke to me for a moment.

‘Jesus love me, I can’t help it, Lewis,’ he said with his fresh open smile. ‘I’m going all randy sad.’

It was after one o’clock when the three of us gathered round one of the marble-topped tables. The room was nearly empty by then, though the gramophone still played. We should have liked to go, but there was over an hour before the last train home. So we sat there, sobered and quiet, ordering a last glass of gin to mollify the manager: and, of course, we talked of women.

‘The first I ever had,’ said George, ‘happened on the night before my eighteenth birthday. She told me that she did it for a hobby. Afterwards, when I was walking home, it seemed necessary to shout, “Why don’t they all take up a hobby? Why don’t they all take up a hobby?”’ The words would have resounded boisterously three hours ago, when we entered that room; but now they were subdued. He was not randy sad, as Jack and I had been; this was a different, a deeper sadness. He knew the pleasure he had gained; and turning from it, he — whose pictures of the future usually glowed like a sunrise — felt all that he might miss.

‘I should have wanted something better before now,’ said Jack, ‘if I’d been you.’

‘It serves my purpose,’ said George. ‘I don’t know about yours.’

Jack smiled. ‘Why don’t you try nearer home?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that some of the young women in our group would be open to persuasion. You’d get more happiness from one of them, George. Clearly you would.’

‘That would destroy everything I want to do,’ George said. ‘You realise that’s what you’re suggesting? You’d put me into a position where people like Morcom could say that I was building up an impressive façade of looking after our group at the School. That I was building up an impressive façade — and that my real motive was to cuddle the girls on the quiet.’

Jack looked at George in consternation. For once in a quarrel, he had not raised his voice; yet his face bore all the signs of pain. Affectionately, Jack said: ‘I want you to be happy, that’s all.’

‘I shouldn’t be happy that way,’ said George. ‘I can look after my own happiness.’

‘Anyway, for my happiness, I’m afraid I shall need love,’ said Jack. ‘Love with all the romantic accompaniments, George. The sort of love that makes the air seem a remarkable medium to be moving through. I’m afraid I need it.’

‘I don’t know whether I need it,’ I said. ‘But I’m afraid that I’ve got it.’

‘Don’t you ever want it, George?’ Jack asked.

‘Of course I want it,’ said George. ‘Though I shouldn’t be prepared to sacrifice everything for it. But of course I want it: what do you think I am? As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking tonight that I’m not very likely to find it.’ He looked at me with a sympathetic smile. ‘I don’t know that I’ve ever been in love — at least not what you’d call love. I’ve made myself ridiculous once or twice, but it didn’t amount to much. I dare say that it never will.’

It seemed strange that George, not as a rule curious about his friends’ feelings, should have recognised from the start that my love for Sheila (which had begun that summer) would hag-ride me for years of my life. Yet that night he envied me. George was a sensual man, often struggling against his senses; Jack an amorous one, revelling in the whole atmosphere of love. In their different ways, they both that night wanted what they had not tasted. Saddened by pleasure, they thought longingly of love.

I said to Jack: ‘I think that Roy would have understood what we’ve been saying. It would have been beyond us at fifteen.’

‘I suppose he would,’ said Jack doubtfully.

‘He’s been in love,’ I said.

‘I still find it a bit hard to credit that,’ said Jack.

‘No one would believe me,’ I said, ‘if I told them that you were a very humble creature, would they?’

At the mention of Roy’s name, George had become preoccupied; his eyes, heavy-lidded after the evening, looked over the now empty room; but that abstracted gaze saw nothing, it was turned into himself. Jack and I talked on; George sat silently by; until he said suddenly, unexpectedly, as though he was in the middle of a conversation: ‘I accept some of the criticisms that were made before we started out.’

I found myself seized by excitement. I knew from his tone that he was going to bring out a surprise.

‘I scored a point or two,’ George said to Jack. ‘But I haven’t done much for you.’

‘Of course you have,’ said Jack. ‘Anyway, let’s postpone it. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘There’s no point in postponing it,’ said George. ‘I haven’t done much for you, as Lewis said before ever Morcom did. And it’s got to be attended to. Mind you, I don’t accept completely the pessimistic account of the situation. But we ought to be prepared to face it.’

Clearly, rationally, half-angrily, George explained to Jack (as Jack knew, as Morcom and I had already said, though not so precisely) how the committee’s decision gave him no future. ‘That being so,’ said George, ‘I suppose you ought to leave Calvert’s wretched place.’

‘I’ve got to live,’ said Jack.

‘Is it possible to go to another printer’s?’

‘I could get an identical job, George. With identical absence of future.’

‘Well, I can’t have any more of this fatalistic nonsense,’ said George, irascibly, and yet with a disarming kindness. ‘What would you do — if we could provide you with a free choice?’

‘I could do several things, George. But they’re all ruled out. They all depend on having some money — now.’

‘Do you agree?’ George asked me. ‘I expect you know Jack’s position better than I do. Do you agree?’

I had to, though I could foresee what was coming. If Jack’s fortunes were to be changed immediately, he must have a loan. My little legacy had given me a chance: each pound at our age was worth ten to a man whose life was fixed. Jack was young enough to get into a profession — or ‘to have a shot at that business we heard about the other day,’ as he said himself.

‘Yes,’ said George. ‘So in fact with a little money now, you’re confident that you could laugh at Calvert and his friends?’

‘With luck, I should make a job of it,’ said Jack. ‘But—’

‘Then the money will have to be produced. I shall want you to let me contribute.’ George’s manner became, to stop Jack speaking, bleak and businesslike. ‘Mind you, I shall want a certain number of guarantees. I shall want to be certain that I’m making a good investment. And also I ought to warn you straightaway that I may not be able to raise much money myself.’ He went on very fast. ‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t put my financial position on the table. It’s all a matter of pure business. And I’ve never been able to understand how people manage to be proud about their finances. Anyway, even people who are proud about their finances couldn’t be if they had mine. I collect exactly £285 per year. (Such incomes, because of the fall in the value of money, were to seem tiny within thirty years.) Of that I allow £55 to my father and mother. I’m also insured in their interest. I think if I decreased the £55 a bit, and added to the insurance, they oughtn’t to be much upset. And then I could probably raise a fair sum from the bank on the policy — but I warn you, it’s a matter of pure business. There may be difficulties.’

Neither Jack nor I fully understood the strange nature of George’s ‘finances’. But Jack was moved so that he did not recover his ready, flattering tongue until we got up to catch our train. Then he said: ‘George, I thought we set out tonight to celebrate a triumph.’

‘It was a triumph,’ said George. ‘I shall always insist that we won at that meeting.’

7: Argument Under the Gaslight

IT took some days for Jack to settle what he wanted to do (from that night at Nottingham, he never doubted that George would find the money): and it took a little longer to persuade George of it.

Those were still the days of the small-scale wireless business. An acquaintance of ours had just started one; Jack had his imagination caught. He expounded what he could make of it — and I thought how much he liked the touch of anything modern. He would have been a contemporary man in any age. But he was inventive, he was shrewd, he had a flair for advertisement; he persuaded us all except George.

George did not like it. He would have preferred to try to article Jack to Eden & Martineau. He asked Morcom and me for our opinions. We gave practically the same answer. Making Jack a solicitor would mean a crippling expense for George; and we could not see Jack settling down to a profession if he started unwillingly. His choice was far more likely to come off.

At last George gave way. Then, though Jack, as I say, never doubted that the money would be found, George faced a last obstacle; he had to tell his father and mother that he was lessening his immediate help to them.

For many men, it would have been easy. He could have equivocated; after all, the insurance provided for their future, and he had been making an extravagantly large contribution. But he never thought of evading the truth. He dreaded telling it, for he knew how it would be taken; their family relations were passionately close. But tell it he did, without any cover, three days after our visit to Nottingham.

A week later, when he took me to supper with them, they were still not reconciled to it. It was only Mr Passant’s natural courtesy, his anxiety to make me feel at home, that kept them from an argument the moment we arrived.

Actually, I was not a stranger in their house. Until two years before, Mr Passant had been assistant postmaster at Wickham; then, when George got his job at Eden & Martineau’s, Mr Passant transferred to the general post office in the town. For fear of their family ties George insisted on going into lodgings, while they lived in this little house, one of a row of identical little houses, each with a tiny front garden and iron railings, on the other side of the town. But George visited them two or three times every week; he took his friends to spend whole evenings with them; tonight we arrived early and George and his mother kissed each other with an affection open and yet suddenly released. She was a stocky, big-breasted woman, wearing an apron over a greyish dress.

‘It’s half the week since I saw you, old George,’ she said: it was the overtones of her racy Suffolk accent that we noticed in George’s speech.

She wanted to talk at once about the question of money. Mr Passant managed to stop her, however, his face lined with concern. In a huff, as hot-tempered as George, she went into the back kitchen, though supper would not be ready for an hour.

Mr Passant sat with us round the table in the kitchen. It was hot from a heaped-up fire, and gave out the rich smell of small living-rooms. Under the gaslight, Mr Passant burst into a breathless, friendly, excited account of how, that morning at the post office, a money order had nearly gone astray. He spoke in a kindly hurry, his voice husky and high-pitched. He said: ‘Do you play cards, Mr — er — Lewis? Of course you must play cards. George, we ought to play something with him now.’

It was impossible to resist Mr Passant’s enormous zest, to prevent him doing a service. He fetched out a pack of cards from the sideboard, and we played three-handed solo. Mr Passant, who had been brought up in the strictest Puritan discipline, was middle-aged before he touched a card; now he played with tremendous enjoyment, with a gusto that was laughable and warmed us all.

When we finished the game, Mr Passant suddenly got up and brought a book to the table.

‘Just a minute, Mr — er — Lewis, there’s something I thought of when I was playing. It won’t take long, but I mustn’t forget.’

The book was a Bible. He moistened a pencil in his lips, drew a circle round a word, and connected it by a long line to another encircled word.

I moved to give him more room at the table, but he protested.

‘No, please, no. I just do a little preparation each night to be ready for Sunday, you know. I’m allowed to tell the good news, I go round the villages, I don’t suppose George has told you.’ (Of course, I knew long since that he devoted his spare hours to local preaching.) ‘And it’s easier if I do a little work every night. I’m only doing it before supper so that afterwards—’

George and I spread out the evening paper and whispered comments to each other. In a few moments Mr Passant sighed and put a marker into the Bible.

‘Ready for Sunday?’ said George.

‘A little more tomorrow.’ Mr Passant smiled.

‘I suppose you won’t have a big congregation,’ George said. His tone was both intimate and constrained. ‘As it’s a slack time of the year.’

Mr Passant said: ‘No, we can’t hope for many, but that’s not the worst thing. What grieves me is that we don’t get as many as we used to. We’re losing, we’ve been losing ever since the war.’

‘So has the Church of England,’ I observed.

‘Yes, you’re losing too,’ Mr Passant smiled at me. ‘It isn’t only one of us. Which way are you going to win them back?’

I gained some amusement from being taken as a spokesman of the Church of England. I did not obtrude my real beliefs: we proceeded to discuss on what basis the Christian Churches could unite. There I soon made a mistake; for I suggested that Mr Passant might not find confirmation an insurmountable obstacle.

Mr Passant pushed his face forward. He looked more like George than I had seen him. ‘That is the mistake you would have to understand before we could come together,’ he said. ‘Can’t I make you see how dangerous a mistake it is, Mr — Lewis? A man is responsible for his own soul. Religion is the choice of a man’s soul before his God. At some time in his life, sooner or later, a man must choose to stay in sin or be converted. That is the most certain fact I know, you see, and I could not bring myself to associate in worship with anyone who doesn’t want to know it as I do.’

‘I understand what you mean by a man being responsible for his soul.’ George rammed tobacco into his pipe. ‘That’s the basis of Protestantism, naturally. And, though you might choose to put it in other words’ — he looked at me — ‘it’s the basis of any human belief that isn’t completely trivial or absurdly fatalistic. But I never have been able to see why you should make conversion so definite an act. It doesn’t happen like that — irrevocably and once for all.’

‘It does,’ said Mr Passant.

‘I challenge it,’ said George.

‘My dear,’ said Mr Passant, ‘you know all sorts of matters that I don’t know, and on every one of these I will defer to your judgment or knowledge, and be glad to. But you see, I have been living amongst people for fifty years, for fifty-three years and a half, within a few days, and as a result of that experience I know that their lives change all of a sudden — like this—’ he took a piece of paper out of his pocket and moistened his pencil against a lip; then he drew a long straight line— ‘a man lives in sin and enjoyment and indulgence for years, until he is brought up against himself; and then, if he chooses right, life changes altogether — so.’ And he drew a line making a sharp re-entrant angle with the first, and coming back to the edge of the paper. ‘That’s what I mean by conversion, and I couldn’t tell you all the lives I’ve seen it in.’

‘I can’t claim the length of your experience,’ George’s tone had suddenly become hard, near anger, ‘but I have been studying people intensively for several years. And all I’ve seen makes me think their lives are more like this—’ he took his father’s paper under the gaslight, his hand casting a blue shadow; he drew a rapid zigzag. ‘A part of the time they don’t trouble to control their baser selves. Then for a while they do and get on with the most valuable task in sight. Then they relax again. And so on another spurt. For some people the down-strokes are longer than the up, and some the reverse. That’s all I’m prepared to admit. That’s all you need to hope, it seems to me. And whatever your hopes are, they’ve got to be founded in something like the truth—’

Mr Passant was breathless and excited: ‘Mine is the truth for every life I’ve seen. It’s the truth for my own life, and no one else can speak for that. When I was a young man I did nothing but run after enjoyments and pleasures.’ He was staring at the paper on the table. It was quiet; a spurt of rain dashed against the window. ‘Sensual pleasures,’ said Mr Passant, ‘that neither of you will ever hear about, perhaps, much less be tempted with. But they were pleasures to me. Until I was a young man about your age, not quite your age exactly.’ He looked at George. ‘Then one night I had a sight of the way to go. I can never forget it, and I can never forget the difference between my state before and since. I can answer for the same change in others also. But chiefly I have to speak for myself.’

‘I have to do the same,’ said George.

They stared at each other, their faces shadowed. George’s lips were pressed tightly together.

Then Margaret, George’s youngest sister, a girl of fourteen, came in to lay the supper. And Mrs Passant, still unappeased, followed with a great metal tray.

Supper was a meal both heavy and perfunctory. There was a leg of cold overdone beef, from which Mr Passant and George ate large slices: after the potatoes were finished, we continued with the meat alone. Mrs Passant herself was eating little — to draw George’s concern, I thought. When her husband tried to persuade her, she merely smiled abruptly. His voice was entreating and anxious; for a moment, the room was pierced by unhappiness, in which, as Mr Passant leaned forward, George and the child suddenly took their share.

Nothing open was said until Margaret had gone to bed. From halfway up the stairs, she called out my Christian name. I went up, leaving the three of them alone; Margaret was explaining in her nervous, high-pitched voice that her candle had gone out and she had no matches. She kept me talking for a few moments, proud of her first timid attempt to flirt. As she cried ‘Goodnight’ down the stairs, I heard the clash of voices from below. The staircase led, through a doorway, directly into the kitchen; past the littered table, George’s face stood out in a frown of anger and pain. Mr Passant was speaking. I went back to my place; no one gave me a glance.

‘You’re putting the wrong meaning on to us,’ the words panted from Mr Passant. ‘Surely you see that isn’t our meaning, or not what we tried to mean.’

‘I can only understand it one way,’ George said. ‘You suspect the use I intend to make of my money. And in any case you claim a right to supervise it, whether you suspect me or not.’

‘We’re trying to help you, that’s all. We must try to help you. You can’t expect us to forget who you are and see you lose or waste everything.’

‘That amounts to claiming a right to interfere in my affairs. I’ve had this out too many times before. I don’t admit it for a single moment. If I make my own judgment and decide to spend every penny I receive on my own pleasures, I’m entitled to do so.’

‘We’ve seen some of your judgment,’ said Mrs Passant. George turned to her. His anger grew stronger, but with a new note of pleading: ‘Don’t you understand I can’t give way in this? I can’t give way in the life I lead or the money I spend. In the last resort, I insist of being the judge of my own actions. If that’s accepted, I’m prepared to justify the present case. I warn you that I’ve made up my mind, but I’m prepared to justify it.’

‘You’re prepared to keep other people with your money. That’s what you want to do,’ said Mrs Passant.

‘You must believe what I’ve told you till I’m tired,’ George shouted. ‘We’re only talking about this particular sum of money I propose to use in a particular way. What I’ve done in the past and what I may do in the future are utterly beside the point. This particular sum I’m not going to spend on a woman, if that’s what you’re thinking. If you won’t believe me—’

‘We believe that, we believe that,’ Mr Passant burst out. George stared at his mother.

‘Very well. Then the point is this, and nothing but this; that I’m going to spend the money on someone I’m responsible for. That responsibility is the most decent task I’m ever likely to have. So the only question is whether I can afford it or not. Nothing I’ve ever learned in this house has given me any respect for your opinions on that matter. Your only grumble could be that I shan’t be discharging my duty and making my contribution here. I admit that is a duty. I’m not trying to evade it. Have I ever got out of it except for a day or two? Have I ever got out of it since I was qualified?’

‘You’re making a song about it. By the side of what we’ve done,’ she said.

‘I want an answer. Have I ever got out of it?’

She shook her head.

‘Do you suggest I shall get out of it now?’

She said, with a sudden bitter and defenceless smile: ‘Oh, I expect you’ll go on throwing me a few shillings. Just to ease your mind before you go off with the others.’

‘Do you want every penny I earn?’

‘If you gave me every penny,’ she said, ‘you’d still only be trying to ease your mind.’

George said in a quietened, contrite tone: ‘Of course, it’s not the money. You wouldn’t worry for a single instant if my salary were cut and I couldn’t afford to find any. I ought to know’ — his face lightened into an affectionate smile — ‘that you’re just as bad with money as I am myself.’

‘I know that you can afford to find money for these other people. Just as you can afford to give them all your time. You’re putting them in the first place—’

‘It’s easy to give your money without thinking,’ said Mr Passant. ‘But that’s worse than meanness if you neglect your real duties or obligations—’

‘To hear you talk of duties,’ Mrs Passant turned on him. ‘I might have listened to that culch if I hadn’t lived with you for thirty years.’

‘I’ve left things I ought not to have left,’ said Mr Passant. ‘You’ve got a right to say that.’

‘I’m going to say, and for the last time,’ George cried, ‘that I intend to spend this money on the realest duty that I’m ever likely to find.’

Mrs Passant said to her husband: ‘You’ve never done a mortal act you didn’t want. Neither will he. I pity anyone who has to think twice about either of you.’

8: George at the Centre of His Group

IT was all settled by the beginning of October. Just three weeks had passed since George first heard the news of Jack’s trouble. Now George was speaking as if those three weeks were comfortably remote; just as, in these same first days of October, he disregarded my years in the office from the moment I quit it. Even the celebratory weekend at the farm was not his idea.

The farm was already familiar ground to George’s group. Without it, in fact, we could not have become so intimate; nowhere in the town could we have made a meeting place for young men and women, some still watched by anxious families. Rachel had set to work to find a place, and found the farm. It was a great shapeless red-brick house fifteen miles from the town, standing out in remarkable ugliness among the wide rolling fields of High Leicestershire; but we did not think twice of its ugliness, since there was room to be together in our own fashion, at the price of a few shillings for a weekend. The tenants did not make much of a living from the thin soil, and were glad to put up a party of us and let us provision for ourselves.

Rachel managed everything. This Saturday afternoon, welcoming us, she was like a young wife with a new house.

She had tidied up the big, low, cold sitting-room which the family at the farm never used; she had a fire blazing for us as we arrived, in batches of two and three, after the walk from the village through the drizzling rain. She installed George in the best armchair by the fire, and the rest of us gathered round; Jack, Olive and I, Mona, a perky girl for whom George had a fancy, several more of both sexes from the School. The entire party numbered twelve, but did not include Arthur Morcom, for George was happiest when it was kept to his own group.

This afternoon he was filled with a happiness so complete, so unashamedly present in his face, that it seemed a provocation to less contented men. He lay back in his chair, smoking a pipe, being attended to; these were his friends and protégés, in each of us he had complete trust; all the bristles and guards of his defences had dropped away.

Cheerfully he did one of his parlour tricks for me. I had been invited for tea in a neighbouring village; I had lived in the county twenty years to George’s two, but it was to him I applied for the shortest cut. He had a singular memory for anything that could be put on paper, so singular that he took it for granted; he proceeded to draw a sketch map of the countryside. We assumed that each detail was exact, for no one was less capable of bluffing. He finished, with immense roars of laughter, by drawing a neat survey sign, a circle surmounted by a cross, to represent my destination; for I was visiting Sheila’s home for the first time, and George could not recover from the joke that she was the daughter of a country clergyman.

Then, just as I was going out, a thought struck him. Among this group, he was always prepared to think aloud. ‘I’m only just beginning to realise,’ said George, ‘what a wonderful invention a map is. Geography would be incomprehensible without maps. They’ve reduced a tremendous muddle of facts into something you can read at a glance. Now I suspect economics is fundamentally no more difficult than geography. Except that it’s about things in motion. If only somebody could invent a dynamic map—’

Myself, having a taste for these things, I should have liked to hear him out. But people like Mona (with her sly eyes and soft figure and single-minded curiosity about men) listened also: listened, it occurred to me as I walked over the wet fields, because George enjoyed his own interest and took theirs for granted.

When I returned, the room was not so peaceful. I heard Jack’s voice, as I shook out my wet coat in the hall; and as soon as I saw him and Olive sitting together by the table, I felt my attention fix on them just as all the others’ were fixed. George, sunk into the background, watched from his chair. It was like one of those primitive Last Suppers, in which from right hand and left eleven pairs of eyes are converging on one focus.

Yet, so far as I could tell, nothing had happened. Jack, some sheets of paper in front of him, was expanding on his first plans for the business: Olive had joined him at the table to read a draft advertisement. They had disagreed over one of his schemes, but now that was pushed aside, and Olive said: ‘You know, I envy you! I envy you!’

‘So you ought,’ said Jack. ‘But you haven’t so much to grumble at, yourself.’

‘I suppose you mean that I needn’t work for a living. It’s true, I could give up my job tomorrow.’

‘You wouldn’t get so much fun out of that,’ said Jack, ‘as I did out of telling your uncle that I had become increasingly dissatisfied with his firm—’

Olive smiled, but there was something on her mind. Suddenly I guessed (recalling his manner at Martineau’s the night before) that Morcom had proposed to her.

‘It’s true,’ Olive said, ‘that my father wouldn’t throw me out. I could live on him if I wanted. He probably expects me to be at home, now his health’s breaking up. It’s also true, I expect, that I could find someone to marry me. And I could live on him. But I envy you, being forced to look after yourself: do you understand that?’

‘I don’t think you’re being honest,’ said Jack.

‘I tell you, Jack, it’s bad luck to be born a woman. There may be compensations — but I’d change like a shot. Don’t you think I’m honest about that?’

‘I think you ought to get married,’ said Jack.

‘Why?’

‘You wouldn’t have so much time to think.’

Jack then became unexpectedly serious.

‘Also you talk about your father wanting you at home. It would be better for you to get free of him altogether.’

‘That doesn’t matter.’

‘It does.’

‘I tell you I’ve got a lot of respect for him. But I’ve got no love.’ She turned towards Jack: the light from the oil lamp glinted on the brooch on her breast.

‘You understand other people better than you do yourself,’ said Jack.

‘What should you say if I decided — I don’t think I ever should, mind you — that I ought to put off thinking of marriage yet awhile, and stay at home?’

‘I should say that you did it because you wanted to.’

‘You think that I want to stay at home, preserving my virginity and reading the monthly magazines?’ she cried.

Jack shrugged his shoulders, and gave his good-natured, impudent, amorous smile. He said: ‘Well, part of that could be remedied—’

She slapped his face. The noise cracked through the room. Jack’s cheek was crimson. He said: ‘I can’t reply properly here—’ but then Rachel intervened.

‘I’ll knock your heads together if there’s any more of it,’ she said. ‘Olive, you’d better help me lay the supper.’

The meal gleamed in bright colours on the table — the red of tomatoes, russet of apples, green of lettuce, and the red Leicestershire cheese. George, as always at the farm, made Rachel take the head of the table and placed himself at her right hand. Gusts of wind kept beating against the windows and whining round the house. The oil lamp smoked in front of us at table, and candles flickered on the mantelpiece. The steam from our teacups whirled in the lamplight; we all drank tea at those meals, for George, with an old-fashioned formality that amused us, insisted that our drinking and visits to Nottingham should be concealed from the young women — though naturally they knew all the time.

The circle from the lamp just reached the edge of the table. We were all within it, and the shadow outside, the windy night, brought us together like a family in childhood. Olive’s quarrel with Jack lost its sting, and turned into a family quarrel. George basked as contentedly as in the afternoon, and was as much our centre.

With great gusto he brought out ideas for Jack’s business; they were a mixture, one entirely unrealistic and another that seemed ingenious and sound. Then he made a remark about me, assuming casually and affectionately that I was bound to do well in my examination in the summer. He cherished our successes to come — as though he had them under his fingers in the circle of lamplight.

Olive looked at him. She forgot herself, and felt anxious for him. She cried sharply: ‘Don’t forget you can’t just watch these people going ahead.’

‘I don’t think you need worry about that,’ said George.

‘I shall worry, George. You’ll find as they get on’ — she indicated us round the table — ‘that you need recognition for yourself. To be practical, you’ll need that partnership in the firm.’

‘Do you think I shall ever fret so much about a piece of respectable promotion?’

‘It’s not just that—’ but, though she stuck to it, she could not explain her intuition. Others of us stepped in to persuade him; no one spoke as strongly as Olive, but we were concerned. George, gratified but curiously embarrassed, tried to pass it off as a joke.

‘As I told you at the café,’ he said to Olive, ‘when we were going into action about Jack — it shouldn’t be so difficult. After all, even if I did perform actions which they don’t entirely approve of, I certainly do most of the work, which they approve of very much: Martineau being given to religious disputation, and Eden preferring pure reflection.’

‘That isn’t good enough,’ said Olive.

‘Very well,’ said George at last. ‘I’ll promise not to let it go by default. It will happen in time, of course.’

‘We want to see it happen,’ said Olive. Her eyes were bright and penetrating while she thought only of George. Now they clouded.

‘George,’ she said, ‘I want you to give me some advice.’

‘Yes.’

‘You heard what I said to Jack. Things at home aren’t getting any easier. Possibly I ought to give up the next two or three years to my father. But you know all about it. I just want an answer to this question — ought I to clear out at any price?’

‘This is a bit complicated,’ said George. ‘You know I don’t approve of your parents. We’ll take that for granted. If you could bring yourself to get away, I think you would be happier. What exactly are you thinking of doing?’

‘I might get a better job,’ she said, ‘and live away from home. Or I might get married soon.’

George stayed silent for a moment. A good-natured smile had settled on his face. He said: ‘Getting a job to make yourself really independent wouldn’t be as easy as you imagine. Everyone knows what I think of your capabilities, but the fact is, girls of your class aren’t trained to be much use in the world.’

‘You’re right,’ said Olive.

‘You’re given less chance than anybody. It’s a scandal, but it’s true. To be honest, I don’t think it would happen if women weren’t in the main destined for their biological purpose. I dare say you could live on your present job. But living in abject poverty isn’t much fun. Anyone who’s ever tried would have to tell you that. I’m afraid you might begin to be willing — to get wrapped in your family again.’

Everyone was struck by the caution and the moderate tone of his advice: in fact, George, who could take up any other free idea under heaven, never had an illusion about the position of women. Olive inclined her head.

‘I’m glad you’re speaking out,’ she said. ‘And marriage?’

George said slowly: ‘Escaping even from a family like yours is no reason for marriage. The only reason for marriage is that you are certain that you’re completely in love.’

‘Perhaps so,’ said Olive, ‘perhaps so. I don’t know.’ She sat silently for an instant. Then she smiled at him. ‘Anyway, it’s more important for you to get established,’ she said, as though there was a link between them.

George did not reply, and Olive fell into silence. The windows rattled in the wind. Rachel sighed opulently, and said: ‘We’ve never had a night here quite like this. George, don’t you think we ought to remember this Saturday? We ought to make it a festival, and come over here to keep it in October every year.’

The sentiment welled from her; and she gave the rest of us an excuse to be sentimental.

A few moments later I said: ‘Some of us are starting. Where we shall have got to, after a few of Rachel’s festivals—’

‘Good God alive,’ George burst into triumphant laughter, ‘you don’t expect me to choose this day of all days to lose faith in the future, do you?’

The next night, after supper, George and I were alone in the room. The others had gone into the town by the last bus: George was staying another night in order to call at the Melton office in the morning, and I could stretch myself in my new liberty.

We made another pot of tea. ‘There’s something I should like to show you,’ George said suddenly, with a friendly but secret smile. ‘I want you to inspect my exhibit. Just to round off the weekend. It is exactly the right night for that.’

He put a small suitcase on the table. This he unlocked and produced a dozen thick folios, held together in a clip-back case.

‘You’ve heard me mention this,’ he said. ‘I’m going to let you read a few entries about Jack Cotery’s affairs. I assume you’ll keep them to yourself, naturally.’

It was his diary, which he had kept for years.

He searched through one of the folios, detached pages and handed them to me. At another, more important, moment in George’s life, I was to read much of the diary. The appearance of the pages, years later, altered little from when he began it at eighteen. They were all in his clerkly and legible hand; in a wide left-hand margin he printed in capitals (sometimes after the entries were made, usually when a folio was completed) a sort of sectional heading, and another at the top of the page.

Thus:

COMFORT WITH THE GROUP

FRIDAY, AUG. 23

PLEASURES OF ONE DAY

I could not let today pass by without writing. It was a day of hard work in the office; Eden listened to my summary and is well and truly launched on the co-operative case. I screwed myself up to spend a couple of hours at Martineau’s this evening; it is not long since I left him and, as so often, felt stronger by his influence. But, above all, I passed a memorable evening with my friends…

‘That entry is just to acclimatise you,’ said George. In fact, there were pages of rhapsody over the group; rhapsody in a florid, elaborate and youthful style, which nevertheless could not keep one from believing his enthusiasm; and mixed with the rhapsody, more self-reproach and doubt than his friends would have expected then.

At first sight much of it seemed unfamiliar; for it was bringing home (what at that age I hadn’t seen directly) some of the ways in which he appeared to himself. I read:

For I feel these people (these protégés of mine, if they will let me call them that) are gradually renewing their grip on my affections, my thought, my visions, although I have only visited them occasionally. The last weekend was full of drunken nights, of decrepit nights. I went to Nottingham, finding money drip away as usual… I was still on the hunt and finished at Connie’s, as in duty bound. Then I realised once again that no other girl of the past year is fit to take her place. I just had time for a huzzlecoo; then I went back on the last train. It left me in a mood of headache and despair…

And another day:

THEY ARE REMOTE

I felt very depressed this evening. I arrived at one of those moods when the world seemed useless — when effort seemed in vain; the impossibility of moving mountains had overwhelmed me with my little faith. A chance remark by Olive on the purposelessness of the group had suddenly awakened me to their lack of response, to the lack of response of all of them; to their utter remoteness from me…

Then there was another entry over which I thought a good deal in the next few months.

MORCOM AND MY WORLD

TUESDAY, SEP. 3

MORCOM RAISES A PROFOUND QUESTION: WHAT SHOULD THE GROUP MEAN?

Today Morcom entertained me to lunch. He was charming and considerate — the perfect host. He has so much that I fear I shall never acquire, taste and polish and

savoir faire

, while I am still uncultivated except in my one or two narrow special regions. If only he would abandon his negative attitude and join my attempts! He and I would be the natural alliance, and there is no limit to what we could achieve among the Philistines in this town. He with his strength and command and certainty. I with my burning hopes. When he went out of his way to be pleasant today and issued this invitation, I could scarcely contain my hopes that he was about to throw in his weight on my side. Yet apparently, if ever he possessed it, he withdrew from any such intention, and, indeed, he dropped one or two hints which made me examine myself anew, distressed me profoundly, and caused me, as before, to distrust his influence on some of my closest friends.

Morcom had criticised, sensibly and much as Olive did later, George’s devotion to our group. He had said, in short, that it was not close enough to the earth to satisfy a man of power for long. On paper George answered the criticisms, so elaborately that he showed his own misgivings: and finished:

And what else lies in my powers? The gift of creation, worse luck, was not bestowed on me: except, I dare sometimes think, in the chance to help my protégés, beside whom all the artistic masterpieces of the world seem like bloodless artifices of men who have never discovered what it is to live. I must concentrate on the little world: I shall not get esteem, except the esteem which I value more than any public praise; I shall get no fame, except some gratitude which will soon be forgotten; I shall get no power at all. But I shall do what with all your gifts, Morcom, you may never do: I shall enjoy every moment of every day, and I shall gain my own soul.

In the first pages he showed me, Jack played very little part; there was a word in August:

I am still enjoying the fruitful association with Jack Cotery as much as ever. I have never been so lucky in my friends as I am now.

Then the idea of helping Jack came into the forefront of the diary, and continued there for weeks. There were descriptions of days which I remembered from another side: our first telling him the news, his attack on the committee (written with curious modesty), the visit to Nottingham, his resolve to find money for Jack.

ISSUES OF JACK

Jack himself is easily disposed of. He is obviously the most gifted person I have a chance of helping. It is a risk, he may fall by the wayside, but it is less risky than with any other of the unfortunates. Morcom mustn’t think he is the only person to spot talent. We mustn’t forget that I first discovered that in spite of his humorous, lively warmth, there is a keen and accomplished edge to Jack’s mind.

Jack’s flattery, however, he mentioned, to my surprise:

We must perhaps remember that Jack is not completely impartial just now, though I should repudiate the suggestion if it were made…

And the opposition by his mother, he described a little oddly:

QUIET EVENINGS AT HOME WITH INTERMISSIONS

There had been little visible sign of misunderstanding or incompatibility, but one or two needless scenes.

But there was one thing which astonished me, more than it should have done, since, when I myself rejected George’s advice about becoming a solicitor, there must have been similar entries about me. I knew that he had been angry at Jack preferring to experiment in business instead of accepting George’s scheme of the law. Until I read George’s entries, though, I could not have realised how he felt deserted, how deeply he had taken it to heart.

COTERY REVEALS FEET OF CLAY

Cotery wantonly destroyed all my schemes for him…after destroying his feeble case for this fatuous project, I went away to consider closely the reasons for this outburst. It is fairly clear that he is not such a strong character as I tried to imagine. He may have been subject to underhand influences. I must not blind myself to that; and no doubt he is reacting to his complete acceptance of all I stand for. But, though understandable, such liability to influence and reaction are the signs of a weak character; and it is abundantly certain that I shall have to revise parts of my opinion of him. He will never seem the same again…

Then, a week later, there came the last entry he showed me that night:

I REACH EQUILIBRIUM ON THE COTERY BUSINESS

FRIDAY, SEP. 28

KERNEL OF COTERY’s BEHAVIOUR

I have settled the difficulty about Cotery at last. I do not withdraw a word of my criticism, either of the wisdom of his course or the causes behind it. In a long and, on whole, profitable conversation with Morcom, I forced him to admit that I had been unfairly treated. Morcom is, no doubt, regretful of using his influence without either thought or knowledge. Apart from that, Jack seems, in short, to be handicapping himself at the outset because of an unworthy reaction against me. But that doesn’t dispose of my share in his adventure.

PROPER ATTITUDE UNAFFECTED

I have decided that I owe it to myself to maintain my offer…he must be helped, as though he were acting more sanely…I talk about freedom, about helping people to become themselves; I must show the scoffers that I mean what I say, I must show that I want life that functions on its own and not in my hothouse. I have got to learn to help people on

their

terms. I wish I could come to it more easily.

THE PRACTICAL PROBLEM

As for the money, I shall cease worrying and hope that finance will arrange itself in the long run. I shall carry through this offer to Jack Cotery; then I shall wait and see, and, somehow, pay.