Charles Snow - George Passant

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘It’s important from every point of view that I get promoted,’ he said quickly. ‘For the group as well. If I’m really going to do much for anyone. I haven’t got the money. I’m often powerless. I nearly was about Jack. God! how crippled one feels when there’s someone who only wants money to give them a start.’

‘You’d be worse off than you are now.’ I smiled. ‘Giving it away.’

George’s own smile grew vaguer.

‘There’s another possibility,’ he said. ‘I don’t know, but I may feel some time that I’ve done as much as I can with the School. After all, the present people will go away in time. I don’t know that I shall want to get interested in any more.’

It was the first time I had heard him permit such a suggestion.

‘I may want to do something useful in a wider field,’ said George. ‘And for that, I must be in with Eden. The group’s all very well in its way, but its success is inside oneself, as you’ve said before now. As one gets older, perhaps one isn’t pure enough to be satisfied with that.’

I tried to laugh it off. ‘Martineau seems to be satisfied pretty easily,’ I said. ‘If his success isn’t inside himself—’

George laughed. Then he said: ‘I may even want to get married.’

Although a wish, it was no clearer than the others. It was one of many wishes springing from the unrest, the hope, that brought to his face a happy and expectant smile.

I was upset by that talk with George.

He was mistaken, I knew, when he suddenly discovered that he was ambitious. If he had been truly ambitious, I should not have been so concerned; for, when this partnership failed him, he would have found something else to drive for. While George valued it more acutely, precisely because he did not usually care — just as a man like Morcom, not easily surrendered to love, may once in his life long for it with a passion dangerous to himself.

George at this moment longed for the place and security to which, for years, he had scarcely given a thought.

But that was nothing like all. I realised that Olive had been right. Months before, by a lucky guess or clairvoyance, she had divined something more important. ‘I think he sometimes knows he was unlucky to get amongst us. Sometimes he wants to get away,’ she said. He was trying to break from his present life, the School, the little world, the group. Jack’s confession might have weakened him — but Olive felt it long before, long before his most vehement declaration of faith, that night in the café by the river. I believed that she was right.

However much he was satisfied by the little world he had built up, he was able to think of breaking free. Perhaps he half realised the danger, the crippling danger to himself. Anyway, he seemed to know that for just these months there was a chance to break loose from his own satisfaction . He also seemed to know that, if this failed, he would never bring himself to the point again.

Hearing George express his want for a respectable position, a comfortable middle-class income, the restraints of a junior partner in a firm of solicitors in a provincial town, I could not help being moved. Knowing the improbability, knowing above all this new suspicious faith in Morcom’s influence, I was afraid. There was only a short time before Eden’s period of grace ran out; it need not be final, but it would deprive George of his hopes.

I heard nothing, until a fortnight later, when Morcom and I were on our way towards Eden’s. Abruptly Morcom said: ‘George thinks Eden will offer him a partnership.’ I exclaimed.

‘He stands exactly as much chance as I do,’ said Morcom. He gave a short laugh, and talked about George’s unrealistic hopes. Then I said: ‘They’re quite fantastic, of course. But that doesn’t prevent him believing in them. It doesn’t prevent him attaching as much importance to them as you might to something reasonable. Surely that’s true.’

‘I expect it is,’ said Morcom. His voice sounded flat, his manner despondent and out of spirits. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I can’t do anything. Eden will settle it completely by himself.’

‘You might sound him,’ I said.

‘It’s a lot of trouble simply because George believes the world revolves round him,’ said Morcom.

‘If he knew it had been mentioned—’ I said. ‘You see,’ I added, filled with an inexplicable shame as well as anxiety, ‘he’s always got a dim feeling that you’re antagonistic. If that grows, it’s going to make life unpleasant.’

Morcom’s face, as we came near a street lamp, looked drawn. I was surprised that the statement should have affected him so much. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’d better try tonight.’

For most of the evening I sat listening to Eden’s anecdotes, laughing more easily to make up for my impatience. The room was warm, there was a fire blazing, stoked high in the chimney: Eden was sitting by its side in his customary armchair, in front of which stood the little table full of books and pipes and a decanter. He wore a velvet smoking jacket. Morcom sat opposite to him. I in the middle: behind Morcom, the light picked out the golden lines in one of the Chinese pictures.

At last there was a lull. Eden filled his glass. Morcom was leaning forward, the fingers of one hand tight over his knee.

‘By the way, the time you gave Martineau to make up his mind — it’ll be over soon, won’t it?’

‘I hadn’t thought of it just lately.’ Eden sipped, and put down his glass. ‘Why, do you know, I suppose it will.’

‘There’s no chance of his coming back,’ said Morcom.

I added: ‘None at all.’

‘I’m afraid you’re right,’ said Eden. It was a comfortable fear, I could not help thinking. ‘It’s a queer business. It’s one of the queerest things I’ve ever struck.’

‘What are you going to do about it? About the firm, I mean?’ The questions were sharp. I could feel Morcom, as I was myself, responding to a slight, an amiable unwillingness in Eden’s manner.

‘I dare say it will go on,’ Eden smiled. ‘When once you’ve really started, it’s not a difficult proposition to keep going, you know.’

‘You’re not thinking of filling — Martineau’s place?’

‘I needn’t make any decision yet,’ Eden said. ‘There isn’t any hurry, of course. But my present belief is that I shan’t take another partner. I’m an old-fashioned democrat in affairs of state’ — he smiled — ‘but the older I get, the more I believe smaller things ought to be controlled by one man.’

‘I can believe that,’ said Morcom. ‘But it’s a lot of work for one man.’

‘There’s plenty of responsibility,’ said Eden. ‘But that’s the penalty of being in control. No one wants it, but it’s got to be shouldered. As for the detailed work, I shan’t do any more than I’m doing now. I can trust the staff for anything in the way of routine. And to some extent I can trust Passant to work on his own.’

‘He is very capable?’ said Morcom.

‘Very capable. Very capable indeed.’ Eden was talking affably, but his lips had no tendency towards their smile. ‘So long as he’s working under someone level-headed . I know he’s a friend of you two. I’m speaking as I shouldn’t, you mustn’t let it go beyond these four walls. But Passant’s a man who’d have a future in front of him if only he didn’t spoil himself. He’s got a brilliant scholastic record, and though that isn’t the same as being able to take your coat off in an office, he’s done some good sound work for the firm. An outsider might think that I ought to give him a chance in a year or two to buy a share in the firm. But unless he takes himself in hand I don’t believe I shall be able to do it. I couldn’t feel I was doing the right thing.’