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

  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 became 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 zig-zag. "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 pleading 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 just gone to bed. From half-way 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 "Good night" 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 on 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 had 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 fill yourself with the others."

  "Do you want every penny I earn?"
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  "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 at least as lax 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 reallest duty that I'm ever likely to find."

  Mrs. Passant said to her husband: "You're never done a mortal act you didn't want. Neither will he. He'll never think twice--any more than you have -of the fools who give themselves up for him."

  EIGHT

  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 week-end 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 that 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 arm-chair 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 the girl I was in love with, and she, a joke from which George could never quite recover, 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 realize," 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 nice 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 to-morrow."

  "You wouldn't get so much fun out of that," said Jack, "as I did out of telling your uncle that I had been 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 oillamp 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 asked 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 instinct. 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 mildly disapproved 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."