Charles Snow - George Passant

‘It was no more urgent than — since I really became interested in a group of people from the School.’

‘You know — you’ve just admitted that you were afraid of intrusion?’

‘I knew that if strangers got inside the group, then I should run a risk of being attacked. That was also true since the first days that I began to take them up.’

‘You are trying to maintain that that was the same several years ago as in the summer when you bought the farm?’

‘Naturally.’

‘There is no “naturally”, Mr Passant. Haven’t you heard something of these scares among your friends — the fear of a scandal just at the psychological moment?’

‘I’ve heard it. Of course. I believe they’ve all missed something essential out of the idea of that danger.’

Porson laughed.

‘So you admit there was a danger, do you?’

‘I never had any intention of pretending there wasn’t.’

‘But you’re pretending it was no greater the summer when you wanted very urgently to buy the farm than it was years before?’

‘It was very little greater.’

‘Mr Passant: the jury has already heard something of the scandals your friends were afraid of when you were buying the farm. What do you expect us to believe, when you say there was no greater danger then?’

George cried loudly: ‘I said the danger was very little greater. And the reason for it was that the scandals were only the excuse to destroy everything I had tried to do. Some excuse could easily have been found at any time.’ His outburst seemed for a moment to exhaust and satisfy him. He was left spent and listless, while Porson asked his next question.

‘I shall have to ask you to explain what you mean by that. Do you really believe anyone threatened your safety for any length of time?’

‘I should have thought that events have left little doubt of that.’

‘No. You had good and sufficient reasons for fear at the time you wanted to buy the farm. What could you have had before?’

‘I was doing something which most people would disapprove of. I didn’t deceive myself that I should escape the consequences if ever I gave an excuse. And I wasn’t fool enough to think that there were no excuses during a number of years. I was vulnerable through other people long before Mr Martineau himself acquired the agency.’

‘You say you were doing something most people would disapprove of. That’ — Porson said — ‘is apparent at the time I am bringing you to. The time the scandals among your friends were finding their way out. But what were you doing before, what are you referring to?’

‘I mean that I was helping a number of people to freedom in their lives.’

‘You’d better explain what you mean by helping people to “freedom in their lives”.’

‘I don’t hope for it to be understood. But I believe that while people are young they have a chance to become themselves only if they’re preserved from all the conspiracy that crushes them down.’

Porson interrupted, but George did not stop.

‘They’re crushed into thinking and feeling just as the world outside wants them to think and feel. I was trying to make a society where they would have the chance of being free.’

‘But you’re asking us to regard that — as the work which would bring you into disrepute? That was the work you seemed to consider important?’

‘I consider it more important than any work I could possibly have done.’

‘We’re not concerned with your own estimate, you know. We want to see how you could possibly think your work a danger — until it had developed into something which people outside your somewhat unimportant group would notice?’

‘Work of that kind can’t be completely ignored.’

‘I suggest to you that it would have remained completely unknown — if it hadn’t just one external result. That is, this series of scandals.’

‘I do not admit those as results. But there are others which people would have been compelled to notice.’

‘Now, Mr Passant, what could you imagine those to be?’

‘The lives and successes of some of my friends.’

‘Do you pretend you ever thought that those would be very easy to show?’

‘Perhaps,’ George cried loudly again, ‘I never credited completely enough how blind people can be. Except when they have a chance to destroy something.’

‘That’s more like it. You’re beginning to admit that you couldn’t possibly have attracted any attention, either favourable or unfavourable? Until something was really wrong—’

‘I’ve admitted nothing of the kind.’

‘I’ll leave it to the jury. In any case, there was no serious scandal threatened until somewhere about the time you considered buying the farm? For several years you had been giving them the chance of what you choose to call “freedom in their lives” — but nothing had resulted until about the time you all got alarmed?’

‘There were plenty of admirable results.’

‘The more obvious ones, however, were that a good many of your friends began to have immoral relations?’

‘You’ve heard the evidence.’

‘Most of them had immoral relations?’

George stood silent.

‘You don’t deny it?’

George shook his head.

‘Your group became, in fact, a haunt of promiscuity?’

George was silent again.

Porson said: ‘You admit, I suppose, that this was the main result of your effort to give them “freedom in their lives”?’

‘I knew from the beginning that it was a possibility I had to face. The important thing was to secure the real gains.’

‘You don’t regret that you brought it about? You don’t feel any responsibility for what you have done to your — protégés?’

‘I accept complete responsibility.’

‘Despite all this scandal?’

‘I believe it’s the final example of the stupid hostility I’d taught them to expect and to dismiss.’

‘You have no regrets for these scandals?’

‘They are an inconvenience. They should not have happened.’

‘But — the happenings themselves?’

‘I’m not ashamed of them,’ George shouted. ‘If there’s to be any freedom in men’s lives, they have got to work out their behaviour for themselves.’

‘So your only objection to this promiscuity was when it became a danger? The danger that suddenly became acute at the time you said, in Mrs Ward’s hearing: “If we don’t get secrecy soon, we shall lose everything”.’

‘I should feel justified if much more had happened.’

‘You also felt justified in practising what you preach?’

George did not answer. Porson referred to Iris Ward’s evidence, the hints of Daphne and other girls. There was a soft, jeering laugh from the court.

George said: ‘There’s no point in denying those stories.’

‘And so all this,’ Porson said, ‘is the work of which you were so proud? Which you told us you considered the most important activity you could perform?’

There was another laugh. With a flushed face, the judge ordered silence. ‘You needn’t answer that if you don’t want,’ he said to George, a kindly curious look in his eyes.

‘I prefer to answer it,’ said George. ‘I’ve already described what I’ve tried to do. I can’t be expected to give much significance to these incidents you are bringing up — when you compare them with the real meaning they mattered very little one way or the other.’

Porson drank some water. When he spoke again, his voice was a little husky, but still full of energy and assertion.

‘You’ve told us, Mr Passant, that work with your group of friends was a very important thing in your life?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you always realised it might involve you in a certain danger? Shall we say in social disapproval?’