George Passant (6 page)

In the midst of George, Beddow and the Principal, all fluent in their different manners, Calvert was at a loss for words. His face was chubby and petulant, and quite unlike his handsome son’s. His irritation seemed naïve and bewildered; but I felt a streak of intense obstinacy in him.

‘I think,’ said George, ‘that Mr Calvert ought to be allowed to withdraw his last suggestion.’

‘I have no intention of – No,’ said Calvert.

‘Then,’ said George, ‘
who
knew that you wouldn’t have room for Cotery? and so intended to cut him off here?’

‘No one, except Cotery and myself. I don’t – it’s not necessary to discuss my business with other people.’

‘That is, no one knew of your intention until you wrote to the Principal some days ago?’ said George.

‘There was no need.’

‘No one knew of your intention, in fact, until another incident had happened? Until after you told Cotery that you had forbidden your son–’

Beddow interrupted loudly: ‘I can’t allow any more, Mr Passant. I’ve got to apologise again’ – he turned to Calvert – ‘that you’ve been compelled to listen to remarks that, giving Mr Passant every shadow of a doubt, are in the worst possible taste.’

‘I entirely concur,’ said the Principal. It was clear that he and Beddow, at any rate, knew the whole sorry story. ‘And, Mr Chairman, since a delicate matter has most regrettably been touched on, I wonder if Miss Geary would not prefer to leave the room?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Miss Geary; and settled herself squatly and darkly in her chair.

‘I take it,’ said George, ‘that to punish a man without trial is in the best possible taste. And I refuse to make this incident sound ominous by brooding over it in silence. Mr Calvert either knows or ought to know that Cotery is absolutely innocent; that the whole matter has been ridiculously exaggerated; that it was nothing but a romantic gesture.’

‘I believe that,’ said Calvert. A glance of sympathy passed between them; for a second, they were made intimate by their quarrel. Then Calvert said obstinately: ‘But it has nothing to do with it.’

‘I am a little surprised,’ said Canon Martineau, ‘that Mr Passant is able to speak with such authority about this young man Cotery. I confess that his standing in the matter isn’t quite so obvious–’

‘I have the right to appear here about any student,’ said George. Their hostility was gathering round him: but he was as self-forgetful as I had ever seen him.

The Principal seized a cue, and said: ‘Mr Passant has, as it happens, a right to appear about students with whom he is not connected. In fact, Cotery never attended any of your classes, Mr Passant?’

‘He presumably wouldn’t have done so exceptionally well in printing,’ George said loudly, ‘if he had attended my classes in law.’

‘Classes in law,’ said the Principal, rising to a cautious, deliberate anger, ‘which amount to two a week, this committee may remember. Like those given by twenty other visiting helpers to our regular staff.’

‘The committee may also remember,’ said George, ‘that they can terminate the connection at a month’s notice. That, however, does not affect the fact that I know Cotery well: I know him, just as I know a good many other students, better than anyone else in this institution.’

‘Why do you go to this
exceptional
trouble?’ asked the Canon.

‘Because I am attached to an educational institution: I conceive that it is my job to help people to think.’

‘Some of your protégés are inclined to think on unorthodox lines?’ the Principal said.

‘No doubt. I shouldn’t consider any other sort of thinking was worth the time of a serious-minded man.’

‘Even if it leads them into actions which might do harm to our reputations?’ said the Principal.

‘I prefer more precise questions. But I might take the opportunity of saying that I know what constitutes a position of trust: and I do not abuse it.’

There was a hush. Calvert’s pencil scribbled over the paper.

‘Well,’ said Beddow, ‘perhaps if–’

‘I have not quite finished,’ said George. ‘I am not prepared to let the committee think that I am simply intruding into this affair. I am completely unapologetic. I repeat, I know Cotery well: you have heard my questions: I regard my case as proved. But I don’t want to leave the committee under a misapprehension. Cotery is one out of many. You will be judged by what you make of them. They are better human material than we are. They are people who’ve missed the war. They are people who are young at the most promising time in the world’s history. If they don’t share in it, then it’s because this committee and I and all we represent are simply playing the irresponsible fool with our youngers and betters. You may take the view that it’s dangerous to make them think: that it’s wiser to leave them in the state of life into which it has pleased God to call them. I refuse to take that view: and I shall not, while I have a foot in this building.’

He stood up to go.

Beddow said: ‘If no one has anything more to ask Mr Passant…’

Until the door closed Beddow did not speak again, but his eyes moved from Calvert to the Canon.

‘Well, Principal,’ said Beddow, but his tone had lost (I was excited to notice) some of its buoyancy, ‘I take it that you have made your recommendation.’

‘I have, sir,’ said Cameron emphatically.

‘In that case, if no one has a motion, I suppose we accept the recommendation and pass on.’

Miss Geary leaned forward in her chair. ‘Certainly not,’ she said. ‘We’ve been listening to a man who believes what he says. And I want to hear some of it answered.’

There was a stir round the table. They were relieved that she had spoken out, given them someone to argue against.

‘Haven’t we been listening,’ said Canon Martineau, with his subtle smile, ‘to a man who has a somewhat exaggerated idea of the importance of his mission?’

‘No doubt,’ said Miss Geary. ‘Most people who believe in anything have a somewhat exaggerated idea of its importance. And I don’t pretend that he made the best of his case. Nevertheless–’

She was speaking from a double motive, of course; her dislike for the Principal shone out of her: so did her desire to help George.

It was still one against four, if it came to a vote; but there was a curious, hypercharged atmosphere that even the absolute recalcitrants, Calvert and the Principal, felt as they became more angry. Over Beddow and Martineau certainly, the two most receptive people there, had come a jag of apprehension. And when, after Miss Geary had competently put the position of Cotery again, and Calvert merely replied stubbornly: ‘He’s known for months that I didn’t intend to keep him here. Nothing else came into account. Nothing else–’ the Canon became restless.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘there are times when it’s not only important that justice should be done. Sometimes it’s important that justice should appear to be done. And in this case, unless we’re careful, it does seem to me possible that our Mr Passant may make a considerable nuisance of himself.’

‘I regret the suggestion,’ said the Principal, ‘that we should consider giving way to threats.’

‘That isn’t Canon Martineau’s suggestion, if I understand it right,’ said Beddow. ‘He’s saying that we mustn’t stand on our dignity, even when we’re being taught our business by a man like Passant. Because nothing would take the wind out of his sails like giving way a bit. And, on the other hand, it might do this young fellow Cotery some good if we stretched a point.’

‘The Chairman has put my attitude,’ said Martineau, ‘much more neatly than I could myself.’

‘I’m afraid that I still consider it dangerous,’ said the Principal.

‘Well,’ said Beddow, ‘if we could meet one condition, I myself would go so far as to stretch a point. But the condition is, of course, that we must satisfy Mr Calvert. We shouldn’t think of acting against your wishes,’ said Beddow to Calvert, in his most cordial and sincere manner.

Calvert nodded his head.

‘I can’t alter my own position,’ he said. ‘There’s no future – I can’t find a place for Cotery. I decided that in the summer. I don’t bear him any ill-will–’

‘I wonder,’ Canon Martineau looked at Beddow with a sarcastic smile, ‘whether this idea would meet the case? Cotery would normally have two more years: we pay half the cost, and Mr Calvert half. Mr Calvert, for reasons we all accept, can’t go on with his share. But is there anything to prevent us keeping to our commitment, and remitting – may I suggest – not the half, but all Cotery’s fees for just
one
year?’

‘Except that it would be no practical use to the man himself,’ said Miss Geary.

‘No,’ said Calvert. ‘He needs the whole three years.’

‘I’m not so desperately concerned about that,’ said the Canon.

‘He’d have to get the money from some other source. If he wanted to finish,’ said Beddow briskly. ‘I agree with the Canon. I think it’s a decent compromise.’

Miss Geary saw that it was her best chance.

‘If you’ll propose it, Canon,’ she said, ‘I’m ready to second.’

‘I deeply regret this idea,’ said the Principal. ‘And I am sure that Mr Calvert does.’

Canon Martineau and Beddow had judged Calvert more shrewdly, however, and he shook his head.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I can’t support the motion. But I shan’t vote against it.’ It was carried by three votes to one, with Calvert abstaining.

I went straight from the committee to the Victoria, our public house, where George and Jack were waiting.

‘Well?’ cried George, as soon as I entered. I saw that Morcom was with them, sitting by the fire.

‘It’s neither one thing nor the other,’ I said. I told them the decision.

‘It’s a pretty remarkable result for any sane collection of men to achieve. I never believed that you’d drive them into it. But it doesn’t help Jack, of course.’

‘Nonsense,’ George shouted. ‘You’re as cheerful as Balfour giving the news of the Battle of Jutland. Your sane collection of men have been made to realise that they can’t treat Jack as though he was someone who just had to be content with their blasted charity. Good God alive, don’t you see that that’s a triumph? We’re going to drink a considerable amount of beer and we’re going to Nottingham by the next train to have a proper celebration. In the meantime, I’m going to hear every word that they found themselves obliged to say.’

Jack smiled, raised his glass towards George, and said: ‘You’re a wonderful man, George.’ Jack was shrewd enough to know already that, for himself, the practical value of the triumph was nothing: but it was his nature to rejoice with him who rejoices. (I was soon to see the same quality again in Herbert Getliffe.) He could not bear to spoil George’s pleasure.

George lived through my description of the meeting before he confronted them and after he left. He was furiously indignant with Beddow’s attempt to propitiate Calvert, more than with the Principal’s: ‘I suppose Cameron, to do him justice, is out to get benefactions for the institution. It’s true that he’s quite incapable of administering them, but we can’t reasonably expect him to realise that. But what Beddow, who calls himself a socialist, thinks he’s doing, when he tries to lick the feet of a confounded businessman–’ so George went on, drinking his beer, chuckling with delight at Miss Geary’s interventions, reinterpreting the Canon’s equivocal manoeuvres as directly due to the influence of Howard Martineau. ‘The Canon must have worked out his technique. To come in on our side without letting it seem obvious,’ said George. But he had no explanation of Calvert’s naïve defence that he formed his decision about Jack long before the incident with his son.

‘That’s just incredible,’ said George. ‘If I’d wanted to invent something improbable, I couldn’t have invented anything as improbable as that.’

Morcom said little; but he was amused by the change of sides, the choice of partners, before the vote. As I told the story, Jack illustrated it by moving glasses about the table; two glasses of beer representing the Canon and Beddow, a glass of water the Principal, a small square jug Miss Geary, and for Calvert Jack turned a glass upside down. When he moved them into their final places, George gave a loud satisfied sigh.

‘They couldn’t do anything else,’ he said. ‘They couldn’t do anything else.’

Morcom looked at him with a curious smile.

‘I doubt whether anyone else could have made them do it, George,’ he said.

‘I don’t know about that,’ said George.

‘But, to come back for a minute to what Lewis said, they’ve still left Jack in the air, haven’t they?’

‘They’ve recognised his position. He’s got time to turn round.’

‘He’s really in very much the same position,’ said Morcom. ‘It’s important you should keep that in mind, for Jack’s sake–’

‘Arthur,’ George cried, angrily and triumphantly, ‘you tried to dissuade me from breathing a word to the bellwethers. You don’t deny that, I suppose?’

‘No,’ said Morcom.

‘And now I’ve done it, you’re trying to deprive me of the luxury of having brought it off. I’m not prepared to submit to it. I’ve listened to you on most things, Arthur, but I’m not prepared to submit to it tonight.’

Half-drunk myself, I laughed. This was his night: I was ready, like Jack, to forget tomorrow. Yet, somewhere beneath my surrender to his victory, there crept a chill of disappointment. An hour ago, I had seen George in his full power and totally admired him; but now, knowing that Morcom was right, I was young enough to resent the contradiction between George in his full power and the same man sitting in this chair by the fire, shutting his eyes to the truth. He ought not to be sitting there, flushed, optimistic, triumphant, seeing only what he wanted to see.

‘In fact,’ shouted George, defiantly, ‘you’re not going to argue me out of my celebration. I dare say you don’t want to come. But the others will.’

Jack and I were eager for it. We left Morcom sitting by the fire, and ran across to the station. The eight-forty was a train to Nottingham that we all knew; for half an hour the lights of farms, the villages, the dark fields, rushed by. The carriage was full, but George talked cheerfully of the pleasures to come and how he first met Connie at the ‘club’; he was oblivious, as in all happiness or quarrels, to the presence of strangers; that night none of us cared.