I did not understand it all until near the end of the trial; but from George’s account, in that first hour, I could put together most of the case that might be brought against them.
George and Jack had been engaged in two different schemes for making money; and the danger was a charge of obtaining this money by false pretences, and (for technical reasons) of conspiracy to defraud.
The schemes were dissimilar, though they had used the same financial technique. After giving up his partnership with Eden, Martineau had played with some curious irrelevant ventures before he finally made his plunge and renounced the world; one of those was a little advertising agency, which had attached to it the kind of small advertising paper common in provincial towns.
Jack Cotery had persuaded George that, if they could raise the money and buy out Martineau’s partner, the agency was a good speculation. In fact, it had turned out to be so. They had met their obligations and made a small, steady profit. It looked like a completely honest business, apart from a misleading figure in the statement on which they had raised money. No sensible prosecution, I thought both then and later, would bring a charge against them on that count — if there existed one single clinching fact over the other business.
They had gone on from their first success to a project bigger altogether; they had decided to buy the farm and some other similar places and run them as a chain of youth hostels. In George’s mind it was clear that one main purpose had been to possess the farm in private, so as to entertain the group. Jack had ranged about among their acquaintances, given all kinds of stories of attendances and profits, and on the strength of them borrowed considerable sums of money. I could imagine him doing it; I had little doubt that, whatever George knew of those stories, Jack Cotery had not kept within the limits of honesty, though he might have been clever enough to have covered his tracks. From the direction of the first inquiries, there seemed a hope that nothing explicitly damning had come to light. Looking at the two businesses together, however, I was afraid that the prosecution would have enough to go on. I went from George to Eden’s house, where I was staying the night; and there, by the fireside in the drawing-room, where I had once waited with joy for Sheila, I told Eden the story to date, and what I feared.
‘These things will happen,’ said Eden, with his usual impenetrable calm. ‘Ah well! These things will happen.’
‘What do you think?’
‘You’re right, of course, we’ve got to be prepared.’
His only sign of emotion was a slight irritability; I was surprised that he was not more upset about the credit of his firm. ‘I must say they’ve been very foolish. They’ve been foolish whatever they’ve been doing. They oughtn’t to try these things without experience. It’s the sort of foolishness that Passant would go in for. I’ve told you that before—’
‘He’s one of the biggest men I’ve met. That still holds after meeting a few more,’ I said, more harshly than I had ever spoken to Eden. For a moment, his composure was broken.
‘We won’t argue about that. It isn’t the time to argue now. I must consider what ought to be done,’ he said; his tone, instead of being half-friendly, half-paternal, as I was used to, had become the practised cordial one of his profession. He did not like his judgement questioned, especially about George. ‘I can’t instruct you myself. My firm can’t take any responsible part. But I can arrange with someone else to act for Passant. And I shall give instructions that you’re to be used from the beginning. That is, if this business develops as we all hope it won’t…’
I wanted to take the case. For, above all, I knew what to conceal.
I knew that the case might turn ugly. George was frightened of his legal danger: he was a robust man, and it was the simple danger of prison that frightened him most; but there was another of which he was both terrified and ashamed. The use of the farm; the morals and ‘free life’ of the group; they might all be dragged through the court. It would not be pretty, for the high thinking and plain living of my time had changed by now. The flirtations which had been the fashion in the idealistic days had not satisfied the group for long. Jack’s influence had step by step played on George’s passionate nature. Jack had never believed in George’s ideals for an instant; and in that relation there could only be one winner. George had his great gift for moral leadership, but he was weak, a human brother, a human hypocrite, uncertain of the intention of his own desires. With someone like Jack who had no doubt of his desires or George’s or any man’s, George was in the long run powerless. And so it happened that he, who was born to be a leader, was in peril of being exposed to ridicule and worse than ridicule as the cheapest kind of provincial Don Juan.
I tried to think of any tactic that would save him. Back in London I sat over the papers night after night. Sheila was in her worst mood, but I could do little for her, and made nothing of an attempt. I could not drag myself to her room, if it only meant the usual routine. For once I prayed for someone who would give me strength, instead of bleeding away such as I had.
For some days Hotchkinson, the solicitor to whom Eden had deputed the case, sent me no news. I had a fugitive hope that the police had found the case too thin. Then a telegram arrived in Chambers to say ‘clients arrested applying for bail’. It was the middle of December, and term would soon be over. After that morning, the next hearing in the magistrates’ court was fixed for 29 December. I had no case in London till January; I thought I could be more use if I lived in the town for the next fortnight.
I went home to Chelsea to tell Sheila so. I wondered if she would perceive the true reason — that only away from her could I be free enough to work for them all out. I could suffer no distraction now.
She was quiet and sensible that morning, when I told her of the arrests.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I suppose it’s been worrying you.’
I smiled a little.
‘I did my best to warn you,’ I said.
‘I’ve been a bit — caged in.’ It was the word she often used; she was ruthless in talking of herself, but sometimes she wanted to domesticate her own behaviour.
I said that I ought to stay at Eden’s until the New Year.
‘Why?’
‘I must win this case.’
‘Will it help you? Going away like that?’ She was staring at me.
‘It’s rather a tangled case. Remember, they’ll tell me everything they can—’
‘Is it more tangled than all the others? You’ve never been away before.’
She said nothing more, except that she would go to her parents for Christmas Day. ‘If you think that my father won’t find out that you’re staying at Eden’s,’ she said with her old sarcastic grin, ‘you’re very much mistaken. I’m not going to make your excuses for you. You’d better come over at Christmas and have a shot yourself.’
In the next fortnight I spent much of my time with George, and I saw Jack whenever he wanted me. Step by step they came to feel secure, as though I were still among them. George learned to believe that I had not altered, and both then and always was on his side. So far as I had altered, in fact, it was in a direction that brought me nearer to him in his trouble. When I was younger and he had known me best, I was struggling, but failure was an experience that I neither knew nor admitted as possible for myself. I believed with a hard, whole, confident heart that success was to be my fortune. I had the opaqueness of the successful, and the impatience of the successful with those so feeble and divided that they fell away. Since then, in my weeks of illness, I had acknowledged absolute surrender — and that I could not forget. I had known the depth of failure, and from that time I was bound to anyone who started with gifts and hope, and then felt his nature break him; I was bound not by compassion or detached sympathy, but because I could have been his like, and might still be. So, in those threatening days, I came near to George.