Charles Snow - George Passant

‘It isn’t cold,’ he said. ‘The fire will soon be through.’ He was placating the inanimate world, as he always had done, never willing to admit the worst of his surroundings.

Olive stood by the fire. The rest of us brought up chairs, and she whispered a word to Jack. She was restless with excitement; a tension had grown up in the room, a foot tapping on the floor sounded very loud. She broke out, inclining her face to me with a quick smile: ‘What are you here for, anyway?’

‘To have a look at you.’

‘Lewis, is that true?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I had a feeling,’ she said, ‘when I saw you tonight — that there was something else behind it. I don’t believe it’s just a casual visit, is it now?’

I did not speak for a moment. In the presence of Rachel and Daphne I could not be frank.

‘As a matter of fact,’ I said, ‘I was a little worried about some of you.’

‘What about us?’

‘I heard something — by accident — that made me think you might be taking some silly risks.’ I paused. ‘Some silly financial risks.’

I expected George to interpose, but it was Olive who answered. She exclaimed: ‘Who told you that?’

‘No one,’ I said. ‘I only had the faintest suspicion. I worked it out from something your cousin Roy happened to say. He said it quite innocently, you realise.’

‘He says a good deal that isn’t innocent.’ Olive laughed, frankly and good-naturedly.

I said: ‘Look here, I want you to tell me if there’s anything in it. I’ve seen enough money lost, you know.’

Again it was Olive who answered. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you. There’s nothing to tell.’

Jack began to talk of my practice, but in a moment Olive interrupted.

‘You’re not to worry about us,’ she said. ‘You understand? You can worry about our souls if you like.’

Suddenly she ceased to be competent and masterful, and her voice went hysterically high.

‘We’ve changed since your time,’ she said to me. ‘Haven’t we changed?’

‘We all have,’ I said.

‘That’s no good. That’s just playing with me,’ she said. ‘We’ve changed, I tell you. We’re not the same people. Don’t you see that?’

George shifted in his chair.

‘There’s something in it, but it’s an exaggeration put like that,’ he said. ‘You’ve all developed—’

‘We’ve all developed!’ Olive cried. ‘As though you’d nothing to do with it. As though you haven’t been more responsible than any of us.’

‘I accept that,’ said George loudly. ‘You don’t think I should pretend not to accept it. I’m proud of it. I’m prouder of it than anything else in my life.’

‘You mean to say you’re proud of having us—’

‘I’m proud that you’re the human being you are. And the same of Jack. And all the others. As well,’ said George, ‘as of Lewis, here.’

‘I’ve had more to do with myself than you have, George,’ Olive broke out, ‘and I should laugh at the idea of being proud.

‘Yet I’ve been complacent enough,’ she went on. ‘God knows how I found any reason for it. I’ve never done an unselfish action in my life without feeling complacent for being such a whirl of compassion. Oh, I know I looked after my father for years — don’t you think I was smug with myself for doing it?’

‘If you’re going down to that level,’ I said, ‘we are all the same. You oughtn’t to be savage with yourself — just with all people.’

‘Just with life,’ said Rachel. ‘Good God, girl, you’ve done more than most. You’ve had a man madly in love with you.’

‘Do you think,’ she cried, ‘I ought to be glad of that?’ She hesitated. ‘That was the one time,’ she said, ‘when I thought I might do something unselfish.’

‘When?’ cried Rachel.

‘When I lived with him,’ said Olive.

‘Why, you were in love with him,’ Daphne said, after a moment’s silence.

‘I never was,’ said Olive. She swept an arm round. ‘They know I never was.’

‘Why then?’ George leaned forward. ‘For all those months—’

Olive said: ‘I did it out of pity.’

Everyone was quiet; I looked into her eyes, and saw her glance fall away. Suddenly George laughed.

The strain had broken down: Jack was whispering to Olive, his eyes and hands eloquent and humorous; Daphne was sitting on the arm of George’s chair. I could feel that only my presence was keeping them from a wilder eirenicon; friend as I was, I was also a foreign influence, unfamiliar enough to keep the balance between decorum and release. My own nerves frayed (for I too had been played on by the undersweep of passion), I was glad when Olive rose to go to bed. Soon George and I were left alone.

We filled our glasses, settled into the easy chairs by the fire, and talked casually for a few minutes.

‘It’s a long while,’ said George comfortably, ‘since we came down here together.’ I was touched by the sentimentality, unselfconscious and unashamed; perhaps, I thought, it came the easier to George, for, in spite of all his emotional warmth, he was less bound to the past than any of us, far less than Morcom or myself. Perhaps to those like him, solid in the core of their personalities, four-square in themselves, feeling intensely within the core but not stretching out tentacles to any other life, it is easier to admit the past — because it does not matter much, as he showed in our separation. While to Morcom, tied inseparably to a thousand moments of the past, it came too near the truth to acknowledge its softening hand, except by a smile of pretended sarcasm.

After that remark, we argued amiably; George had lost little of his buoyant appetite for ideas. I enjoyed his mental gusto for its own sake, and also because it was impeding the purpose which brought me there.

‘We had some rather good talk tonight,’ he said, after a time, with the change of his manner to an elated but uneasy defence that still covered him when he talked of the group: ‘Didn’t you think so?’

‘Yes. I confess—’

‘Of course you’ve got to remember the relevant circumstances,’ said George hurriedly. ‘The kind of people they would have been if they had been left to their own devices. You’ve got to remember that. Not that they’re not an extremely good collection. They’re better than they’ve ever been, of course. We’ve had some reorientations. I’ve reconsidered some of my opinions.’

‘Still,’ I said, ‘I was glad to see some of the old gang. Particularly Olive. Though I thought she was too much upset—’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ George replied. ‘She’s had something to put up with, you know. You can’t deny that she was magnificently frank about it — she got the whole affair in its right proportion. There aren’t many people who’d do that.’

Obstinately he repeated: ‘She was magnificently frank.’

‘I could find another name for it,’ I said. ‘But still, I wasn’t thinking of her being upset by a love affair. I thought there might possibly be some other cause.’

A frown, or something less (the fixity with which he would at any time have heard a criticism), came into his face.

‘What else could be the matter with her?’

‘I didn’t know her circumstances, since her father died. I thought — perhaps — money—’

‘Ridiculous,’ George interrupted. ‘Completely ridiculous. Her father left her a hundred and fifty a year of her own — and the reversion of the rest of the money when her mother dies.’

‘It can’t be that, then,’ I said. ‘I just felt there might be trouble.’

‘With no justification at all.’

‘Everything is all right?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ said George, ‘I wondered why you were asking about our affairs.’