We walked back to the court, Mr March still nervous and proud. For the first time I had seen how much he was living again in his son.
In the last hours of the case, Charles’ cross-examination of an expert witness secured most attention. Several people later commented on how formidable a cross-examiner he would become. Actually, his own strain gave him an added edge; but still, he enjoyed those minutes. He loved argument: he was sometimes ashamed of the harshness that leapt to his tongue, but when he let himself go, argument made him fierce, cheerful, quite spontaneous and self-forgetful. The court had just admired him in one of those moods.
In the end, Charles lost the case, but the judge paid a compliment to ‘the able manner, if I may say so, in which the case has been handled by the plaintiff’s counsel.’
As we left the court, men collected round Charles, congratulating him. I joined them and did the same, before I went back to chambers.
‘I want to see you rather specially. I’ll come round tomorrow night,’ said Charles. ‘Can you manage to stay in?’
On my way to the Inn, I wondered what he was coming for. He had looked flushed and smiling: perhaps his success — my envy kept gnawing, as sharp, as dominating as neuralgia — had settled him at last. I walked along the back streets down from the Strand; it was a grey afternoon, and a mizzle of rain was greasing the pavement. I thought about Charles’ future compared with mine. In natural gifts there was not much in it. He was at least as clever, and had a better legal mind; perhaps I was the more speculative. In strength of character we were about the same. In everything but natural gifts, he had so much start that I was left at the post.
I had one advantage, though. Neither of us was the kind of man whom his career would completely satisfy. Charles had read for the Bar because he could not find a vocation; I had always known that, in the very long run, I wanted other things. The difference was, I had to behave as though the doubt did not exist. To earn a living, I had to work as though I was single-minded. Until I made some money and some sort of name, I could not even let myself look round. Charles often envied that simplification, that compulsory simplification, which being poor imposed upon my life.
Nevertheless, anyone in his senses would put his money on Charles, I told myself that afternoon. As Herbert Getliffe remarked when I arrived and told him of the result: ‘Mark my words, Eliot, that young friend of ours will go a long way.’ He went on: ‘He was lucky to get the job, of course. The boys on the Jewish upper deck are doing a bit of pulling together. Don’t you wish you were in that racket, Eliot?’
He looked harassed, responsible, sincere.
‘I must see if I can find you a snippet for yourself one of these days. The trouble is, one owes a duty to one’s clients. One can’t forget that, much as one would like to—’
The next night, I waited in my room for Charles. It was a room which bore only a remote resemblance to Mr March’s drawing-room. The satin was wearing through on the two arm-chairs; the room was unheated all day, and even by the fire at night it struck empty and chill, with the vestige of a smell of hair-lotion drifting up from the barber’s shop down below. Charles was late: at last I heard his car draw up below, and his footsteps on the stairs. As soon as he entered, I was struck by the expression on his face. The strain had left him. He apologized for keeping me; I knew that he was tired, relaxed, and content.
He sat in the other chair, at the opposite side of the fireplace. Nothing had been said except for his apologies. He stretched himself in the chair, and smiled. He said: ‘Lewis, I shan’t go on with the Bar.’
I exclaimed. After a moment, I said: ‘You’ve not settled anything, have you?’
‘What do you think?’ He was still smiling.
‘You know you’d do well at it,’ I began. ‘Better than any of us—’
‘I’m sure that’s nonsense,’ he said. ‘But in any case, it isn’t the point. You know it isn’t the point, don’t you?’
He had not come for advice. His mind was made up. There was no anxiety or hesitation left in his manner. He was speaking more calmly, with more strength and authority, than I had ever heard him speak.
‘I was very glad that I didn’t disgrace myself yesterday,’ he said. ‘Because one of the reasons for giving up the law wasn’t exactly pleasing to one’s self-respect. I knew it all along: I wanted to escape because I was frightened. I was frightened that I shouldn’t succeed.’
‘I don’t believe much in that,’ I said.
‘You mustn’t minimize it.’ He smiled at me. ‘Remember, I’m a much more diffident person than you are. As well as being much more spiritually arrogant. I hate competing unless I’m certain that I’m going to win. The pastime I really enjoy most is dominoes, right hand against left. So I wanted to slip out: but I should have felt cheap doing it.’
I nodded.
‘What would have happened if you hadn’t done so well yesterday?’
‘Do you think I’ve enough character to go on until I’d satisfied myself?’ He chuckled. ‘I wonder if I or anyone else could really have stuck on doggedly at the Bar until they felt sufficiently justified. It would have been rather heroic: but it would also have been slightly mad. Don’t you agree it would have been mad? No, I’m sure I should have given it up whatever had happened. But if I’d been a complete failure yesterday, I should have felt pretty inferior because I was escaping. Now I don’t, at any rate to the same extent.’ He went on: ‘Of course, you know what I think about the law.’
He meant the law as an occupation: for a time we went over our past arguments: I knew as well as he did how he found the law sterile, how he could not feel value in such a life. Then Charles said:
‘Well, those were two reasons I’ve thought about for months. You can’t dismiss them altogether. I shall always have a slight suspicion that I ran away. But, like all the other reasons one thinks about for months, they had just about as much effect on my actions as Mr L’s patent medicines have on his superb health. It was something quite different — that I didn’t need or want to think about — that made it certain I should have to break away.’
He looked straight at me.
‘I think you’ve realized it for long enough,’ he said. ‘You remember the first time I talked to you about Katherine?’
‘Yes.’
‘I was afraid afterwards that you must have noticed something,’ he said, with a grim smile. ‘It was the first time you came to our house, of course. I was very much upset because she was being sent to that dance against her will. I was pretending to be concerned only about her welfare. I was talking about her, and trying to believe that was being detached and dispassionate. You’ve done the same thing yourself, haven’t you? It was the sort of occasion when one sits with a furrowed brow trying to work out someone else’s salvation — and knows all the time that one’s talking about oneself.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Probably you understand,’ said Charles, ‘without my saying any more. But I want to explain myself. It’s curiously difficult to speak, still. Even tonight, when I’m extremely happy, I’m still not quite free.’
He said, slowly: ‘The Bar represented part of an environment that I can’t accept for myself. You see, I can’t say it simply. If I stayed at the Bar, I should be admitting that I belonged to the world’ — he hesitated — ‘of rich and influential Jews. That is the world in which most people want to keep me. Most people, both inside it and outside. If I stayed at the Bar, I should get cases from Jewish solicitors, I should become one of the gang. And people outside would dismiss me, not that they need so much excuse, as another bright young Jew. Do you think it’s tolerable to be set aside like that?’