In the match light, I read some of this letter.
Dear George,
We are writing in the name of twelve people who have known you at the School, and who are indignant at the news tonight. We wish there was something we could do to help, but at least we feel that we cannot let another day go by without saying how much you have meant to us all. Whatever happens or is said, that cannot be taken away. We shall always remember it with gratitude. We shall always think of you as someone we were lucky to know…
There were four signatures, including those of a young man I had met at the farm in September.
‘They meant it,’ I said.
‘It’s too late to be written to now,’ said George. With desperate attention he still watched for Martineau. ‘Though I don’t entirely accept Jack’s remarks on the letter.’
‘What were they?’
‘That the people who wrote it didn’t realise that he and I weren’t so very different nowadays—’
Without interest, George mentioned a quarrel over the letter. Jack had laughed at George’s devotion to his protégés; he took it for granted, he expected George to take it for granted also, that it was just a camouflage to get closer to the women.
George was listening only for footsteps: he had no more thought for Jack’s remark. Yet he had resented it little — suddenly, in this park where he might have finished with Jack, I saw their relation more closely than I had ever done.
Jack’s power over George had grown each year. It was not the result of ordinary affection or admiration. It did not owe much to the charm which Jack exercised over many people. At times, George actively disliked him. But now, in the middle of this night of fear, George submitted to having his aspirations mocked.
The fact was, from the beginning Jack had never believed in George’s altruistic dreams. For a time — until he had been an intimate friend for years — Jack entered into them, and in George’s company talked George’s language. But it was always with a wink to himself; he judged George by the standard of his own pleasures; by instinct and very soon by experience he knew a good deal about the erotic life. He saw the sensual side of George’s devotion long before George would admit it to himself. Jack thought none the worse of George, he took it as completely natural — but he was often irritated, sometimes morbidly provoked, by the barricade of aspirations. He had spoken of them tonight as ‘camouflage’; he had never believed they could be anything else. As soon as George ‘got down to business’ — his affair with Freda — Jack showed that he both knew and had suspected it all along.
From then onwards, in their curious intimacy, George seemed to be almost eager to accept Jack’s valuation — to throw away all ‘pretence’ and to share his pleasures with someone who was a rake, gay, frank, and unashamed.
That mixture of intimacy and profound disbelief was at the root of Jack’s power over George. George was paying a sort of spiritual blackmail. He was, in a fashion, glad to pay it. Very few men, the Georges least of all, are secure in their aspirations; it takes someone both intimate and unsympathetic to touch one’s own doubts — to give one, for part of one’s life at least, the comfort of taking oneself on the lowest terms. At times we all want someone to destroy our own ‘ideals’. We are ready to put ourselves in the power of a destructive, clear-eyed and degrading friend.
The light in the drawing-room went out. Immediately George ran to the house, rang the bell, hammered on the door.
‘Where is Mr Martineau? I’ve got to see him,’ he shouted. His voice echoed round the road.
A light was switched on in the hall. The housekeeper opened a crack of door, and said: ‘He’s not coming home tonight.’
‘Let me in,’ George shouted.
‘He’s rung up to say he’s sleeping somewhere else.’
She did not know where, or would not say. I thought she was speaking the truth, and did not know.
George and I were left outside the dark house.
‘Why didn’t you see Martineau? Why wasn’t I sent for myself?’ George cried.
Afraid also, I tried to give him reasonable answers.
‘Getliffe was absolutely clear on the importance. We were talking about it at dinner.’
‘With Eden?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think I’m going to be deluded for ever? You can’t expect me to believe that Eden is devoted to my welfare. I tell you, I insist on being certain that Getliffe is aware of the point at issue. And that someone whom I can trust must be present with Getliffe and Martineau when this point is being made. You ought to see that I’m right to insist on that. Are you going to desert me now?’
‘You don’t believe we’ve missed anything so obvious,’ I said. ‘I know Getliffe was going to ask Martineau about the figure. He’s very good at persuading people to say what he wants them to say. It’s his chief—’
‘And he doesn’t think that he’s persuaded Martineau?’
‘No.’
‘Don’t you admit he would if there had been any serious attempt on my behalf? You come to me saying he’s so good — and then apparently he wasn’t interested enough to get the one essential piece of information. And then you think I ought not to insist that he’s taken every step to get it.’
‘It’s no use—’
‘You know what depends on it,’ George cried. ‘Do you think I don’t know what depends on it?’
‘We all know that.’
‘But none of you will lift a finger,’ he said. ‘I’m beginning to realise why Eden imported Getliffe—’
‘That’s nonsense.’
‘I’m not going to listen to that sort of defence. There’s one thing more precious than all your feelings,’ he shouted. ‘It’s got to be settled tonight.’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘I want to hear Getliffe and Martineau discuss the figure of the circulation. With you and myself present.’
I repeated the arguments: it had all been done. We did not know where Martineau was. He attacked me with bitterness and violence. At last, he said: ‘I knew you would do nothing. I can’t expect any help.’
We argued again. He began to repeat himself. He accused me of taking everyone’s side against him. Nothing I said could bring him even a moment’s relief.
36: Martineau’s Day in Town
WHEN I turned out of — Street towards the court next morning, George and Martineau were standing on the pavement, outside a newspaper shop. Martineau cried: ‘Ah, Lewis! You see I’ve come! I ran up against old George two minutes ago!’ His cheeks were sunburnt and half-hidden by a rich brown beard. His skin was wrinkled with laughter, and his eyes looked clear and bright. In George’s presence his gaiety was oppressive; I began a question about his evidence, but he would not reply; I asked quickly about the journey, how did he travel, how was the ‘settlement’?
‘They’re shaking down,’ he said. ‘Soon they will be able to do without me. I might be justified in making a move—’
To my astonishment, George laughed; not easily — by the sound alone, one would have known him to be in distress — and yet with a note of genuine amusement.
‘You don’t mean that you are going to start again?’
‘I’m beginning to feel I ought, after all.’
‘What ought you to do? What more can you do along those lines? There’s simply nothing left for you to give up—’