Eden entered on a disquisition about the unpredictable behaviour of juries, their quirks and obstinacies and prejudices. I wanted to be spared that, in my impatience, in my wounded vanity. Soon I broke in ‘What do you suggest?’
‘I want you to stay in the case. You know it better than anyone already, and we can’t do without you. But I believe, taking everything into consideration, you ought to have someone to lead you.’
‘Who?’
‘I was thinking of your old chief — Getliffe.’
Now I was savage.
‘It’s sensible to get someone,’ I said with violence, ‘but Getliffe — seriously, he’s a bad lawyer.’
‘No one’s a hero to his pupils, you know,’ said Eden. He pointed out, as was true, that Getliffe was already successful as a silk.
‘I dare say I’m unfair. But this is important. There are others who’d do it admirably.’ I rapped out several names.
‘They’re clever fellows.’ Eden gave a smile, obstinate, displeased, unconvinced. ‘But I don’t see any reason to go beyond Getliffe. He’s always done well with my briefs.’
I was ashamed that the disappointment swamped me. I had believed that I was entirely immersed in the danger to my friends. I had lain awake at night, thinking of George’s suffering, of how he could be rescued, of plans for his life afterwards. I believed that those cares had driven all others from my mind. And in fact they were not false.
Yet, when I heard Eden’s decision, I could think of nothing but the setback to myself. It was no use pretending. No one can hide from himself which wound makes him flinch more. This petty setback overwhelmed their disaster. It was a wound in my vanity, it was a wound in my ambition. By its side, my concern for George had been only the vague shadow of an ache.
It lay bare the nerve both of my vanity and of my ambition. Much had happened to me since first in this town they had begun to drive me on; sometimes I had forgotten them; now they were quiveringly alive. They were, of course, inseparable; while one burned, so must the other. In all ambitions, even those much loftier than mine, there lives the nerve of vanity. That I should be thought not fit to handle a second-rate case! That I should be relegated in favour of a man whom I despised! I stood by the fire in Eden’s drawing-room after he had gone to bed. If I had gone further, I thought, they would not have considered giving me a leader. I knew, better than anyone, that I had stood still this last year, and longer than that. They had not realized it, they could not have heard the whiffs of depreciation that were beginning to go round. But if I had indisputably arrived, they would not have passed me over.
There was one reason, and one reason only, I told myself that night, why I had not indisputably arrived. It was she. The best of my life I had poured out upon her. I had lived for two. I had not been left enough power to throw into my ambition. She not only did not help; she was the greatest weight I carried. She alone could have kept me back. ‘Without her, I should have been invulnerable now. It was she who was to blame.
In the assize court, Getliffe began badly. He took nearly all the examinations himself, he did not allow me much part. Once, when he was leading me, he had said with childlike earnestness: ‘It’s one of my principles, L S — if one wants anything done well, one must do it oneself.’ The case went dead against us. Getliffe became careless, and in his usual fashion got a name or figure wrong. It did us harm. At those moments — though once in court I was passing him a junior’s correcting notes, I was carried along by my anxiety about George’s fate — I felt a dart of degrading satisfaction. They might think twice before they passed me over for an inferior again.
But then Getliffe stumbled on to a piece of luck. Martineau was still wandering on his religious tramps, but he had been tracked down, and he attended to give evidence about the advertising agency. In the box he allowed Getliffe to draw from him an explanation of the most damning fact against George — for Martineau took the fault upon himself. It was he who had misled George.
From that point, Getliffe believed that he could win the case. Despite the farm evidence which he could not shift; in fact, he worried less about that evidence than about the revelations of the group’s secret lives. The scandals came out, and George’s cross-examination was a bitter hour. They had raised much prejudice, as Getliffe said. Nevertheless, he thought he could ‘pull something out of the bag’ in his final speech. If he could smooth the prejudice down, Martineau’s appearance ought to have settled it. It was the one thing the jury were bound to remember, said Getliffe with an impish grin.
It had actually made an impression on Getliffe himself. Like many others, he could not decide whether Martineau had committed perjury in order to save George.
Before the end of the trial, I was able to settle that doubt. I listened to a confession, not from George or Jack but from their chief associate.
George had started the agency venture in complete innocence; but he realized the truth before they had raised the whole sum. He realized that the statement he had quoted, on Martineau’s authority, was false. He tried to stop the business then, but Jack’s influence was too strong. From that time forward, Jack was George’s master. He was the dominant figure in the farm transactions — Jack’s stories, on which they borrowed the money, were conscious lies, and George knew of them.
In his final speech, Getliffe kept his promise and ‘pulled something out of the bag’. Yet he believed what he said; in his facile emotional fashion, he had been moved by the stories both of Martineau and of George, and he just spoke as he felt. It was his gift, naïve, subtle, and instinctive, that what he felt happened to be convenient for the case. He let himself go; and as I listened, I felt a kind of envious gratitude. As the verdict came near, I was thankful that he was defending them. He had done far better than I should ever have done.
He dismissed the charge over the agency, and the one over the farm, already vague and complicated enough, he made to sound unutterably mysterious. Then we expected him to sit down; but instead he set out to fight the prejudice that George’s life had roused. He did so by admitting the prejudice himself. ‘I want to say something about Mr Passant, because I think we all realize he has been the leader. He is the one who set off with this idea of freedom. It’s his influence that I’m going to try to explain. You’ve all seen him… He could have done work for the good of the country and his generation — no one has kept him from it but himself. No one but himself and the ideas he has persuaded himself to believe in: because I’m going a bit further. It may surprise you to hear that I do genuinely credit him with setting out to create a better world.
‘I don’t pretend he has, mind you. You’re entitled to think of him as a man who has wasted every gift he possesses. I’m with you.’ Getliffe went on to throw the blame on to George’s time. As he said it, he believed it, just as he believed in anything he said. He was so sincere that he affected others. It was one of the most surprising and spontaneous of all his speeches.
The jury were out two hours. Some of the time, Getliffe and I walked about together. He was nervous but confident. At last we were called into court.
The door clicked open, the feet of the jury clattered and drummed across the floor. Nearly all of them looked into the dock.
The clerk read the first charge, conspiracy over the agency. The foreman said, very hurriedly: ‘Not guilty.’
After the second charge (there were nine items in the indictment), the ‘Not guilty’ kept tapping out, mechanically and without any pause.