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diff --git a/old/30340-8.txt b/old/30340-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1aa2ad7 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/30340-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11531 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Passionate Friends, by Herbert George Wells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Passionate Friends + +Author: Herbert George Wells + +Release Date: October 26, 2009 [EBook #30340] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS *** + + + + +Produced by Carl Hudkins, Martin Pettit and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +The Passionate Friends + +By H. G. WELLS + +Author of "Marriage." + +[Illustration] + +WITH FRONTISPIECE + +A. L. BURT COMPANY, PUBLISHERS + +114-120 East Twenty-third Street - - New York + +PUBLISHED BY ARRANGEMENT WITH HARPER & BROTHERS + + +COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY HARPER & BROTHERS + + +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA +PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1913 + + +TO +L. E. N. S. + + +[Illustration: "OUR KISSES WERE KISSES OF MOONLIGHT" See p. 85] + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAP. PAGE + + I. MR. STRATTON TO HIS SON 1 + + II. BOYHOOD 14 + + III. INTENTIONS AND THE LADY MARY CHRISTIAN 40 + + IV. THE MARRIAGE OF THE LADY MARY CHRISTIAN 73 + + V. THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA 102 + + VI. LADY MARY JUSTIN 132 + + VII. BEGINNING AGAIN 197 + +VIII. THIS SWARMING BUSINESS OF MANKIND 220 + + IX. THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW WORLD 246 + + X. MARY WRITES 280 + + XI. THE LAST MEETING 318 + + XII. THE ARRAIGNMENT OF JEALOUSY 358 + + + + +THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST + +MR. STRATTON TO HIS SON + + +§ 1 + +I want very much to set down my thoughts and my experiences of life. I +want to do so now that I have come to middle age and now that my +attitudes are all defined and my personal drama worked out I feel that +the toil of writing and reconsideration may help to clear and fix many +things that remain a little uncertain in my thoughts because they have +never been fully stated, and I want to discover any lurking +inconsistencies and unsuspected gaps. And I have a story. I have lived +through things that have searched me. I want to tell that story as well +as I can while I am still a clear-headed and active man, and while many +details that may presently become blurred and altered are still rawly +fresh in my mind. And to one person in particular do I wish to think I +am writing, and that is to you, my only son. I want to write my story +not indeed to the child you are now, but to the man you are going to be. +You are half my blood and temperamentally altogether mine. A day will +come when you will realize this, and want to know how life has gone with +me, and then it may be altogether too late for me to answer your +enquiries. I may have become inaccessible as old people are sometimes +inaccessible. And so I think of leaving this book for you--at any rate, +I shall write it as if I meant to leave it for you. Afterwards I can +consider whether I will indeed leave it.... + +The idea of writing such a book as this came to me first as I sat by the +dead body of your grandfather--my father. It was because I wanted so +greatly such a book from him that I am now writing this. He died, you +must know, only a few months ago, and I went to his house to bury him +and settle all his affairs. + +At one time he had been my greatest friend. He had never indeed talked +to me about himself or his youth, but he had always showed an +extraordinary sympathy and helpfulness for me in all the confusion and +perplexities into which I fell. This did not last to the end of his +life. I was the child of his middle years, and suddenly, in a year or +less, the curtains of age and infirmity fell between us. There came an +illness, an operation, and he rose from it ailing, suffering, dwarfed +and altogether changed. Of all the dark shadows upon life I think that +change through illness and organic decay in the thoughts and spirits of +those who are dear and close to us is the most evil and distressing and +inexplicable. Suddenly he was a changeling, a being querulous and +pitiful, needing indulgence and sacrifices. + +In a little while a new state of affairs was established. I ceased to +consider him as a man to whom one told things, of whom one could expect +help or advice. We all ceased to consider him at all in that way. We +humored him, put pleasant things before him, concealed whatever was +disagreeable. A poor old man he was indeed in those concluding years, +weakly rebellious against the firm kindliness of my cousin, his +housekeeper and nurse. He who had once been so alert was now at times +astonishingly apathetic. At times an impish malice I had never known in +him before gleamed in little acts and speeches. His talk rambled, and +for the most part was concerned with small, long-forgotten contentions. +It was indistinct and difficult to follow because of a recent loss of +teeth, and he craved for brandy, to restore even for a moment the sense +of strength and well-being that ebbed and ebbed away from him. So that +when I came to look at his dead face at last, it was with something like +amazement I perceived him grave and beautiful--more grave and beautiful +than he had been even in the fullness of life. + +All the estrangement of the final years was wiped in an instant from my +mind as I looked upon his face. There came back a rush of memories, of +kind, strong, patient, human aspects of his fatherhood. And I remembered +as every son must remember--even you, my dear, will some day remember +because it is in the very nature of sonship--insubordinations, +struggles, ingratitudes, great benefits taken unthankfully, slights and +disregards. It was not remorse I felt, nor repentance, but a tremendous +regret that so things had happened and that life should be so. Why is +it, I thought, that when a son has come to manhood he cannot take his +father for a friend? I had a curious sense of unprecedented communion +as I stood beside him now. I felt that he understood my thoughts; his +face seemed to answer with an expression of still and sympathetic +patience. + +I was sensible of amazing gaps. We had never talked together of love, +never of religion. + +All sorts of things that a man of twenty-eight would not dream of hiding +from a coeval he had hidden from me. For some days I had to remain in +his house, I had to go through his papers, handle all those intimate +personal things that accumulate around a human being year by +year--letters, yellowing scraps of newspaper, tokens, relics kept, +accidental vestiges, significant litter. I learnt many things I had +never dreamt of. At times I doubted whether I was not prying, whether I +ought not to risk the loss of those necessary legal facts I sought, and +burn these papers unread. There were love letters, and many such +touching things. + +My memories of him did not change because of these new lights, but they +became wonderfully illuminated. I realized him as a young man, I began +to see him as a boy. I found a little half-bound botanical book with +stencil-tinted illustrations, a good-conduct prize my father had won at +his preparatory school; a rolled-up sheet of paper, carbonized and dry +and brittle, revealed itself as a piece of specimen writing, stiff with +boyish effort, decorated in ambitious and faltering flourishes and still +betraying the pencil rulings his rubber should have erased. Already your +writing is better than that. And I found a daguerreotype portrait of him +in knickerbockers against a photographer's stile. His face then was not +unlike yours. I stood with that in my hand at the little bureau in his +bedroom, and looked at his dead face. + +The flatly painted portrait of his father, my grandfather, hanging +there in the stillness above the coffin, looking out on the world he had +left with steady, humorous blue eyes that followed one about the +room,--that, too, was revivified, touched into reality and participation +by this and that, became a living presence at a conference of lives. +Things of his were there also in that life's accumulation.... + +There we were, three Strattons together, and down in the dining-room +were steel engravings to take us back two generations further, and we +had all lived full lives, suffered, attempted, signified. I had a +glimpse of the long successions of mankind. What a huge inaccessible +lumber-room of thought and experience we amounted to, I thought; how +much we are, how little we transmit. Each one of us was but a variation, +an experiment upon the Stratton theme. All that I had now under my hands +was but the merest hints and vestiges, moving and surprising indeed, but +casual and fragmentary, of those obliterated repetitions. Man is a +creature becoming articulate, and why should those men have left so much +of the tale untold--to be lost and forgotten? Why must we all repeat +things done, and come again very bitterly to wisdom our fathers have +achieved before us? My grandfather there should have left me something +better than the still enigma of his watching face. All my life so far +has gone in learning very painfully what many men have learnt before me; +I have spent the greater part of forty years in finding a sort of +purpose for the uncertain and declining decades that remain. Is it not +time the generations drew together and helped one another? Cannot we +begin now to make a better use of the experiences of life so that our +sons may not waste themselves so much, cannot we gather into books that +men may read in an hour or so the gist of these confused and +multitudinous realities of the individual career? Surely the time is +coming for that, when a new private literature will exist, and fathers +and mothers behind their rôles of rulers, protectors, and supporters, +will prepare frank and intimate records of their thought and their +feeling, told as one tells things to equals, without authority or +reserves or discretions, so that, they being dead, their children may +rediscover them as contemporaries and friends. + +That desire for self-expression is indeed already almost an instinct +with many of us. Man is disposed to create a traditional wisdom. For me +this book I contemplate is a need. I am just a year and a half from a +bitter tragedy and the loss of a friend as dear as life to me. It is +very constantly in my mind. She opened her mind to me as few people open +their minds to anyone. In a way, little Stephen, she died for you. And I +am so placed that I have no one to talk to quite freely about her. The +one other person to whom I talk, I cannot talk to about her; it is +strange, seeing how we love and trust one another, but so it is; you +will understand that the better as this story unfolds. For eight long +years before the crisis that culminated in her tragic death I never saw +her; yet, quite apart from the shock and distresses of that time, it has +left me extraordinarily lonely and desolate. + +And there was a kind of dreadful splendor in that last act of hers, +which has taken a great hold upon my imagination; it has interwoven with +everything else in my mind, it bears now upon every question. I cannot +get away from it, while it is thus pent from utterance.... Perhaps +having written this to you I may never show it you or leave it for you +to see. But yet I must write it. Of all conceivable persons you, when +you have grown to manhood, are the most likely to understand. + + +§ 2 + +You did not come to see your dead grandfather, nor did you know very +much about the funeral. Nowadays we do not bring the sweet egotisms, the +vivid beautiful personal intensities of childhood, into the cold, vast +presence of death. I would as soon, my dear, have sent your busy little +limbs toiling up the Matterhorn. I have put by a photograph of my father +for you as he lay in that last stillness of his, that you will see at a +properer time. + +Your mother and I wore black only at his funeral and came back colored +again into your colored world, and in a very little while your interest +in this event that had taken us away for a time turned to other, more +assimilable things. But there happened a little incident that laid hold +upon me; you forgot it, perhaps, in a week or less, but I shall never +forget it; and this incident it was that gathered up the fruits of those +moments beside my father's body and set me to write this book. It had +the effect of a little bright light held up against the vague dark +immensities of thought and feeling that filled my mind because of my +father's death. + +Now that I come to set it down I see that it is altogether trivial, and +I cannot explain how it is that it is to me so piercingly significant. I +had to whip you. Your respect for the admirable and patient +Mademoiselle Potin, the protectress and companion of your public +expeditions, did in some slight crisis suddenly fail you. In the extreme +publicity of Kensington Gardens, in the presence of your two little +sisters, before a startled world, you expressed an opinion of her, in +two languages and a loud voice, that was not only very unjust, but +extremely offensive and improper. It reflected upon her intelligence and +goodness; it impeached her personal appearance; it was the kind of +outcry no little gentleman should ever permit himself, however deeply he +may be aggrieved. You then, so far as I was able to disentangle the +evidence, assaulted her violently, hurled a stone at her, and fled her +company. You came home alone by a route chosen by yourself, flushed and +wrathful, braving the dangers of Kensington High Street. This, after my +stern and deliberate edict that, upon pain of corporal punishment, +respect and obedience must be paid to Mademoiselle Potin. The logic of +the position was relentless. + +But where your behavior was remarkable, where the affair begins to touch +my imagination, was that you yourself presently put the whole business +before me. Alone in the schoolroom, you seem to have come to some +realization of the extraordinary dreadfulness of your behavior. Such +moments happen in the lives of all small boys; they happened to me times +enough, to my dead father, to that grandfather of the portrait which is +now in my study, to his father and his, and so on through long series of +Strattons, back to inarticulate, shock-haired little sinners slinking +fearfully away from the awful wrath, the bellowings and limitless +violence of the hairy Old Man of the herd. The bottom goes out of your +heart then, you are full of a conviction of sin. So far you did but +carry on the experience of the race. But to ask audience of me, to come +and look me in the eye, to say you wanted my advice on a pressing +matter, that I think marks almost a new phase in the long developing +history of father and son. And your account of the fracas struck me as +quite reasonably frank and honest. "I didn't seem able," you observed, +"not to go on being badder and badder." + +We discussed the difficulties of our situation, and you passed sentence +upon yourself. I saw to it that the outraged dignity of Mademoiselle +Potin was mocked by no mere formality of infliction. You did your best +to be stoical, I remember, but at last you yelped and wept. Then, +justice being done, you rearranged your costume. The situation was a +little difficult until you, still sobbing and buttoning--you are really +a shocking bad hand at buttons--and looking a very small, tender, +ruffled, rueful thing indeed, strolled towards my study window. "The +pear tree is out next door," you remarked, without a trace of animosity, +and sobbing as one might hiccough. + +I suppose there are moments in the lives of all grown men when they come +near to weeping aloud. In some secret place within myself I must have +been a wild river of tears. I answered, however, with the same admirable +detachment from the smarting past that you had achieved, that my study +window was particularly adapted to the appreciation of our neighbor's +pear tree, because of its height from the ground. We fell into a +conversation about blossom and the setting of fruit, kneeling together +upon my window-seat and looking up into the pear tree against the sky, +and then down through its black branches into the gardens all +quickening with spring. We were on so friendly a footing when presently +Mademoiselle Potin returned and placed her dignity or her resignation in +my hands, that I doubt if she believed a word of all my assurances until +the unmistakable confirmation of your evening bath. Then, as I +understood it, she was extremely remorseful to you and indignant against +my violence.... + +But when I knelt with you, little urchin, upon my window-seat, it came +to me as a thing almost intolerably desirable that some day you should +become my real and understanding friend. I loved you profoundly. I +wanted to stretch forward into time and speak to you, man myself to the +man you are yet to be. It seemed to me that between us there must needs +be peculiar subtleties of sympathy. And I remembered that by the time +you were a man fully grown and emerging from the passionately tumultuous +openings of manhood, capable of forgiving me all my blundering +parentage, capable of perceiving all the justifying fine intention of my +ill-conceived disciplines and misdirections, I might be either an old +man, shriveling again to an inexplicable egotism, or dead. I saw myself +as I had seen my father--first enfeebled and then inaccessibly tranquil. +When presently you had gone from my study, I went to my writing-desk and +drew a paper pad towards me, and sat thinking and making idle marks upon +it with my pen. I wanted to exceed the limits of those frozen silences +that must come at last between us, write a book that should lie in your +world like a seed, and at last, as your own being ripened, flower into +living understanding by your side. + +This book, which before had been only an idea for a book, competing +against many other ideas and the demands of that toilsome work for +peace and understanding to which I have devoted the daily energies of my +life, had become, I felt, an imperative necessity between us. + + +§ 3 + +And then there happened one of those crises of dread and apprehension +and pain that are like a ploughing of the heart. It was brought home to +me that you might die even before the first pages of this book of yours +were written. You became feverish, complained of that queer pain you had +felt twice before, and for the third time you were ill with +appendicitis. Your mother and I came and regarded your touzled head and +flushed little face on the pillow as you slept uneasily, and decided +that we must take no more risks with you. So soon as your temperature +had fallen again we set about the business of an operation. + +We told each other that nowadays these operations were as safe as going +to sleep in your bed, but we knew better. Our own doctor had lost his +son. "That," we said, "was different." But we knew well enough in our +hearts that you were going very near to the edge of death, nearer than +you had ever been since first you came clucking into the world. + +The operation was done at home. A capable, fair-complexioned nurse took +possession of us; and my study, because it has the best light, was +transfigured into an admirable operating-room. All its furnishings were +sent away, every cloth and curtain, and the walls and floor were covered +with white sterilized sheets. The high little mechanical table they +erected before the window seemed to me like an altar on which I had to +offer up my son. There were basins of disinfectants and towels +conveniently about, the operator came, took out his array of scalpels +and forceps and little sponges from the black bag he carried, put them +ready for his hand, and then covered them from your sight with a white +cloth, and I brought you down in my arms, wrapped in a blanket, from +your bedroom to the anæsthetist. You were beautifully trustful and +submissive and unafraid. I stood by you until the chloroform had done +its work, and then left you there, lest my presence should in the +slightest degree embarrass the surgeon. The anæsthetic had taken all the +color out of your face, and you looked pinched and shrunken and greenish +and very small and pitiful. I went into the drawing-room and stood there +with your mother and made conversation. I cannot recall what we said, I +think it was about the moorland to which we were going for your +convalescence. Indeed, we were but the ghosts of ourselves; all our +substance seemed listening, listening to the little sounds that came to +us from the study. + +Then after long ages there was a going to and fro of feet, a bump, the +opening of a door, and our own doctor came into the room rubbing his +hands together and doing nothing to conceal his profound relief. +"Admirable," he said, "altogether successful." I went up to you and saw +a tumbled little person in the bed, still heavily insensible and moaning +slightly. By the table were bloody towels, and in a shallow glass tray +was a small object like a damaged piece of earthworm. "Not a bit too +soon," said the surgeon, holding this up in his forceps for my +inspection. "It's on the very verge of perforation." I affected a +detached and scientific interest, but the prevailing impression in my +mind was that this was a fragment from very nearly the centre of your +being. + +He took it away with him, I know not whither. Perhaps it is now in +spirits in a specimen jar, an example to all medical students of what to +avoid in an appendix; perhaps it was stained and frozen, and +microtomized into transparent sections as they do such things, and +mounted on glass slips and distributed about the world for curious +histologists to wreak their eyes upon. For a time you lay uneasily still +and then woke up to pain. Even then you got a fresh purchase on my +heart. It has always been our custom to discourage weeping and outcries, +and you did not forget your training. "I shan't mind so much, dadda," +you remarked to me, "if I may yelp." So for a day, by special +concession, you yelped, and then the sting of those fresh wounds +departed. + +Within a fortnight, so quickly does an aseptic wound heal up again, you +were running about in the sun, and I had come back, as one comes back to +a thing forgotten, to the first beginnings of this chapter on my desk. +But for a time I could not go on working at it because of the fear I had +felt, and it is only now in June, in this house in France to which we +have come for the summer, with you more flagrantly healthy than I have +ever known you before, that my heart creeps out of its hole again, and I +can go on with my story. + + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND + +BOYHOOD + + +§ 1 + +I was a Harbury boy as my father and grandfather were before me and as +you are presently to be. I went to Harbury at the age of fourteen. Until +then I was educated at home, first by a governess and then by my +father's curate, Mr. Siddons, who went from us to St. Philip's in +Hampstead, and, succeeding marvellously there, is now Bishop of +Exminster. My father became rector of Burnmore when I was nine; my +mother had been dead four years, and my second cousin, Jane Stratton, +was already his housekeeper. My father held the living until his +resignation when I was nearly thirty. So that all the most +impressionable years of my life centre upon the Burnmore rectory and the +easy spaciousness of Burnmore Park. My boyhood and adolescence +alternated between the ivied red-brick and ancient traditions of Harbury +(and afterwards Christ-church) and that still untroubled countryside. + +I was never a town dweller until I married and we took our present house +in Holland Park. I went into London at last as one goes into an arena. +It cramps me and wearies me and at times nearly overwhelms me, but +there it is that the life of men centres and my work lies. But every +summer we do as we have done this year and go to some house in the +country, near to forests or moorland or suchlike open and uncultivated +country, where one may have the refreshment of freedom among natural and +unhurried things. This year we are in a walled garden upon the Seine, +about four miles above Château Galliard, and with the forest reaching up +to the paddock beyond the orchard close.... + +You will understand better when I have told you my story why I saw +Burnmore for the last time when I was one-and-twenty and why my memories +of it shine so crystalline clear. I have a thousand vivid miniatures of +it in my mind and all of them are beautiful to me, so that I could quite +easily write a whole book of landscapes from the Park alone. I can still +recall quite vividly the warm beauty-soaked sensation of going out into +the morning sunshine of the Park, with my lunch in a little green Swiss +tin under my arm and the vast interminable day all before me, the +gigantic, divinely unconditional day that only boyhood knows, and the +Park so great and various that it was more than two hours' going for me +to reach its eastern fences. I was only a little older then than you are +now. Sometimes I went right up through the woods to the house to +companion with Philip and Guy Christian and their sister--I loved her +then, and one day I was to love her with all my heart--but in those +boyish times I liked most to go alone. + +My memories of the Park are all under blue sky and sunshine, with just a +thunderstorm or so; on wet days and cold days I was kept to closer +limits; and it seems to me now rather an intellectual conviction than a +positive memory that save for a few pine-clad patches in the extreme +south-east, its soil was all thick clay. That meant for me only +beautiful green marshes, a number of vividly interesting meres upon the +course of its stream, and a wealth of gigantic oaks. The meres lay at +various levels, and the hand of Lady Ladislaw had assisted nature in +their enrichment with lilies and water plants. There were places of +sedge and scented rush, amidst which were sapphire mists of +forget-me-not for long stretches, skirmishing commandoes of yellow iris +and wide wastes of floating water-lilies. The gardens passed insensibly +into the Park, and beyond the house were broad stretches of grass, +sun-lit, barred with the deep-green shadows of great trees, and animated +with groups and lines of fallow deer. Near the house was an Italianate +garden, with balustradings and statuary, and a great wealth of roses and +flowering shrubs. + +Then there were bracken wildernesses in which the does lurked with the +young fawns, and a hollow, shallow and wide, with the turf greatly +attacked by rabbits, and exceptionally threadbare, where a stricken oak, +lightning-stripped, spread out its ghastly arms above contorted rotting +branches and the mysterious skeletons of I should think five several +deer. In the evening-time the woods behind this place of bones--they +were woods of straight-growing, rather crowded trees and standing as it +were a little aloof--became even under the warmest sunset grey and +cold--and as if they waited.... + +And in the distant corner where the sand was, rose suddenly a steep +little hill, surmounted by a wild and splendid group of pines, through +which one looked across a vale of cornfields at an ancient town that +became strange and magical as the sun went down, so that I was held +gazing at it, and afterwards had to flee the twilight across the windy +spaces and under the dim and darkling trees. It is only now in the +distant retrospect that I identify that far-off city of wonder, and +luminous mist with the commonplace little town, through whose narrow +streets we drove to the railway station. But, of course, that is what it +must have been. + +There are persons to be found mixed up in those childish memories,--Lady +Ladislaw, tall and gracious, in dresses of floating blue or grey, or +thin, subtly folding, flowering stuffs, Philip and his sister, Guy, the +old butler, a multitude of fainter figures long become nameless and +featureless; they are far less vivid in my memory than the fine +solitudes of the Park itself--and the dreams I had there. + +I wonder if you dream as I dreamt. I wonder whether indeed I dreamt as +now I think I did. Have I, in these latter years, given form and +substance and a name to things as vague in themselves as the urgencies +of instinct? Did I really go into those woods and waving green places as +one keeps a tryst, expectant of a fellowship more free and delicate and +delightful than any I knew. Did I know in those days of nymphs and +dryads and fauns and all those happy soulless beings with which the +desire of man's heart has animated the wilderness. Once certainly I +crawled slowly through the tall bracken and at last lay still for an +interminable while, convinced that so I should see those shadows +populous with fairies, with green little people. How patiently I lay! +But the stems creaked and stirred, and my heart would keep on beating +like a drum in my throat. + +It is incredible that once a furry whispering half-human creature with +bright brown eyes came and for a time played with me near where the tall +ferns foam in a broad torrent from between the big chestnuts down to the +upper mere. That must have been real dreaming, and yet now, with all my +sanities and scepticisms, I could half believe it real. + + +§ 2 + +You become reserved. Perhaps not exceptionally so, but as all children +become reserved. Already you understand that your heart is very +preciously your own. You keep it from me and everyone, so much so, so +justifiably so, that when by virtue of our kindred and all that we have +in common I get sudden glimpses right into your depths, there mixes with +the swift spasm of love I feel, a dread--lest you should catch me, as it +were, spying into you and that one of us, I know not which, should feel +ashamed. + +Every child passes into this secret stage; it closes in from its first +frankness; it carries off the growing jewel of its consciousness to hide +from all mankind.... I think I can see why this should be so, but I +cannot tell why in so many cases no jewel is given back again at last, +alight, ripened, wonderful, glowing with the deep fires of experience. I +think that is what ought to happen; it is what does happen now with true +poets and true artists. Someday I think it will be the life of all +normal human souls. But usually it does not seem to happen at all. +Children pass out of a stage--open, beautiful, exquisitely simple--into +silences and discretions beneath an imposed and artificial life. And +they are lost. Out of the finished, careful, watchful, restrained and +limited man or woman, no child emerges again.... + +I remember very distinctly how I myself came by imperceptible increments +of reservation to withdraw those early delicacies of judgments, those +original and personal standards and appreciations, from sight and +expression. I can recall specific moments when I perceive now that my +little childish figure stood, as it were, obstinately and with a sense +of novelty in a doorway denying the self within. + +It was partly, I think, a simple instinct that drew that curtain of +silences and concealments, it was much more a realization that I had no +power of lucidity to save the words and deeds I sought to make +expressive from complete misunderstanding. But most of all it was the +perception that I was under training and compulsion for ends that were +all askew and irrelevant to the trend of my imaginations, the quality of +my dreams. There was around me something unfriendly to this inner +world--something very ready to pass from unfriendliness to acute +hostility; and if, indeed, I succeeded in giving anything of my inner +self to others, it was only, as people put it, to give myself away. + +My nurses, my governess, my tutor, my father, the servants about me, +seemed all bent upon imposing an artificial personality upon me. Only in +a very limited sense did they want me. What they wanted was something +that could be made out of me by extensive suppressions and additions. +They ignored the fact that I had been born with a shape of my own; they +were resolved I should be pressed into a mould and cast. + +It was not that they wanted outer conformity to certain needs and +standards--that, I think, would be a reasonable thing enough to +demand--but they wanted me to subdue my most private thoughts to their +ideals. My nurses and my governesses would rate me for my very feelings, +would clamor for gratitude and reproach me bitterly for betraying that I +did not at some particular moment--love. + +(Only yesterday I heard Mademoiselle Potin doing that very same thing to +you. "It is that you do not care, Master Steve. It is that you do not +care. You do not want to care.") + +They went too far in that invasion of my personal life, but I perceive +quite clearly the present need for most of the process of moulding and +subjugation that children must undergo. Human society is a new thing +upon the earth, an invention of the last ten thousand years. Man is a +creature as yet not freely and instinctively gregarious; in his more +primordial state he must have been an animal of very small groups and +limited associations, an animal rather self-centred and fierce, and he +is still but imperfectly adapted either morally or physically to the +wider social life his crowding interactions force upon him. He still +learns speech and computation and civility and all the devices of this +artificially extended and continually broadening tribal life with an +extreme reluctance. He has to be shaped in the interests of the species, +I admit, to the newer conditions; the growing social order must be +protected from the keen edge of his still savage individuality, and he +must be trained in his own interests to save himself from the +destruction of impossible revolts. But how clumsily is the thing done! +How we are caught and jammed and pressed and crippled into citizenship! +How excessive and crushing is the suppression, and how inadequate! + +Every child feels that, even if every child does not clearly know it. +Every child presently begins to hide itself from the confused tyrannies +of the social process, from the searching inspections and injunctions +and interferences of parent and priest and teacher. + +"I have got to be _so_," we all say deep down in ourselves and more or +less distinctly according to the lucidities of our minds; "but in my +heart I am _this_." + +And in the outcome we all try to seem at least to be _so_, while an +ineffectual rebel struggles passionately, like a beast caught in a trap, +for ends altogether more deep and dangerous, for the rose and the star +and the wildfire,--for beauty and beautiful things. These, we all know +in our darkly vital recesses, are the real needs of life, the obediences +imposed upon us by our crude necessities and jostling proximities, mere +incidentals on our way to those profounder purposes.... + +And when I write thus of our selves I mean our bodies quite as much as +our imaginations; the two sides of us are covered up alike and put alike +into disguises and unnatural shapes, we are taught and forced to hide +them for the same reasons, from a fear of ourselves and a fear of the +people about us. The sense of beauty, the sense of one's body, the +freedom of thought and of desire and the wonder of life, are all +interwoven strands. I remember that in the Park of Burnmore one great +craving I had was to take off my clothes there altogether, and bathe in +a clear place among loosestrife and meadowsweet, and afterwards lie wet +and naked upon the soft green turf with the sun shining upon me. But I +thought also that that was a very wicked and shameful craving to have, +and I never dared give way to it. + + +§ 3 + +As I think of myself and all these glowing secrecies and hidden fancies +within, walking along beside old Siddons, and half listening to his +instructive discourse, I see myself as though I was an image of all +humanity under tuition for the social life. + +I write "old Siddons," for so he seemed to me then. In truth he was +scarcely a dozen years older than I, and the other day when I exchanged +salutations with his gaitered presence in the Haymarket, on his way I +suppose to the Athenæum, it struck me that he it is who is now the +younger man. But at Burnmore he was eighteen inches or more above my +head and all the way of school and university beyond me; full of the +world they had fitted him for and eager to impart its doctrines. He went +along in his tweeds that were studiously untidy, a Norfolk jacket of one +clerically-greyish stuff and trousers of another somewhat lighter +pattern, in thick boots, the collar of his calling, and a broad-minded +hat, bearing his face heavenward as he talked, and not so much aware of +me as appreciating the things he was saying. And sometimes he was +manifestly talking to himself and airing his outlook. He carried a +walking-stick, a manly, homely, knobby, donnish walking-stick. + +He forced the pace a little, for his legs were long and he had acquired +the habit of strenuous pedestrianism at Oxford with all the other +things; he obliged me to go at a kind of skipping trot, and he preferred +the high roads towards Wickenham for our walks, because they were +flatter and there was little traffic upon them in those days before the +motor car, and we could keep abreast and go on talking uninterruptedly. +That is to say, he could. + +What talk it was! + +Of all the virtues that the young should have. He spoke of courage and +how splendid it was to accustom oneself not even to feel fear; of truth, +and difficult cases when one might conceivably injure others by telling +the truth and so perhaps, perhaps qualify the rigor of one's integrity, +but how one should never hesitate to injure one's own self in that +matter. Then in another phase he talked of belief--and the +disagreeableness of dissenters. But here, I remember, there was a +discussion. I have forgotten how I put the thing, but in some boyish +phrasing or other I must have thrown out the idea that thought is free +and beliefs uncontrollable. What of conformity, if the truth was that +you doubted? "Not if you make an effort," I remember him saying, "not if +you make an effort. I have had my struggles. But if you say firmly to +yourself, the Church teaches this. If you dismiss mere carping and say +that." + +"But suppose you can't," I must have urged. + +"You can if you will," he said with a note near enthusiasm. "I have been +through all that. I did it. I dismissed doubts. I wouldn't listen. I +felt, _This won't do. All this leads nowhere._" + +And he it was told me the classic story of that presumptuous schoolboy +who went to his Head Master and declared himself an atheist. There were +no dialectics but a prompt horse-whipping. "In after life," said Mr. +Siddons, with unctuous gratification, "he came to recognize that +thrashing as the very best thing that had ever happened to him. The +kindest thing." + +"Yes," urged the obstinate rebel within me, "but--the Truth, that +fearless insistence on the Truth!" + +I could, however, find nothing effective to say aloud, and Siddons +prevailed over me. That story made my blood boil, it filled me with an +anticipatory hatred of and hostility to Head Masters, and at the same +time there was something in it, brutally truer to the conditions of +human association than any argument. + +I do not remember the various steps by which I came to be discussing +doubts so early in my life. I could not have been much more than +thirteen when that conversation occurred. I am I think perhaps +exceptionally unconscious about myself. I find I can recall the sayings +and even the gestures of other people far more distinctly than the +things I said and did myself. Even my dreams and imaginings are more +active than my positive thoughts and proceedings. But I was no doubt +very much stimulated by the literature lying about my home and the +gleans and echoes of controversies that played like summer lightning +round and about the horizons of my world. Over my head and after I had +gone to bed, my father and Siddons were talking, my cousin was listening +with strained apprehensions, there was a new spirit in my father's +sermons; it was the storm of Huxley-Darwin controversies that had at +last reached Burnmore. I was an intelligent little listener, an eager +reader of anything that came to hand, Mr. Siddons had a disposition to +fight his battles over again in his monologues to me; and after all at +thirteen one isn't a baby. The small boy of the lower classes used in +those days to start life for himself long before then. + +How dramatic a phase it was in the history of the human mind when +science suddenly came into the vicarages, into all the studies and quiet +places that had been the fastnesses of conviction and our ideals, and +denied, with all the power of evidence it had been accumulating for so +long, and so obscurely and inaggressively, with fossils and strata, with +embryology and comparative anatomy, the doctrine of the historical Fall +and all the current scheme of orthodoxy that was based on that! What a +quickening shock it must have been in countless thousands of educated +lives! And my father after a toughly honest resistance was won over to +Darwinism, the idea of Evolution got hold of him, the idea that life +itself was intolerant of vain repetitions; and he had had to "consider +his position" in the church. To him as to innumerable other honest, +middle-aged and comfortable men, Darwinism came as a dreadful invitation +to go out into the wilderness. Over my head and just out of range of my +ears he was debating that issue with Siddons as a foil and my cousin as +a horrified antagonist. Slowly he was developing his conception of +compromise. And meanwhile he wasn't going out into the wilderness at +all, but punctually to and fro, along the edge of the lawn by the bed of +hollyhocks and through the little green door in the garden wall, and +across the corner of the churchyard to the vestry and the perennial +services and sacraments of the church. + +But he never talked to me privately of religion. He left that for my +cousin and Mr. Siddons to do or not to do as they felt disposed, and in +those silences of his I may have found another confirmation of my +growing feeling that religion was from one point of view a thing +somehow remote and unreal, claiming unjustifiable interventions in the +detailed conduct of my life, and from another a peculiar concern of my +father's and Mr. Siddons', to which they went--through the vestry, +changing into strange garments on the way. + + +§ 4 + +I do not want to leave the impression which my last section may have +conveyed that at the age of thirteen or thereabouts I walked about with +Mr. Siddons discussing doubt in a candid and intelligent manner and +maintaining theological positions. That particular conversation, you +must imagine with Mr. Siddons somewhat monologuing, addressing himself +not only to my present self, but with an unaccustomed valiance to my +absent father. What I may have said or not said, whether I did indeed +dispute or merely and by a kind of accident implied objections, I have +altogether forgotten long ago. + +A boy far more than a man is mentally a discontinuous being. The +drifting chaos of his mind makes its experimental beginnings at a +hundred different points and in a hundred different spirits and +directions; here he flashes into a concrete realization, here into a +conviction unconsciously incompatible; here is something originally +conceived, here something uncritically accepted. I know that I +criticized Mr. Siddons quite acutely, and disbelieved in him. I know +also that I accepted all sorts of suggestions from him quite +unhesitatingly and that I did my utmost to satisfy his standards and +realize his ideals of me. + +Like an outer casing to that primordial creature of senses and dreams +which came to the surface in the solitudes of the Park was my +Siddonsesque self, a high-minded and clean and brave English boy, +conscientiously loyal to queen and country, athletic and a good +sportsman and acutely alive to good and bad "form." Mr. Siddons made me +aware of my clothed self as a visible object, I surveyed my garmented +being in mirrors and was trained to feel the "awfulness" of various +other small boys who appeared transitorily in the smaller Park when Lady +Ladislaw extended her wide hospitality to certain benevolent London +associations. Their ill-fitting clothing, their undisciplined outcries, +their slouching, their bad throwing and defective aspirates were made +matters for detestation in my plastic mind. Those things, I was assured, +placed them outside the pale of any common humanity. + +"Very unfortunate and all that," said Mr. Siddons, "and uncommonly good +of Lady Ladislaw to have them down. But dirty little cads, Stephen, +dirty little cads; so don't go near 'em if you can help it." + +They played an indecent sort of cricket with coats instead of a wicket! + +Mr. Siddons was very grave about games and the strict ritual and proper +apparatus for games. He believed that Waterloo was won by the indirect +influence of public school cricket--disregarding many other contributory +factors. We did not play very much, but we "practised" sedulously at a +net in the paddock with the gardener and the doctor's almost grown-up +sons. I thought missing a possible catch was an impropriety. I +studiously maintained the correct attitude, alert and elastic, while I +was fielding. Moreover I had a shameful secret, that I did not really +know where a ball ought to pitch. I wasn't clear about it and I did not +dare to ask. Also until I was nearly thirteen I couldn't bowl overarm. +Such is the enduring force of early suggestion, my dear son, that I feel +a faint twinge of shame as I set this down for your humiliated eyes. But +so it was. May you be more precocious! + +Then I was induced to believe that I really liked hunting and killing +things. In the depths of my being I was a gentle and primitive savage +towards animals; I believed they were as subtle and wise as myself and +full of a magic of their own, but Mr. Siddons nevertheless got me out +into the south Warren, where I had often watched the rabbits setting +their silly cock-eared sentinels and lolloping out to feed about +sundown, and beguiled me into shooting a furry little fellow-creature--I +can still see its eyelid quiver as it died--and carrying it home in +triumph. On another occasion I remember I was worked up into a ferocious +excitement about the rats in the old barn. We went ratting, just as +though I was Tom Brown or Harry East or any other of the beastly little +models of cant and cruelty we English boys were trained to imitate. It +was great sport. It was a tremendous spree. The distracted movements, +the scampering and pawing of the little pink forefeet of one squawking +little fugitive, that I hit with a stick and then beat to a shapeless +bag of fur, haunted my dreams for years, and then I saw the bowels of +another still living victim that had been torn open by one of the +terriers, and abruptly I fled out into the yard and was violently sick; +the best of the fun was over so far as I was concerned. + +My cousin saved me from the uttermost shame of my failure by saying +that I had been excited too soon after my dinner.... + +And also I collected stamps and birds' eggs. + +Mr. Siddons hypnotized me into believing that I really wanted these +things; he gave me an egg-cabinet for a birthday present and told me +exemplary stories of the wonderful collections other boys had made. My +own natural disposition to watch nests and establish heaven knows what +friendly intimacy with the birds--perhaps I dreamt their mother might +let me help to feed the young ones--gave place to a feverish artful +hunting, a clutch, and then, detestable process, the blowing of the egg. +Of course we were very humane; we never took the nest, but just +frightened off the sitting bird and grabbed a warm egg or so. And the +poor perforated, rather damaged little egg-shells accumulated in the +drawers, against the wished-for but never actually realized day of glory +when we should meet another collector who wouldn't have--something that +we had. So far as it was for anything and not mere imbecile +imitativeness, it was for that. + +And writing thus of eggs reminds me that I got into a row with Mr. +Siddons for cruelty. + +I discovered there was the nest of a little tit in a hole between two +stones in the rock bank that bordered the lawn. I found it out when I +was sitting on the garden seat near by, learning Latin irregular verbs. +I saw the minute preposterous round birds going and coming, and I found +something so absurdly amiable and confiding about them--they sat +balancing and oscillating on a standard rose and cheeped at me to go and +then dived nestward and gave away their secret out of sheer +impatience--that I could not bring myself to explore further, and kept +the matter altogether secret from the enthusiasm of Mr. Siddons. And in +a few days there were no more eggs and I could hear the hungry little +nestlings making the minutest of fairy hullabaloos, the very finest spun +silk of sound; a tremendous traffic in victual began and I was the +trusted friend of the family. + +Then one morning I was filled with amazement and anguish. There was a +rock torn down and lying in the path; a paw had gone up to that little +warm place. Across the gravel, shreds of the nest and a wisp or so of +down were scattered. I could imagine the brief horrors of that night +attack. I started off, picking up stones as I went, to murder that sandy +devil, the stable cat. I got her once--alas! that I am still glad to +think of it--and just missed her as she flashed, a ginger streak, +through the gate into the paddock. + +"_Now_ Steve! Now!" came Mr. Siddons' voice behind me.... + +How can one explain things of that sort to a man like Siddons? I took my +lecture on the Utter Caddishness of Wanton Cruelty in a black rebellious +silence. The affair and my own emotions were not only far beyond my +powers of explanation, but far beyond my power of understanding. Just +then my soul was in shapeless and aimless revolt against something +greater and higher and deeper and darker than Siddons, and his +reproaches were no more than the chattering of a squirrel while a storm +uproots great trees. I wanted to kill the cat. I wanted to kill whatever +had made that cat. + + +§ 5 + +Mr. Siddons it was who first planted the conception of Life as a Career +in my mind. + +In those talks that did so much towards shaping me into the likeness of +a modest, reserved, sporting, seemly, clean and brave, patriotic and +decently slangy young Englishman, he was constantly reverting to that +view of existence. He spoke of failures and successes, talked of +statesmen and administrators, peerages and Westminster Abbey. "Nelson," +he said, "was once a clergyman's son like you." + +"England has been made by the sons of the clergy." + +He talked of the things that led to failure and the things that had made +men prominent and famous. + +"Discursiveness ruins a man," I remember him saying. "Choose your goal +and press to it." + +"Never do anything needlessly odd. It's a sort of impertinence to all +the endless leaders of the past who created our traditions. Do not +commit yourself hastily to opinions, but once you have done so, stick to +them. The world would far rather have a firm man wrong, than a weak man +hesitatingly right. Stick to them." + +"One has to remember," I recall him meditating, far over my head with +his face upturned, "that Institutions are more important than Views. +Very often one adopts a View only to express one's belief in an +Institution.... Men can do with almost all sorts of Views, but only with +certain Institutions. All this Doubt doesn't touch a truth like that. +One does not refuse to live in a house because of the old symbols one +finds upon the door.... If they _are_ old symbols...." + +Out of such private contemplations he would descend suddenly upon me. + +"What are _you_ going to do with your life, Steve?" he would ask. + +"There is no happiness in life without some form of service. Where do +you mean to serve? With your bent for science and natural history, it +wouldn't be difficult for you to get into the I.C.S. I doubt if you'd do +anything at the law; it's a rough game, Steve, though the prizes are +big. Big prizes the lawyers get. I've known a man in the Privy Council +under forty--and that without anything much in the way of a family.... +But always one must concentrate. The one thing England will not stand is +a loafer, a wool-gatherer, a man who goes about musing and half-awake. +It's our energy. We're western. It's that has made us all we are." + +I knew whither that pointed. Never so far as I can remember did Mr. +Siddons criticize either myself or my father directly, but I understood +with the utmost clearness that he found my father indolent and +hesitating, and myself more than a little bit of a mollycoddle, and in +urgent need of pulling together. + + +§ 6 + +Harbury went on with that process of suppressing, encrusting, hardening, +and bracing-up which Mr. Siddons had begun. For a time I pulled myself +together very thoroughly. I am not ungrateful nor unfaithful to Harbury; +in your turn you will go there, you will have to live your life in this +British world of ours and you must learn its language and manners, +acquire its reserves and develop the approved toughness and patterning +of cuticle. Afterwards if you please you may quarrel with it. But don't +when the time comes quarrel with the present conditions of human +association and think it is only with Harbury you quarrel. What man has +become and may become beneath the masks and impositions of civilization, +in his intimate texture and in the depths of his being, I begin now in +my middle age to appreciate. No longer is he an instinctive savage but a +creature of almost incredible variability and wonderful new +possibilities. Marvels undreamt of, power still inconceivable, an empire +beyond the uttermost stars; such is man's inheritance. But for the +present, until we get a mastery of those vague and mighty intimations at +once so perplexing and so reassuring, if we are to live at all in the +multitudinousness of human society we must submit to some scheme of +clumsy compromises and conventions or other,--and for us Strattons the +Harbury system is the most convenient. You will have to go to the old +school. + +I went to Rendle's. I just missed getting into college; I was two places +below the lowest successful boy. I was Maxton's fag to begin with, and +my chief chum was Raymond, who is your friend also, and who comes so +often to this house. I preferred water to land, boats to cricket, +because of that difficulty about pitch I have already mentioned. But I +was no great sportsman. Raymond and I shared a boat, and spent most of +the time we gave to it under the big trees near Dartpool Lock, reading +or talking. We would pull up to Sandy Hall perhaps once a week. I never +rowed in any of the eights, though I was urged to do so. I swam fairly +well, and got my colors on the strength of my diving. + +On the whole I found Harbury a satisfactory and amusing place, I was +neither bullied nor do I think I greatly bullied, and of all that +furtive and puerile lasciviousness of which one hears so many hints +nowadays--excitable people talk of it as though it was the most +monstrous and singular of vices instead of a slightly debasing but +almost unavoidable and very obvious result of heaping boys together +under the inefficient control of a timid pretentious class of men--of +such uncleanness as I say, scarcely more than a glimpse and a whisper +and a vague tentative talk or so reached me. Little more will reach you, +for that kind of thing, like the hells of Swedenborg, finds its own. + +I had already developed my growing instinct for observance to a very +considerable extent under Siddons, and at Harbury I remember myself, and +people remember me, as an almost stiffly correct youth. I was pretty +good at most of the work, and exceptionally so at history, geology, and +the biological side of natural science. I had to restrain my interest in +these latter subjects lest I should appear to be a "swat," and a +modern-side swat at that. I was early in the sixth, and rather a +favorite with old Latimer. He incited me to exercise what he called a +wholesome influence on the younger boys, and I succeeded in doing this +fairly well without any gross interventions. I implied rather than +professed soundly orthodox views about things in general, and I was +extremely careful to tilt my straw hat forward over my nose so as just +not to expose the crown of my head behind, and to turn up my trousers +with exactly that width of margin which the judgment of my +fellow-creatures had decided was correct. My socks were spirited without +being vulgar, and the ties I wore were tied with a studious avoidance +of either slovenliness or priggish neatness. I wrote two articles in the +Harburonian, became something of a debater in the Literacy and +Political, conducted many long conversations with my senior +contemporaries upon religion, politics, sport and social life, and +concealed my inmost thoughts from every human being. Indeed, so +effective had been the training of Harbury and Mr. Siddons, that I think +at that time I came very near concealing them from myself. I could +suppress wonder, I could pass by beauty as if I did not see it, almost I +think I did not see it for a time, and yet I remember it in those years +too--a hundred beautiful things. + +Harbury itself is a very beautiful place. The country about it has all +the charm of river scenery in a settled and ancient land, and the great +castle and piled town of Wetmore, cliffs of battlemented grey wall +rising above a dense cluster of red roofs, form the background to +innumerable gracious prospects of great stream-fed trees, level meadows +of buttercups, sweeping curves of osier and rush-rimmed river, the +playing fields and the sedgy, lily-spangled levels of Avonlea. The +college itself is mostly late Tudor and Stuart brickwork, very ripe and +mellow now, but the great grey chapel with its glorious east window +floats over the whole like a voice singing in the evening. And the +evening cloudscapes of Harbury are a perpetual succession of glorious +effects, now serene, now mysteriously threatening and profound, now +towering to incredible heights, now revealing undreamt-of distances of +luminous color. Assuredly I must have delighted in all those aspects, or +why should I remember them so well? But I recall, I mean, no confessed +recognition of them; no deliberate going-out of my spirit, open and +unashamed, to such things. + +I suppose one's early adolescence is necessarily the period of maximum +shyness in one's life. Even to Raymond I attempted no extremities of +confidence. Even to myself I tried to be the thing that was expected of +me. I professed a modest desire for temperate and tolerable achievement +in life, though deep in my lost depths I wanted passionately to excel; I +worked hard, much harder than I allowed to appear, and I said I did it +for the credit of the school; I affected a dignified loyalty to queen +and country and church; I pretended a stoical disdain for appetites and +delights and all the arts, though now and then a chance fragment of +poetry would light me like a fire, or a lovely picture stir unwonted +urgencies, though visions of delight haunted the shadows of my +imagination and did not always fly when I regarded them. But on the +other hand I affected an interest in games that I was far from feeling. +Of some boys I was violently jealous, and this also I masked beneath a +generous appreciation. Certain popularities I applauded while I doubted. +Whatever my intimate motives I became less and less disposed to obey +them until I had translated them into a plausible rendering of the +accepted code. If I could not so translate them I found it wise to +control them. When I wanted urgently one summer to wander by night over +the hills towards Kestering and lie upon heather and look up at the +stars and wonder about them, I cast about and at last hit upon the +well-known and approved sport of treacling for moths, as a cloak for so +strange an indulgence. + +I must have known even then what a mask and front I was, because I knew +quite well how things were with other people. I listened politely and +respected and understood the admirable explanations of my friends. When +some fellow got a scholarship unexpectedly and declared it was rotten +bad luck on the other chap, seeing the papers he had done, and doubted +whether he shouldn't resign, I had an intuitive knowledge that he +wouldn't resign, and I do not remember any time in my career as the +respectful listener to Mr. Siddons' aspirations for service and +devotion, when I did not perceive quite clearly his undeviating eye upon +a bishopric. He thought of gaiters though he talked of wings. + +How firmly the bonds of an old relationship can hold one! I remember +when a few years ago he reached that toiled-for goal, I wrote in a tone +of gratified surprise that in this blatant age, such disinterested +effort as his should receive even so belated a recognition. Yet what +else was there for me to write? We all have our Siddonses, with whom +there are no alternatives but insincerity or a disproportionate +destructiveness. I am still largely Siddonsized, little son, and so, I +fear, you will have to be. + + +§ 7 + +The clue to all the perplexities of law and custom lies in this, that +human association is an artificiality. We do not run together naturally +and easily as grazing deer do or feeding starlings or a shoal of fish. +We are a sort of creature which is only resuming association after a +long heredity of extreme separation. We are beings strongly +individualized, we are dominated by that passion which is no more and +no less than individuality in action,--jealousy. Jealousy is a fierce +insistence on ourselves, an instinctive intolerance of our +fellow-creatures, ranging between an insatiable aggression as its +buoyant phase and a savage defensiveness when it is touched by fear. In +our expansive moments we want to dominate and control everyone and +destroy every unlikeness to ourselves; in our recessive phases our homes +are our castles and we want to be let alone. + +Now all law, all social order, all custom, is a patch-up and a +concession to this separating passion of self-insistence. It is an +evasion of conflict and social death. Human society is as yet only a +truce and not an alliance. + +When you understand that, you will begin to understand a thousand +perplexing things in legislation and social life. You will understand +the necessity of all those restrictions that are called +"conventionality," and the inevitableness of the general hostility to +singularity. To be exceptional is to assert a difference, to disregard +the banked-up forces of jealousy and break the essential conditions of +the social contract. It invites either resentment or aggression. So we +all wear much the same clothing, affect modesty, use the same phrases, +respect one another's "rights," and pretend a greater disinterestedness +than we feel.... + +You have to face this reality as you must face all reality. This is the +reality of laws and government; this is the reality of customs and +institutions; _a convention between jealousies_. This is reality, just +as the cat's way with the nestlings was reality, and the squealing rat +one smashed in a paroxysm of cruelty and disgust in the barn. + +But it isn't the only reality. Equally real is the passionate revolt of +my heart against cruelty, and the deep fluctuating impulse not to +pretend, to set aside fear and jealousy, to come nakedly out of the +compromises and secretive methods of every-day living into the light, +into a wide impersonal love, into a new way of living for mankind.... + + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD + +INTENTIONS AND THE LADY MARY CHRISTIAN + + +§ 1 + +I know that before the end of my Harbury days I was already dreaming of +a Career, of some great and conspicuous usefulness in the world. That +has always haunted my mind and haunts it now. I may be cured perhaps of +the large and showy anticipations of youth, I may have learnt to drop +the "great and conspicuous," but still I find it necessary to believe +that I matter, that I play a part no one else can play in a progress, in +a universal scheme moving towards triumphant ends. + +Almost wholly I think I was dreaming of public service in those days. +The Harbury tradition pointed steadfastly towards the state, and all my +world was bare of allurements to any other type of ambition. Success in +art or literature did not appeal to us, and a Harbury boy would as soon +think of being a great tinker as a great philosopher. Science we called +"stinks"; our three science masters were _ex officio_ ridiculous and the +practical laboratory a refuge for oddities. But a good half of our +fathers at least were peers or members of parliament, and our sense of +politics was close and keen. History, and particularly history as it +came up through the eighteenth century to our own times, supplied us +with a gallery of intimate models, our great uncles and grandfathers and +ancestors at large figured abundantly in the story and furnished the +pattern to which we cut our anticipations of life. It was a season of +Imperialism, the picturesque Imperialism of the earlier Kipling phase, +and we were all of us enthusiasts for the Empire. It was the empire of +the White Man's Burthen in those days; the sordid anti-climax of the +Tariff Reform Movement was still some years ahead of us. It was easier +for us at Harbury to believe then than it has become since, in our own +racial and national and class supremacy. We were the Anglo-Saxons, the +elect of the earth, leading the world in social organization, in science +and economic method. In India and the east more particularly we were the +apostles of even-handed justice, relentless veracity, personal +cleanliness, and modern efficiency. In a spirit of adventurous +benevolence we were spreading those blessings over a reluctant and +occasionally recalcitrant world of people for the most part "colored." +Our success in this had aroused the bitter envy and rivalry of various +continental nations, and particularly of France, Russia, and Germany. +But France had been diverted to North Africa, Russia to Eastern Asia, +and Germany was already the most considered antagonist in our path +towards an empire over the world. + +This was the spacious and by no means ignoble project of the later +nineties. Most of us Harbury boys, trained as I had been trained to be +uncritical, saw the national outlook in those terms. We knew little or +nothing, until the fierce wranglings of the Free Traders and Tariff +Reformers a few years later brought it home to us, of the commercial, +financial and squalid side of our relations with the vast congeries of +exploited new territories and subordinated and subjugated populations. +We knew nothing of the social conditions of the mass of people in our +own country. We were blankly ignorant of economics. We knew nothing of +that process of expropriation and the exploitation of labor which is +giving the world the Servile State. The very phrase was twenty years +ahead of us. We believed that an Englishman was a better thing in every +way than any other sort of man, that English literature, science and +philosophy were a shining and unapproachable light to all other peoples, +that our soldiers were better than all other soldiers and our sailors +than all other sailors. Such civilization and enterprise as existed in +Germany for instance we regarded as a shadow, an envious shadow, +following our own; it was still generally believed in those days that +German trade was concerned entirely with the dishonest imitation of our +unapproachable English goods. And as for the United States, well, the +United States though blessed with a strain of English blood, were +nevertheless "out of it," marooned in a continent of their own and--we +had to admit it--corrupt. + +Given such ignorance, you know, it wasn't by any means ignoble to be +patriotic, to dream of this propagandist Empire of ours spreading its +great peace and culture, its virtue and its amazing and unprecedented +honesty,--its honesty!--round the world. + + +§ 2 + +When I look and try to recover those early intentions of mine I am +astonished at the way in which I took them ready-made from the world +immediately about me. In some way I seem to have stopped looking--if +ever I had begun looking--at the heights and depths above and below that +immediate life. I seem to have regarded these profounder realities no +more during this phase of concentration than a cow in a field regards +the sky. My father's vestments, the Burnmore altar, the Harbury pulpit +and Mr. Siddons, stood between me and the idea of God, so that it needed +years and much bitter disillusionment before I discovered my need of it. +And I was as wanting in subtlety as in depth. We did no logic nor +philosophy at Harbury, and at Oxford it was not so much thought we came +to deal with as a mistranslation and vulgarization of ancient and alien +exercises in thinking. There is no such effective serum against +philosophy as the scholarly decoction of a dead philosopher. The +philosophical teaching of Oxford at the end of the last century was not +so much teaching as a protective inoculation. The stuff was administered +with a mysterious gilding of Greek and reverence, old Hegel's monstrous +web was the ultimate modernity, and Plato, that intellectual +journalist-artist, that bright, restless experimentalist in ideas, was +as it were the God of Wisdom, only a little less omniscient (and on the +whole more of a scholar and a gentleman) than the God of fact.... + +So I fell back upon the empire in my first attempts to unify my life. I +would serve the empire. That should be my total significance. There was +a Roman touch, I perceive, in this devotion. Just how or where I should +serve the empire I had not as yet determined. At times I thought of the +civil service, in my more ambitious moments I turned my thoughts to +politics. But it was doubtful whether my private expectations made the +last a reasonable possibility. + +I would serve the empire. + + +§ 3 + +And all the while that the first attempts to consolidate, to gather +one's life together into a purpose and a plan of campaign, are going on +upon the field of the young man's life, there come and go and come again +in the sky above him the threatening clouds, the ethereal cirrus, the +red dawns and glowing afternoons of that passion of love which is the +source and renewal of being. There are times when that solicitude +matters no more than a spring-time sky to a runner who wins towards the +post, there are times when its passionate urgency dominates every fact +in his world. + + +§ 4 + +One must have children and love them passionately before one realizes +the deep indignity of accident in life. It is not that I mind so much +when unexpected and disconcerting things happen to you or your sisters, +but that I mind before they happen. My dreams and anticipations of your +lives are all marred by my sense of the huge importance mere chance +encounters and incalculable necessities will play in them. And in +friendship and still more here, in this central business of love, +accident rules it seems to me almost altogether. What personalities you +will encounter in life, and have for a chief interest in life, is nearly +as much a matter of chance as the drift of a grain of pollen in the +pine forest. And once the light hazard has blown it has blown, never to +drive again. In other schoolrooms and nurseries, in slum living-rooms +perhaps or workhouse wards or palaces, round the other side of the +earth, in Canada or Russia or China, other little creatures are trying +their small limbs, clutching at things about them with infantile hands, +who someday will come into your life with a power and magic monstrous +and irrational and irresistible. They will break the limits of your +concentrating self, call you out to the service of beauty and the +service of the race, sound you to your highest and your lowest, give you +your chance to be godlike or filthy, divine or utterly ignoble, react +together with you upon the very core and essence of your being. These +unknowns are the substance of your fate. You will in extreme intimacy +love them, hate them, serve them, struggle with them, and in that +interaction the vital force in you and the substance of your days will +be spent. + +And who they may chance to be and their peculiar quality and effect is +haphazard, utterly beyond designing. + +Law and custom conspire with the natural circumstances of man to +exaggerate every consequence of this accumulating accident, and make it +definite and fatal.... + +I find it quite impossible now to recall the steps and stages by which +this power of sex invaded my life. It seems to me now that it began very +much as a gale begins, in catspaws upon the water and little rustlings +among the leaves, and then stillness and then a distant soughing again +and a pause, and then a wider and longer disturbance and so more and +more, with a gathering continuity, until at last the stars were hidden, +the heavens were hidden; all the heights and depths of life were +obscured by stormy impulses and passionate desires. I suppose that +quite at the first there were simple curiosities; no doubt they were +vivid at the time but they have left scarcely a trace; there were vague +first intimations of a peculiar excitement. I do remember more +distinctly phases when there was a going-out from myself towards these +things, these interests, and then a reaction of shame and concealment. + +And these memories were mixed up with others not sexual at all, and +particularly with the perception of beauty in things inanimate, with +lights seen at twilight and the tender mysteriousness of the dusk and +the confused disturbing scents of flowers in the evening and the +enigmatical serene animation of stars in the summer sky.... + +I think perhaps that my boyhood was exceptionally free from vulgarizing +influences in this direction. There were few novels in my father's house +and I neither saw nor read any plays until I was near manhood, so that I +thought naturally about love and not rather artificially round and about +love as so many imaginative young people are trained to do. I fell in +love once or twice while I was still quite a boy. These earliest +experiences rarely got beyond a sort of dumb awe, a vague, vast, +ineffectual desire for self-immolation. For a time I remember I +worshipped Lady Ladislaw with all my being. Then I talked to a girl in a +train--I forget upon what journey--but I remember very vividly her quick +color and a certain roguish smile. I spread my adoration at her feet, +fresh and frank. I wanted to write to her. Indeed I wanted to devote all +my being to her. I begged hard, but there was someone called Auntie who +had to be considered, an Atropos for that thread of romance. + +Then there was a photograph in my father's study of the Delphic Sibyl +from the Sistine Chapel, that for a time held my heart, and--Yes, there +was a girl in a tobacconist's shop in the Harbury High Street. Drawn by +an irresistible impulse I used to go and buy cigarettes--and sometimes +converse about the weather. But afterwards in solitude I would meditate +tremendous conversations and encounters with her. The cigarettes +increased the natural melancholy of my state and led to a reproof from +old Henson. Almost always I suppose there is that girl in the +tobacconist's shop.... + +I believe if I made an effort I could disinter some dozens of such +memories, more and more faded until the marginal ones would be +featureless and all but altogether effaced. As I look back at it now I +am struck by an absurd image; it is as if a fish nibbled at this bait +and then at that. + +Given but the slightest aid from accidental circumstances and any of +those slight attractions might have become a power to deflect all my +life. + +The day of decision arrived when, the Lady Mary Christian came smiling +out of the sunshine to me into the pavilion at Burnmore. With that the +phase of stirrings and intimations was over for ever in my life. All +those other impressions went then to the dusty lumber room from which I +now so slightingly disinter them. + + +§ 5 + +We five had all been playmates together. There were Lord Maxton, who was +killed at Paardeberg while I was in Ladysmith, he was my senior by +nearly a year, Philip, who is now Earl Ladislaw and who was about +eighteen months younger than I, Mary, my contemporary within eight days, +and Guy, whom we regarded as a baby and who was called, apparently on +account of some early linguistic efforts, "Brugglesmith." He did his +best to avenge his juniority as time passed on by an enormous length of +limb. I had more imagination than Maxton and was a good deal better +read, so that Mary and I dominated most of the games of Indians and +warfare and exploration in which we passed our long days together. When +the Christians were at Burnmore, and they usually spent three or four +months in the year there, I had a kind of standing invitation to be with +them. Sometimes there would also be two Christian cousins to swell our +party, and sometimes there would be a raid of the Fawney children with a +detestable governess who was perpetually vociferating reproaches, but +these latter were absent-minded, lax young persons, and we did not +greatly love them. + +It is curious how little I remember of Mary's childhood. All that has +happened between us since lies between that and my present self like +some luminous impenetrable mist. I know we liked each other, that I was +taller than she was and thought her legs unreasonably thin, and that +once when I knelt by accident on a dead stick she had brought into an +Indian camp we had made near the end of the west shrubbery, she flew at +me in a sudden fury, smacked my face, scratched me and had to be +suppressed, and was suppressed with extreme difficulty by the united +manhood of us three elder boys. Then it was I noted first the blazing +blueness of her eyes. She was light and very plucky, so that none of us +cared to climb against her, and she was as difficult to hold as an eel. +But all these traits and characteristics vanished when she was +transformed. + +For what seems now a long space of time I had not seen her or any of the +family except Philip; it was certainly a year or more, probably two; +Maxton was at a crammer's and I think the others must have been in +Canada with Lord Ladislaw. Then came some sort of estrangement between +him and his wife, and she returned with Mary and Guy to Burnmore and +stayed there all through the summer. + +I was in a state of transition between the infinitely great and the +infinitely little. I had just ceased to be that noble and potent being, +that almost statesmanlike personage, a sixth form boy at Harbury, and I +was going to be an Oxford undergraduate. Philip and I came down together +by the same train from Harbury, I shared the Burnmore dog-cart and +luggage cart, and he dropped me at the rectory. I was a long-limbed +youngster of seventeen, as tall as I am now, and fair, so fair that I +was still boyish-faced while most of my contemporaries and Philip (who +favored his father) were at least smudgy with moustaches. With the +head-master's valediction and the grave elder-brotherliness of old +Henson, and the shrill cheers of a little crowd of juniors still echoing +in my head, I very naturally came home in a mood of exalted gravity, and +I can still remember pacing up and down the oblong lawn behind the +rockery and the fig-tree wall with my father, talking of my outlook with +all the tremendous _savoir faire_ that was natural to my age, and noting +with a secret gratification that our shoulders were now on a level. No +doubt we were discussing Oxford and all that I was to do at Oxford; I +don't remember a word of our speech though I recall the exact tint of +its color and the distinctive feeling of our measured equal paces in the +sunshine.... + +I must have gone up to Burnmore House the following afternoon. I went up +alone and I was sent out through the little door at the end of the big +gallery into the garden. In those days Lady Ladislaw had made an Indian +pavilion under the tall trees at the east end of the house, and here I +found her with her cousin Helena Christian entertaining a mixture of +people, a carriageful from Hampton End, the two elder Fawneys and a man +in brown who had I think ridden over from Chestoxter Castle. Lady +Ladislaw welcomed me with ample graciousness--as though I was a +personage. "The children" she said were still at tennis, and as she +spoke I saw Guy, grown nearly beyond recognition and then a shining +being in white, very straight and graceful, with a big soft hat and +overshadowed eyes that smiled, come out from the hurried endearments of +the sunflakes under the shadows of the great chestnuts, into the glow of +summer light before the pavilion. + +"Steve arrived!" she cried, and waved a welcoming racquet. + +I do not remember what I said to her or what else she said or what +anyone said. But I believe I could paint every detail of her effect. I +know that when she came out of the brightness into the shadow of the +pavilion it was like a regal condescension, and I know that she was +wonderfully self-possessed and helpful with her mother's hospitalities, +and that I marvelled I had never before perceived the subtler sweetness +in the cadence of her voice. I seem also to remember a severe internal +struggle for my self-possession, and that I had to recall my exalted +position in the sixth form to save myself from becoming tongue-tied and +abashed and awkward and utterly shamed. + +You see she had her hair up and very prettily dressed, and those +aggressive lean legs of hers had vanished, and she was sheathed in +muslin that showed her the most delicately slender and beautiful of +young women. And she seemed so radiantly sure of herself! + +After our first greeting I do not think I spoke to her or looked at her +again throughout the meal. I took things that she handed me with an +appearance of supreme indifference, was politely attentive to the elder +Miss Fawney, and engaged with Lady Ladislaw and the horsey little man in +brown in a discussion of the possibility of mechanical vehicles upon the +high road. That was in the early nineties. We were all of opinion that +it was impossible to make a sufficiently light engine for the purpose. +Afterwards Mary confessed to me how she had been looking forward to our +meeting, and how snubbed I had made her feel.... + +Then a little later than this meeting in the pavilion, though I am not +clear now whether it was the same or some subsequent afternoon, we are +walking in the sunken garden, and great clouds of purple clematis and +some less lavish heliotrope-colored creeper, foam up against the ruddy +stone balustrading. Just in front of us a fountain gushes out of a +grotto of artificial stalagmite and bathes the pedestal of an absurd +little statuette of the God of Love. We are talking almost easily. She +looks sideways at my face, already with the quiet controlled +watchfulness of a woman interested in a man, she smiles and she talks of +flowers and sunshine, the Canadian winter--and with an abrupt +transition, of old times we've had together in the shrubbery and the +wilderness of bracken out beyond. She seems tremendously grown-up and +womanly to me. I am talking my best, and glad, and in a manner scared at +the thrill her newly discovered beauty gives me, and keeping up my +dignity and coherence with an effort. My attention is constantly being +distracted to note how prettily she moves, to wonder why it is I never +noticed the sweet fall, the faint delightful whisper of a lisp in her +voice before. + +We agree about the flowers and the sunshine and the Canadian +winter--about everything. "I think so often of those games we used to +invent," she declares. "So do I," I say, "so do I." And then with a +sudden boldness: "Once I broke a stick of yours, a rotten stick you +thought a sound one. Do you remember?" + +Then we laugh together and seem to approach across a painful, +unnecessary distance that has separated us. It vanishes for ever. "I +couldn't now," she says, "smack your face like that, Stephen." + +That seems to me a brilliantly daring and delightful thing for her to +say, and jolly of her to use my Christian name too! "I believe I +scratched," she adds. + +"You never scratched," I assert with warm conviction. "Never." + +"I did," she insists and I deny. "You couldn't." + +"We're growing up," she cries. "That's what has happened to us. We shall +never fight again with our hands and feet, never--until death do us +part." + +"For better, or worse," I say, with a sense of wit and enterprise beyond +all human precedent. + +"For richer, or poorer," she cries, taking up my challenge with a +lifting laugh in her voice. + +And then to make it all nothing again, she exclaims at the white lilies +that rise against masses of sweet bay along the further wall.... + +How plainly I can recall it all! How plainly and how brightly! As we +came up the broad steps at the further end towards the tennis lawn, she +turned suddenly upon me and with a novel assurance of command told me to +stand still. "_There_," she said with a hand out and seemed to survey me +with her chin up and her white neck at the level of my eyes. "Yes. A +whole step," she estimated, "and more, taller than I. You will look down +on me, Stephen, now, for all the rest of our days." + +"I shall always stand," I answered, "a step or so below you." + +"No," she said, "come up to the level. A girl should be smaller than a +man. You are a man, Stephen--almost.... You must be near six feet.... +Here's Guy with the box of balls." + +She flitted about the tennis court before me, playing with Philip +against Guy and myself. She punished some opening condescensions with a +wicked vigor--and presently Guy and I were straining every nerve to save +the set. She had a low close serve I remember that seemed perfectly +straightforward and simple, and was very difficult to return. + + +§ 6 + +All that golden summer on the threshold of my manhood was filled by +Mary. I loved her with the love of a boy and a man. Either I was with +Mary or I was hoping and planning to be with Mary or I was full of some +vivid new impression of her or some enigmatical speech, some pregnant +nothing, some glance or gesture engaged and perplexed my mind. In those +days I slept the profound sweet sleep of youth, but whenever that deep +flow broke towards the shallows, as I sank into it at night and came out +of it at morning, I passed through dreams of Mary to and from a world of +waking thought of her. + +There must have been days of friendly intercourse when it seemed we +talked nothings and wandered and meandered among subjects, but always we +had our eyes on one another. And afterwards I would spend long hours in +recalling and analyzing those nothings, questioning their nothingness, +making out of things too submerged and impalpable for the rough drags of +recollection, promises and indications. I would invent ingenious things +to say, things pushing out suddenly from nothingness to extreme +significance. I rehearsed a hundred declarations. + +It was easy for us to be very much together. We were very free that +summer and life was all leisure. Lady Ladislaw was busied with her own +concerns; she sometimes went away for two or three days leaving no one +but an attenuated governess with even the shadow of a claim to interfere +with Mary. Moreover she was used to seeing me with her children at +Burnmore; we were still in her eyes no more than children.... And also +perhaps she did not greatly mind if indeed we did a little fall in love +together. To her that may have seemed a very natural and slight and +transitory possibility.... + +One afternoon of warm shadows in the wood near the red-lacquered Chinese +bridge, we two were alone together and we fell silent. I was trembling +and full of a wild courage. I can feel now the exquisite surmise, the +doubt of that moment. Our eyes met. She looked up at me with an +unwonted touch of fear in her expression and I laid my hands on her. She +did not recoil, she stood mute with her lips pressed together, looking +at me steadfastly. I can feel that moment now as a tremendous +hesitation, blank and yet full of light and life, like a clear sky in +the moment before dawn.... + +She made a little move towards me. Impulsively, with no word said, we +kissed. + + +§ 7 + +I would like very much to give you a portrait of Mary as she was in +those days. Every portrait I ever had of her I burnt in the sincerity of +what was to have been our final separation, and now I have nothing of +her in my possession. I suppose that in the files of old illustrated +weeklies somewhere, a score of portraits must be findable. Yet +photographs have a queer quality of falsehood. They have no movement and +always there was a little movement about Mary just as there is always a +little scent about flowers. She was slender and graceful, so that she +seemed taller than she was, she had beautifully shaped arms and a +brightness in her face; it seemed to me always that there was light in +her face, more than the light that shone upon it. Her fair, very +slightly reddish hair--it was warm like Australian gold--flowed with a +sort of joyous bravery back from her low broad forehead; the color under +her delicate skin was bright and quick, and her mouth always smiled +faintly. There was a peculiar charm for me about her mouth, a +whimsicality, a sort of humorous resolve in the way in which the upper +lip fell upon the lower and in a faint obliquity that increased with +her quickening smile. She spoke with a very clear delicate intonation +that made one want to hear her speak again; she often said faintly +daring things, and when she did, she had that little catch in the +breath--of one who dares. She did not talk hastily; often before she +spoke came a brief grave pause. Her eyes were brightly blue except when +the spirit of mischief took her and then they became black, and there +was something about the upper and lower lids that made them not only the +prettiest but the sweetest and kindliest eyes in the world. And she +moved with a quiet rapidity, without any needless movements, to do +whatever she had a mind to do.... + +But how impossible it is to convey the personal charm of a human being. +I catalogue these things and it is as if she moved about silently behind +my stumbling enumeration and smiled at me still, with her eyes a little +darkened, mocking me. That phantom will never be gone from my mind. It +was all of these things and none of these things that made me hers, as I +have never been any other person's.... + +We grew up together. The girl of nineteen mingles in my memory with the +woman of twenty-five. + +Always we were equals, or if anything she was the better of us two. I +never made love to her in the commoner sense of the word, a sense in +which the woman is conceived of as shy, unawakened, younger, more +plastic, and the man as tempting, creating responses, persuading and +compelling. We made love to each other as youth should, we were friends +lit by a passion.... I think that is the best love. If I could wish your +future I would have you love someone neither older and stronger nor +younger and weaker than yourself. I would have you have neither a toy +nor a devotion, for the one makes the woman contemptible and the other +the man. There should be something almost sisterly between you. Love +neither a goddess nor a captive woman. But I would wish you a better +fate in your love than chanced to me. + +Mary was not only naturally far more quick-minded, more swiftly +understanding than I, but more widely educated. Mine was the stiff +limited education of the English public school and university; I could +not speak and read and think French and German as she could for all that +I had a pedantic knowledge of the older forms of those tongues; and the +classics and mathematics upon which I had spent the substance of my +years were indeed of little use to me, have never been of any real use +to me, they were ladders too clumsy to carry about and too short to +reach anything. My general ideas came from the newspapers and the +reviews. She on the other hand had read much, had heard no end of good +conversation, the conversation of people who mattered, had thought for +herself and had picked the brains of her brothers. Her mother had let +her read whatever books she liked, partly because she believed that was +the proper thing to do, and partly because it was so much less trouble +to be liberal in such things. + +We had the gravest conversations. + +I do not remember that we talked much of love, though we were very much +in love. We kissed; sometimes greatly daring we walked hand in hand; +once I took her in my arms and carried her over a swampy place beyond +the Killing Wood, and held her closely to me; that was a great event +between us; but we were shy of one another, shy even of very intimate +words; and a thousand daring and beautiful things I dreamt of saying to +her went unsaid. I do not remember any endearing names from that time. +But we jested and shared our humors, shaped our developing ideas in +quaint forms to amuse one another and talked--as young men talk +together. + +We talked of religion; I think she was the first person to thaw the +private silences that had kept me bound in these matters even from +myself for years. I can still recall her face, a little flushed and +coming nearer to mine after avowals and comparisons. "But Stephen," she +says; "if none of these things are really true, why do they keep on +telling them to us? What is true? What are we for? What is Everything +for?" + +I remember the awkwardness I felt at these indelicate thrusts into +topics I had come to regard as forbidden. + +"I suppose there's a sort of truth in them," I said, and then more +Siddonsesquely: "endless people wiser than we are----" + +"Yes," she said. "But that doesn't matter to us. Endless people wiser +than we are have said one thing, and endless people wiser than we are +have said exactly the opposite. It's _we_ who have to understand--for +ourselves.... We don't understand, Stephen." + +I was forced to a choice between faith and denial. But I parried with +questions. "Don't you," I asked, "feel there is a God?" + +She hesitated. "There is something--something very beautiful," she said +and stopped as if her breath had gone. "That is all I know, Stephen...." + +And I remember too that we talked endlessly about the things I was to do +in the world. I do not remember that we talked about the things she was +to do, by some sort of instinct and some sort of dexterity she evaded +that, from the very first she had reserves from me, but my career and +purpose became as it were the form in which we discussed all the +purposes of life. I became Man in her imagination, the protagonist of +the world. At first I displayed the modest worthy desire for respectable +service that Harbury had taught me, but her clear, sceptical little +voice pierced and tore all those pretences to shreds. "Do some decent +public work," I said, or some such phrase. + +"But is that All you want?" I hear her asking. "Is that All you want?" + +I lay prone upon the turf and dug up a root of grass with my penknife. +"Before I met you it was," I said. + +"And now?" + +"I want you." + +"I'm nothing to want. I want you to want all the world.... _Why +shouldn't you?_" + +I think I must have talked of the greatness of serving the empire. "Yes, +but splendidly," she insisted. "Not doing little things for other +people--who aren't doing anything at all. I want you to conquer people +and lead people.... When I see you, Stephen, sometimes--I almost wish I +were a man. In order to be able to do all the things that you are going +to do." + +"For you," I said, "for you." + +I stretched out my hand for hers, and my gesture went disregarded. + +She sat rather crouched together with her eyes gazing far away across +the great spaces of the park. + +"That is what women are for," she said. "To make men see how splendid +life can be. To lift them up--out of a sort of timid grubbiness----" She +turned upon me suddenly. "Stephen," she said, "promise me. Whatever you +become, you promise and swear here and now never to be grey and grubby, +never to be humpy and snuffy, never to be respectable and modest and +dull and a little fat, like--like everybody. Ever." + +"I swear," I said. + +"By me." + +"By you. No book to kiss! Please, give me your hand." + + +§ 8 + +All through that summer we saw much of each other. I was up at the House +perhaps every other day; we young people were supposed to be all in a +company together down by the tennis lawns, but indeed we dispersed and +came and went by a kind of tacit understanding, Guy and Philip each with +one of the Fawney girls and I with Mary. I put all sorts of +constructions upon the freedom I was given with her, but I perceive now +that we still seemed scarcely more than children to Lady Ladislaw, and +that the idea of our marriage was as inconceivable to her as if we had +been brother and sister. Matrimonially I was as impossible as one of the +stable boys. All the money I could hope to earn for years to come would +not have sufficed even to buy Mary clothes. But as yet we thought little +of matters so remote, glad in our wonderful new discovery of love, and +when at last I went off to Oxford, albeit the parting moved us to much +tenderness and vows and embraces, I had no suspicion that never more in +all our lives would Mary and I meet freely and gladly without +restriction. Yet so it was. From that day came restraints and +difficulties; the shadow of furtiveness fell between us; our +correspondence had to be concealed. + +I went to Oxford as one goes into exile; she to London. I would post to +her so that the letters reached Landor House before lunch time when the +sun of Lady Ladislaw came over the horizon, but indeed as yet no one was +watching her letters. Afterwards as she moved about she gave me other +instructions, and for the most part I wrote to her in envelopes +addressed for her by one of the Fawney girls, who was under her spell +and made no enquiry for what purpose these envelopes were needed. + +To me of course Mary wrote without restraint. All her letters to me were +destroyed after our crisis, but some of mine to her she kept for many +years; at last they came back to me so that I have them now. And for all +their occasional cheapness and crudity, I do not find anything in them +to be ashamed of. They reflect, they are chiefly concerned with that +search for a career of fine service which was then the chief +preoccupation of my mind, the bias is all to a large imperialism, but it +is manifest that already the first ripples of a rising tide of criticism +against the imperialist movement had reached and were exercising me. In +one letter I am explaining that imperialism is not a mere +aggressiveness, but the establishment of peace and order throughout half +the world. "We may never withdraw," I wrote with all the confidence of a +Foreign Secretary, "from all these great territories of ours, but we +shall stay only to raise their peoples ultimately to an equal +citizenship with ourselves." And then in the same letter: "and if I do +not devote myself to the Empire what else is there that gives anything +like the same opportunity of a purpose in life." I find myself in +another tolerantly disposed to "accept socialism," but manifestly +hostile to "the narrow mental habits of the socialists." The large note +of youth! And in another I am clearly very proud and excited and a +little mock-modest over the success of my first two speeches in the +Union. + +On the whole I like the rather boyish, tremendously serious young man of +those letters. An egotist, of course, but what youth was ever anything +else? I may write that much freely now, for by this time he is almost as +much outside my personality as you or my father. He is the young +Stratton, one of a line. I like his gravity; if youth is not grave with +all the great spectacle of life opening at its feet, then surely no age +need be grave. I love and envy his simplicity and honesty. His sham +modesty and so forth are so translucent as scarcely to matter. It is +clear I was opening my heart to myself as I opened it to Mary. I wasn't +acting to her. I meant what I said. And as I remember her answers she +took much the same high tone with me, though her style of writing was +far lighter than mine, more easy and witty and less continuous. She +flashed and flickered. As for confessed love-making there is very +little,--I find at the end of one of my notes after the signature, "I +love you, I love you." And she was even more restrained. Such little +phrases as "Dear Stevenage"--that was one of her odd names for me--"I +wish you were here," or "Dear, _dear_ Stevenage," were epistolary +events, and I would re-read the blessed wonderful outbreak a hundred +times.... + +Our separation lengthened. There was a queer detached unexpected +meeting in London in December, for some afternoon gathering. I was shy +and the more disconcerted because she was in winter town clothes that +made her seem strange and changed. Then came the devastating intimation +that all through the next summer the Ladislaws were to be in Scotland. + +I did my boyish utmost to get to Scotland. They were at Lankart near +Invermoriston, and the nearest thing I could contrive was to join a +reading party in Skye, a reading party of older men who manifestly had +no great desire for me. For more than a year we never met at all, and +all sorts of new things happened to us both. I perceived they happened +to me, but I did not think they happened to her. Of course we changed. +Of course in a measure and relatively we forgot. Of course there were +weeks when we never thought of each other at all. Then would come phases +of hunger. I remember a little note of hers. "Oh Stevenage," it was +scrawled, "perhaps next Easter!" Next Easter was an aching desolation. +The blinds of Burnmore House remained drawn; the place was empty except +for three old servants on board-wages. The Christians went instead to +the Canary Isles, following some occult impulse of Lady Ladislaw's. Lord +Ladislaw spent the winter in Italy. + +What an empty useless beauty the great Park possessed during those +seasons of intermission! There were a score of places in it we had made +our own.... + +Her letters to Oxford would cease for weeks, and suddenly revive and +become frequent. Now and then would come a love-letter that seemed to +shine like stars as I read it; for the most part they were low-pitched, +friendly or humorous letters in a roundish girlish writing that was +maturing into a squarely characteristic hand. My letters to her too I +suppose varied as greatly. We began to be used to living so apart. There +were weeks of silence.... + +Yet always when I thought of my life as a whole, Mary ruled it. With her +alone I had talked of my possible work and purpose; to her alone had I +confessed to ambitions beyond such modest worthiness as a public school +drills us to affect.... + +Then the whole sky of my life lit up again with a strange light of +excitement and hope. I had a note, glad and serenely friendly, to say +they were to spend all the summer at Burnmore. + +I remember how I handled and scrutinized that letter, seeking for some +intimation that our former intimacy was still alive. We were to meet. +How should we meet? How would she look at me? What would she think of +me? + + +§ 9 + +Of course it was all different. Our first encounter in this new phase +had a quality of extreme disillusionment. The warm living creature, who +would whisper, who would kiss with wonderful lips, who would say strange +daring things, who had soft hair one might touch with a thrilling and +worshipful hand, who changed one at a word or a look into a God of +pride, became as if she had been no more than a dream. A self-possessed +young aristocrat in white and brown glanced at me from amidst a group of +brilliant people on the terrace, nodded as it seemed quite carelessly +in acknowledgment of my salutation, and resumed her confident +conversation with a tall stooping man, no less a person than Evesham, +the Prime Minister. He was lunching at Burnmore on his way across +country to the Rileys. I heard that dear laugh of hers, as ready and +easy as when she laughed with me. I had not heard it for nearly three +years--nor any sound that had its sweetness. "But Mr. Evesham," she was +saying, "nowadays we don't believe that sort of thing----" + +"There are a lot of things still for you to believe," says Mr. Evesham +beaming. "A lot of things! One's capacity increases. It grows with +exercise. Justin will bear me out." + +Beyond her stood an undersized, brown-clad middle-aged man with a big +head, a dark face and expressive brown eyes fixed now in unrestrained +admiration on Mary's laughing face. This then was Justin, the incredibly +rich and powerful, whose comprehensive operations could make and break a +thousand fortunes in a day. He answered Evesham carelessly, with his +gaze still on Mary, and in a voice too low for my straining ears. There +was some woman in the group also, but she has left nothing upon my mind +whatever except an effect of black and a very decorative green sunshade. +She greeted Justin's remark, I remember, with the little yelp of +laughter that characterized that set. I think too there was someone else +in the group; but I cannot clearly recall who.... + +Presently as I and Philip made unreal conversation together I saw Mary +disengage herself and come towards us. It was as if a princess came +towards a beggar. Absurd are the changes of phase between women and +men. A year or so ago and all of us had been but "the children" +together; now here were I and Philip mere youths still, nobodies, echoes +and aspirations, crude promises at the best, and here was Mary in full +flower, as glorious and central as the Hampton Court azaleas in spring. + +"And this is Stephen," she said, aglow with happy confidence. + +I made no memorable reply, and there was a little pause thick with mute +questionings. + +"After lunch," she said with her eye on mine, "I am going to measure +against you on the steps. I'd hoped--when you weren't looking--I might +creep up----" + +"I've taken no advantage," I said. + +"You've kept your lead." + +Justin had followed her towards us, and now held out a hand to Philip. +"Well, Philip my boy," he said, and defined our places. Philip made some +introductory gesture with a word or so towards me. Justin glanced at me +as one might glance at someone's new dog, gave an expressionless nod to +my stiff movement of recognition, and addressed himself at once to Mary. + +"Lady Mary," he said, "I've wanted to tell you----" + +I caught her quick eye for a moment and knew she had more to say to me, +but neither she nor I had the skill and alacrity to get that said. + +"I wanted to tell you," said Justin, "I've found a little Japanese who's +done exactly what you wanted with that group of dwarf maples." + +She clearly didn't understand. + +"But what did I want, Mr. Justin?" she asked. + +"Don't say that you forget?" cried Justin. "Oh don't tell me you +forget! You wanted a little exact copy of a Japanese house---- I've had +it done. Beneath the trees...." + +"And so you're back in Burnmore, Mr. Stratton," said Lady Ladislaw +intervening between me and their duologue. And I never knew how pleased +Mary was with this faithful realization of her passing and forgotten +fancy. My hostess greeted me warmly and pressed my hand, smiled +mechanically and looked over my shoulder all the while to Mr. Evesham +and her company generally, and then came the deep uproar of a gong from +the house and we were all moving in groups and couples luncheonward. + +Justin walked with Lady Mary, and she was I saw an inch taller than his +squat solidity. A tall lady in rose-pink had taken possession of Guy, +Evesham and Lady Ladislaw made the two centres of a straggling group who +were bandying recondite political allusions. Then came one or two +couples and trios with nothing very much to say and active ears. Philip +and I brought up the rear silently and in all humility. Even young Guy +had gone over our heads. I was too full of a stupendous realization for +any words. Of course, during those years, she had been doing--no end of +things! And while I had been just drudging with lectures and books and +theorizing about the Empire and what I could do with it, and taking +exercise, she had learnt, it seemed--the World. + + +§ 10 + +Lunch was in the great dining-room. There was a big table and two +smaller ones; we sat down anyhow, but the first comers had grouped +themselves about Lady Ladislaw and Evesham and Justin and Mary in a +central orb, and I had to drift perforce to one of the satellites. I +secured a seat whence I could get a glimpse ever and again over Justin's +assiduous shoulders of a delicate profile, and I found myself +immediately engaged in answering the innumerable impossible questions of +Lady Viping, the widow of terrible old Sir Joshua, that devastating +divorce court judge who didn't believe in divorces. His domestic +confidences had I think corrupted her mind altogether. She cared for +nothing but evidence. She was a rustling, incessant, sandy, peering +woman with a lorgnette and rapid, confidential lisping undertones, and +she wanted to know who everybody was and how they were related. This +kept us turning towards the other tables--and when my information failed +she would call upon Sir Godfrey Klavier, who was explaining, rather +testily on account of her interruptions, to Philip Christian and a +little lady in black and the elder Fawney girl just why he didn't +believe Lady Ladislaw's new golf course would succeed. There were two or +three other casual people at our table; one of the Roden girls, a young +guardsman and, I think, some other man whom I don't clearly remember. + +"And so that's the great Mr. Justin," rustled Lady Viping and stared +across me. + +(I saw Evesham, leaning rather over the table to point some remark at +Mary, and noted her lips part to reply.) + +"What _is_ the word?" insisted Lady Viping like a fly in my ear. + +I turned on her guiltily. + +"Whether it's brachy," said Lady Viping, "or whether it's dolly--_I_ can +never remember?" + +I guessed she was talking of Justin's head. "Oh!--brachycephalic," I +said. + +I had lost Mary's answer. + +"They say he's a woman hater," said Lady Viping. "It hardly looks like +it now, does it?" + +"Who?" I asked. "What?--oh!--Justin." + +"The great financial cannibal. Suppose she turned him into a +philanthropist! Stranger things have happened. Look!--now. The man's +face is positively tender." + +I hated looking, and I could not help but look. It was as if this +detestable old woman was dragging me down and down, down far below all +dignity to her own level of a peeping observer. Justin was saying +something to Mary in an undertone, something that made her glance up +swiftly and at me before she answered, and there I was with my head side +by side with those quivering dyed curls, that flighty black bonnet, that +remorseless observant lorgnette. I could have sworn aloud at the +hopeless indignity of my pose. + +I saw Mary color quickly before I looked away. + +"Charming, isn't she?" said Lady Viping, and I discovered those infernal +glasses were for a moment honoring me. They shut with a click. "Ham," +said Lady Viping. "I told him no ham--and now I remember--I like ham. Or +rather I like spinach. I forgot the spinach. One has the ham for the +spinach,--don't you think? Yes,--tell him. She's a perfect Dresden +ornament, Mr. Stratton. She's adorable ... (lorgnette and search for +fresh topics). Who is the dark lady with the slight moustache--sitting +there next to Guy? Sir Godfrey, who is the dark lady? No, I don't mean +Mary Fitton. Over there! Mrs. Roperstone. Ooh. _The_ Mrs. Roperstone. +(Renewed lorgnette and click.) Yes--ham. With spinach. A lot of spinach. +There's Mr. Evesham laughing again. He's greatly amused. Unusual for him +to laugh twice. At least, aloud. (Rustle and adjustment of lorgnette.) +Mr. Stratton, don't you think?--exactly like a little shepherdess. Only +I can't say I think Mr. Justin is like a shepherd. On the whole, more +like a large cloisonné jar. Now Guy would do. As a pair they're +beautiful. Pity they're brother and sister. Curious how that boy manages +to be big and yet delicate. H'm. Mixed mantel ornaments. Sir Godfrey, +how old _is_ Mrs. Roperstone?... You never know on principle. I think I +shall make Mr. Stratton guess. What do you think, Mr. Stratton?... You +never guess on principle! Well, we're all very high principled. (Fresh +exploratory movements of the lorgnette.) Mr. Stratton, tell me; is that +little peaked man near Lady Ladislaw Mr. Roperstone? I thought as much!" + +All this chatter is mixed up in my mind with an unusual sense of +hovering attentive menservants, who seemed all of them to my heated +imagination to be watching me (and particularly one clean-shaven, +reddish-haired, full-faced young man) lest I looked too much at the Lady +Mary Christian. Of course they were merely watching our plates and +glasses, but my nerves and temper were now in such a state that if my +man went off to the buffet to get Sir Godfrey the pickled walnuts, I +fancied he went to report the progress of my infatuation, and if a +strange face appeared with the cider cup, that this was a new observer +come to mark the revelation of my behavior. My food embarrassed me. I +found hidden meanings in the talk of the Roden girl and her guardsman, +and an ironical discovery in Sir Godfrey's eye.... + +I felt indignant with Mary. I felt she disowned me and deserted me and +repudiated me, that she ought in some manner to have recognized me. I +gave her no credit for her speech to me before the lunch, or her promise +to measure against me again. I blinded myself to all her frank +friendliness. I felt she ought not to notice Justin, ought not to answer +him.... + +Clearly she liked those men to flatter her, she liked it.... + +I remember too, so that I must have noted it and felt it then as a thing +perceived for the first time, the large dignity of the room, the tall +windows and splendid rich curtains, the darkened Hoppners upon the +walls. I noted too the quality and abundance of the table things, and +there were grapes and peaches, strawberries, cherries and green almonds, +piled lavishly above the waiting dessert plates with the golden knives +and forks, upon a table in the sunshine of the great bay. The very +sunshine filtered through the tall narrow panes from the great chestnut +trees without, seemed of a different quality from the common light of +day.... + +I felt like a poor relation. I sympathized with Anarchists. We had come +out of the Park now finally, both Mary and I--into this.... + +"Mr. Stratton I am sure agrees with me." + +For a time I had been marooned conversationally, and Lady Viping had +engaged Sir Godfrey. Evidently he was refractory and she was back at me. + +"Look at it now in profile," she said, and directed me once more to that +unendurable grouping. Justin again! + +"It's a heavy face," I said. + +"It's a powerful face. I wouldn't care anyhow to be up against it--as +people say." And the lorgnette shut with a click. "What is this? +Peaches!--Yes, and give me some cream." ... + +I hovered long for that measuring I had been promised on the steps, but +either Mary had forgotten or she deemed it wiser to forget. + + +§ 11 + +I took my leave of Lady Ladislaw when the departure of Evesham broke the +party into dispersing fragments. I started down the drive towards the +rectory and then vaulted the railings by the paddock and struck across +beyond the mere. I could not go home with the immense burthen of thought +and new ideas and emotions that had come upon me. I felt confused and +shattered to incoherence by the new quality of Mary's atmosphere. I +turned my steps towards the wilder, lonelier part of the park beyond the +Killing Wood, and lay down in a wide space of grass between two +divergent thickets of bracken, and remained there for a very long time. + +There it was in the park that for the first time I pitted myself against +life upon a definite issue, and prepared my first experience of defeat. +"I _will_ have her," I said, hammering at the turf with my fist. "I +will. I do not care if I give all my life...." + +Then I lay still and bit the sweetness out of joints of grass, and +presently thought and planned. + + + + +CHAPTER THE FOURTH + +THE MARRIAGE OF THE LADY MARY CHRISTIAN + + +§ 1 + +For three or four days I could get no word with Mary. I could not now +come and go as I had been able to do in the days when we were still "the +children." I could not work, I could not rest, I prowled as near as I +could to Burnmore House hoping for some glimpse of her, waiting for the +moment when I could decently present myself again at the house. + +When at last I called, Justin had gone and things had some flavor of the +ancient time. Lady Ladislaw received me with an airy intimacy, all the +careful responsibility of her luncheon party manner thrown aside. "And +how goes Cambridge?" she sang, sailing through the great saloon towards +me, and I thought that for the occasion Cambridge instead of Oxford +would serve sufficiently well. "You'll find them all at tennis," said +Lady Ladislaw, and waved me on to the gardens. There I found all four of +them and had to wait until their set was finished. + +"Mary," I said at the first chance, "are we never to talk again?" + +"It's all different," she said. + +"I am dying to talk to you--as we used to talk." + +"And I--Stevenage. But---- You see?" + +"Next time I come," I said, "I shall bring you a letter. There is so +much----" + +"No," she said. "Can't you get up in the morning? Very early--five or +six. No one is up until ever so late." + +"I'd stay up all night." + +"Serve!" said Maxton, who was playing the two of us and had stopped I +think to tighten a shoe. + +Things conspired against any more intimacy for a time. But we got our +moment on the way to tea. She glanced back at Philip, who was loosening +the net, and then forward to estimate the distance of Maxton and Guy. +"They're all three going," she said, "after Tuesday. Then--before six." + +"Wednesday?" + +"Yes." + +"Suppose after all," she threw out, "I can't come." + +"Fortunes of war." + +"If I can't come one morning I may come another," she spoke hastily, and +I perceived that Guy and Maxton had turned and were waiting for us. + +"You know the old Ice House?" + +"Towards the gardens?" + +"Yes. On the further side. Don't come by the road, come across by the +end of the mere. Lie in the bracken until you see me coming.... I've not +played tennis a dozen times this year. Not half a dozen." + +This last was for the boys. + +"You've played twenty times at least since you've been here," said Guy, +with the simple bluntness of a brother. "I'm certain." + + +§ 2 + +To this day a dewy morning in late August brings back the thought of +Mary and those stolen meetings. I have the minutest recollection of the +misty bloom upon the turf, and the ragged, filmy carpet of gossamer on +either hand, of the warm wetness of every little blade and blossom and +of the little scraps and seeds of grass upon my soaking and discolored +boots. Our footsteps were dark green upon the dew-grey grass. And I feel +the same hungry freshness again at the thought of those stolen meetings. +Presently came the sunrise, blinding, warming, dew-dispelling arrows of +gold smiting through the tree stems, a flood of light foaming over the +bracken and gilding the under sides of the branches. Everything is +different and distinctive in those opening hours; everything has a +different value from what it has by day. All the little things upon the +ground, fallen branches, tussocks, wood-piles, have a peculiar intensity +and importance, seem magnified, because of the length of their shadows +in the slanting rays, and all the great trees seem lifted above the +light and merged with the sky. And at last, a cool grey outline against +the blaze and with a glancing iridescent halo about her, comes Mary, +flitting, adventurous, friendly, wonderful. + +"Oh Stevenage!" she cries, "to see you again!" + +We each hold out both our hands and clasp and hesitate and rather shyly +kiss. + +"Come!" she says, "we can talk for an hour. It's still not six. And +there is a fallen branch where we can sit and put our feet out of the +wet. Oh! it's so good to be out of things again--clean out of +things--with you. Look! there is a stag watching us." + +"You're glad to be with me?" I ask, jealous of the very sunrise. + +"I am always glad," she says, "to be with you. Why don't we always get +up at dawn, Stevenage, every day of our lives?" + +We go rustling through the grass to the prostrate timber she has chosen. +(I can remember even the thin bracelet on the wrist of the hand that +lifted her skirt.) I help her to clamber into a comfortable fork from +which her feet can swing.... + +Such fragments as this are as bright, as undimmed, as if we had met this +morning. But then comes our conversation, and that I find vague and +irregularly obliterated. But I think I must have urged her to say she +loved me, and beat about the bush of that declaration, too fearful to +put my heart's wish to the issue, that she would promise to wait three +years for me--until I could prove it was not madness for her to marry +me. "I have been thinking of it all night and every night since I have +been here," I said. "Somehow I will do something. In some way--I will +get hold of things. Believe me!--with all my strength." + +I was standing between the forking boughs, and she was looking down upon +me. + +"Stephen dear," she said, "dear, dear Boy; I have never wanted to kiss +you so much in all my life. Dear, come close to me." + +She bent her fresh young face down to mine, her fingers were in my hair. + +"My Knight," she whispered close to me. "My beautiful young Knight." + +I whispered back and touched her dew fresh lips.... + +"And tell me what you would do to conquer the world for me?" she asked. + +I cannot remember now a word of all the vague threatenings against the +sundering universe with which I replied. Her hand was on my shoulder as +she listened.... + +But I do know that even on this first morning she left me with a sense +of beautiful unreality, of having dipped for some precious moments into +heroic gossamer. All my world subjugation seemed already as evanescent +as the morning haze and the vanishing dews as I stood, a little hidden +in the shadows of the Killing Wood and ready to plunge back at the first +hint of an observer, and watched her slender whiteness flit +circumspectly towards the house. + + +§ 3 + +Our next three or four meetings are not so clearly defined. We did not +meet every morning for fear that her early rising should seem too +punctual to be no more than a chance impulse, nor did we go to the same +place. But there stands out very clearly a conversation in a different +mood. We had met at the sham ruins at the far end of the great +shrubbery, a huge shattered Corinthian portico of rather damaged stucco +giving wide views of the hills towards Alfridsham between its three +erect pillars, and affording a dry seat upon its fallen ones. It was an +overcast morning, I remember probably the hour was earlier; a kind of +twilight clearness made the world seem strange and the bushes and trees +between us and the house very heavy and still and dark. And we were at +cross purpose, for now it was becoming clear to me that Mary did not +mean to marry me, that she dreaded making any promise to me for the +future, that all the heroic common cause I wanted with her, was quite +alien to her dreams. + +"But Mary," I said looking at her colorless delicate face, "don't you +love me? Don't you want me?" + +"You know I love you, Stevenage," she said. "You know." + +"But if two people love one another, they want to be always together, +they want to belong to each other." + +She looked at me with her face very intent upon her meaning. +"Stevenage," she said after one of those steadfast pauses of hers, "I +want to belong to myself." + +"Naturally," I said with an air of disposing of an argument, and then +paused. + +"Why should one have to tie oneself always to one other human being?" +she asked. "Why must it be like that?" + +I do not remember how I tried to meet this extraordinary idea. "One +loves," I may have said. The subtle scepticisms of her mind went +altogether beyond my habits of thinking; it had never occurred to me +that there was any other way of living except in these voluntary and +involuntary mutual servitudes in which men and women live and die. "If +you love me," I urged, "if you love me---- I want nothing better in all +my life but to love and serve and keep you and make you happy." + +She surveyed me and weighed my words against her own. + +"I love meeting you," she said. "I love your going because it means +that afterwards you will come again. I love this--this slipping out to +you. But up there, there is a room in the house that is _my_ +place--me--my own. Nobody follows me there. I want to go on living, +Stevenage, just as I am living now. I don't want to become someone's +certain possession, to be just usual and familiar to anyone. No, not +even to you." + +"But if you love," I cried. + +"To you least of all. Don't you see?--I want to be wonderful to you, +Stevenage, more than to anyone. I want--I want always to make your heart +beat faster. I want always to be coming to you with my own heart beating +faster. Always and always I want it to be like that. Just as it has been +on these mornings. It has been beautiful--altogether beautiful." + +"Yes," I said, rather helplessly, and struggled with great issues I had +never faced before. + +"It isn't," I said, "how people live." + +"It is how I want to live," said Mary. + +"It isn't the way life goes." + +"I want it to be. Why shouldn't it be? Why at any rate shouldn't it be +for me?" + + +§ 4 + +I made some desperate schemes to grow suddenly rich and powerful, and I +learnt for the first time my true economic value. Already my father and +I had been discussing my prospects in life and he had been finding me +vague and difficult. I was full of large political intentions, but so +far I had made no definite plans for a living that would render my +political ambitions possible. It was becoming apparent to me that for a +poor man in England, the only possible route to political distinction is +the bar, and I was doing my best to reconcile myself to the years of +waiting and practice that would have to precede my political début. + +My father disliked the law. And I do not think it reconciled him to the +idea of my being a barrister that afterwards I hoped to become a +politician. "It isn't in our temperament, Stephen," he said. "It's a +pushing, bullying, cramming, base life. I don't see you succeeding +there, and I don't see myself rejoicing even if you do succeed. You have +to shout, and Strattons don't shout; you have to be smart and tricky and +there's never been a smart and tricky Stratton yet; you have to snatch +opportunities and get the better of the people and misrepresent the +realities of every case you touch. You're a paid misrepresenter. They +say you'll get a fellowship, Stephen. Why not stay up, and do some +thinking for a year or so. There'll be enough to keep you. Write a +little." + +"The bar," I said, "is only a means to an end." + +"If you succeed." + +"If I succeed. One has to take the chances of life everywhere." + +"And what is the end?" + +"Constructive statesmanship." + +"Not in that way," said my father, pouring himself a second glass of +port, and turned over my high-sounding phrase with a faint hint of +distaste; "Constructive Statesmanship. No. Once a barrister always a +barrister. You'll only be a party politician.... Vulgar men.... +Vulgar.... If you succeed that is...." + +He criticized me but he did not oppose me, and already in the beginning +of the summer we had settled that I should be called to the bar. + +Now suddenly I wanted to go back upon all these determinations. I began +to demand in the intellectual slang of the time "more actuality," and to +amaze my father with talk about empire makers and the greatness of Lord +Strathcona and Cecil Rhodes. Why, I asked, shouldn't I travel for a year +in search of opportunity? At Oxford I had made acquaintance with a son +of Pramley's, the big Mexican and Borneo man, and to him I wrote, +apropos of a half-forgotten midnight talk in the rooms of some common +friend. He wrote back with the suggestion that I should go and talk to +his father, and I tore myself away from Mary and went up to see that +great exploiter of undeveloped possibilities and have one of the most +illuminating and humiliating conversations in the world. He was, I +remember, a little pale-complexioned, slow-speaking man with a humorous +blue eye, a faint, just perceptible northern accent and a trick of +keeping silent for a moment after you had finished speaking, and he +talked to me as one might talk to a child of eight who wanted to know +how one could become a commander-in-chief. His son had evidently +emphasized my Union reputation, and he would have been quite willing, I +perceived, to give me employment if I had displayed the slightest +intelligence or ability in any utilizable direction. But quite +dreadfully he sounded my equipment with me and showed me the emptiness +of my stores. + +"You want some way that gives you a chance of growing rich rapidly," he +said. "Aye. It's not a bad idea. But there's others, you know, have +tried that game before ye. + +"You don't want riches just for riches but for an end. Aye! Aye! It's +the spending attracts ye. You'd not have me think you'd the sin of +avarice. I'm clear on that about ye. + +"Well," he explained, "it's all one of three things we do, you +know--prospecting and forestalling and--just stealing, and the only +respectable way is prospecting. You'd prefer the respectable way, I +suppose?... I knew ye would. Well, let's see what chances ye have." + +And he began to probe my practical knowledge. It was like an unfit man +stripping for a medical inspection. Did I know anything of oil, of +rubber, of sugar, of substances generally, had I studied mineralogy or +geology, had I any ideas of industrial processes, of technical +chemistry, of rare minerals, of labor problems and the handling of alien +labor, of the economics of railway management or of camping out in dry, +thinly populated countries, or again could I maybe speak Spanish or +Italian or Russian? The little dons who career about Oxford afoot and +awheel, wearing old gowns and mortarboards, giggling over Spooner's +latest, and being tremendous "characters" in the intervals of concocting +the ruling-class mind, had turned my mind away from such matters +altogether. I had left that sort of thing to Germans and east-end Jews +and young men from the upper-grade board schools of Sheffield and +Birmingham. I was made to realize appalling wildernesses of +ignorance.... + +"You see," said old Pramley, "you don't seem to know anything whatever. +It's a deeficulty. It'll stand in your way a little now, though no +doubt you'd be quick at the uptake--after all the education they've +given ye.... But it stands in your way, if ye think of setting out to do +something large and effective, just immediately...." + +Moreover it came out, I forget now how, that I hadn't clearly grasped +the difference between cumulative and non-cumulative preference +shares.... + +I remember too how I dined alone that evening in a mood between frantic +exasperation and utter abasement in the window of the Mediated +Universities Club, of which I was a junior member under the +undergraduate rule. And I lay awake all night in one of the austere club +bedrooms, saying to old Pramley a number of extremely able and +penetrating things that had unhappily not occurred to me during the +progress of our interview. I didn't go back to Burnmore for several +days. I had set my heart on achieving something, on returning with some +earnest of the great attack I was to make upon the separating great +world between myself and Mary. I am far enough off now from that angry +and passionate youngster to smile at the thought that my subjugation of +things in general and high finance in particular took at last the form +of proposing to go into the office of Bean, Medhurst, Stockton, and +Schnadhorst upon half commission terms. I was awaiting my father's reply +to this startling new suggestion when I got a telegram from Mary. "We +are going to Scotland unexpectedly. Come down and see me." I went home +instantly, and told my father I had come to talk things over with him. A +note from Mary lay upon the hall-table as I came in and encountered my +father. "I thought it better to come down to you," I said with my +glance roving to find that, and then I met his eye. It wasn't altogether +an unkindly eye, but I winced dishonestly. + +"Talking is better for all sorts of things," said my father, and wanted +to know if the weather had been as hot in London as it had been in +Burnmore. + +Mary's note was in pencil, scribbled hastily. I was to wait after eleven +that night near the great rose bushes behind the pavilion. Long before +eleven I was there, on a seat in a thick shadow looking across great +lakes of moonlight towards the phantom statuary of the Italianate garden +and the dark laurels that partly masked the house. I waited nearly an +hour, an hour of stillness and small creepings and cheepings and goings +to and fro among the branches. + +In the bushes near by me a little green glow-worm shared my vigil. + +And then, wrapped about in a dark velvet cloak, still in her white +dinner dress, with shining, gleaming, glancing stones about her dear +throat, warm and wonderful and glowing and daring, Mary came flitting +out of the shadows to me. + +"My dear," she whispered, panting and withdrawing a little from our +first passionate embrace, "Oh my dear!... How did I come? Twice before, +when I was a girl, I got out this way. By the corner of the conservatory +and down the laundry wall. You can't see from here, but it's easy--easy. +There's a tree that helps. And now I have come that way to you. +_You!..._ + +"Oh! love me, my Stephen, love me, dear. Love me as if we were never to +love again. Am I beautiful, my dear? Am I beautiful in the moonlight? +Tell me!... + +"Perhaps this is the night of our lives, dear! Perhaps never again will +you and I be happy!... + +"But the wonder, dear, the beauty! Isn't it still? It's as if nothing +really stood solid and dry. As if everything floated.... + +"Everyone in all the world has gone to sleep to-night and left the world +to us. Come! Come this way and peep at the house, there. Stoop--under +the branches. See, not a light is left! And all its blinds are drawn and +its eyes shut. One window is open, _my_ little window, Stephen! but that +is in the shadow where that creeper makes everything black. + +"Along here a little further is night-stock. Now--Now! Sniff, Stephen! +Sniff! The scent of it! It lies--like a bank of scented air.... And +Stephen, there! Look!... A star--a star without a sound, falling out of +the blue! It's gone!" + +There was her dear face close to mine, soft under the soft moonlight, +and the breath of her sweet speech mingled with the scent of the +night-stock.... + +That was indeed the most beautiful night of my life, a night of +moonlight and cool fragrance and adventurous excitement. We were +transported out of this old world of dusty limitations; it was as if for +those hours the curse of man was lifted from our lives. No one +discovered us, no evil thing came near us. For a long time we lay close +in one another's arms upon a bank of thyme. Our heads were close +together; her eyelashes swept my cheek, we spoke rarely and in soft +whispers, and our hearts were beating, beating. We were as solemn as +great mountains and as innocent as sleeping children. Our kisses were +kisses of moonlight. And it seemed to me that nothing that had ever +happened or could happen afterwards, mattered against that happiness.... + +It was nearly three when at last I came back into my father's garden. No +one had missed me from my room and the house was all asleep, but I could +not get in because I had closed a latch behind me, and so I stayed in +the little arbor until day, watching the day break upon long beaches of +pale cloud over the hills towards Alfridsham. I slept at last with my +head upon my arms upon the stone table, until the noise of shooting +bolts and doors being unlocked roused me to watch my chance and slip +back again into the house, and up the shuttered darkened staircase to my +tranquil, undisturbed bedroom. + + +§ 5 + +It was in the vein of something evasive in Mary's character that she let +me hear first of her engagement to Justin through the _Times_. Away +there in Scotland she got I suppose new perspectives, new ideas; the +glow of our immediate passion faded. The thing must have been drawing in +upon her for some time. Perhaps she had meant to tell me of it all that +night when she had summoned me to Burnmore. Looking back now I am the +more persuaded that she did. But the thing came to me in London with the +effect of an immense treachery. Within a day or so of the newspaper's +announcement she had written me a long letter answering some argument of +mine, and saying nothing whatever of the people about her. Even then +Justin must have been asking her to marry him. Her mind must have been +full of that question. Then came a storm of disappointment, humiliation +and anger with this realization. I can still feel myself writing and +destroying letters to her, letters of satire, of protest. Oddly enough I +cannot recall the letter that at last I sent her, but it is eloquent of +the weak boyishness of my position that I sent it in our usual furtive +manner, accepted every precaution that confessed the impossibility of +our relationship. "No," she scribbled back, "you do not understand. I +cannot write. I must talk to you." + +We had a secret meeting. + +With Beatrice Normandy's connivance she managed to get away for the +better part of the day, and we spent a long morning in argument in the +Botanical Gardens--that obvious solitude--and afterwards we lunched upon +ham and ginger beer at a little open-air restaurant near the Broad Walk +and talked on until nearly four. We were so young that I think we both +felt, beneath our very real and vivid emotions, a gratifying sense of +romantic resourcefulness in this prolonged discussion. There is +something ridiculously petty and imitative about youth, something too, +naïvely noble and adventurous. I can never determine if older people are +less generous and imaginative or merely less absurd. I still recall the +autumnal melancholy of that queer, neglected-looking place, in which I +had never been before, and which I have never revisited--a memory of +walking along narrow garden paths beside queer leaf-choked artificial +channels of water under yellow-tinted trees, of rustic bridges going +nowhere in particular, and of a kind of brickwork ruined castle, greatly +decayed and ivy-grown, in which we sat for a long time looking out upon +a lawn and a wide gravel path leading to a colossal frontage of +conservatory. + +I must have been resentful and bitter in the beginning of that talk. I +do not remember that I had any command of the situation or did anything +but protest throughout that day. I was too full of the egotism of the +young lover to mark Mary's moods and feelings. It was only afterwards +that I came to understand that she was not wilfully and deliberately +following the course that was to separate us, that she was taking it +with hesitations and regrets. Yet she spoke plainly enough, she spoke +with a manifest sincerity of feeling. And while I had neither the grasp +nor the subtlety to get behind her mind I perceive now as I think things +out that Lady Ladislaw had both watched and acted, had determined her +daughter's ideas, sown her mind with suggestions, imposed upon her a +conception of her situation that now dominated all her thoughts. + +"Dear Stephen," reiterated Mary, "I love you. I do, clearly, definitely, +deliberately love you. Haven't I told you that? Haven't I made that +plain to you?" + +"But you are going to marry Justin!" + +"Stephen dear, can I possibly marry you? Can I?" + +"Why not? Why not make the adventure of life with me? Dare!" + +She looked down on me. She was sitting upon a parapet of the brickwork +and I was below her. She seemed to be weighing possibilities. + +"Why not?" I cried. "Even now. Why not run away with me, throw our two +lives together? Do as lovers have dared to do since the beginning of +things! Let us go somewhere together----" + +"But Stephen," she asked softly, "_where_?" + +"Anywhere!" + +She spoke as an elder might do to a child. "No! tell me where--exactly. +Where would it be? Where should we go? How should we live? Tell me. Make +me see it, Stephen." + +"You are too cruel to me, Mary," I said. "How can I--on the spur of the +moment--arrange----?" + +"But dear, suppose it was somewhere very grimy and narrow! +Something--like some of those back streets I came through to get here. +Suppose it was some dreadful place. And you had no money. And we were +both worried and miserable. One gets ill in such places. If I loved you, +Stephen--I mean if you and I--if you and I were to be together, I should +want it to be in sunshine, I should want it to be among beautiful +forests and mountains. Somewhere very beautiful...." + +"Why not?" + +"Because--to-day I know. There are no such places in the world for us. +Stephen, they are dreams." + +"For three years now," I said, "I have dreamed such dreams. + +"Oh!" I cried out, stung by my own words, "but this is cowardice! Why +should we submit to this old world! Why should we give up--things you +have dreamed as well as I! You said once--to hear my voice--calling in +the morning.... Let us take each other, Mary, now. _Now!_ Let us take +each other, and"--I still remember my impotent phrase--"afterwards count +the cost!" + +"If I were a queen," said Mary. "But you see I am not a queen." ... + +So we talked in fragments and snatches of argument, and all she said +made me see more clearly the large hopelessness of my desire. "At +least," I urged, "do not marry Justin now. Give me a chance. Give me +three years, Mary, three short years, to work, to do something!" + +She knew so clearly now the quality of her own intentions. + +"Dear Stephen," she explained, "if I were to come away with you and +marry you, in just a little time I should cease to be your lover, I +should be your squaw. I should have to share your worries and make your +coffee--and disappoint you, disappoint you and fail you in a hundred +ways. Think! Should I be any good as a squaw? How can one love when one +knows the coffee isn't what it should be, and one is giving one's lover +indigestion? And I don't _want_ to be your squaw. I don't want that at +all. It isn't how I feel for you. I don't _want_ to be your servant and +your possession." + +"But you will be Justin's--squaw, you are going to marry him!" + +"That is all different, Stevenage. Between him and me there will be +space, air, dignity, endless servants----" + +"But," I choked. "You! He! He will make love to you, Mary." + +"You don't understand, Stephen." + +"He will make love to you, Mary. Mary! don't you understand? These +things---- We've never talked of them.... You will bear him children!" + +"No," she said. + +"But----" + +"No. He promises. Stephen,--I am to own myself." + +"But--He marries you!" + +"Yes. Because he--he admires me. He cannot live without me. He loves my +company. He loves to be seen with me. He wants me with him to enjoy all +the things he has. Can't you understand, Stephen?" + +"But do you mean----?" + +Our eyes met. + +"Stephen," she said, "I swear." + +"But---- He hopes." + +"I don't care. He has promised. I have his promise. I shall be free. Oh! +I shall be free--free! He is a different man from you, Stephen. He isn't +so fierce; he isn't so greedy." + +"But it parts us!" + +"Only from impossible things." + +"It parts us." + +"It does not even part us, Stevenage. We shall see one another! we shall +talk to one another." + +"I shall lose you." + +"I shall keep you." + +"But I--do you expect me to be content with _this_?" + +"I will make you content. Oh! Stephen dear, can't there be love--love +without this clutching, this gripping, this carrying off?" + +"You will be carried altogether out of my world." + +"If I thought that, Stephen, indeed I would not marry him." + +But I insisted we should be parted, and parted in the end for ever, and +there I was the wiser of the two. I knew the insatiable urgency within +myself. I knew that if I continued to meet Mary I should continue to +desire her until I possessed her altogether. + + +§ 6 + +I cannot reproduce with any greater exactness than this the quality and +gist of our day-long conversation. Between us was a deep affection, and +instinctive attraction, and our mental temperaments and our fundamental +ideas were profoundly incompatible. We were both still very young in +quality, we had scarcely begun to think ourselves out, we were greatly +swayed by the suggestion of our circumstances, complex, incoherent and +formless emotions confused our minds. But I see now that in us there +struggled vast creative forces, forces that through a long future, in +forms as yet undreamt of, must needs mould the destiny of our race. Far +more than Mary I was accepting the conventions of our time. It seemed to +me not merely reasonable but necessary that because she loved me she +should place her life in my youthful and inexpert keeping, share my +struggles and the real hardships they would have meant for her, devote +herself to my happiness, bear me children, be my inspiration in +imaginative moments, my squaw, helper and possession through the whole +twenty-four hours of every day, and incidentally somehow rear whatever +family we happened to produce, and I was still amazed in the depths of +my being that she did not reciprocate this simple and comprehensive +intention. I was ready enough I thought for equivalent sacrifices. I was +prepared to give my whole life, subordinate all my ambitions, to the +effort to maintain our home. If only I could have her, have her for my +own, I was ready to pledge every hour I had still to live to that +service. It seemed mere perversity to me then that she should turn even +such vows as that against me. + +"But I don't want it, Stevenage," she said. "I don't want it. I want you +to go on to the service of the empire, I want to see you do great +things, do all the things we've talked about and written about. Don't +you see how much better that is for you and for me--and for the world +and our lives? I don't want you to become a horrible little specialist +in feeding and keeping me." + +"Then--then _wait_ for me!" I cried. + +"But--I want to live myself! I don't want to wait. I want a great house, +I want a great position, I want space and freedom. I want to have +clothes--and be as splendid as your career is going to be. I want to be +a great and shining lady in your life. I can't always live as I do now, +dependent on my mother, whirled about by her movements, living in her +light. Why should I be just a hard-up Vestal Virgin, Stephen, in your +honor? You will not be able to marry me for years and years and +years--unless you neglect your work, unless you throw away everything +that is worth having between us in order just to get me." + +"But I want _you_, Mary," I cried, drumming at the little green table +with my fist. "I want you. I want nothing else in all the world unless +it has to do with you." + +"You've got me--as much as anyone will ever have me. You'll always have +me. Always I will write to you, talk to you, watch you. Why are you so +greedy, Stephen? Why are you so ignoble? If I were to come now and marry +you, it wouldn't help you. It would turn you into--a wife-keeper, into +the sort of uninteresting preoccupied man one sees running after and +gloating over the woman he's bought--at the price of his money and his +dignity--and everything.... It's not proper for a man to live so for a +woman and her children. It's dwarfish. It's enslaving. It's--it's +indecent. Stephen! I'd hate you so." ... + + +§ 7 + +We parted at last at a cab-rank near a bridge over the Canal at the +western end of Park Village. I remember that I made a last appeal to her +as we walked towards it, and that we loitered on the bridge, careless of +who might see us there, in a final conflict of our wills. "Before it is +too late, Mary, dear," I said. + +She shook her head, her white lips pressed together. + +"But after the things that have happened. That night--the moonlight!" + +"It's not fair," she said, "for you to talk of that. It isn't fair." + +"But Mary. This is parting. This indeed is parting." + +She answered never a word. + +"Then at least talk to me again for one time more." + +"Afterwards," she said. "Afterwards I will talk to you. Don't make +things too hard for me, Stephen." + +"If I could I would make this impossible. It's--it's hateful." + +She turned to the kerb, and for a second or so we stood there without +speaking. Then I beckoned to a hansom. + +She told me Beatrice Normandy's address. + +I helped her into the cab. "Good-bye," I said with a weak affectation +of an everyday separation, and I turned to the cabman with her +instructions. + +Then again we looked at one another. The cabman waited. "All right, +sir?" he asked. + +"Go ahead!" I said, and lifted my hat to the little white face within. + +I watched the cab until it vanished round the curve of the road. Then I +turned about to a world that had become very large and empty and +meaningless. + + +§ 8 + +I struggled feebly to arrest the course of events. I wrote Mary some +violent and bitter letters. I treated her as though she alone were +responsible for my life and hers; I said she had diverted my energies, +betrayed me, ruined my life. I hinted she was cold-blooded, mercenary, +shameless. Someday you, with that quick temper of yours and your power +of expression, will understand that impulse to write, to pour out a +passionately unjust interpretation of some nearly intolerable situation, +and it is not the least of all the things I owe to Mary that she +understood my passion and forgave those letters and forgot them. I tried +twice to go and see her. But I do not think I need tell you, little son, +of these self-inflicted humiliations and degradations. An angry man is +none the less a pitiful man because he is injurious. The hope that had +held together all the project of my life was gone, and all my thoughts +and emotions lay scattered in confusion.... + +You see, my little son, there are two sorts of love; we use one name +for very different things. The love that a father bears his children, +that a mother feels, that comes sometimes, a strange brightness and +tenderness that is half pain, at the revelation of some touching aspect +of one long known to one, at the sight of a wife bent with fatigue and +unsuspicious of one's presence, at the wretchedness and perplexity of +some wrong-doing brother, or at an old servant's unanticipated tears, +that is love--like the love God must bear us. That is the love we must +spread from those of our marrow until it reaches out to all mankind, +that will some day reach out to all mankind. But the love of a young man +for a woman takes this quality only in rare moments of illumination and +complete assurance. My love for Mary was a demand, it was a wanton claim +I scored the more deeply against her for every moment of happiness she +gave me. I see now that as I emerged from the first abjection of my +admiration and began to feel assured of her affection, I meant nothing +by her but to possess her, I did not want her to be happy as I want you +to be happy even at the price of my life; I wanted her. I wanted her as +barbarians want a hunted enemy, alive or dead. It was a flaming jealousy +to have her mine. That granted, then I was prepared for all +devotions.... + +This is how men love women. Almost as exclusively and fiercely I think +do women love men. And the deepest question before humanity is just how +far this jealous greed may be subdued to a more generous passion. The +fierce jealousy of men for women and women for men is the very heart of +all our social jealousies, the underlying tension of this crowded modern +life that has grown out of the ampler, simpler, ancient life of men. +That is why we compete against one another so bitterly, refuse +association and generous co-operations, keep the struggle for existence +hard and bitter, hamper and subordinate the women as they in their turn +would if they could hamper and subordinate the men--because each must +thoroughly have his own. + +And I knew my own heart too well to have any faith in Justin and his +word. He was taking what he could, and his mind would never rest until +some day he had all. I had seen him only once, but the heavy and +resolute profile above his bent back and slender shoulders stuck in my +memory. + +If he was cruel to Mary, I told her, or broke his least promise to her, +I should kill him. + + +§ 9 + +My distress grew rather than diminished in the days immediately before +her marriage, and that day itself stands out by itself in my memory, a +day of wandering and passionate unrest. My imagination tormented me with +thoughts of Justin as a perpetual privileged wooer. + +Well, well,--I will not tell you, I will not write the ugly mockeries my +imagination conjured up. I was constantly on the verge of talking and +cursing aloud to myself, or striking aimlessly at nothing with clenched +fists. I was too stupid to leave London, too disturbed for work or any +distraction of my mind. I wandered about the streets of London all day. +In the morning I came near going to the church and making some +preposterous interruptions. And I remember discovering three or four +carriages adorned with white favors and a little waiting crowd outside +that extinguisher-spired place at the top of Regent Street, and +wondering for a moment or so at their common preoccupation, and then +understanding. Of course, another marriage! Of all devilish +institutions! + +What was I to do with my life now? What was to become of my life? I can +still recall the sense of blank unanswerableness with which these +questions dominated my mind, and associated with it is an effect of +myself as a small human being, singular and apart, wandering through a +number of London landscapes. At one time I was in a great grey +smoke-rimmed autumnal space of park, much cut up by railings and worn by +cricket pitches, far away from any idea of the Thames, and in the +distance over the tops of trees I discovered perplexingly the clustering +masts and spars of ships. I have never seen that place since. Then the +Angel at Islington is absurdly mixed up with the distresses of this day. +I attempted some great detour thence, and found myself with a dumb +irritation returning to the place from another direction. I remember too +a wide street over which passes a thundering railway bridge borne upon +colossal rounded pillars of iron, and carrying in white and blue some +big advertisement, I think of the _Daily Telegraph_. Near there I +thought a crowd was gathered about the victim of some accident, and +thrusting myself among the people with a vague idea of help, discovered +a man selling a remedy for corns. And somewhere about this north region +I discovered I was faint with hunger, and got some bread and cheese and +beer in a gaudily decorated saloon bar with a sanded floor. I resisted +a monstrous impulse to stay in that place and drink myself into +inactivity and stupefaction with beer. + +Then for a long time I sat upon an iron seat near some flower beds in a +kind of garden that had the headstones of graves arranged in a row +against a yellow brick wall. The place was flooded with the amber +sunshine of a September afternoon. I shared the seat with a nursemaid in +charge of a perambulator and several scuffling uneasy children, and I +kept repeating to myself: "By now it is all over. The thing is done." + +My sense of the enormity of London increased with the twilight, and +began to prevail a little against my intense personal wretchedness. I +remember wastes of building enterprise, interminable vistas of wide dark +streets, with passing trams, and here and there at strategic corners +coruscating groups of shops. And somewhere I came along a narrow street +suddenly upon the distant prospect of a great monstrous absurd place on +a steep hill against the last brightness of the evening sky, a burlesque +block of building with huge truncated pyramids at either corner, that I +have since learnt was the Alexandra Palace. It was so queer and bulky +that it arrested and held my attention, struck on my memory with an +almost dreamlike quality, so that years afterwards I went to Muswell +Hill to see if indeed there really was such a place on earth, or whether +I had had a waking nightmare during my wanderings.... + +I wandered far that night, very far. Some girl accosted me, a thin-faced +ruined child younger by a year or so than myself. I remembered how I +talked to her, foolish rambling talk. "If you loved a man, and he was +poor, you'd wait," I said, "you'd stick to him. You'd not leave him +just to get married to a richer man." + +We prowled talking for a time, and sat upon a seat somewhere near the +Regent's Park canal. I rather think I planned to rescue her from a +fallen life, but somehow we dropped that topic. I know she kissed me. I +have a queer impression that it came into my head to marry her. I put +all my loose money in her hands at last and went away extraordinarily +comforted by her, I know not how, leaving her no doubt wondering +greatly. + +I did not go to bed that night at all, nor to the office next morning. I +never showed myself in the office again. Instead I went straight down to +my father, and told him I wanted to go to the war forthwith. I had an +indistinct memory of a promise I had made Mary to stay in England, but I +felt it was altogether unendurable that I should ever meet her again. My +father sat at table over the remains of his lunch, and regarded me with +astonishment, with the beginnings of protest. + +"I want to get away," I said, and to my own amazement and shame I burst +into tears. + +"My boy!" he gasped, astonished and terrified. "You've--you've not +done--some foolish thing?" + +"No," I said, already wiping the tears from my face, "nothing.... But I +want to go away." + +"You shall do as you please," he said, and sat for a moment regarding +his only son with unfathomable eyes. + +Then he got up with a manner altogether matter-of-fact, came half-way +round the table and mixed me a whisky and soda. "It won't be much of a +war, I'm told," he said with the syphon in his hands, breaking a +silence. "I sometimes wish--I had seen a bit of soldiering. And this +seems to be an almost unavoidable war. Now, at any rate, it's +unavoidable.... Drink this and have a biscuit." + +He turned to the mantelshelf, and filled his pipe with his broad back to +me. "Yes," he said, "you---- You'll be interested in the war. I hope---- +I hope you'll have a good time there...." + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIFTH + +THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA + + +§ 1 + +Mary and I did not meet again for five years, and for nearly all that +time I remained in South Africa. I went from England a boy; I came back +seasoned into manhood. They had been years of crowded experience, rapid +yet complicated growth, disillusionment and thought. Responsibility had +come to me. I had seen death, I had seen suffering, and held the lives +of men in my hands. + +Of course one does not become a soldier on active service at once for +the wishing, and there was not at first that ready disposition on the +part of the home military authorities which arose later, to send out +young enthusiasts. I could ride and shoot fairly well, and accordingly I +decided to go on my own account to Durban--for it was manifest that +things would begin in Natal--and there attach myself to some of the +local volunteer corps that would certainly be raised. This took me out +of England at once, a thing that fell in very well with my mood. I +would, I was resolved, begin life afresh. I would force myself to think +of nothing but the war. I would never if I could help it think of Mary +again. + +The war had already begun when I reached Durban. The town was seething +with the news of a great British victory at Dundee. We came into the +port through rain and rough weather and passed a big white liner loaded +up feverishly from steam tenders with wealthy refugees going +England-ward. From two troopships against the wharves there was a great +business of landing horses--the horses of the dragoons and hussars from +India. I spent the best part of my first night in South Africa in the +streets looking in vain for a bedroom, and was helped at last by a +kindly rickshaw Zulu to a shanty where I slept upon three chairs. I +remember I felt singularly unwanted. + +The next day I set about my volunteering. By midday I had opened +communications with that extremely untried and problematical body, the +Imperial Light Horse, and in three days more I was in the company of a +mixed batch of men, mostly Australian volunteers, on my way to a place I +had never heard of before called Ladysmith, through a country of +increasing picturesqueness and along a curious curving little line whose +down traffic seemed always waiting in sidings, and consisted of crowded +little trains full of pitiful fugitives, white, brown, and black, +stifled and starving. They were all clamoring to buy food and drink--and +none seemed forthcoming. We shunted once to allow a southbound train to +pass, a peculiar train that sent everyone on to the line to +see--prisoners of war! There they were, real live enemies, rather glum, +looking out at us with faces very like our own--but rather more +unshaven. They had come from the battle of Elandslaagte.... + +I had never been out of England before except for a little +mountaineering in the French Alps and one walking excursion in the Black +Forest, and the scenery of lower Natal amazed me. I had expected +nothing nearly so tropical, so rich and vivid. There were little +Mozambique monkeys chattering in the thick-set trees beside the line and +a quantity of unfamiliar birds and gaudy flowers amidst the abundant +deep greenery. There were aloe and cactus hedges, patches of unfamiliar +cultivation upon the hills; bunchy, frondy growths that I learnt were +bananas and plantains, and there were barbaric insanitary-looking Kaffir +kraals which I supposed had vanished before our civilization. There +seemed an enormous quantity of Kaffirs all along the line--and all of +them, men, women, and children, were staring at the train. The scenery +grew finer and bolder, and more bare and mountainous, until at last we +came out into the great basin in which lay this Ladysmith. It seemed a +poor unimportant, dusty little street of huts as we approached it, but +the great crests beyond struck me as very beautiful in the morning +light.... + +I forgot the beauty of those hills as we drew into the station. It was +the morning after the surrender of Nicholson's Nek. I had come to join +an army already tremendously astonished and shattered. The sunny +prospect of a triumphal procession to Pretoria which had been still in +men's minds at Durban had vanished altogether. In rather less than a +fortnight of stubborn fighting we had displayed a strategy that was +flighty rather than brilliant, and lost a whole battery of guns and +nearly twelve hundred prisoners. We had had compensations, our common +soldiers were good stuff at any rate, but the fact was clear that we +were fighting an army not only very much bigger than ours but better +equipped, with bigger guns, better information, and it seemed superior +strategy. We were being shoved back into this Ladysmith and encircled. +This confused, disconcerted, and thoroughly bad-tempered army, whose +mules and bullocks cumbered the central street of the place, was all +that was left of the British Empire in Natal. Behind it was an +unprotected country and the line to Pietermaritzburg, Durban, and the +sea. + +You cannot imagine how amazed I felt at it. I had been prepared for a +sort of Kentucky quality in the enemy, illiteracy, pluck, guile and good +shooting, but to find them with more modern arms than our own, more +modern methods! Weren't we there, after all, to teach _them_! Weren't we +the Twentieth and they the Eighteenth Century? The town had been shelled +the day before from those very hills I had admired; at any time it might +be shelled again. The nose of a big gun was pointed out to me by a +blasphemous little private in the Devons. It was a tremendous, a +profoundly impressive, black snout. His opinions of the directing wisdom +at home were unquotable. The platform was a wild confusion of women and +children and colored people,--there was even an invalid lady on a +stretcher. Every non-combatant who could be got out of Ladysmith was +being hustled out that day. Everyone was smarting with the sense of +defeat in progress, everyone was disappointed and worried; one got short +answers to one's questions. For a time I couldn't even find out where I +had to go.... + + +§ 2 + +I fired my first shot at a fellow-creature within four days of my +arrival. We rode out down the road to the south to search some hills, +and found the Boers in fair strength away to the east of us. We were +dismounted and pushed up on foot through a wood to a grassy crest. There +for the first time I saw the enemy, little respectable-looking +unsoldierlike figures, mostly in black, dodging about upon a ridge +perhaps a mile away. I took a shot at one of these figures just before +it vanished into a gully. One or two bullets came overhead, and I tried +to remember what I had picked up about cover. They made a sound, +_whiff-er-whiff_, a kind of tearing whistle, and there was nothing but a +distant crackling to give one a hint of their direction until they took +effect. I remember the peculiar smell of the grass amidst which I +crouched, my sudden disgust to realize I was lying, and had to lie now +for an indefinite time, in the open sunlight and far from any shade, and +how I wondered whether after all I had wanted to come to this war. + +We lay shooting intermittently until the afternoon, I couldn't +understand why; we went forward a little, and at last retired upon +Ladysmith. On the way down to the horses, I came upon my first dead man. +He was lying in a crumpled heap not fifty yards from where I had been +shooting. There he lay, the shattered mirror of a world. One side of his +skull over the ear had been knocked away by a nearly spent bullet, and +he was crumpled up and face upward as though he had struggled to his +feet and fallen back. He looked rather horrible, with blue eyes wide +open and glassily amazed, and the black flies clustering upon his +clotted wound and round his open mouth.... + +I halted for a moment at the sight, and found the keen scrutiny of a +fellow trooper upon me. "No good waiting for him," I said with an +affectation of indifference. But all through the night I saw him again, +and marvelled at the stupendous absurdity of such a death. I was a +little feverish, I remember, and engaged in an interminable theological +argument with myself, why when a man is dead he should leave so queer +and irrelevant a thing as a body to decay.... + +I was already very far away from London and Burnmore Park. I doubt if I +thought of Mary at all for many days. + + +§ 3 + +It isn't my business to write here any consecutive story of my war +experiences. Luck and some latent quality in my composition made me a +fairly successful soldier. Among other things I have an exceptionally +good sense of direction, and that was very useful to me, and in Burnmore +Park I suppose I had picked up many of the qualities of a scout. I did +some fair outpost work during the Ladysmith siege, I could report as +well as crawl and watch, and I was already a sergeant when we made a +night attack and captured and blew up Long Tom. There, after the fight, +while we were covering the engineers, I got a queer steel ball about the +size of a pea in my arm, a bicycle bearings ball it was, and had my +first experience of an army surgeon's knife next day. It was much less +painful than I had expected. I was also hit during the big assault on +the sixth of January in the left shoulder, but so very slightly that I +wasn't technically disabled. They were the only wounds I got in the war, +but I went under with dysentery before the relief; and though I was by +no means a bad case I was a very yellow-faced, broken-looking +convalescent when at last the Boer hosts rolled northward again and +Buller's men came riding across the flats.... + +I had seen some stimulating things during those four months of actual +warfare, a hundred intense impressions of death, wounds, anger, +patience, brutality, courage, generosity and wasteful destruction--above +all, wasteful destruction--to correct the easy optimistic patriotism of +my university days. There is a depression in the opening stages of fever +and a feebleness in a convalescence on a starvation diet that leads men +to broad and sober views. (Heavens! how I hated the horse +extract--'chevril' we called it--that served us for beef tea.) When I +came down from Ladysmith to the sea to pick up my strength I had not an +illusion left about the serene, divinely appointed empire of the +English. But if I had less national conceit, I had certainly more +patriotic determination. That grew with every day of returning health. +The reality of this war had got hold of my imagination, as indeed for a +time it got hold of the English imagination altogether, and I was now +almost fiercely keen to learn and do. At the first chance I returned to +active service, and now I was no longer a disconsolate lover taking war +for a cure, but an earnest, and I think reasonably able, young officer, +very alert for chances. + +I got those chances soon enough. I rejoined our men beyond Kimberley, on +the way to Mafeking,--we were the extreme British left in the advance +upon Pretoria--and I rode with Mahon and was ambushed with him in a +little affair beyond Koodoosrand. It was a sudden brisk encounter. We +got fired into at close quarters, but we knew our work by that time, +and charged home and brought in a handful of prisoners to make up for +the men we had lost. A few days later we came into the flattened ruins +of the quaintest siege in history.... + +Three days after we relieved Mafeking I had the luck to catch one of +Snyman's retreating guns rather easily, the only big gun that was taken +at Mafeking. I came upon it unexpectedly with about twenty men, spotted +a clump of brush four hundred yards ahead, galloped into it before the +Boers realized the boldness of our game, shot all the draught oxen while +they hesitated, and held them up until Chambers arrived on the scene. +The incident got perhaps a disproportionate share of attention in the +papers at home, because of the way in which Mafeking had been kept in +focus. I was mentioned twice again in despatches before we rode across +to join Roberts in Pretoria and see what we believed to be the end of +the war. We were too late to go on up to Komatipoort, and had some +rather blank and troublesome work on the north side of the town. That +was indeed the end of the great war; the rest was a struggle with +guerillas. + +Everyone thought things were altogether over. I wrote to my father +discussing the probable date of my return. But there were great chances +still to come for an active young officer; the guerilla war was to +prolong the struggle yet for a whole laborious, eventful year, and I was +to make the most of those later opportunities.... + +Those years in South Africa are stuck into my mind like--like those pink +colored pages about something else one finds at times in a railway +_Indicateur_. Chance had put this work in my way, and started me upon +it with a reputation that wasn't altogether deserved, and I found I +could only live up to it and get things done well by a fixed and extreme +concentration of my attention. But the whole business was so interesting +that I found it possible to make that concentration. Essentially warfare +is a game of elaborate but witty problems in precaution and +anticipation, with amazing scope for invention. You so saturate your +mind with the facts and possibilities of the situation that intuitions +emerge. It did not do to think of anything beyond those facts and +possibilities and dodges and counterdodges, for to do so was to let in +irrelevant and distracting lights. During all that concluding year of +service I was not so much myself as a forced and artificial thing I made +out of myself to meet the special needs of the time. I became a +Boer-outwitting animal. When I was tired of this specialized thinking, +then the best relief, I found, was some quite trivial +occupation--playing poker, yelling in the chorus of some interminable +song one of the men would sing, or coining South African Limericks or +playing burlesque _bouts-rimés_ with Fred Maxim, who was then my second +in command.... + +Yet occasionally thought overtook me. I remember lying one night out +upon a huge dark hillside, in a melancholy wilderness of rock-ribbed +hills, waiting for one of the flying commandoes that were breaking +northward from Cape Colony towards the Orange River in front of Colonel +Eustace. We had been riding all day, I was taking risks in what I was +doing, and there is something very cheerless in a fireless bivouac. My +mind became uncontrollably active. + +It was a clear, still night. The young moon set early in a glow of white +that threw the jagged contours of a hill to the south-east into +strange, weird prominence. The patches of moonshine evaporated from the +summits of the nearer hills, and left them hard and dark. Then there was +nothing but a great soft black darkness below that jagged edge and above +it the stars very large and bright. Somewhere under that enormous +serenity to the south of us the hunted Boers must be halting to snatch +an hour or so of rest, and beyond them again extended the long thin net +of the pursuing British. It all seemed infinitely small and remote, +there was no sound of it, no hint of it, no searchlight at work, no +faintest streamer of smoke nor the reflection of a solitary fire in the +sky.... + +All this business that had held my mind so long was reduced to +insignificance between the blackness of the hills and the greatness of +the sky; a little trouble, it seemed of no importance under the Southern +Cross. And I fell wondering, as I had not wondered for long, at the +forces that had brought me to this occupation and the strangeness of +this game of war which had filled the minds and tempered the spirit of a +quarter of a million of men for two hard-living years. + +I fell thinking of the dead. + +No soldier in a proper state of mind ever thinks of the dead. At times +of course one suspects, one catches a man glancing at the pair of boots +sticking out stiffly from under a blanket, but at once he speaks of +other things. Nevertheless some suppressed part of my being had been +stirring up ugly and monstrous memories, of distortion, disfigurement, +torment and decay, of dead men in stained and ragged clothes, with their +sole-worn boots drawn up under them, of the blood trail of a dying man +who had crawled up to a dead comrade rather than die alone, of Kaffirs +heaping limp, pitiful bodies together for burial, of the voices of +inaccessible wounded in the rain on Waggon Hill crying in the night, of +a heap of men we found in a donga three days dead, of the dumb agony of +shell-torn horses, and the vast distressful litter and heavy brooding +stench, the cans and cartridge-cases and filth and bloody rags of a +shelled and captured laager. I will confess I have never lost my horror +of dead bodies; they are dreadful to me--dreadful. I dread their stiff +attitudes, their terrible intent inattention. To this day such memories +haunt me. That night they nearly overwhelmed me.... I thought of the +grim silence of the surgeon's tent, the miseries and disordered ravings +of the fever hospital, of the midnight burial of a journalist at +Ladysmith with the distant searchlight on Bulwana flicking suddenly upon +our faces and making the coffin shine silver white. What a vast trail of +destruction South Africa had become! I thought of the black scorched +stones of burnt and abandoned farms, of wretched natives we had found +shot like dogs and flung aside, rottenly amazed, decaying in infinite +indignity; of stories of treachery and fierce revenges sweeping along in +the trail of the greater fighting. I knew too well of certain +atrocities,--one had to believe them incredibly stupid to escape the +conviction that they were incredibly evil. + +For a time my mind could make no headway against its monstrous +assemblage of horror. There was something in that jagged black hill +against the moonshine and the gigantic basin of darkness out of which it +rose that seemed to gather all these gaunt and grisly effects into one +appalling heap of agonizing futility. That rock rose up and crouched +like something that broods and watches. + +I remember I sat up in the darkness staring at it. + +I found myself murmuring: "Get the proportions of things, get the +proportions of things!" I had an absurd impression of a duel between +myself and the cavernous antagonism of the huge black spaces below me. I +argued that all this pain and waste was no more than the selvedge of a +proportionately limitless fabric of sane, interested, impassioned and +joyous living. These stiff still memories seemed to refute me. But why +us? they seemed to insist. In some way it's essential,--this margin. I +stopped at that. + +"If all this pain, waste, violence, anguish is essential to life, why +does my spirit rise against it? What is wrong with me?" I got from that +into a corner of self-examination. Did I respond overmuch to these +painful aspects in life? When I was a boy I had never had the spirit +even to kill rats. Siddons came into the meditation, Siddons, the +essential Englishman, a little scornful, throwing out contemptuous +phrases. Soft! Was I a soft? What was a soft? Something not rough, not +hearty and bloody! I felt I had to own to the word--after years of +resistance. A dreadful thing it is when a great empire has to rely upon +soft soldiers. + +Was civilization breeding a type of human being too tender to go on +living? I stuck for a time as one does on these nocturnal occasions at +the word "hypersensitive," going round it and about it.... + +I do not know now how it was that I passed from a mood so darkened and +sunless to one of exceptional exaltation, but I recall very clearly that +I did. I believe that I made a crowning effort against this despair and +horror that had found me out in the darkness and overcome. I cried in +my heart for help, as a lost child cries, to God. I seem to remember a +rush of impassioned prayer, not only for myself, not chiefly for myself, +but for all those smashed and soiled and spoilt and battered residues of +men whose memories tormented me. I prayed to God that they had not lived +in vain, that particularly those poor Kaffir scouts might not have lived +in vain. "They are like children," I said. "It was a murder of +children.... _By children!_" + +My horror passed insensibly. I have to feel the dreadfulness of these +things, I told myself, because it is good for such a creature as I to +feel them dreadful, but if one understood it would all be simple. Not +dreadful at all. I clung to that and repeated it,--"it would all be +perfectly simple." It would come out no more horrible than the things +that used to frighten me as a child,--the shadow on the stairs, the +white moonrise reflected on a barked and withered tree, a peculiar dream +of moving geometrical forms, an ugly illustration in the "Arabian +Nights." ... + +I do not know how long I wrestled with God and prayed that night, but +abruptly the shadows broke; and very suddenly and swiftly my spirit +seemed to flame up into space like some white beacon that is set alight. +Everything became light and clear and confident. I was assured that all +was well with us, with us who lived and fought and with the dead who +rotted now in fifty thousand hasty graves.... + +For a long time it seemed I was repeating again and again with soundless +lips and finding the deepest comfort in my words:--"And out of our +agonies comes victory, out of our agonies comes victory! Have pity on +us, God our Father!" + +I think that mood passed quite insensibly from waking to a kind of +clear dreaming. I have an impression that I fell asleep and was aroused +by a gun. Yet I was certainly still sitting up when I heard that gun. + +I was astonished to find things darkly visible about me. I had not noted +that the stars were growing pale until the sound of this gun very far +away called my mind back to the grooves in which it was now accustomed +to move. I started into absolute wakefulness. A gun?... + +I found myself trying to see my watch. + +I heard a slipping and clatter of pebbles near me, and discovered Fred +Maxim at my side. "Look!" he said, hoarse with excitement. "Already!" He +pointed to a string of dim little figures galloping helter-skelter over +the neck and down the gap in the hills towards us. + +They came up against the pale western sky, little nodding swaying black +dots, and flashed over and were lost in the misty purple groove towards +us. They must have been riding through the night--the British following. +To them we were invisible. Behind us was the shining east, we were in a +shadow still too dark to betray us. + +In a moment I was afoot and called out to the men, my philosophy, my +deep questionings, all torn out of my mind like a page of scribbled +poetry plucked out of a business note-book. Khaki figures were up all +about me passing the word and hurrying to their places. All the +dispositions I had made overnight came back clear and sharp into my +mind. We hadn't long for preparations.... + +It seems now there were only a few busy moments before the fighting +began. It must have been much longer in reality. By that time we had +seen their gun come over and a train of carts. They were blundering +right into us. Every moment it was getting lighter, and the moment of +contact nearer. Then "Crack!" from down below among the rocks, and there +was a sudden stoppage of the trail of dark shapes upon the hillside. +"Crack!" came a shot from our extreme left. I damned the impatient men +who had shot away the secret of our presence. But we had to keep them at +a shooting distance. Would the Boers have the wit to charge through us +before the daylight came, or should we hold them? I had a swift, +disturbing idea. Would they try a bolt across our front to the left? Had +we extended far enough across the deep valley to our left? But they'd +hesitate on account of their gun. The gun couldn't go that way because +of the gullies and thickets.... But suppose they tried it! I hung +between momentous decisions.... + +Then all up the dim hillside I could make out the Boers halting and +riding back. One rifle across there flashed. + +We held them!... + +We had begun the fight of Pieters Nek which ended before midday with the +surrender of Simon Botha and over seven hundred men. It was the crown of +all my soldiering. + + +§ 4 + +I came back to England at last when I was twenty-six. After the peace of +Vereeniging I worked under the Repatriation Commission which controlled +the distribution of returning prisoners and concentrated population to +their homes; for the most part I was distributing stock and grain, and +presently manoeuvring a sort of ploughing flying column that the dearth +of horses and oxen made necessary, work that was certainly as hard as if +far less exciting than war. That particular work of replanting the +desolated country with human beings took hold of my imagination, and for +a time at least seemed quite straightforward and understandable. The +comfort of ceasing to destroy! + +No one has written anything that really conveys the quality of that +repatriation process; the queer business of bringing these suspicious, +illiterate, despondent people back to their desolated homes, reuniting +swarthy fathers and stockish mothers, witnessing their touchingly +inexpressive encounters, doing what one could to put heart into their +resumption. Memories come back to me of great littered heaps of luggage, +bundles, blankets, rough boxes, piled newly purchased stores, ready-made +doors, window sashes heaped ready for the waggons, slow-moving, +apathetic figures sitting and eating, an infernal squawking of parrots, +sometimes a wailing of babies. Repatriation went on to a parrot +obligato, and I never hear a parrot squawk without a flash of South +Africa across my mind. All the prisoners, I believe, brought back +parrots--some two or three. I had to spread these people out, over a +country still grassless, with teams of war-worn oxen, mules and horses +that died by the dozen on my hands. The end of each individual instance +was a handshake, and one went lumbering on, leaving the children one had +deposited behind one already playing with old ration-tins or hunting +about for cartridge-cases, while adults stared at the work they had to +do. + +There was something elementary in all that redistribution. I felt at +times like a child playing in a nursery and putting out its bricks and +soldiers on the floor. There was a kind of greatness too about the +process, a quality of atonement. And the people I was taking back, the +men anyhow, were for the most part charming and wonderful people, very +simple and emotional, so that once a big bearded man, when I wanted him +in the face of an overflowing waggon to abandon about half-a-dozen great +angular colored West Indian shells he had lugged with him from Bermuda, +burst into tears of disappointment. I let him take them, and at the end +I saw them placed with joy and reverence in a little parlor, to become +the war heirlooms no doubt of a long and bearded family. As we shook +hands after our parting coffee he glanced at them with something between +gratitude and triumph in his eyes. + +Yes, that was a great work, more especially for a ripening youngster +such as I was at that time. The memory of long rides and tramps over +that limitless veld returns to me, lonely in spite of the creaking, +lumbering waggons and transport riders and Kaffirs that followed behind. +South Africa is a country not only of immense spaces but of an immense +spaciousness. Everything is far apart; even the grass blades are far +apart. Sometimes one crossed wide stony wastes, sometimes came great +stretches of tall, yellow-green grass, wheel-high, sometimes a little +green patch of returning cultivation drew nearer for an hour or so, +sometimes the blundering, toilsome passage of a torrent interrupted our +slow onward march. And constantly one saw long lines of torn and twisted +barbed wire stretching away and away, and here and there one found +archipelagoes as it were in this dry ocean of the skeletons of cattle, +and there were places where troops had halted and their scattered +ration-tins shone like diamonds in the sunshine. Occasionally I struck +talk, some returning prisoner, some group of discharged British soldiers +become carpenters or bricklayers again and making their pound a day by +the work of rebuilding; always everyone was ready to expatiate upon the +situation. Usually, however, I was alone, thinking over this immense now +vanished tornado of a war and this equally astonishing work of healing +that was following it. + +I became keenly interested in all this great business, and thought at +first of remaining indefinitely in Africa. Repatriation was presently +done and finished. I had won Milner's good opinion, and he was anxious +for me to go on working in relation to the labor difficulty that rose +now more and more into prominence behind the agricultural re-settlement. +But when I faced that I found myself in the middle of a tangle +infinitely less simple than putting back an agricultural population upon +its land. + + +§ 5 + +For the first time in my life I was really looking at the social +fundamental of Labor. + +There is something astonishingly naïve in the unconsciousness with which +people of our class float over the great economic realities. All my life +I had been hearing of the Working Classes, of Industrialism, of Labor +Problems and the Organization of Labor; but it was only now in South +Africa, in this chaotic, crude illuminating period of putting a smashed +and desolated social order together again, that I perceived these +familiar phrases represented something--something stupendously real. +There were, I began to recognize, two sides to civilization; one +traditional, immemorial, universal, the side of the homestead, the side +I had been seeing and restoring; and there was another, ancient, too, +but never universal, as old at least as the mines of Syracuse and the +building of the pyramids, the side that came into view when I emerged +from the dusty station and sighted the squat shanties and slender +chimneys of Johannesburg, that uprooted side of social life, that +accumulation of toilers divorced from the soil, which is Industrialism +and Labor and which carries such people as ourselves, and whatever +significance and possibilities we have, as an elephant carries its +rider. + +Now all Johannesburg and Pretoria were discussing Labor and nothing but +Labor. Bloemfontein was in conference thereon. Our work of repatriation +which had loomed so large on the southernward veld became here a +business at once incidental and remote. One felt that a little sooner or +a little later all that would resume and go on, as the rains would, and +the veld-grass. But this was something less kindred to the succession of +the seasons and the soil. This was a hitch in the upper fabric. Here in +the great ugly mine-scarred basin of the Rand, with its bare hillsides, +half the stamps were standing idle, machinery was eating its head off, +time and water were running to waste amidst an immense exasperated +disputation. Something had given way. The war had spoilt the Kaffir +"boy," he was demanding enormous wages, he was away from Johannesburg, +and above all, he would no longer "go underground." + +Implicit in all the argument and suggestion about me was this profoundly +suggestive fact that some people, quite a lot of people, scores of +thousands, had to "go underground." Implicit too always in the discourse +was the assumption that the talker or writer in question wasn't for a +moment to be expected to go there. Those others, whoever they were, had +to do that for us. Before the war it had been the artless Portuguese +Kaffir, but he alas! was being diverted to open-air employment at +Delagoa Bay. Should we raise wages and go on with the fatal process of +"spoiling the workers," should we by imposing a tremendous hut-tax drive +the Kaffir into our toils, should we carry the labor hunt across the +Zambesi into Central Africa, should we follow the lead of Lord Kitchener +and Mr. Creswell and employ the rather dangerous unskilled white labor +(with "ideas" about strikes and socialism) that had drifted into +Johannesburg, should we do tremendous things with labor-saving +machinery, or were we indeed (desperate yet tempting resort!) to bring +in the cheap Indian or Chinese coolie? + +Steadily things were drifting towards that last tremendous experiment. +There was a vigorous opposition in South Africa and in England (growing +there to an outcry), but behind that proposal was the one vitalizing +conviction in modern initiative:--indisputably it would pay, _it would +pay_!... + +The human mind has a much more complex and fluctuating process than most +of those explanatory people who write about psychology would have us +believe. Instead of that simple, direct movement, like the movement of a +point, forward and from here to there, one's thoughts advance like an +army, sometimes extended over an enormous front, sometimes in échelon, +sometimes bunched in a column throwing out skirmishing clouds of +emotion, some flying and soaring, some crawling, some stopping and +dying.... In this matter of Labor, for example, I have thought so much, +thought over the ground again and again, come into it from this way and +from that way, that for the life of me I find it impossible to state at +all clearly how much I made of these questions during that Johannesburg +time. I cannot get back into those ancient ignorances, revive my old +astonishments and discoveries. Certainly I envisaged the whole process +much less clearly than I do now, ignored difficulties that have since +entangled me, regarded with a tremendous perplexity aspects that have +now become lucidly plain. I came back to England confused, and doing +what confused people are apt to do, clinging to an inadequate phrase +that seemed at any rate to define a course of action. The word +"efficiency" had got hold of me. All our troubles came, one assumed, +from being "inefficient." One turned towards politics with a bustling +air, and was all for fault-finding and renovation. + +I sit here at my desk, pen in hand, and trace figures on the +blotting-paper, and wonder how much I understood at that time. I came +back to England to work on the side of "efficiency," that is quite +certain. A little later I was writing articles and letters about it, so +that much is documented. But I think I must have apprehended too by that +time some vague outline at least of those wider issues in the sæcular +conflict between the new forms of human association and the old, to +which contemporary politics and our national fate are no more than +transitory eddies and rufflings of the surface waters. It was all so +nakedly plain there. On the one hand was the primordial, on the other +the rankly new. The farm on the veld stood on the veld, a thing of the +veld, a thing rooted and established there and nowhere else. The dusty, +crude, brick-field desolation of the Rand on the other hand did not +really belong with any particularity to South Africa at all. It was one +with our camps and armies. It was part of something else, something +still bigger: a monstrous shadowy arm had thrust out from Europe and +torn open this country, erected these chimneys, piled these heaps--and +sent the ration-tins and cartridge-cases to follow them. It was gigantic +kindred with that ancient predecessor which had built the walls of +Zimbabwe. And this hungry, impatient demand for myriads of toilers, this +threatening inundation of black or brown or yellow bond-serfs was just +the natural voice of this colossal system to which I belonged, which had +brought me hither, and which I now perceived I did not even begin to +understand.... + +One day when asking my way to some forgotten destination, I had pointed +out to me the Grey and Roberts Deep Mine. Some familiarity in the name +set me thinking until I recalled that this was the mine in which I had +once heard Lady Ladislaw confess large holdings, this mine in which +gangs of indentured Chinamen would presently be sweating to pay the +wages of the game-keepers and roadmenders in Burnmore Park.... + +Yes, this was what I was taking in at that time, but it found +me--inexpressive; what I was saying on my return to England gave me no +intimation of the broad conceptions growing in my mind. I came back to +be one of the many scores of energetic and ambitious young men who were +parroting "Efficiency," stirring up people and more particularly +stirring up themselves with the utmost vigor,--and all the time within +their secret hearts more than a little at a loss.... + + +§ 6 + +While I had been in South Africa circumstances had conspired to alter my +prospects in life very greatly. Unanticipated freedoms and opportunities +had come to me, and it was no longer out of the question for me to think +of a parliamentary career. Our fortunes had altered. My father had +ceased to be rector of Burnmore, and had become a comparatively wealthy +man. + +My second cousin, Reginald Stratton, had been drowned in Finland, and +his father had only survived the shock of his death a fortnight; his +sister, Arthur Mason's first wife, had died in giving birth to a +stillborn child the year before, and my father found himself suddenly +the owner of all that large stretch of developing downland and building +land which old Reginald had bought between Shaddock and Golding on the +south and West Esher station on the north, and in addition of +considerable investments in northern industrials. It was an odd +collusion of mortality; we had had only the coldest relations with our +cousins, and now abruptly through their commercial and speculative +activities, which we had always affected to despise and ignore, I was in +a position to attempt the realization of my old political ambitions. + +My cousins' house had not been to my father's taste. He had let it, and +I came to a new home in a pleasant, plain red-brick house, a hundred and +fifty years old perhaps, on an open and sunny hillside, sheltered by +trees eastward and northward, a few miles to the south-west of +Guildford. It had all the gracious proportions, the dignified +simplicity, the roomy comfort of the good building of that time. It +looked sunward; we breakfasted in sunshine in the library, and outside +was an old wall with peach trees and a row of pillar roses heavily in +flower. I had a little feared this place; Burnmore Rectory had been so +absolutely home to me with its quiet serenities, its ample familiar +garden, its greenhouses and intimately known corners, but I perceived I +might have trusted my father's character to preserve his essential +atmosphere. He was so much himself as I remembered him that I did not +even observe for a day or so that he had not only aged considerably but +discarded the last vestiges of clerical costume in his attire. He met me +in front of the house and led me into a wide panelled hall and wrung my +hand again and again, deeply moved and very inexpressive. "Did you have +a good journey?" he asked again and again, with tears in his eyes. "Did +you have a comfortable journey?" + +"I've not seen the house," said I. "It looks fine." + +"_You're_ a man," he said, and patted my shoulder. "Of course! It was at +Burnmore." + +"You're not changed," I said. "You're not an atom changed." + +"How could I?" he replied. "Come--come and have something to eat. You +ought to have something to eat." + +We talked of the house and what a good house it was, and he took me out +into the garden to see the peaches and grape vine and then brought me +back without showing them to me in order to greet my cousin. "It's very +like Burnmore," he said with his eyes devouring me, "very like. A +little more space and--no services. No services at all. That makes a gap +of course. There's a little chap about here, you'll find--his name is +Wednesday--who sorts my papers and calls himself my secretary.... Not +necessary perhaps but--_I missed the curate_." + +He said he was reading more than he used to do now that the parish was +off his hands, and he was preparing material for a book. It was, he +explained later, to take the form of a huge essay ostensibly on Secular +Canons, but its purport was to be no less than the complete +secularization of the Church of England. At first he wanted merely to +throw open the cathedral chapters to distinguished laymen, irrespective +of their theological opinions, and to make each English cathedral a +centre of intellectual activity, a college as it were of philosophers +and writers. But afterwards his suggestions grew bolder, the Articles of +Religion were to be set aside, the creeds made optional even for the +clergy. His dream became more and more richly picturesque until at last +he saw Canterbury a realized Thelema, and St. Paul's a new Academic +Grove. He was to work at that remarkable proposal intermittently for +many years, and to leave it at last no more than a shapeless mass of +memoranda, fragmentary essays, and selected passages for quotation. Yet +mere patchwork and scrapbook as it would be, I still have some thought +of publishing it. There is a large human charity about it, a sun too +broad and warm, a reasonableness too wide and free perhaps for the timid +convulsive quality of our time, yet all good as good wine for the wise. +Is it incredible that a day should come when our great grey monuments to +the Norman spirit should cease to be occupied by narrow-witted parsons +and besieged by narrow-souled dissenters, the soul of our race in exile +from the home and place our fathers built for it?... + +If he was not perceptibly changed, I thought my cousin Jane had become +more than a little sharper and stiffer. She did not like my uncle's own +personal secularization, and still less the glimpses she got of the +ampler intentions of his book. She missed the proximity to the church +and her parochial authority. But she was always a silent woman, and made +her comments with her profile and not with her tongue.... + +"I'm glad you've come back, Stephen," said my father as we sat together +after dinner and her departure, with port and tall silver candlesticks +and shining mahogany between us. "I've missed you. I've done my best to +follow things out there. I've got, I suppose, every press mention +there's been of you during the war and since. I've subscribed to two +press-cutting agencies, so that if one missed you the other fellow got +you. Perhaps you'll like to read them over one of these days.... You +see, there's not been a soldier in the family since the Peninsular War, +and so I've been particularly interested.... You must tell me all the +things you're thinking of, and what you mean to do. This last +stuff--this Chinese business--it puzzles me. I want to know what you +think of it--and everything." + +I did my best to give him my ideas such as they were. And as they were +still very vague ideas I have no doubt he found me rhetorical. I can +imagine myself talking of the White Man's Burthen, and how in Africa it +had seemed at first to sit rather staggeringly upon our under-trained +shoulders. I spoke of slackness and planlessness. + +"I've come back in search of efficiency." I have no doubt I said that +at any rate. + +"We're trying to run this big empire," I may have explained, "with +under-trained, under-educated, poor-spirited stuff, and we shall come a +cropper unless we raise our quality. I'm still Imperialist, more than +ever I was. But I'm an Imperialist on a different footing. I've no great +illusions left about the Superiority of the Anglo-Saxons. All that has +gone. But I do think it will be a monstrous waste, a disaster to human +possibilities if this great liberal-spirited empire sprawls itself +asunder for the want of a little gravity and purpose. And it's here the +work has to be done, the work of training and bracing up and stimulating +the public imagination...." + +Yes, that would be the sort of thing I should have said in those days. +There's an old _National Review_ on my desk as I write, containing an +article by me with some of those very phrases in it. I have been looking +at it in order to remind myself of my own forgotten eloquence. + +"Yes," I remember my father saying. "Yes." And then after reflection, +"But those coolies, those Chinese coolies. You can't build up an +imperial population by importing coolies." + +"I don't like that side of the business myself," I said. "It's detail." + +"Perhaps. But the Liberals will turn you out on it next year. And then +start badgering public houses and looting the church.... And then this +Tariff talk! Everybody on our side seems to be mixing up the unity of +the empire with tariffs. It's a pity. Salisbury wouldn't have stood it. +Unity! Unity depends on a common literature and a common language and +common ideas and sympathies. It doesn't unite people for them to be +forced to trade with each other. Trading isn't friendship. I don't trade +with my friends and I don't make friends with my tradesmen. Natural +enemies--polite of course but antagonists. Are you keen over this Tariff +stuff, Steve?" + +"Not a bit," I said. "That too seems a detail." + +"It doesn't seem to be keeping its place as a detail," said my father. +"Very few men can touch tariffs and not get a little soiled. I hate all +this international sharping, all these attempts to get artificial +advantages, all this making poor people buy inferior goods dear, in the +name of the flag. If it comes to that, damn the flag! Custom-houses are +ugly things, Stephen; the dirty side of nationality. Dirty things, +ignoble, cross, cunning things.... They wake you up in the small hours +and rout over your bags.... An imperial people ought to be an urbane +people, a civilizing people--above such petty irritating things. I'd as +soon put barbed wire along the footpath across that field where the +village children go to school. Or claim that our mushrooms are +cultivated. Or prosecute a Sunday-Society Cockney for picking my +primroses. Custom-houses indeed! It's Chinese. There are things a Great +Country mustn't do, Stephen. A country like ours ought to get along +without the manners of a hard-breathing competitive cad.... If it can't +I'd rather it didn't get along.... What's the good of a huckster +country?--it's like having a wife on the streets. It's no excuse that +she brings you money. But since the peace, and that man Chamberlain's +visit to Africa, you Imperialists seem to have got this nasty spirit all +over you.... The Germans do it, you say!" + +My father shut one eye and regarded the color of his port against the +waning light. "Let _'em_," he said.... "Fancy!--quoting the _Germans_! +When I was a boy, there weren't any Germans. They came up after '70. +Statecraft from Germany! And statesmen from Birmingham! German silver +and Electroplated Empires.... No." + +"It's just a part of our narrow outlook," I answered from the hearthrug, +after a pause. "It's because we're so--limited that everyone is +translating the greatness of empire into preferential trading and +jealousy of Germany. It's for something bigger than that that I've +returned." + +"Those big things come slowly," said my father. And then with a sigh: +"Age after age. They seem at times--to be standing still. Good things go +with the bad; bad things come with the good...." + +I remember him saying that as though I could still hear him. + +It must have been after dinner, for he was sitting, duskily indistinct, +against the light, with a voice coming out to him. The candles had not +been brought in, and the view one saw through the big plate glass window +behind him was very clear and splendid. Those little Wealden hills in +Surrey and Sussex assume at times, for all that by Swiss standards they +are the merest ridges of earth, the dignity and mystery of great +mountains. Now, the crests of Hindhead and Blackdown, purple black +against the level gold of the evening sky, might have been some +high-flung boundary chain. Nearer there gathered banks and pools of +luminous lavender-tinted mist out of which hills of pinewood rose like +islands out of the sea. The intervening spaces were magnified to +continental dimensions. And the closer lowlier things over which we +looked, the cottages below us, were grey and black and dim, pierced by a +few luminous orange windows and with a solitary street lamp shining like +a star; the village might have been nestling a mountain's height below +instead of a couple of hundred feet. + +I left my hearthrug, and walked to the window to survey this. + +"Who's got all that land stretching away there; that little blunted +sierra of pines and escarpments I mean?" + +My father halted for an instant in his answer, and glanced over his +shoulder. + +"Wardingham and Baxter share all those coppices," he remarked. "They +come up to my corner on each side." + +"But the dark heather and pine land beyond. With just the gables of a +house among the trees." + +"Oh? _that_," he said with a careful note of indifference. +"That's--Justin. You know Justin. He used to come to Burnmore Park." + + + + +CHAPTER THE SIXTH + +LADY MARY JUSTIN + + +§ 1 + +I did not see Lady Mary Justin for nearly seven months after my return +to England. Of course I had known that a meeting was inevitable, and I +had taken that very carefully into consideration before I decided to +leave South Africa. But many things had happened to me during those +crowded years, so that it seemed possible that that former magic would +no longer sway and distress me. Not only had new imaginative interests +taken hold of me but--I had parted from adolescence. I was a man. I had +been through a great war, seen death abundantly, seen hardship and +passion, and known hunger and shame and desire. A hundred disillusioning +revelations of the quality of life had come to me; once for example when +we were taking some people to the concentration camps it had been +necessary to assist at the premature birth of a child by the wayside, a +startlingly gory and agonizing business for a young man to deal with. +Heavens! how it shocked me! I could give a score of such grim +pictures--and queer pictures.... + +And it wasn't only the earthlier aspects of the life about me but also +of the life within me that I had been discovering. The first wonder and +innocence, the worshipping, dawn-clear passion of youth, had gone out of +me for ever.... + + +§ 2 + +We met at a dinner. It was at a house the Tarvrilles had taken for the +season in Mayfair. The drawing-room was a big white square apartment +with several big pictures and a pane of plate glass above the fireplace +in the position in which one usually finds a mirror; this showed another +room beyond, containing an exceptionally large, gloriously colored +portrait in pastel--larger than I had ever thought pastels could be. +Except for the pictures both rooms were almost colorless. It was a +brilliant dinner, with a predominating note of ruby; three of the women +wore ruby velvet; and Ellersley was present just back from Arabia, and +Ethel Manton, Lady Hendon and the Duchess of Clynes. I was greeted by +Lady Tarvrille, spoke to Ellersley and Lady Hendon, and then discovered +a lady in a dress of blue and pearls standing quite still under a +picture in the opposite corner of the room and regarding me attentively. +It was Mary. Some man was beside her, a tall grey man with a broad +crimson ribbon, and I think he must have spoken of me to her. It was as +if she had just turned to look at me. + +Constantly during those intervening months I had been thinking of +meeting her. None the less there was a shock, not so much of surprise as +of deferred anticipation. There she stood like something amazingly +forgotten that was now amazingly recalled. She struck me in that brief +crowded instant of recognition as being exactly the person she had been +when we had made love in Burnmore Park; there were her eyes, at once +frank and sidelong, the old familiar sweep of her hair, the old familiar +tilt of the chin, the faint humor of her lip, and at the same time she +seemed to be something altogether different from the memories I had +cherished, she was something graver, something inherently more splendid +than they had recorded. Her face lit now with recognition. + +I went across to her at once, with some dull obviousness upon my lips. + +"And so you are back from Africa at last," she said, still unsmiling. "I +saw about you in the papers.... You had a good time." + +"I had great good luck," I replied. + +"I never dreamt when we were boy and girl together that you would make a +soldier." + +I think I said that luck made soldiers. + +Then I think we found a difficulty in going on with our talk, and began +a dull little argument that would have been stupidly egotistical on my +part if it hadn't been so obviously merely clumsy, about luck making +soldiers or only finding them out. I saw that she had not intended to +convey any doubt of my military capacity but only of that natural +insensitiveness which is supposed to be needed in a soldier. But our +minds were remote from the words upon our lips. We were like aphasiacs +who say one thing while they intend something altogether different. The +impulse that had brought me across to her had brought me up to a wall of +impossible utterances. It was with a real quality of rescue that our +hostess came between us to tell us our partners at the dinner-table, +and to introduce me to mine. "You shall have him again on your other +side," she said to Lady Mary with a charming smile for me, treating me +as if I was a lion in request instead of the mere outsider I was. + +We talked very little at dinner. Both of us I think were quite unequal +to the occasion. Whatever meetings we had imagined, certainly neither of +us had thought of this very possible encounter, a long disconcerting +hour side by side. I began to remember old happenings with an +astonishing vividness; there within six inches of me was the hand I had +kissed; her voice was the same to its lightest shade, her hair flowed +off her forehead with the same amazingly familiar wave. Was she too +remembering? But I perhaps had changed altogether.... + +"Why did you go away as you did?" she asked abruptly, when for a moment +we were isolated conversationally. "Why did you never write?" + +She had still that phantom lisp. + +"What else could I do?" + +She turned away from me and answered the man on her left, who had just +addressed her.... + +When the mid-dinner change came we talked a little about indifferent +things, making a stiff conversation like a bridge over a torrent of +unspoken intimacies. We discussed something; I think Lady Tarvrille's +flowers and the Cape Flora and gardens. She told me she had a Japanese +garden with three Japanese gardeners. They were wonderful little men to +watch. "Humming-bird gardeners," she called them. "They wear their +native costume." + +"We are your neighbors in Surrey," she said, going off abruptly from +that. "We are quite near to your father." + +She paused with that characteristic effect of deliberation in her +closed lips. Then she added: "I can see the trees behind your father's +house from the window of my room." + +"Yes," I said. "You take all our southward skyline." + +She turned her face to me with the manner of a great lady adding a new +acquaintance to her collection. But her eyes met mine very steadily and +intimately. "Mr. Stratton," she said--it was the first time in her life +she had called me that--"when we come back to Surrey I want you to come +and see me and tell me of all the things you are going to do. Will you?" + + +§ 3 + +That meeting, that revival, must have been late in November or early in +December. Already by that time I had met your mother. I write to you, +little son, not to you as you are now, but to the man you are someday to +be. I write to understand myself, and, so far as I can understand, to +make you understand. So that I want you to go back with me for a time +into the days before your birth, to think not of that dear spirit of +love who broods over you three children, that wise, sure mother who +rules your life, but of a young and slender girl, Rachel More, younger +then than you will be when at last this story comes into your hands. For +unless you think of her as being a girl, if you let your present +knowledge of her fill out this part in our story, you will fail to +understand the proportions of these two in my life. So I shall write of +her here as Rachel More, as if she were someone as completely +dissociated from yourself as Lady Mary; as if she were someone in the +story of my life who had as little to do with yours. + +I had met her in September. The house my father lived in is about twelve +miles away from your mother's home at Ridinghanger, and I was taken over +by Percy Restall in his motor-car. Restall had just become a convert to +this new mode of locomotion, and he was very active with a huge, +malignant-looking French car that opened behind, and had a kind of poke +bonnet and all sorts of features that have since disappeared from the +automobile world. He took everyone that he could lay hands upon for +rides,--he called it extending their range, and he called upon everyone +else to show off the car; he was responsible for more introduction and +social admixture in that part of Surrey than had occurred during the +previous century. We punctured in the Ridinghanger drive, Restall did +his own repairs, and so it was we stayed for nearly four hours and +instead of a mere caller I became a familiar friend of the family. + +Your mother then was still not eighteen, a soft white slip of being, +tall, slender, brown-haired and silent, with very still deep dark eyes. +She and your three aunts formed a very gracious group of young women +indeed; Alice then as now the most assertive, with a gay initiative and +a fluent tongue; Molly already a sun-brown gipsy, and Norah still a +pig-tailed thing of lank legs and wild embraces and the pinkest of swift +pink blushes; your uncle Sidney, with his shy lank moodiness, acted the +brotherly part of a foil. There were several stray visitors, young men +and maidens, there were always stray visitors in those days at +Ridinghanger, and your grandmother, rosy and bright-eyed, maintained a +gentle flow of creature comforts and kindly but humorous observations. I +do not remember your grandfather on this occasion; probably he wasn't +there. + +There was tea, and we played tennis and walked about and occasionally +visited Restall, who was getting dirtier and dirtier, and crosser and +crosser at his repairs, and spreading a continually more remarkable +assemblage of parts and instruments over the grass about him. He looked +at last more like a pitch in the Caledonian market than a decent country +gentleman paying an afternoon call. And then back to more tennis and +more talk. We fell into a discussion of Tariff Reform as we sat taking +tea. Two of the visitor youths were strongly infected by the new +teachings which were overshadowing the outlook of British Imperialism. +Some mean phrase about not conquering Africa for the German bagman, some +ugly turn of thought that at a touch brought down Empire to the level of +a tradesman's advantage, fell from one of them, and stirred me to sudden +indignation. I began to talk of things that had been gathering in my +mind for some time. + +I do not know what I said. It was in the vein of my father's talk no +doubt. But I think that for once I may have been eloquent. And in the +midst of my demand for ideals in politics that were wider and deeper +than artful buying and selling, that looked beyond a vulgar aggression +and a churl's dread and hatred of foreign things, while I struggled to +say how great and noble a thing empire might be, I saw Rachel's face. +This, it was manifest, was a new kind of talk to her. Her dark eyes were +alight with a beautiful enthusiasm for what I was trying to say, and +for what in the light of that glowing reception I seemed to be. + +I felt that queer shame one feels when one is taken suddenly at the full +value of one's utmost expressions. I felt as though I had cheated her, +was passing myself off for something as great and splendid as the Empire +of my dreams. It is hard to dissociate oneself from the fine things to +which one aspires. I stopped almost abruptly. Dumbly her eyes bade me go +on, but when I spoke again it was at a lower level.... + +That look in Rachel's eyes remained with me. My mind had flashed very +rapidly from the realization of its significance to the thought that if +one could be sure of that, then indeed one could pitch oneself high. +Rachel, I felt, had something for me that I needed profoundly, without +ever having known before that I needed it. She had the supreme gifts of +belief and devotion; in that instant's gleam it seemed she held them out +to me. + +Never before in my life had it seemed credible to me that anyone could +give me that, or that I could hope for such a gift of support and +sacrifice. Love as I had known it had been a community and an alliance, +a frank abundant meeting; but this was another kind of love that shone +for an instant and promised, and vanished shyly out of sight as I and +Rachel looked at one another. + +Some interruption occurred. Restall came, I think, blackened by +progress, to drink a cup of tea and negotiate the loan of a kitchen +skewer. A kitchen skewer it appeared was all that was needed to complete +his reconstruction in the avenue. Norah darted off for a kitchen skewer, +while Restall drank. And then there was a drift to tennis, and Rachel +and I were partners. All this time I was in a state of startled +attention towards her, full of this astounding impression that something +wonderful and unprecedented had flowed out from her towards my life, +full too of doubts now whether that shining response had ever occurred, +whether some trick of light and my brain had not deceived me. I wanted +tremendously to talk to her, and did not know how to begin in any +serious fashion. Beyond everything I wanted to see again that deep onset +of belief.... + +"Come again," said your grandmother to me, "come again!" after she had +tried in vain to make Restall stay for an informal supper. I was all for +staying, but Restall said darkly, "There are the Lamps." + +"But they will be all right," said Mrs. More. + +"I can't trust 'em," said Restall, with a deepening gloom. "Not after +_that_." The motor-car looked self-conscious and uncomfortable, but said +nothing by way of excuse, and Restall took me off in it like one whose +sun has set for ever. "I wouldn't be surprised," said Restall as we went +down the drive, "if the damned thing turned a somersault. It might +do--anything." Those were the brighter days of motoring. + +The next time I went over released from Restall's limitations, and +stayed to a jolly family supper. I found remarkably few obstacles in my +way to a better acquaintance with Rachel. You see I was an entirely +eligible and desirable young man in Mrs. More's eyes.... + + +§ 4 + +When I recall these long past emotions again, I am struck by the +profound essential difference between my feelings for your mother and +for Mary. They were so different that it seems scarcely rational to me +that they should be called by the same name. Yet each was love, +profoundly deep and sincere. The contrast lies, I think, in our relative +ages, and our relative maturity; that altered the quality of all our +emotions. The one was the love of a man of six-and-twenty, exceptionally +seasoned and experienced and responsible for his years, for a girl still +at school, a girl attractively beautiful, mysterious and unknown to him; +the other was the love of coevals, who had been playmates and intimate +companions, and of whom the woman was certainly as capable and wilful as +the man. + +Now it is exceptional for men to love women of their own age, it is the +commoner thing that they should love maidens younger and often much +younger than themselves. This is true more particularly of our own +class; the masculine thirties and forties marry the feminine twenties, +all the prevailing sentiment and usage between the sexes rises naturally +out of that. We treat this seniority as though it were a virile +characteristic; we treat the man as though he were a natural senior, we +expect a weakness, a timid deference, in the girl. I and Mary had loved +one another as two rivers run together on the way to the sea, we had +grown up side by side to the moment when we kissed; but I sought your +mother, I watched her and desired her and chose her, very tenderly and +worshipfully indeed, to be mine. I do not remember that there was any +corresponding intention in my mind to be hers. I do not think that that +idea came in at all. She was something to be won, something playing an +inferior and retreating part. And I was artificial in all my attitudes +to her, I thought of what would interest her, what would please her, I +knew from the outset that what she saw in me to rouse that deep, shy +glow of exaltation in her face was illusion, illusion it was my business +to sustain. And so I won her, and long years had to pass, years of +secret loneliness and hidden feelings, of preposterous pretences and +covert perplexities, before we escaped from that crippling tradition of +inequality and looked into one another's eyes with understanding and +forgiveness, a woman and a man. + +I made no great secret of the interest and attraction I found in Rachel, +and the Mores made none of their entire approval of me. I walked over on +the second occasion, and Ridinghanger opened out, a great flower of +genial appreciation that I came alone, hiding nothing of its dawning +perception that it was Rachel in particular I came to see. + +Your grandmother's match-making was as honest as the day. There was the +same salad of family and visitors as on the former afternoon, and this +time I met Freshman, who was destined to marry Alice; there was tea, +tennis, and, by your grandmother's suggestion, a walk to see the sunset +from the crest of the hill. Rachel and I walked across the breezy +moorland together, while I talked and tempted her to talk. + +What, I wonder, did we talk about? English scenery, I think, and African +scenery and the Weald about us, and the long history of the Weald and +its present and future, and at last even a little of politics. I had +never explored the mind of a girl of seventeen before; there was a +surprise in all she knew and a delight in all she didn't know, and about +herself a candor, a fresh simplicity of outlook that was sweeter than +the clear air about us, sweeter than sunshine or the rising song of a +lark. She believed so gallantly and beautifully, she was so perfectly, +unaffectedly and certainly prepared to be a brave and noble person--if +only life would let her. And she hadn't as yet any suspicion that life +might make that difficult.... + +I went to Ridinghanger a number of times in the spring and early summer. +I talked a great deal with Rachel, and still I did not make love to her. +It was always in my mind that I would make love to her, the heavens and +earth and all her family were propitious, glowing golden with consent +and approval, I thought she was the most wonderful and beautiful thing +in life, and her eyes, the intonation of her voice, her hurrying color +and a hundred little involuntary signs told me how she quickened at my +coming. But there was a shyness. I loved her as one loves and admires a +white flower or a beautiful child--some stranger's child. I felt that I +might make her afraid of me. I had never before thought that to make +love is a coarse thing. But still at high summer when I met Mary again +no definite thing had been said between myself and Rachel. But we knew, +each of us knew, that somewhere in a world less palpable, in fairyland, +in dreamland, we had met and made our vows. + + +§ 5 + +You see how far my imagination had gone towards readjustment when Mary +returned into my life. You see how strange and distant it was to meet +her again, changed completely into the great lady she had intended to +be, speaking to me with the restrained and practised charm of a woman +who is young and beautiful and prominent and powerful and secure. There +was no immediate sense of shock in that resumption of our broken +intercourse, it seemed to me that night simply that something odd and +curious had occurred. I do not remember how we parted that evening or +whether we even saw each other after dinner was over, but from that hour +forth Mary by insensible degrees resumed her old predominance in my +mind. I woke up in the night and thought about her, and next day I found +myself thinking of her, remembering things out of the past and recalling +and examining every detail of the overnight encounter. How cold and +ineffective we had been, both of us! We had been like people resuming a +disused and partially forgotten language. Had she changed towards me? +Did she indeed want to see me again or was that invitation a mere +demonstration of how entirely unimportant seeing me or not seeing me had +become? + +Then I would find myself thinking with the utmost particularity of her +face. Had it changed at all? Was it altogether changed? I seemed to have +forgotten everything and remembered everything; that peculiar slight +thickness of her eyelids that gave her eyes their tenderness, that light +firmness of her lips. Of course she would want to talk to me, as now I +perceived I wanted to talk to her. + +Was I in love with her still? It seemed to me then that I was not. It +had not been that hesitating fierceness, that pride and demand and +doubt, which is passionate love, that had made all my sensations strange +to me as I sat beside her. It had been something larger and finer, +something great and embracing, a return to fellowship. Here beside me, +veiled from me only by our transient embarrassment and the tarnish of +separation and silences, was the one person who had ever broken down the +crust of shy insincerity which is so incurably my characteristic and +talked intimately of the inmost things of life to me. I discovered now +for the first time how intense had been my loneliness for the past five +years. I discovered now that through all those years I had been hungry +for such talk as Mary alone could give me. My mind was filled with talk, +filled with things I desired to say to her; that chaos began to take on +a multitudinous expression at the touch of her spirit. I began to +imagine conversations with her, to prepare reports for her of those new +worlds of sensation and activity I had discovered since that boyish +parting. + +But when at last that talk came it was altogether different from any of +those I had invented. + +She wrote to me when she came down into Surrey and I walked over to +Martens the next afternoon. I found her in her own sitting-room, a +beautiful characteristic apartment with tall French windows hung with +blue curtains, a large writing-desk and a great litter of books. The +room gave upon a broad sunlit terrace with a balustrading of yellowish +stone, on which there stood great oleanders. Beyond was a flower garden +and then the dark shadows of cypresses. She was standing as I came in to +her, as though she had seen me coming across the lawns and had been +awaiting my entrance. "I thought you might come to-day," she said, and +told the manservant to deny her to other callers. Again she produced +that queer effect of being at once altogether the same and altogether +different from the Mary I had known. "Justin," she said, "is in Paris. +He comes back on Friday." I saw then that the change lay in her bearing, +that for the easy confidence of the girl she had now the deliberate +dignity and control of a married woman--a very splendidly and spaciously +married woman. Her manner had been purged of impulse. Since we had met +she had stood, the mistress of great houses, and had dealt with +thousands of people. + +"You walked over to me?" + +"I walked," I said. "It is nearly a straight path. You know it?" + +"You came over the heather beyond our pine wood," she confirmed. And +then I think we talked some polite unrealities about Surrey scenery and +the weather. It was so formal that by a common impulse we let the topic +suddenly die. We stood through a pause, a hesitation. Were we indeed to +go on at that altitude of cold civility? She turned to the window as if +the view was to serve again. + +"Sit down," she said and dropped into a chair against the light, looking +away from me across the wide green space of afternoon sunshine. I sat +down on a little sofa, at a loss also. + +"And so," she said, turning her face to me suddenly, "you come back into +my life." And I was amazed to see that the brightness of her eyes was +tears. "We've lived--five years." + +"You," I said clumsily, "have done all sorts of things. I hear of +you--patronizing young artists--organizing experiments in village +education." + +"Yes," she said, "I've done all sorts of things. One has to. Forced, +unreal things for the most part. You I expect have done--all sorts of +things also.... But yours have been real things...." + +"All things," I remarked sententiously, "are real. And all of them a +little unreal. South Africa has been wonderful. And now it is all over +one doubts if it really happened. Like that incredulous mood after a +storm of passion." + +"You've come back for good?" + +"For good. I want to do things in England." + +"Politics?" + +"If I can get into that." + +Again a pause. There came the characteristic moment of deliberation that +I remembered so well. + +"I never meant you," she said, "to go away.... You could have written. +You never answered the notes I sent." + +"I was frantic," I said, "with loss and jealousy. I wanted to forget." + +"And you forgot?" + +"I did my best." + +"I did my best," said Mary. "And now---- Have you forgotten?" + +"Nothing." + +"Nor I. I thought I had. Until I saw you again. I've thought of you +endlessly. I've wanted to talk to you. We had a way of talking together. +But you went away. You turned your back as though all that was +nothing--not worth having. You--you drove home my marriage, Stephen. You +made me know what a thing of sex a woman is to a man--and how little +else...." + +She paused. + +"You see," I said slowly. "You had made me, as people say, in love with +you.... I don't know--if you remember everything...." + +She looked me in the eyes for a moment. + +"I hadn't been fair," she said with an abrupt abandonment of accusation. +"But you know, Stephen, that night---- I meant to explain. And +afterwards.... Things sometimes go as one hasn't expected them to go, +even the things one has planned to say. I suppose--I treated +you--disgustingly." + +I protested. + +"Yes," she said. "I treated you as I did--and I thought you would stand +it. I _knew_, I knew then as well as you do now that male to my female +you wouldn't stand it, but somehow--I thought there were other things. +Things that could override that...." + +"Not," I said, "for a boy of one-and-twenty." + +"But in a man of twenty-six?" + +I weighed the question. "Things are different," I said, and then, "Yes. +Anyhow now--if I may come back penitent,--to a friendship." + +We looked at one another gravely. Faintly in our ears sounded the music +of past and distant things. We pretended to hear nothing of that, tried +honestly to hear nothing of it. I had not remembered how steadfast and +quiet her face could be. "Yes," she said, "a friendship." + +"I've always had you in my mind, Stephen," she said. "When I saw I +couldn't marry you, it seemed to me I had better marry and be free of +any further hope. I thought we could get over that. 'Let's get it over,' +I thought. Now--at any rate--we have got over that." Her eyes verified +her words a little doubtfully. "And we can talk and you can tell me of +your life, and the things you want to do that make life worth living. +Oh! life has been _stupid_ without you, Stephen, large and expensive and +aimless....Tell me of your politics. They say--Justin told me--you think +of parliament?" + +"I want to do that. I have been thinking---- In fact I am going to +stand." I found myself hesitating on the verge of phrases in the quality +of a review article. It was too unreal for her presence. And yet it was +this she seemed to want from me. "This," I said, "is a phase of great +opportunities. The war has stirred the Empire to a sense of itself, to a +sense of what it might be. Of course this Tariff Reform row is a squalid +nuisance; it may kill out all the fine spirit again before anything is +done. Everything will become a haggle, a chaffering of figures.... All +the more reason why we should try and save things from the commercial +traveller. If the Empire is anything at all, it is something infinitely +more than a combination in restraint of trade...." + +"Yes," she said. "And you want to take that line. The high line." + +"If one does not take the high line," I said, "what does one go into +politics for?" + +"Stephen," she smiled, "you haven't lost a sort of simplicity---- People +go into politics because it looks important, because other people go +into politics, because they can get titles and a sense of influence +and--other things. And then there are quarrels, old grudges to serve." + +"These are roughnesses of the surface." + +"Old Stephen!" she cried with the note of a mother. "They will worry you +in politics." + +I laughed. "Perhaps I'm not altogether so simple." + +"Oh! you'll get through. You have a way of going on. But I shall have +to watch over you. I see I shall have to watch over you. Tell me of the +things you mean to do. Where are you standing?" + +I began to tell her a little disjointedly of the probabilities of my +Yorkshire constituency.... + + +§ 6 + +I have a vivid vignette in my memory of my return to my father's house, +down through the pine woods and by the winding path across the deep +valley that separated our two ridges. I was thinking of Mary and nothing +but Mary in all the world and of the friendly sweetness of her eyes and +the clean strong sharpness of her voice. That sweet white figure of +Rachel that had been creeping to an ascendancy in my imagination was +moonlight to her sunrise. I knew it was Mary I loved and had always +loved. I wanted passionately to be as she desired, the friend she +demanded, that intimate brother and confederate, but all my heart cried +out for her, cried out for her altogether. + +I would be her friend, I repeated to myself, I would be her friend. I +would talk to her often, plan with her, work with her. I could put my +meanings into her life and she should throw her beauty over mine. I +began already to dream of the talk of to-morrow's meeting.... + + +§ 7 + +And now let me go on to tell at once the thing that changed life for +both of us altogether, that turned us out of the courses that seemed +set for us, our spacious, successful and divergent ways, she to the +tragedy of her death and I from all the prospects of the public career +that lay before me to the work that now, toilsomely, inadequately and +blunderingly enough, I do. It was to pierce and slash away the +appearances of life for me, it was to open my way to infinite +disillusionment, and unsuspected truths. Within a few weeks of our +second meeting Mary and I were passionately in love with one another; we +had indeed become lovers. The arrested attractions of our former love +released again, drew us inevitably to that. We tried to seem outwardly +only friends, with this hot glow between us. Our tormented secret was +half discovered and half betrayed itself. There followed a tragi-comedy +of hesitations and disunited struggle. Within four months the crisis of +our two lives was past.... + +It is not within my purpose to tell you, my son, of the particular +events, the particular comings and goings, the chance words, the chance +meetings, the fatal momentary misunderstandings that occurred between +us. I want to tell of something more general than that. This +misadventure is in our strain. It is our inheritance. It is a +possibility in the inheritance of all honest and emotional men and +women. There are no doubt people altogether cynical and adventurous to +whom these passions and desires are at once controllable and permissible +indulgences without any radiation of consequences, a secret and +detachable part of life, and there may be people of convictions so +strong and simple that these disturbances are eliminated, but we +Strattons are of a quality neither so low nor so high, we stoop and +rise, we are not convinced about our standards, and for many +generations to come, with us and with such people as the Christians, and +indeed with most of our sort of people, we shall be equally desirous of +free and intimate friendship and prone to blaze into passion and +disaster at that proximity. + +This is one of the essential riddles in the adaptation of such human +beings as ourselves to that greater civilized state of which I dream. It +is the gist of my story. It is one of the two essential riddles that +confront our kind. The servitude of sex and the servitude of labor are +the twin conditions upon which human society rests to-day, the two +limitations upon its progress towards a greater social order, to that +greater community, those uplands of light and happy freedom, towards +which that Being who was my father yesterday, who thinks in myself +to-day, and who will be you to-morrow and your sons after you, by his +very nature urges and must continue to urge the life of mankind. The +story of myself and Mary is a mere incident in that gigantic, scarce +conscious effort to get clear of toils and confusions and encumbrances, +and have our way with life. We are like little figures, dots ascendant +upon a vast hillside; I take up our intimacy for an instant and hold it +under a lens for you. I become more than myself then, and Mary stands +for innumerable women. It happened yesterday, and it is just a part of +that same history that made Edmond Stratton of the Hays elope with +Charlotte Anstruther and get himself run through the body at Haddington +two hundred years ago, which drove the Laidlaw-Christians to Virginia in +'45, gave Stratton Street to the moneylenders when George IV. was +Regent, and broke the heart of Margaret Stratton in the days when +Charles the First was king. With our individual variations and under +changed conditions the old desires and impulses stirred us, the old +antagonisms confronted us, the old difficulties and sloughs and +impassable places baffled us. There are times when I think of my history +among all those widespread repeated histories, until it seems to me that +the human Lover is like a creature who struggles for ever through a +thicket without an end.... + +There are no universal laws of affection and desire, but it is +manifestly true that for the most of us free talk, intimate association, +and any real fellowship between men and women turns with an extreme +readiness to love. And that being so it follows that under existing +conditions the unrestricted meeting and companionship of men and women +in society is a monstrous sham, a merely dangerous pretence of +encounters. The safe reality beneath those liberal appearances is that a +woman must be content with the easy friendship of other women and of one +man only, letting a superficial friendship towards all other men veil +impassable abysses of separation, and a man must in the same way have +one sole woman intimate. To all other women he must be a little blind, a +little deaf, politely inattentive. He must respect the transparent, +intangible, tacit purdah about them, respect it but never allude to it. +To me that is an intolerable state of affairs, but it is reality. If you +live in the spirit of any other understanding you will court social +disaster. I suppose it is a particularly intolerable state of affairs to +us Strattons because it is in our nature to want things to seem what +they are. That translucent yet impassible purdah outrages our veracity. +And it is plain to me that our social order cannot stand and is not +standing the tensions it creates. The convention that passions and +emotions are absent when they are palpably present broke down between +Mary and myself, as it breaks down in a thousand other cases, as it +breaks down everywhere. Our social life is honeycombed and rotten with +secret hidden relationships. The rigid, the obtuse and the +unscrupulously cunning escape; the honest passion sooner or later flares +out and destroys.... Here is a difficulty that no bullying imposition of +arbitrary rules on the one hand nor any reckless abandonment of law on +the other, can solve. Humanity has yet to find its method in sexual +things; it has to discover the use and the limitation of jealousy. And +before it can even begin to attempt to find, it has to cease its present +timid secret groping in shame and darkness and turn on the light of +knowledge. None of us knows much and most of us do not even know what is +known. + + +§ 8 + +The house is very quiet to-day. It is your mother's birthday, and you +three children have gone with her and Mademoiselle Potin into the forest +to celebrate the occasion. Presently I shall join you. The sunlit +garden, with its tall dreaming lilies against the trellised vines upon +the wall, the cedars and the grassy space about the sundial, have that +distinguished stillness, that definite, palpable and almost outlined +emptiness which is so to speak your negative presence. It is like a +sheet of sunlit colored paper out of which your figures have been cut. +There is a commotion of birds in the jasmine, and your Barker reclines +with an infinite tranquillity, a masterless dog, upon the lawn. I take +up this writing again after an interval of some weeks. I have been in +Paris, attending the Sabotage Conference, and dealing with those +intricate puzzles of justice and discipline and the secret sources of +contentment that have to be solved if sabotage is ever to vanish from +labor struggles again. I think a few points have been made clearer in +that curious riddle of reconciliations.... + +Now I resume this story. I turn over the sheets that were written and +finished before my departure, and come to the notes for what is to +follow. + +Perhaps my days of work in Paris have carried my mind on beyond the +point at which I left the narrative. I sit as it were among a pile of +memories that are now all disordered and mixed up together, their proper +sequences and connexions lost. I cannot trace the phases through which +our mutual passion rode up through the restrained and dignified +intentions of our friendship. But I know that presently we were in a +white heat of desire. There must have been passages that I now +altogether forget, moments of tense transition. I am more and more +convinced that our swiftest, intensest, mental changes leave far less +vivid memories than impressions one receives when one is comparatively +passive. And of this phase in my life of which I am now telling I have +clear memories of a time when we talked like brother and sister, or like +angels if you will, and hard upon that came a time when we were planning +in all our moments together how and when and where we might meet in +secret and meet again. + +Things drift with a phantom-like uncertainty into my mind and pass +again; those fierce motives of our transition have lost now all stable +form and feature, but I believe there was a curious tormenting urgency +in our jealousy of those others, of Justin on my part and of Rachel on +hers. At first we had talked quite freely about Rachel, had discussed my +conceivable marriage with her. We had indeed a little forced that topic, +as if to reassure ourselves of the honesty of our new footing. But the +force that urged us nearer pervaded all our being. It was hard enough to +be barred apart, to snatch back our hands from touching, to avoid each +other's eyes, to hurry a little out of the dusk towards the lit house +and its protecting servants, but the constant presence and suggestion of +those others from whom there were no bars, or towards whom bars could be +abolished at a look, at an impulse, exacerbated that hardship, roused a +fierce insatiable spirit of revolt within us. At times we grew angry +with each other's formalism, came near to quarrelling.... + +I associate these moods with the golden stillnesses of a prolonged and +sultry autumn, and with slowly falling leaves.... + +I will not tell you how that step was taken, it matters very little to +my story, nor will I tell which one of us it was first broke the +barriers down. + + +§ 9 + +But I do want to tell you certain things. I want to tell you them +because they are things that affect you closely. There was almost from +the first a difference between Mary and myself in this, that I wanted to +be public about our love, I wanted to be open and defiant, and +she--hesitated. She wanted to be secret. She wanted to keep me; I +sometimes think that she was moved to become my mistress because she +wanted to keep me. But she also wanted to keep everything else in her +life,--her position, her ample freedoms and wealth and dignity. Our love +was to be a secret cavern, Endymion's cave. I was ready enough to do +what I could to please her, and for a time I served that secrecy, lied, +pretended, agreed to false addresses, assumed names, and tangled myself +in a net-work of furtive proceedings. These are things that poison and +consume honest love. + +You will learn soon enough as you grow to be a man that beneath the +respectable assumptions of our social life there is an endless intricate +world of subterfuge and hidden and perverted passion,--for all passion +that wears a mask is perversion--and that thousands of people of our +sort are hiding and shamming about their desires, their gratifications, +their true relationships. I do not mean the open offenders, for they are +mostly honest and gallant people, but the men and women who sin in the +shadows, the people who are not clean and scandalous, but immoral and +respectable. This underworld is not for us. I wish that I who have +looked into it could in some way inoculate you now against the +repetition of my misadventure. We Strattons are daylight men, and if I +work now for widened facilities of divorce, for an organized freedom and +independence of women, and greater breadth of toleration, it is because +I know in my own person the degradations, the falsity, the bitterness, +that can lurk beneath the inflexible pretentions of the established code +to-day. + +And I want to tell you too of something altogether unforeseen that +happened to us, and that was this, that from the day that passion +carried us and we became in the narrower sense of the word lovers, all +the wider interests we had in common, our political intentions, our +impersonal schemes, began to pass out of our intercourse. Our situation +closed upon us like a trap and hid the sky. Something more intense had +our attention by the feet, and we used our wings no more. I do not think +that we even had the real happiness and beauty and delight of one +another. Because, I tell you, there is no light upon kiss or embrace +that is not done with pride. I do not know why it should be so, but +people of our race and quality are a little ashamed of mere +gratification in love. Always we seem in my memory to have been +whispering with flushed cheeks, and discussing +interminably--_situation_. Had something betrayed us, might something +betray, was this or that sufficiently cunning? Had we perhaps left a +footmark or failed to burn a note, was the second footman who was +detailed as my valet even now pausing astonished in the brushing of my +clothes with our crumpled secret in his hand? Between myself and the +clear vision of this world about me this infernal net-work of +precautions spread like a veil. + +And it was not only a matter of concealments but of positive deceptions. +The figure of Justin comes back to me. It is a curious thing that in +spite of our bitter antagonism and the savage jealousy we were to feel +for one another, there has always been, and there remains now in my +thought of him, a certain liking, a regret at our opposition, a quality +of friendliness. His broad face, which the common impression and the +caricaturist make so powerful and eagle-like, is really not a brutal or +heavy face at all. It is no doubt aquiline, after the fashion of an +eagle-owl, the mouth and chin broad and the eyes very far apart, but +there is a minute puckering of the brows which combines with that queer +streak of brown discoloration that runs across his cheek and into the +white of his eyes, to give something faintly plaintive and pitiful to +his expression, an effect enhanced by the dark softness of his eyes. +They are gentle eyes; it is absurd to suppose them the eyes of a +violently forceful man. And indeed they do not belie Justin. It is not +by vehemence or pressure that his wealth and power have been attained; +it is by the sheer detailed abundance of his mind. In that queer big +brain of his there is something of the calculating boy and not a little +of the chess champion; he has a kind of financial gift, he must be rich, +and grows richer. What else is there for him to do? How many times have +I not tried to glance carelessly at his face and scrutinize that look in +his eyes, and ask myself was that his usual look, or was it lit by an +instinctive jealousy? Did he perhaps begin to suspect? I had become a +persistent visitor in the house, he might well be jealous of such minor +favors as she showed me, for with him she talked but little and shared +no thoughts. His manner with her was tinctured by an habituated despair. +They were extraordinarily polite and friendly with one another.... + +I tried a hundred sophistications of my treachery to him. I assured +myself that a modern woman is mistress and owner of herself; no chattel, +and so forth. But he did not think so, and neither she nor I were +behaving as though we thought so. In innumerable little things we were +doing our best tacitly to reassure him. And so you see me shaking hands +with this man, affecting an interest in his topics and affairs, staying +in his house, eating his food and drinking his wine, that I might be the +nearer to his wife. It is not the first time that has been done in the +world, there are esoteric codes to justify all I did; I perceive there +are types of men to whom such relationships are attractive by the very +reason of their illicit excitement. But we Strattons are honest people, +there is no secretive passion in our blood; this is no game for us; +never you risk the playing of it, little son, big son as you will be +when you read this story. Perhaps, but I hope indeed not, this may reach +you too late to be a warning, come to you in mid-situation. Go through +with it then, inheritor of mine, and keep as clean as you can, follow +the warped honor that is still left to you--and if you can, come out of +the tangle.... + +It is not only Justin haunts the memories of that furtive time, but +Rachel More. I see her still as she was then, a straight, white-dressed +girl with big brown eyes that regarded me now with perplexity, now with +a faint dismay. I still went over to see her, and my manner had changed. +I had nothing to say to her now and everything to hide. Everything +between us hung arrested, and nothing could occur to make an end. + +I told Mary I must cease my visits to the Mores. I tried to make her +feel my own sense of an accumulating cruelty to Rachel. "But it explains +away so much," she said. "If you stop going there--everyone will talk. +Everything will swing round--and point here." + +"Rachel!" I protested. + +"No," she said, overbearing me, "you must keep on going to Ridinghanger. +You must. You must." ... + +For a long time I had said nothing to Mary of the burthen these +pretences were to me; it had seemed a monstrous ingratitude to find the +slightest flaw in the passionate love and intimacy she had given me. But +at last the divergence of our purposes became manifest to us both. A +time came when we perceived it clearly and discussed it openly. I have +still a vivid recollection of a golden October day when we had met at +the edge of the plantation that overlooks Bearshill. She had come +through the gardens into the pine-wood, and I had jumped the rusty +banked stream that runs down the Bearshill valley, and clambered the +barbed wire fence. I came up the steep bank and through a fringe of +furze to where she stood in the shade; I kissed her hand, and discovered +mine had been torn open by one of the thorns of the wire and was +dripping blood. "Mind my dress," she said, and we laughed as we kissed +with my arm held aloof. + +We sat down side by side upon the warm pine needles that carpeted the +sand, and she made a mothering fuss about my petty wound, and bound it +in my handkerchief. We looked together across the steep gorge at the +blue ridge of trees beyond. "Anyone," she said, "might have seen us this +minute." + +"I never thought," I said, and moved a foot away from her. + +"It's too late if they have," said she, pulling me back to her. "Over +beyond there, that must be Hindhead. Someone with a telescope----!" + +"That's less credible," I said. And it occurred to me that the grey +stretch of downland beyond must be the ridge to the west of +Ridinghanger. + +"I wish," I said, "it didn't matter. I wish I could come and go and +fear nobody--and spend long hours with you--oh! at our ease." + +"Now," she said, "we spend short hours. I wonder if I would like---- +It's no good, Stephen, letting ourselves think of things that can't be. +Here we are. Kiss that hand, my lover, there, just between wrist and +thumb--the little hollow. Yes, exactly there." + +But thoughts had been set going in my mind. "Why," I said presently, +"should you always speak of things that can't be? Why should we take all +this as if it were all that there could be? I want long hours. I want +you to shine all the day through on my life. Now, dear, it's as if the +sun was shown ever and again, and then put back behind an eclipse. I +come to you half-blinded, I go away unsatisfied. All the world is dark +in between, and little phantom _yous_ float over it." + +She rested her cheek on her hand and looked at me gravely. + +"You are hard to satisfy, brother heart," she said. + +"I live in snatches of brightness and all the rest of life is waiting +and thinking and waiting." + +"What else is there? Haven't we the brightness?" + +"I want you," I said. "I want _you_ altogether." + +"After so much?" + +"I want the more. Mary, I want you to come away with me. No, listen! +this life--don't think I'm not full of the beauty, the happiness, the +wonder---- But it's a suspense. It doesn't go on. It's just a dawn, +dear, a splendid dawn, a glory of color and brightness and freshness and +hope, and--no sun rises. I want the day. Everything else has stopped +with me and stopped with you. I do nothing with my politics now,--I +pretend. I have no plans in life except plans for meeting you and again +meeting you. I want to go on, I want to go on with you and take up work +and the world again--you beside me. I want you to come out of all this +life--out of all this immense wealthy emptiness of yours----" + +"Stop," she said, "and listen to me, Stephen." + +She paused with her lips pressed together, her brows a little knit. + +"I won't," she said slowly. "I am going on like this. I and you are +going to be lovers--just as we are lovers now--secret lovers. And I am +going to help you in all your projects, hold your party together--for +you will have a party--my house shall be its centre----" + +"But Justin----" + +"He takes no interest in politics. He will do what pleases me." + +I took some time before I answered. "You don't understand how men feel," +I said. + +She waited for what else I had to say. I lay prone, and gathered +together and shaped and reshaped a little heap of pine needles. "You +see---- I can't do it. I want you." + +She gripped a handful of my hair, and tugged hard between each word. +"Haven't you got me?" she asked between her teeth. "What more _could_ +you have?" + +"I want you openly." + +She folded her arms beneath her. "_No_," she said. + +For a little while neither of us spoke. + +"It's the trouble of the deceit?" she asked. + +"It's--the deceit." + +"We can stop all that," she said. + +I looked up at her face enquiringly. + +"By having no more to hide," she said, with her eyes full of tears. "If +it's nothing to you----" + +"It's everything to me," I said. "It's overwhelming me. Oh Mary, heart +of my life, my dear, come out of this! Come with me, come and be my +wife, make a clean thing of it! Let me take you away, and then let me +marry you. I know it's asking you--to come to a sort of poverty----" + +But Mary's blue eyes were alight with anger. "Isn't it a clean thing +_now_, Stephen?" she was crying. "Do you mean that you and I aren't +clean now? Will you never understand?" + +"Oh clean," I answered, "clean as Eve in the garden. But can we keep +clean? Won't the shadow of our falsehoods darken at all? Come out of it +while we are still clean. Come with me. Justin will divorce you. We can +stay abroad and marry and come back." + +Mary was kneeling up now with her hands upon her knees. + +"Come back to what?" she cried. "Parliament?--after that? You _boy!_ you +sentimentalist! you--you duffer! Do you think I'd let you do it for your +own sake even? Do you think I want you--spoilt? We should come back to +mope outside of things, we should come back to fret our lives out. I +won't do it, Stephen, I won't do it. End _this_ if you like, break our +hearts and throw them away and go on without them, but to turn all our +lives into a scandal, to give ourselves over to the mean and the +malicious, a prey to old women--and _you_ damned out of everything! A +man partly forgiven! A man who went wrong for a woman! _No!_" + +She sprang lightly to her feet and stood over me as I knelt before her. +"And I came here to be made love to, Stephen! I came here to be loved! +And you talk that nonsense! You remind me of everything--wretched!" + +She lifted up her hands and then struck down with them, a gesture of +infinite impatience. Her face as she bent to me was alive with a +friendly anger, her eyes suddenly dark. "You _duffer_!" she repeated.... + + +§ 10 + +Discovery followed hard upon that meeting. I had come over to Martens +with some book as a pretext; the man had told me that Lady Mary awaited +me in her blue parlor, and I went unannounced through the long gallery +to find her. The door stood a little ajar, I opened it softly so that +she did not hear me, and saw her seated at her writing-desk with her +back to me, and her cheek and eyebrow just touched by the sunlight from +the open terrace window. She was writing a note. I put my hand about her +shoulder, and bent to kiss her as she turned. Then as she came round to +me she started, was for a moment rigid, then thrust me from her and rose +very slowly to her feet. + +I turned to the window and became as rigid, facing Justin. He was +standing on the terrace, staring at us, with a face that looked stupid +and inexpressive and--very white. The sky behind him, appropriately +enough, was full of the tattered inky onset of a thunderstorm. So we +remained for a lengthy second perhaps, a trite _tableau vivant_. We two +seemed to hang helplessly upon Justin, and he was the first of us to +move. + +He made a queer, incomplete gesture with one hand, as if he wanted to +undo the top button of his waistcoat and then thought better of it. He +came very slowly into the room. When he spoke his voice had neither rage +nor denunciation in it. It was simply conversational. "I felt this was +going on," he said. And then to his wife with the note of one who +remarks dispassionately on a peculiar situation. "Yet somehow it seemed +wrong and unnatural to think such a thing of you." + +His face took on something of the vexed look of a child who struggles +with a difficult task. "Do you mind," he said to me, "will you go?" + +I took a moment for my reply. "No," I said. "Since you know at last---- +There are things to be said." + +"No," said Mary, suddenly. "Go! Let me talk to him." + +"No," I said, "my place is here beside you." + +He seemed not to hear me. His eyes were fixed on Mary. He seemed to +think he had dismissed me, and that I was no longer there. His mind was +not concerned about me, but about her. He spoke as though what he said +had been in his mind, and no doubt it had been in his mind, for many +days. "I didn't deserve this," he said to her. "I've tried to make your +life as you wanted your life. It's astonishing to find--I haven't. You +gave no sign. I suppose I ought to have felt all this happening, but it +comes upon me surprisingly. I don't know what I'm to do." He became +aware of me again. "And _you_!" he said. "What am I to do? To think that +you--while I have been treating her like some sacred thing...." + +The color was creeping back into his face. Indignation had come into +his voice, the first yellow lights of rising jealousy showed in his +eyes. + +"Stephen," I heard Mary say, "will you leave me to talk to my husband?" + +"There is only one thing to do," I said. "What is the need of talking? +We two are lovers, Justin." I spoke to both of them. "We two must go out +into the world, go out now together. This marriage of yours--it's no +marriage, no real marriage...." + +I think I said that. I seem to remember saying that; perhaps with other +phrases that I have forgotten. But my memory of what we said and did, +which is so photographically clear of these earlier passages that I +believe I can answer for every gesture and nearly every word that I have +set down, becomes suddenly turbid. The high tension of our first +confrontation was giving place to a flood of emotional impulse. We all +became eager to talk, to impose interpretations and justifications upon +our situation. We all three became divided between our partial attention +to one another and our urgent necessity to keep hold of our points of +view. That I think is the common tragedy of almost all human conflicts, +that rapid breakdown from the first cool apprehension of an issue to +heat, confusion, and insistence. I do not know if indeed we raised our +voices, but my memory has an effect of raised voices, and when at last I +went out of the house it seemed to me that the men-servants in the hall +were as hushed as beasts before a thunderstorm, and all of them quite +fully aware of the tremendous catastrophe that had come to Martens. And +moreover, as I recalled afterwards with astonishment, I went past them +and out into the driving rain unprotected, and not one of them stirred +a serviceable hand.... + +What was it we said? I have a vivid sense of declaring not once only but +several times that Mary and I were husband and wife "in the sight of +God." I was full of the idea that now she must inevitably be mine. I +must have spoken to Justin at times as if he had come merely to confirm +my view of the long dispute there had been between us. For a while my +mind resisted his extraordinary attitude that the matter lay between him +and Mary, that I was in some way an interloper. It seemed to me there +was nothing for it now but that Mary should stand by my side and face +Justin with the world behind him. I remember my confused sense that +presently she and I would have to go straight out of Martens. And she +was wearing a tea-gown, easy and open, and the flimsiest of slippers. +Any packing, any change of clothing, struck me as an incredible +anti-climax. I had visions of our going forth, hand in hand. Outside was +the soughing of a coming storm, a chill wind drove a tumult of leaves +along the terrace, the door slammed and yawned open again, and then came +the rain. Justin, I remember, still talking, closed the door. I tried to +think how I could get to the station five miles away, and then what we +could do in London. We should seem rather odd visitors to an +hotel--without luggage. All this was behind my valiant demand that she +should come with me, and come now. + +And then my mind was lanced by the thin edge of realization that she did +not intend to come now, and that Justin was resolved she should not do +so. After the first shock of finding herself discovered she had stood +pale but uncowed before her bureau, with her eyes rather on him than on +me. Her hands, I think, were behind her upon the edge of the writing +flap, and she was a little leaning upon them. She had the watchful alert +expression of one who faces an unanticipated but by no means +overwhelming situation. She cast a remark to me. "But I do not want to +come with you," she said. "I have told you I do not want to come with +you." All her mind seemed concentrated upon what she should do with +Justin. "You must send him away," he was saying. "It's an abominable +thing. It must stop. How can you dream it should go on?" + +"But you said when you married me I should be free, I should own myself! +You gave me this house----" + +"What! To disgrace myself!" + +I was moved to intervene. + +"You must choose between us, Mary," I cried. "It is impossible you +should stay here! You cannot stay here." + +She turned upon me, a creature at bay. "Why shouldn't I stay here? Why +must I choose between two men? I want neither of you. I want myself. I'm +not a thing. I'm a human being. I'm not your thing, Justin--nor yours, +Stephen. Yet you want to quarrel over me--like two dogs over a bone. I +am going to stay here--in my house! It's my house. I made it. Every room +of it is full of me. Here I am!" + +She stood there making this magnificently extravagant claim; her eyes +blazing blue, her hair a little dishevelled with a strand across her +cheek. + +Both I and Justin spoke together, and then turned in helpless anger upon +one another. I remember that with the clumsiest of weak gestures he bade +me begone from the house, and that I with a now rather deflated +rhetoric answered I would go only with Mary at my side. And there she +stood, less like a desperate rebel against the most fundamental social +relations than an indignant princess, and demanded of us and high +heaven, "Why should I be fought for? Why should I be fought for?" + +And then abruptly she gathered her skirts in her hand and advanced. +"Open that door, Stephen," she said, and was gone with a silken whirl +and rustle from our presence. + +We were left regarding one another with blank expressions. + +Her departure had torn the substance out of our dispute. For the moment +we found ourselves left with a new situation for which there is as yet +no tradition of behavior. We had become actors in that new human comedy +that is just beginning in the world, that comedy in which men still +dispute the possession and the manner of the possession of woman +according to the ancient rules, while they on their side are determining +ever more definitely that they will not be possessed.... + +We had little to say to one another,--mere echoes and endorsements of +our recent declarations. "She must come to me," said I. And he, "I will +save her from that at any cost." + +That was the gist of our confrontation, and then I turned about and +walked along the gallery towards the entrance, with Justin following me +slowly. I was full of the wrath of baffled heroics; I turned towards him +with something of a gesture. Down the perspective of the white and empty +gallery he appeared small and perplexed. The panes of the tall French +windows were slashed with rain.... + + +§ 11 + +I forget now absolutely what I may have expected to happen next. I +cannot remember my return to my father's house that day. But I know that +what did happen was the most unanticipated and incredible experience of +my life. It was as if the whole world of mankind were suddenly to turn +upside down and people go about calmly in positions of complete +inversion. I had a note from Mary on the morning after this discovery +that indeed dealt with that but was otherwise not very different from +endless notes I had received before our crisis. It was destroyed, so +that I do not know its exact text now, but it did not add anything +material to the situation, or give me the faintest shadow to intimate +what crept close upon us both. She repeated her strangely thwarting +refusal to come away and live with me. She seemed indignant that we had +been discovered--as though Justin had indulged in an excess of existence +by discovering us. I completed and despatched to her a long letter I had +already been writing overnight in which I made clear the hopeless +impossibility of her attitude, vowed all my life and strength to her, +tried to make some picture of the happiness that was possible for us +together, sketched as definitely as I could when and where we might meet +and whither we might go. It must have made an extraordinary jumble of +protest, persuasion and practicality. It never reached her; it was +intercepted by Justin. + +I have gathered since that after I left Martens he sent telegrams to Guy +and Philip and her cousin Lord Tarvrille. He was I think amazed beyond +measure at this revelation of the possibilities of his cold and distant +wife, with a vast passion of jealousy awaking in him, and absolutely +incapable of forming any plan to meet the demands of his extraordinary +situation. Guy and Philip got to him that night, Tarvrille came down +next morning, and Martens became a debate. Justin did not so much +express views and intentions as have them extracted from him; it was +manifest he was prepared for the amplest forgiveness of his wife if only +I could be obliterated from their world. Confronted with her brothers, +the two men in the world who could be frankly brutal to her, Mary's +dignity suffered; she persisted she meant to go on seeing me, but she +was reduced to passionate tears. + +Into some such state of affairs I came that morning on the heels of my +letter, demanding Lady Mary of a scared evasive butler. + +Maxton and Tarvrille appeared: "Hullo, Stratton!" said Tarvrille, with a +fine flavor of an agreeable chance meeting. Philip had doubts about his +greeting me, and then extended his reluctant hand with a nervous grin to +excuse the delay. + +"I want to see Lady Mary," said I, stiffly. + +"She's not up yet," said Tarvrille, with a hand on my shoulder. "Come +and have a talk in the garden." + +We went out with Tarvrille expanding the topic of the seasons. "It's a +damned good month, November, say what you like about it." Philip walked +grimly silent on my other hand. + +"And it's a damned awkward situation you've got us into, Stratton," said +Tarvrille, "say what you like about it." + +"It isn't as though old Justin was any sort of beast," he reflected, +"or anything like that, you know. He's a most astonishing decent chap, +clean as they make them." + +"This isn't a beastly intrigue," I said. + +"It never is," said Tarvrille genially. + +"We've loved each other a long time. It's just flared out here." + +"No doubt of that," said Tarvrille. "It's been like a beacon to all +Surrey." + +"It's one of those cases where things have to be readjusted. The best +thing to do is for Mary and me to go abroad----" + +"Yes, but does Mary think so?" + +"Look here!" said Philip in a voice thick with rage. "I won't have Mary +divorced. I won't. See? I won't." + +"What the devil's it got to do with _you_?" I asked with an answering +flash of fury. + +Tarvrille's arm ran through mine. "Nobody's going to divorce Mary," he +said reassuringly. "Not even Justin. He doesn't want to, and nobody else +can, and there you are!" + +"But we two----" + +"You two have had a tremendously good time. You've got found out--and +there you are!" + +"This thing has got to stop absolutely now," said Philip and echoed with +a note of satisfaction in his own phrasing, "absolutely _now_." + +"You see, Stratton," said Tarvrille as if he were expanding Philip's +assertion, "there's been too many divorces in society. It's demoralizing +people. It's discrediting us. It's setting class against class. +Everybody is saying why don't these big people either set about +respecting the law or altering it. Common people are getting too +infernally clear-headed. Hitherto it's mattered so little.... But we +can't stand any more of it, Stratton, now. It's something more than a +private issue; it's a question of public policy. We can't stand any more +divorces." + +He reflected. "We have to consider something more than our own personal +inclinations. We've got no business to be here at all if we're not a +responsible class. We owe something--to ourselves." + +It was as if Tarvrille was as concerned as I was for this particular +divorce, as if he struggled with a lively desire to see me and Mary +happily married after the shortest possible interval. And indeed he +manifestly wasn't unsympathetic; he had the strongest proclivity for the +romantic and picturesque, and it was largely the romantic +picturesqueness of renunciation that he urged upon me. Philip for the +most part maintained a resentful silence; he was a clenched anger +against me, against Mary, against the flaming possibilities that +threatened the sister of Lord Maxton, that most promising and +distinguished young man. + +Of course their plans must have been definitely made before this talk, +probably they had made them overnight, and probably it was Tarvrille had +given them a practicable shape, but he threw over the whole of our talk +so satisfying a suggestion of arrest and prolonged discussion that it +never occurred to me that I should not be able to come again on the +morrow and renew my demand to see Mary. Even when next day I turned my +face to Martens and saw the flag had vanished from the flagstaff, it +seemed merely a token of that household's perturbation. I thought the +house looked oddly blank and sleepy as I drew near, but I did not +perceive that this was because all the blinds were drawn. The door upon +the lawn was closed, and presently the butler came to open it. He was in +an old white jacket, and collarless. "Lady Mary!" he said. "Lady Mary +has gone, sir. She and Mr. Justin went yesterday after you called." + +"Gone!" said I. "But where?" + +"I _think_ abroad, sir." + +"Abroad!" + +"I _think_ abroad." + +"But---- They've left an address?" + +"Only to Mr. Justin's office," said the man. "Any letters will be +forwarded from there." + +I paused upon the step. He remained stiffly deferential, but with an air +of having disposed of me. He reproved me tacitly for forgetting that I +ought to conceal my astonishment at this disappearance. He was indeed an +admirable man-servant. "Thank you," said I, and dropped away defeated +from the door. + +I went down the broad steps, walked out up the lawn, and surveyed house +and trees and garden and sky. To the heights and the depths and the +uttermost, I knew now what it was to be amazed.... + + +§ 12 + +I had felt myself an actor in a drama, and now I had very much the +feeling an actor would have who answers to a cue and finds himself in +mid-stage with the scenery and the rest of the cast suddenly vanished +behind him. By that mixture of force and persuasion which avails itself +of a woman's instinctive and cultivated dread of disputes and raised +voices and the betrayal of contention to strangers, by the sheer tiring +down of nerves and of sleepless body and by threats of an immediate +divorce and a campaign of ruin against me, these three men had obliged +Mary to leave Martens and go with them to Southampton, and thence they +took her in Justin's yacht, the _Water-Witch_, to Waterford, and thence +by train to a hired house, an adapted old castle at Mirk near Crogham in +Mayo. There for all practical purposes she was a prisoner. They took +away her purse, and she was four miles from a pillar-box and ten from a +telegraph office. This house they had taken furnished without seeing it +on the recommendation of a London agent, and in the name of Justin's +solicitor. Thither presently went Lady Ladislaw, and an announcement +appeared in the _Times_ that Justin and Lady Mary had gone abroad for a +time and that no letters would be forwarded. + +I have never learnt the particulars of that abduction, but I imagine +Mary astonished, her pride outraged, humiliated, helpless, perplexed and +maintaining a certain outward dignity. Moreover, as I was presently to +be told, she was ill. Guy and Philip were, I believe, the moving spirits +in the affair; Tarvrille was their apologetic accomplice, Justin took +the responsibility for what they did and bore the cost, he was bitterly +ashamed to have these compulsions applied to his wife, but full now of a +gusty fury against myself. He loved Mary still with a love that was +shamed and torn and bleeding, but his ruling passion was that infinitely +stronger passion than love in our poor human hearts, jealousy. He was +prepared to fight for her now as men fight for a flag, tearing it to +pieces in the struggle. He meant now to keep Mary. That settled, he was +prepared to consider whether he still loved her or she him.... + +Now here it may seem to you that we are on the very verge of romance. +Here is a beautiful lady carried off and held prisoner in a wild old +place, standing out half cut off from the mainland among the wintry +breakers of the west coast of Ireland. Here is the lover, baffled but +insistent. Here are the fierce brothers and the stern dragon husband, +and you have but to make out that the marriage was compulsory, irregular +and, on the ground of that irregularity, finally dissoluble, to furnish +forth a theme for Marriott Watson in his most admirable and adventurous +vein. You can imagine the happy chances that would have guided me to the +hiding-place, the trusty friend who would have come with me and told the +story, the grim siege of the place--all as it were _sotto voce_ for fear +of scandal--the fight with Guy in the little cave, my attempted +assassination, the secret passage. Would to heaven life had those rich +simplicities, and one could meet one's man at the end of a sword! My +siege of Mirk makes a very different story from that. + +In the first place I had no trusted friend of so extravagant a +friendship as such aid would demand. I had no one whom it seemed +permissible to tell of our relations. I was not one man against three or +four men in a romantic struggle for a woman. I was one man against +something infinitely greater than that, I was one man against nearly all +men, one man against laws, traditions, instincts, institutions, social +order. Whatever my position had been before, my continuing pursuit of +Mary was open social rebellion. And I was in a state of extreme +uncertainty how far Mary was a willing agent in this abrupt +disappearance. I was disposed to think she had consented far more than +she had done to this astonishing step. Carrying off an unwilling woman +was outside my imaginative range. It was luminously clear in my mind +that so far she had never countenanced the idea of flight with me, and +until she did I was absolutely bound to silence about her. I felt that +until I saw her face to face again, and was sure she wanted me to +release her, that prohibition held. Yet how was I to get at her and hear +what she had to say? Clearly it was possible that she was under +restraint, but I did not know; I was not certain, I could not prove it. +At Guildford station I gathered, after ignominious enquiries, that the +Justins had booked to London. I had two days of nearly frantic +inactivity at home, and then pretended business that took me to London, +for fear that I should break out to my father. I came up revolving a +dozen impossible projects of action in my mind. I had to get into touch +with Mary, at that my mind hung and stopped. All through the twenty-four +hours my nerves jumped at every knock upon my door; this might be the +letter, this might be the telegram, this might be herself escaped and +come to me. The days passed like days upon a painful sick-bed, grey or +foggy London days of an appalling length and emptiness. If I sat at home +my imagination tortured me; if I went out I wanted to be back and see if +any communication had come. I tried repeatedly to see Tarvrille. I had +an idea of obtaining a complete outfit for an elopement, but I was +restrained by my entire ignorance of what a woman may need. I tried to +equip myself for a sudden crisis by the completest preparation of every +possible aspect. I did some absurd and ill-advised things. I astonished +a respectable solicitor in a grimy little office behind a queer little +court with trees near Cornhill, by asking him to give advice to an +anonymous client and then putting my anonymous case before him. +"Suppose," said I, "it was for the plot of a play." He nodded gravely. + +My case as I stated it struck me as an unattractive one. + +"Application for a Writ of Habeas Corpus," he considered with eyes that +tried to remain severely impartial, "by a Wife's Lover, who wants to +find out where she is.... It's unusual. You will be requiring the +husband to produce her Corpus.... I don't think--speaking in the same +general terms as those in which you put the circumstances, it would be +likely to succeed.... No." + +Then I overcame a profound repugnance and went to a firm of private +detectives. It had occurred to me that if I could have Justin, +Tarvrille, Guy or Philip traced I might get a clue to Mary's +hiding-place. I remember a queer little office, a blusterous, +frock-coated creature with a pock-marked face, iron-grey hair, an +eyeglass and a strained tenor voice, who told me twice that he was a +gentleman and several times that he would prefer not to do business than +to do it in an ungentlemanly manner, and who was quite obviously ready +and eager to blackmail either side in any scandal into which spite or +weakness admitted his gesticulating fingers. He alluded vaguely to his +staff, to his woman helpers, "some personally attached to me," to his +remarkable underground knowledge of social life--"the illicit side." +What could he do for me? There was nothing, I said, illicit about me. +His interest waned a little. I told him that I was interested in +certain financial matters, no matter what they were, and that I wanted +to have a report of the movements of Justin and his brothers-in-law for +the past few weeks and for a little time to come. "You want them +watched?" said my private enquiry agent, leaning over the desk towards +me and betraying a slight squint. "Exactly," said I. "I want to know +what sort of things they are looking at just at present." + +"Have you any inkling----?" + +"None." + +"If our agents have to travel----" + +I expressed a reasonable generosity in the matter of expenses, and left +him at last with a vague discomfort in my mind. How far mightn't this +undesirable unearth the whole business in the course of his +investigations? And then what could he do? Suppose I went back forthwith +and stopped his enquiries before they began! I had a disagreeable +feeling of meanness that I couldn't shake off; I felt I was taking up a +weapon that Justin didn't deserve. Yet I argued with myself that the +abduction of Mary justified any such course. + +As I was still debating this I saw Philip. He was perhaps twenty yards +ahead of me, he was paying off a hansom which had just put him down +outside Blake's. "Philip," I cried, following him up the steps and +overtaking him and seizing his arm as the commissionaire opened the door +for him. "Philip! What have you people done with Mary? Where is Mary?" + +He turned a white face to me. "How dare you," he said with a catch of +the breath, "mention my sister?" + +I spoke in an undertone, and stepped a little between him and the man at +the door in order that the latter might not hear what I said. "I want +to see her," I expostulated. "I _must_ see her. What you are doing is +not playing the game. I've _got_ to see her." + +"Let go of my arm, sir!" cried he, and suddenly I felt a whirlwind of +rage answering the rage in his eyes. The pent-up exasperation of three +weeks rushed to its violent release. He struck me in the face with the +hand that was gripped about his umbrella. He meant to strike me in the +face and then escape into his club, but before he could get away from me +after his blow I had flung out at him, and had hit him under the +jawbone. My blow followed his before guard or counter was possible. I +hit with all my being. It was an amazing flare up of animal passion; +from the moment that I perceived he was striking at me to the moment +when both of us came staggering across the door-mat into the dignified +and spacious hall-way of Blake's, we were back at the ancestral ape, and +we did exactly what the ancestral ape would have done. The arms of the +commissionaire about my waist, the rush of the astonished porter from +his little glass box, two incredibly startled and delighted pages, and +an intervening member bawling out "Sir! Sir!" converged to remind us +that we were a million years or so beyond those purely arboreal days.... + +We seemed for a time to be confronted before an audience that hesitated +to interfere. "How dare you name my sister to me?" he shouted at me, and +brought to my mind the amazing folly of which he was capable. I +perceived Mary's name flung to the four winds of heaven. + +"You idiot, Philip!" I cried. "I don't _know_ your sister. I've not seen +her--scarcely seen her for years. I ask you--I ask you for a match-box +or something and you hit me." + +"If you dare to speak to her----!" + +"You fool!" I cried, going nearer to him and trying to make him +understand. But he winced and recoiled defensively. "I'm sorry," I said +to the commissionaire who was intervening. "Lord Maxton has made a +mistake." + +"Is he a member?" said someone in the background, and somebody else +suggested calling a policeman. I perceived that only a prompt retreat +would save the whole story of our quarrel from the newspapers. So far as +I could see nobody knew me there except Philip. I had to take the risks +of his behavior; manifestly I couldn't control it. I made no further +attempt to explain anything to anybody. Everyone was a little too +perplexed for prompt action, and so the advantage in that matter lay +with me. I walked through the door, and with what I imagined to be an +appearance of the utmost serenity down the steps. I noted an ascending +member glance at me with an expression of exceptional interest, but it +was only after I had traversed the length of Pall Mall that I realized +that my lip and the corner of my nostril were both bleeding profusely. I +called a cab when I discovered my handkerchief scarlet, and retreated to +my flat and cold ablutions. Then I sat down to write a letter to +Tarvrille, with a clamorous "Urgent, Please forward if away" above the +address, and tell him at least to suppress Philip. But within the club +that blockhead, thinking of nothing but the appearances of our fight and +his own credit, was varying his assertion that he had thrashed me, with +denunciations of me as a "blackguard," and giving half a dozen men a +highly colored, improvised, and altogether improbable account of my +relentless pursuit and persecution of Lady Mary Justin, and how she had +left London to avoid me. They listened, no doubt, with extreme avidity. +The matrimonial relations of the Justins had long been a matter for +speculative minds. + +And while Philip was doing this, Guy, away in Mayo still, was writing a +tender, trusting, and all too explicit letter to a well-known and +extremely impatient lady in London to account for his continued absence +from her house. "So that is it!" said the lady, reading, and was at +least in the enviable position of one who had confirmatory facts to +impart.... + +And so quite suddenly the masks were off our situation and we were open +to an impertinent world. For some days I did not realize what had +happened, and lived in hope that Philip had been willing and able to +cover his lapse. I went about with my preoccupation still, as I +imagined, concealed, and with an increasing number of typed letters from +my private enquiry agent in my pocket containing inaccurate and +worthless information about the movements of Justin, which appeared to +have been culled for the most part from a communicative young policeman +stationed at the corner nearest to the Justins' house, or expanded from +_Who's Who_ and other kindred works of reference. The second letter, I +remember, gave some particulars about the financial position of the +younger men, and added that Justin's credit with the west-end tradesmen +was "limitless," points upon which I had no sort of curiosity +whatever.... + +I suppose a couple of hundred people in London knew before I did that +Lady Mary Justin had been carried off to Ireland and practically +imprisoned there by her husband because I was her lover. The thing +reached me at last through little Fred Riddling, who came to my rooms in +the morning while I was sitting over my breakfast. "Stratton!" said he, +"what is all this story of your shaking Justin by the collar, and +threatening to kill him if he didn't give up his wife to you? And why do +you want to fight a duel with Maxton? What's it all about? Fire-eater +you must be! I stood up for you as well as I could, but I heard you +abused for a solid hour last night, and there was a chap there simply +squirting out facts and dates and names. Got it all.... What have you +been up to?" + +He stood on my hearthrug with an air of having called for an explanation +to which he was entitled, and he very nearly got one. But I just had +some scraps of reserve left, and they saved me. "Tell me first," I said, +delaying myself with the lighting of a cigarette, "the particulars ... +as you heard them." + +Riddling embarked upon a descriptive sketch, and I got a minute or so to +think. + +"Go on," I said with a note of irony, when he paused. "Go on. Tell me +some more. Where did you say they have taken her; let us have it right." + +By the time his little store had run out I knew exactly what to do with +him. "Riddling," said I, and stood up beside him suddenly and dropped my +hand with a little added weight upon his shoulder, "Riddling, do you +know the only right and proper thing to do when you hear scandal about a +friend?" + +"Come straight to him," said Riddling virtuously, "as I have done." + +"No. Say you don't believe it. Ask the scandal-monger how he knows and +insist on his telling you--insist. And if he won't--be very, very rude +to him. Insist up to the quarrelling point. Now who were those people?" + +"Well--that's a bit stiff.... One chap I didn't know at all." + +"You should have pulled him up and insisted upon knowing who he was, and +what right he had to lie about me. For it's lying, Riddling. Listen! It +isn't true that I'm besieging Lady Mary Justin. So far from besieging +her I didn't even know where she was until you told me. Justin is a +neighbor of my father's and a friend of mine. I had tea with him and his +wife not a month ago. I had tea with them together. I knew they were +going away, but it was a matter of such slight importance to me, such +slight importance"--I impressed this on his collarbone--"that I was left +with the idea that they were going to the south of France. I believe +they are in the south of France. And there you are. I'm sorry to spoil +sport, but that's the bleak unromantic truth of the matter." + +"You mean to say that there is nothing in it all?" + +"Nothing." + +He was atrociously disappointed. "But everybody," he said, "everybody +has got something." + +"Somebody will get a slander case if this goes on. I don't care what +they've got." + +"Good Lord!" he said, and stared at the rug. "You'll take your oath----" +He glanced up and met my eye. "Oh, of course it's all right what you +say." He was profoundly perplexed. He reflected. "But then, I say +Stratton, why did you go for Maxton at Blake's? _That_ I had from an +eye-witness. You can't deny a scrap like that--in broad daylight. Why +did you do that?" + +"Oh _that's_ it," said I. "I begin to have glimmerings. There's a little +matter between myself and Maxton...." I found it a little difficult to +improvise a plausible story. + +"But he said it was his sister," persisted Riddling. "He said so +afterwards, in the club." + +"Maxton," said I, losing my temper, "is a fool and a knave and a liar. +His sister indeed! Lady Mary! If he can't leave his sister out of this +business I'll break every bone of his body." ... I perceived my temper +was undoing me. I invented rapidly but thinly. "As a matter of fact, +Riddling, it's quite another sort of lady has set us by the ears." + +Riddling stuck his chin out, tucked in the corners of his mouth, made +round eyes at the breakfast things and, hands in pockets, rocked from +heels to toes and from toes to heels. "I see Stratton, yes, I see. Yes, +all this makes it very plain, of course. Very plain.... Stupid thing, +scandal is.... Thanks! no, I won't have a cigarette." + +And he left me presently with an uncomfortable sense that he did see, +and didn't for one moment intend to restrain his considerable histrionic +skill in handing on his vision to others. For some moments I stood +savoring this all too manifest possibility, and then my thoughts went +swirling into another channel. At last the curtain was pierced. I was no +longer helplessly in the dark. I got out my Bradshaw, and sat with the +map spread out over the breakfast things studying the routes to Mayo. +Then I rang for Williams, the man I shared with the two adjacent +flat-holders, and told him to pack my kit-bag because I was suddenly +called away. + + +§ 13 + +Many of the particulars of my journey to Ireland have faded out of my +mind altogether. I remember most distinctly my mood of grim elation that +at last I had to deal with accessible persons again.... + +The weather was windy and violent, and I was sea-sick for most of the +crossing, and very tired and exhausted when I landed. Williams had +thought of my thick over-coat and loaded me with wraps and rugs, and I +sat in the corner of a compartment in that state of mental and bodily +fatigue that presses on the brows like a painless headache. I got to +some little junction at last where I had to wait an hour for a +branch-line train. I tasted all the bitterness of Irish hospitality, and +such coffee as Ireland alone can produce. Then I went on to a station +called Clumber or Clumboye, or some such name, and thence after some +difficulty I got a car for my destination. It was a wretched car in +which hens had been roosting, and it was drawn by a steaming horse that +had sores under its mended harness. + +An immense wet wind was blowing as we came over the big hill that lies +to the south of Mirk. Everything was wet, the hillside above me was +either intensely green sodden turf or great streaming slabs of +limestone, seaward was a rocky headland, a ruin of a beehive shape, and +beyond a vast waste of tumbling waters unlit by any sun. Not a tree +broke that melancholy wilderness, nor any living thing but ourselves. +The horse went stumblingly under the incessant stimulation of the +driver's lash and tongue.... + +"Yonder it is," said my man, pointing with his whip, and I twisted +round to see over his shoulder, not the Rhine-like castle I had +expected, but a long low house of stone upon a headland, backed by a +distant mountain that vanished in a wild driven storm of rain as I +looked. But at the sight of Mirk my lassitude passed, my nerves +tightened, and my will began to march again. Now, thought I, we bring +things to an issue. Now we come to something personal and definite. The +vagueness is at an end. I kept my eyes upon the place, and thought it +more and more like a prison as we drew nearer. Perhaps from that window +Mary was looking for me now. Had she wondered why I did not come to her +before? Now at any rate I had found her. I sprang off the car, found a +bell-handle, and set the house jangling. + +The door opened, and a little old man appeared with his fingers thrust +inside his collar as though he were struggling against strangulation. He +regarded me for a second, and spoke before I could speak. + +"What might you be wanting?" said he, as if he had an answer ready. + +"I want to see Lady Mary Justin," I said. + +"You can't," he said. "She's gone." + +"Gone!" + +"The day before yesterday she went to London. You'll have to be getting +back there." + +"She's gone to London." + +"No less." + +"Willingly?" + +The little old man struggled with his collar. "Anyone would go +willingly," he said, and seemed to await my further commands. He eyed me +obliquely with a shadow of malice in his eyes. + +It was then my heart failed, and I knew that we lovers were beaten. I +turned from the door without another word to the janitor. "Back," said I +to my driver, and got up behind him. + +But it is one thing to decide to go back, and another to do it. At the +little station I studied time-tables, and I could not get to England +again without a delay of half a day. Somewhere I must wait. I did not +want to wait where there was any concourse of people. I decided to stay +in the inn by the station for the intervening six hours, and get some +sleep before I started upon my return, but when I saw the bedroom I +changed my plan and went down out of the village by a steep road towards +the shore. I wandered down through the rain and spindrift to the very +edge of the sea, and there found a corner among the rocks a little +sheltered from the wind, and sat, inert and wretched; my lips salt, my +hair stiff with salt, and my body wet and cold; a miserable defeated +man. For I had now an irrational and entirely overwhelming conviction of +defeat. I saw as if I ought always to have seen that I had been pursuing +a phantom of hopeless happiness, that my dream of ever possessing Mary +again was fantastic and foolish, and that I had expended all my strength +in vain. Over me triumphed a law and tradition more towering than those +cliffs and stronger than those waves. I was overwhelmed by a sense of +human weakness, of the infinite feebleness of the individual man against +wind and wave and the stress of tradition and the ancient usages of +mankind. "We must submit," I whispered, crouching close, "we must +submit." ... + +Far as the eye could reach the waves followed one another in long +unhurrying lines, an inexhaustible succession, rolling, hissing, +breaking, and tossing white manes of foam, to gather at last for a +crowning effort and break thunderously, squirting foam two hundred feet +up the streaming faces of the cliffs. The wind tore and tugged at me, +and wind and water made together a clamor as though all the evil voices +in the world, all the violent passions and all the hasty judgments were +seeking a hearing above the more elemental uproar.... + + +§ 14 + +And while I was in this phase of fatigue and despair in Mayo, the scene +was laid and all the other actors were waiting for the last act of my +defeat in London. I came back to find two letters from Mary and a little +accumulation of telegrams and notes, one written in my flat, from +Tarvrille. + +Mary's letters were neither of them very long, and full of a new-born +despair. She had not realized how great were the forces against her and +against us both. She let fall a phrase that suggested she was ill. She +had given in, she said, to save herself and myself and others from the +shame and ruin of a divorce, and I must give in too. We had to agree not +to meet or communicate for three years, and I was to go out of England. +She prayed me to accept this. She knew, she said, she seemed to desert +me, but I did not know everything,--I did not know everything,--I must +agree; she could not come with me; it was impossible. _Now_ certainly it +was impossible. She had been weak, but I did not know all. If I knew all +I should be the readier to understand and forgive her, but it was part +of the conditions that I could not know all. Justin had been generous, +in his way.... Justin had everything in his hands, the whole world was +behind him against us, and I must give in. Those letters had a quality I +had never before met in her, they were broken-spirited. I could not +understand them fully, and they left me perplexed, with a strong desire +to see her, to question her, to learn more fully what this change in her +might mean. + +Tarvrille's notes recorded his repeated attempts to see me, I felt that +he alone was capable of clearing up things for me, and I went out again +at once and telegraphed to him for an appointment. + +He wired to me from that same house in Mayfair in which I had first met +Mary after my return. He asked me to come to him in the afternoon, and +thither I went through a November fog, and found him in the drawing-room +that had the plate glass above the fireplace. But now he was vacating +the house, and everything was already covered up, the pictures and their +frames were under holland, the fine furniture all in covers of faded +stuff, the chandeliers and statues wrapped up, the carpets rolled out of +the way. Even the window-curtains were tucked into wrappers, and the +blinds, except one he had raised, drawn down. He greeted me and +apologized for the cold inhospitality of the house. "It was convenient +here," he said. "I came here to clear out my papers and boxes. And +there's no chance of interruptions." + +He went and stood before the empty fireplace, and plunged into the +middle of the matter. + +"You know, my dear Stratton, in this confounded business my heart's with +you. It has been all along. If I could have seen a clear chance before +you--for you and Mary to get away--and make any kind of life of +it--though she's my cousin--I'd have helped you. Indeed I would. But +there's no sort of chance--not the ghost of a chance...." + +He began to explain very fully, quite incontrovertibly, that entire +absence of any chance for Mary and myself together. He argued to the +converted. "You know as well as I do what that romantic flight abroad, +that Ouidaesque casa in some secluded valley, comes to in reality. All +round Florence there's no end of such scandalous people, I've been among +them, the nine circles of the repenting scandalous, all cutting one +another." + +"I agree," I said. "And yet----" + +"What?" + +"We could have come back." + +Tarvrille paused, and then leant forward. "No." + +"But people have done so. It would have been a clean sort of divorce." + +"You don't understand Justin. Justin would ruin you. If you were to take +Mary away.... He's a queer little man. Everything is in his hands. +Everything always is in the husband's hands in these affairs. If he +chooses. And keeps himself in the right. For an injured husband the law +sanctifies revenge.... + +"And you see, you've got to take Justin's terms. He's changed. He didn't +at first fully realize. He feels--cheated. We've had to persuade him. +There's a case for Justin, you know. He's had to stand--a lot. I don't +wonder at his going stiff at last. No doubt it's hard for you to see +that. But you have to see it. You've got to go away as he +requires--three years out of England, you've got to promise not to +correspond, not to meet afterwards----" + +"It's so extravagant a separation." + +"The alternative is--not for you to have Mary, but for you two to be +flung into the ditch together--that's what it comes to, Stratton. +Justin's got his case. He's set like--steel. You're up against the law, +up against social tradition, up against money--any one of those a man +may fight, but not all three. And she's ill, Stratton. You owe her +consideration. You of all people. That's no got-up story; she's truly +ill and broken. She can no longer fly with you and fight with you, +travel in uncomfortable trains, stay in horrible little inns. You don't +understand. The edge is off her pluck, Stratton." + +"What do you mean?" I asked, and questioned his face. + +"Just exactly what I say." + +A gleam of understanding came to me.... + +"Why can't I see her?" I broke in, with my voice full of misery and +anger. "Why can't I see her? As if seeing her once more could matter so +very greatly now!" + +He appeared to weigh something in his mind. "You can't," he said. + +"How do I know that she's not being told some story of my abandonment of +her? How do I know she isn't being led to believe I no longer want her +to come to me?" + +"She isn't," said Tarvrille, still with that arrested judicial note in +his voice. "You had her letters?" he said. + +"Two." + +"Yes. Didn't they speak?" + +"I want to see her. Damn it, Tarvrille!" I cried with sudden tears in +my smarting eyes. "Let _her_ send me away. This isn't---- Not treating +us like human beings." + +"Women," said Tarvrille and looked at his boot toes, "are different from +men. You see, Stratton----" + +He paused. "You always strike me, Stratton, as not realizing that women +are weak things. We've got to take _care_ of them. You don't seem to +feel that as I do. Their moods--fluctuate--more than ours do. If you +hold 'em to what they say in the same way you hold a man--it isn't +fair...." + +He halted as though he awaited my assent to that proposition. + +"If you were to meet Mary now, you see, and if you were to say to her, +come--come and we'll jump down Etna together, and you said it in the +proper voice and with the proper force, she'd do it, Stratton. You know +that. Any man knows a thing like that. And she wouldn't _want_ to do +it...." + +"You mean that's why I can't see her." + +"That's why you can't see her." + +"Because we'd become--dramatic." + +"Because you'd become--romantic and uncivilized." + +"Well," I said sullenly, realizing the bargain we were making, "I +won't." + +"You won't make any appeal?" + +"No." + +He made no answer, and I looked up to discover him glancing over his +shoulder through the great glass window into the other room. I stood up +very quickly, and there in the further apartment were Guy and Mary, +standing side by side. Our eyes met, and she came forward towards the +window impulsively, and paused, with that unpitying pane between us.... + +Then Guy was opening the door for her and she stood in the doorway. She +was in dark furs wrapped about her, but in the instant I could see how +ill she was and how broken. She came a step or so towards me and then +stopped short, and so we stood, shyly and awkwardly under Guy and +Tarvrille's eyes, two yards apart. "You see," she said, and stopped +lamely. + +"You and I," I said, "have to part, Mary. We---- We are beaten. Is that +so?" + +"Stephen, there is nothing for us to do. We've offended. We broke the +rules. We have to pay." + +"By parting?" + +"What else is there to do?" + +"No," I said. "There's nothing else." ... + +"I tried," she said, "that you shouldn't be sent from England." + +"That's a detail," I answered. + +"But your politics--your work?" + +"That does not matter. The great thing is that you are ill and +unhappy--that I can't help you. I can't do anything.... I'd go anywhere +... to save you.... All I can do, I suppose, is to part like this and +go." + +"I shan't be--altogether unhappy. And I shall think of you----" + +She paused, and we stood facing one another, tongue-tied. There was only +one word more to say, and neither of us would say it for a moment. + +"Good-bye," she whispered at last, and then, "Don't think I deserted +you, Stephen my dear. Don't think ill of me. I couldn't come--I couldn't +come to you," and suddenly her face changed slowly and she began to +weep, my fearless playmate whom I had never seen weeping before; she +began to weep as an unhappy child might weep. + +"Oh my Mary!" I cried, weeping also, and held out my arms, and we clung +together and kissed with tear-wet faces. + +"No," cried Guy belatedly, "we promised Justin!" + +But Tarvrille restrained his forbidding arm, and then after a second's +interval put a hand on my shoulder. "Come," he said.... + +And so it was Mary and I parted from one another. + + + + +CHAPTER THE SEVENTH + +BEGINNING AGAIN + + +§ 1 + +In operas and romances one goes from such a parting in a splendid +dignity of gloom. But I am no hero, and I went down the big staircase of +Tarvrille's house the empty shuck of an abandoned desire. I was acutely +ashamed of my recent tears. In the centre of the hall was a marble +figure swathed about with yellow muslin. "On account of the flies," I +said, breaking our silence. + +My words were far too unexpected for Tarvrille to understand. "The +flies," I repeated with an air of explanation. + +"You're sure she'll be all right?" I said abruptly. + +"You've done the best thing you can for her." + +"I suppose I have. I have to go." And then I saw ahead of me a world +full of the tiresome need of decisions and arrangements and empty of all +interest. "Where the _devil_ am I to go, Tarvrille? I can't even get out +of things altogether...." + +And then with a fresh realization of painful difficulties ahead: "I have +to tell this to my father. I've got to explain---- And he thought--he +expected----" + +Tarvrille opened the half of the heavy front door for me, hesitated, +and came down the broad steps into the chilly grey street and a few +yards along the pavement with me. He wanted to say something that he +found difficult to say. When at last he did find words they were quite +ridiculous in substance, and yet at the time I took them as gravely as +he intended them. "It's no good quoting Marcus Aurelius," said +Tarvrille, "to a chap with his finger in the crack of a door." + +"I suppose it isn't," I said. + +"One doesn't want to be a flatulent ass of course," said Tarvrille, +"still----" + +He resumed with an air of plunging. "It will sound just rot to you now, +Stratton, but after all it comes to this. Behind us is +a--situation--with half-a-dozen particular persons. Out here--I mean +here round the world--before you've done with them--there's a thousand +million people--men and women." + +"Oh! what does that matter to me?" said I. + +"Everything," said Tarvrille. "At least--it ought to." + +He stopped and held out his hand. "Good-bye, Stratton--good luck to you! +Good-bye." + +"Yes," I said. "Good-bye." + +I turned away from him. The image of Mary crying as a child cries +suddenly blinded me and blotted out the world. + + +§ 2 + +I want to give you as clearly as I can some impression of the mental +states that followed this passion and this collapse. It seems to me one +of the most extraordinary aspects of all that literature of speculative +attack which is called psychology, that there is no name and no +description at all of most of the mental states that make up life. +Psychology, like sociology, is still largely in the scholastic stage, it +is ignorant and intellectual, a happy refuge for the lazy industry of +pedants; instead of experience and accurate description and analysis it +begins with the rash assumption of elements and starts out upon +ridiculous syntheses. Who with a sick soul would dream of going to a +psychologist?... + +Now here was I with a mind sore and inflamed. I did not clearly +understand what had happened to me. I had blundered, offended, entangled +myself; and I had no more conception than a beast in a bog what it was +had got me, or the method or even the need of escape. The desires and +passionate excitements, the anger and stress and strain and suspicion of +the last few months had worn deep grooves in my brain, channels without +end or issue, out of which it seemed impossible to keep my thoughts. I +had done dishonorable things, told lies, abused the confidence of a +friend. I kept wrestling with these intolerable facts. If some momentary +distraction released me for a time, back I would fall presently before I +knew what was happening, and find myself scheming once more to reverse +the accomplished, or eloquently restating things already intolerably +overdiscussed in my mind, justifying the unjustifiable or avenging +defeat. I would dream again and again of some tremendous appeal to Mary, +some violent return and attack upon the situation.... + +One very great factor in my mental and moral distress was the uncertain +values of nearly every aspect of the case. There is an invincible sense +of wild rightness about passionate love that no reasoning and no +training will ever altogether repudiate; I had a persuasion that out of +that I would presently extract a magic to excuse my deceits and +treacheries and assuage my smarting shame. And round these deep central +preoccupations were others of acute exasperation and hatred towards +secondary people. There had been interventions, judgments upon +insufficient evidence, comments, and often quite justifiable comments, +that had filled me with an extraordinary savagery of resentment. + +I had a persuasion, illogical but invincible, that I was still entitled +to all the respect due to a man of unblemished honor. I clung fiercely +to the idea that to do dishonorable things isn't necessarily to be +dishonorable.... This state of mind I am describing is, I am convinced, +the state of every man who has involved himself in any affair at once +questionable and passionate. He seems free, but he is not free; he is +the slave of the relentless paradox of his position. + +And we were all of us more or less in deep grooves we had made for +ourselves, Philip, Guy, Justin, the friends involved, and all in the +measure of our grooves incapable of tolerance or sympathetic +realization. Even when we slept, the clenched fist of the attitudes we +had assumed gave a direction to our dreams. + +You see the same string of events that had produced all this system of +intense preoccupations had also severed me from the possible resumption +of those wider interests out of which our intrigue had taken me. I had +had to leave England and all the political beginnings I had been +planning, and to return to those projects now, those now impossible +projects, was to fall back promptly into hopeless exasperation.... + +And then the longing, the longing that is like a physical pain, that +hunger of the heart for some one intolerably dear! The desire for a +voice! The arrested habit of phrasing one's thoughts for a hearer who +will listen in peace no more! From that lonely distress even rage, even +the concoction of insult and conflict, was a refuge. From that pitiless +travail of emptiness I was ready to turn desperately to any offer of +excitement and distraction. + +From all those things I was to escape at last unhelped, but I want you +to understand particularly these phases through which I passed; it falls +to many and it may fall to you to pass through such a period of darkness +and malign obsession. Make the groove only a little deeper, a little +more unclimbable, make the temperament a little less sanguine, and +suicide stares you in the face. And things worse than suicide, that +suicide of self-respect which turns men to drugs and inflammatory vices +and the utmost outrageous defiance of the dreaming noble self that has +been so despitefully used. Into these same inky pools I have dipped my +feet, where other men have drowned. I understand why they drown. And my +taste of misdeed and resentment has given me just an inkling of what men +must feel who go to prison. I know what it is to quarrel with a world. + + +§ 3 + +My first plan when I went abroad was to change my Harbury French, which +was poor stuff and pedantic, into a more colloquial article, and then go +into Germany to do the same thing with my German, and then perhaps to +remain in Germany studying German social conditions--and the quality of +the German army. It seemed to me that when the term of my exile was over +I might return to England and re-enter the army. But all these were very +anæmic plans conceived by a tired mind, and I set about carrying them +out in a mood of slack lassitude. I got to Paris, and in Paris I threw +them all overboard and went to Switzerland. + +I remember very clearly how I reached Paris. I arrived about sunset--I +suppose at St. Lazare or the Gare du Nord--sent my luggage to the little +hotel in the Rue d'Antin where I had taken rooms, and dreading their +loneliness decided to go direct to a restaurant and dine. I remember +walking out into the streets just as shops and windows and street lamps +were beginning to light up, and strolling circuitously through the clear +bright stir of the Parisian streets to find a dinner at the Café de la +Paix. Some day you will know that peculiar sharp definite excitement of +Paris. All cities are exciting, and each I think in a different way. And +as I walked down along some boulevard towards the centre of things I saw +a woman coming along a side street towards me, a woman with something in +her body and something in her carriage that reminded me acutely of Mary. +Her face was downcast, and then as we converged she looked up at me, not +with the meretricious smile of her class but with a steadfast, friendly +look. Her face seemed to me sane and strong. I passed and hesitated. An +extraordinary impulse took me. I turned back. I followed this woman +across the road and a little way along the opposite pavement. I remember +I did that, but I do not remember clearly what was in my mind at the +time; I think it was a vague rush towards the flash of companionship in +her eyes. There I had seemed to see the glimmer of a refuge from my +desolation. Then came amazement and reaction. I turned about and went on +my way, and saw her no more. + +But afterwards, later, I went out into the streets of Paris bent upon +finding that woman. She had become a hope, a desire. + +I looked for her for what seemed a long time, half an hour perhaps or +two hours. I went along, peering at the women's faces, through the +blazing various lights, the pools of shadowy darkness, the flickering +reflections and transient glitter, one of a vast stream of slow-moving +adventurous human beings. I crossed streams of traffic, paused at +luminous kiosks, became aware of dim rows of faces looking down upon me +from above the shining enamel of the omnibuses.... My first intentness +upon one person, so that I disregarded any distracting intervention, +gave place by insensible degrees to a more general apprehension of the +things about me. That original woman became as it were diffused. I began +to look at the men and women sitting at the little tables behind the +panes of the cafés, and even on the terraces--for the weather was still +dry and open. I scrutinized the faces I passed, faces for the most part +animated by a sort of shallow eagerness. Many were ugly, many vile with +an intense vulgarity, but some in that throng were pretty, some almost +gracious. There was something pathetic and appealing for me in this +great sweeping together of people into a little light, into a weak +community of desire for joy and eventfulness. There came to me a sense +of tolerance, of fellowship, of participation. From an outer darkness +of unhappiness or at least of joylessness, they had all come hither--as +I had come. + +I was like a creature that slips back again towards some deep waters out +of which long since it came, into the light and air. It was as if old +forgotten things, prenatal experiences, some magic of ancestral +memories, urged me to mingle again with this unsatisfied passion for +life about me.... + +Then suddenly a wave of feeling between self-disgust and fear poured +over me. This vortex was drawing me into deep and unknown things.... I +hailed a passing _fiacre_, went straight to my little hotel, settled my +account with the proprietor, and caught a night train for Switzerland. + +All night long my head ached, and I lay awake swaying and jolting and +listening to the rhythms of the wheels, Paris clean forgotten so soon as +it was left, and my thoughts circling continually about Justin and +Philip and Mary and the things I might have said and done. + + +§ 4 + +One day late in February I found myself in Vevey. I had come down with +the break-up of the weather from Montana, where I had met some Oxford +men I knew and had learned to ski. I had made a few of those vague +acquaintances one makes in a winter-sport hotel, but now all these +people were going back to England and I was thrown back upon myself once +more. I was dull and angry and unhappy still, full of self-reproaches +and dreary indignations, and then very much as the sky will sometimes +break surprisingly through storm clouds there began in me a new series +of moods. They came to me by surprise. One clear bright afternoon I sat +upon the wall that runs along under the limes by the lake shore, envying +all these people who were going back to England and work and usefulness. +I thought of myself, of my career spoilt, my honor tarnished, my +character tested and found wanting. So far as English politics went my +prospects had closed for ever. Even after three years it was improbable +that I should be considered by the party managers again. And besides, it +seemed to me I was a man crippled. My other self, the mate and +confirmation of my mind, had gone from me. I was no more than a +mutilated man. My life was a thing condemned; I had joined the ranks of +loafing, morally-limping, English exiles. + +I looked up. The sun was setting, a warm glow fell upon the dissolving +mountains of Savoy and upon the shining mirror of the lake. The +luminous, tranquil breadth of it caught me and held me. "I am done for." +The light upon the lake and upon the mountains, the downward swoop of a +bird over the water and something in my heart, gave me the lie. + +"What nonsense!" I said, and felt as if some dark cloud that had +overshadowed me had been thrust back. + +I stared across at Savoy as though that land had spoken. Why should I +let all my life be ruled by the blunders and adventures of one short +year of adventure? Why should I become the votary of a train of +consequences? What had I been dreaming of all this time? Over there were +gigantic uplands I had never seen and trodden; and beyond were great +plains and cities, and beyond that the sea, and so on, great spaces and +multitudinous things all round about the world. What did the things I +had done, the things I had failed to do, the hopes crushed out of me, +the tears and the anger, matter to _that_? And in some amazing way this +thought so took possession of me that the question seemed also to carry +with it the still more startling collateral, what then did they matter +to me? "Come out of yourself," said the mountains and all the beauty of +the world. "Whatever you have done or suffered is nothing to the +inexhaustible offer life makes you. We are you, just as much as the past +is you." + +It was as though I had forgotten and now remembered how infinitely +multitudinous life can be. It was as if Tarvrille's neglected words to +me had sprouted in the obscurity of my mind and borne fruit.... + +I cannot explain how that mood came, I am doing my best to describe it, +and it is not easy even to describe. And I fear that to you who will +have had I hope no experience of such shadows as I had passed through, +it is impossible to convey its immense elation.... I remember once I +came in a boat out of the caves of Han after two hours in the darkness, +and there was the common daylight that is nothing wonderful at all, and +its brightness ahead there seemed like trumpets and cheering, like +waving flags and like the sunrise. And so it was with this mood of my +release. + +There is a phrase of Peter E. Noyes', that queer echo of Emerson whom +people are always rediscovering and forgetting again, a phrase that +sticks in my mind,--"Every living soul is heir to an empire and has +fallen into a pit." It's an image wonderfully apt to describe my change +of mental attitude, and render the contrast between those intensely +passionate personal entanglements that had held me tight and that wide +estate of life that spreads about us all, open to all of us in just the +measure that we can scramble out of our individual selves--to a more +general self. I seemed to be hanging there at the brim of my stale and +painful den, staring at the unthought-of greatness of the world, with an +unhoped-for wind out of heaven blowing upon my face. + +I suppose the intention of the phrase "finding salvation," as religious +people use it, is very much this experience. If it is not the same thing +it is something very closely akin. It is as if someone were scrambling +out of a pit into a largeness--a largeness that is attainable by every +man just in the measure that he realizes it is there. + +I leave these fine discriminations to the theologian. I know that I went +back to my hotel in Vevey with my mind healed, with my will restored to +me, and my ideas running together into plans. And I know that I had come +out that day a broken and apathetic man. + + +§ 5 + +The next day my mood declined again; it was as if that light, that sense +of release that had shone so clear and strong in my mind, had escaped +me. I sought earnestly to recover it. But I could not do so, and I found +my old narrow preoccupations calling urgently to me again. + +I thought that perhaps I might get back those intimations of outlook and +relief if I clambered alone into some high solitude and thought. I had +a crude attractive vision of myself far above the heat and noise, +communing with the sky. It was the worst season for climbing, and on the +spur of the moment I could do nothing but get up the Rochers de Naye on +the wrong side, and try and find some eyrie that was neither slippery +nor wet. I did not succeed. In one place I slipped down a wet bank for +some yards and held at last by a root; if I had slipped much further I +should not be writing here now; and I came back a very weary and bruised +climber, without any meditation.... + +Three nights after when I was in bed I became very lucidly awake--it +must have been about two or three in the morning--and the vision of life +returned to me, with that same effect of enlargement and illumination. +It was as if the great stillness that is behind and above and around the +world of sense did in some way communicate with me. It bade me rouse my +spirit and go on with the thoughts and purposes that had been stirring +and proliferating in my mind when I had returned to England from the +Cape. "Dismiss your passion." But I urged that that I could not do; +there was the thought of Mary subjugated and weeping, the smarting +memory of injury and defeat, the stains of subterfuge and discovery, the +aching separation. No matter, the stillness answered, in the end all +that is just to temper you for your greater uses.... I cannot forget, I +insisted. Do not forget, but for the present this leads you no whither; +this chapter has ended; dismiss it and turn to those other things. You +are not only Stephen Stratton who fell into adultery; in these silences +he is a little thing and far away; here and with me you are +Man--Everyman--in this round world in which your lot has fallen. But +Mary, I urged, to forget Mary is a treason, an ingratitude, seeing that +she loved me. But the stillness did not command me to forget her, but +only to turn my face now to the great work that lies before mankind. And +that work? That work, so far as your share goes, is first to understand, +to solve, and then to achieve, to work out in the measure of yourself +that torment of pity and that desire for order and justice which +together saturate your soul. Go about the world, embrue yourself with +life, make use of that confusedly striving brain that I have lifted so +painfully out of the deadness of matter.... + +"But who are you?" I cried out suddenly to the night. "Who are you?" + +I sat up on the side of my bed. The dawn was just beginning to break up +the featureless blackness of the small hours. "This is just some odd +corner of my brain," I said.... + +Yet---- How did I come to have this odd corner in my brain? What _is_ +this lucid stillness?... + + +§ 6 + +Let me tell you rather of my thoughts than of my moods, for there at +least one comes to something with a form that may be drawn and a +substance that is measurable; one ceases to struggle with things +indefinable and the effort to convey by metaphors and imaginary voices +things that are at once bodiless and soundless and lightless and yet +infinitely close and real. And moreover with that mysterious and subtle +change of heart in me there came also a change in the quality and range +of my ideas. I seemed to rise out of a tangle of immediacies and +misconceptions, to see more largely and more freely than I had ever done +before. + +I have told how in my muddled and wounded phase I had snatched at the +dull project of improving my languages, and under the cloak of that +spying a little upon German military arrangements. Now my mind set such +petty romanticism on one side. It had recovered the strength to look on +the whole of life and on my place in it. It could resume the ideas that +our storm of passion had for a time thrust into the background of my +thoughts. I took up again all those broad generalizations that had +arisen out of my experiences in South Africa, and which I had been not +so much fitting into as forcing into the formulæ of English politics; I +recalled my disillusionment with British Imperialism, my vague but +elaborating apprehension of a profound conflict between enterprise and +labor, a profound conflict between the life of the farm and the life of +trade and finance and wholesale production, as being something far truer +to realities than any of the issues of party and patriotism upon which +men were spending their lives. So far as this rivalry between England +and Germany, which so obsessed the imagination of Europe, went, I found +that any faith I may have had in its importance had simply fallen out of +my mind. As a danger to civilization, as a conceivable source of +destruction and delay, it was a monstrous business enough, but that in +the long run it mattered how or when they fought and which won I did not +believe. In the development of mankind the thing was of far less +importance than the struggle for Flanders or the wars of France and +Burgundy. I was already coming to see Europe as no more than the +dog's-eared corner of the page of history,--like most Europeans I had +thought it the page--and my recovering mind was eager and open to see +the world beyond and form some conception of the greater forces that lay +outside our insularities. What is humanity as a whole doing? What is the +nature of the world process of which I am a part? Why should I drift +from cradle to grave wearing the blinkers of my time and nationality, a +mere denizen of Christendom, accepting its beliefs, its stale +antagonisms, its unreal purposes? That perhaps had been tolerable while +I was still an accepted member of the little world into which my lot had +fallen, but now that I was thrust out its absurdity glared. For me the +alternative was to be a world-man or no man. I had seemed sinking +towards the latter: now I faced about and began to make myself what I +still seek to make myself to-day, a son of mankind, a conscious part of +that web of effort and perplexity which wraps about our globe.... + +All this I say came into my mind as if it were a part of that recovery +of my mind from its first passionate abjection. And it seemed a simple +and obvious part of the same conversion to realize that I was ignorant +and narrow, and that, too, in a world which is suffering like a beast in +a slime pit by reason of ignorance and narrowness of outlook, and that +it was my manifest work and purpose to make myself less ignorant and to +see and learn with all my being. It came to me as a clear duty that I +should get out of the land of hotels and leisure and go seeking the +facts and clues to human inter-relationship nearer the earthy roots of +things, and I turned my thoughts to India and China, those vast enigmas +of human accumulation, in a spirit extraordinarily like that of some +mystic who receives a call. I felt I must go to Asia and from Asia +perhaps round the world. But it was the greatness of Asia commanded me. +I wanted to see the East not as a spectacle but as the simmering vat in +which the greater destiny of man brews and brews.... + + +§ 7 + +It was necessary to tell my father of my intentions. I made numerous +beginnings. I tore up several letters and quarrelled bitterly with the +hotel pens. At first I tried to describe the change that had happened to +my mind, to give him some impression of the new light, the release that +had come to me. But how difficult this present world is with its tainted +and poisoned phrases and its tangled misunderstandings! Here was I +writing for the first time in my life of something essentially religious +and writing it to him whose profession was religion, and I could find no +words to convey my meaning to him that did not seem to me fraught with +the possibilities of misinterpretation. One evening I made a desperate +resolve to let myself go, and scrawled my heart out to him as it seemed +that night, a strange, long letter. It was one of the profoundest +regrets that came to me when I saw him dead last winter that I did not +risk his misunderstanding and post that letter. But when I re-read it in +the next morning's daylight it seemed to me so rhetorical, so full +of--what shall I call it?--spiritual bombast, it so caricatured and +reflected upon the deep feelings sustaining me, that I could not post it +for shamefacedness, and I tore it up into little pieces and sent +instead the briefest of notes. + +"I am doing no good here in Switzerland," I wrote. "Would you mind if I +went east? I want to see something of the world outside Europe. I have a +fancy I may find something to do beyond there. Of course, it will cost +rather more than my present allowance. I will do my best to economize. +Don't bother if it bothers you--I've been bother enough to you...." + +He replied still more compactly. "By all means. I will send you some +circular notes, Poste Restante, Rome. That will be on your way. Good +wishes to you, Stephen. I'm glad you want to go east instead of just +staying in Switzerland." + +I sit here now and wonder, little son, what he thought, what he +supposed, what he understood. + +I loved my father, and I began to perceive he loved me wonderfully. I +can imagine no man I would have sooner had for a priest than him; all +priestcraft lays hands if it can, and with an excellent wisdom, upon the +titles and dignity of fatherhood; and yet here am I left to guessing--I +do not know whether my father ever worshipped, whether he ever prayed +with his heart bared to God. There are times when the inexpressiveness +of life comes near to overwhelming me, when it seems to me we are all +asleep or entranced, and but a little way above the still cows who stand +munching slowly in a field. Why couldn't we and why didn't we talk +together?... We fear bathos too much, are shyly decent to the pitch of +mania. We have neither the courage of our bodies nor of our souls.... + +I went almost immediately to Rome. I stayed in Rome some days, getting +together an outfit, and incidentally seeing that greater city of the +dead in whose embrace the modern city lies. I was now becoming +interested in things outside my grooves, though my grooves were still +there, deep and receptive, and I went about the place at last almost +eagerly, tracing the outlines of that great departed city on whose +colossal bones the churches and palaces of the middle ages cluster like +weeds in the spaces and ruins of a magnificent garden. I found myself +one day in the Forum, thinking of that imperialism that had built the +Basilica of Julius Cæsar, and comparing its cramped vestiges with that +vaster second administrative effort which has left the world the +monstrous arches of Constantine. I sat down over against these last +among the ruins of the Vestals' House, and mused on that later +reconstruction when the Empire, with its science aborted and its +literature and philosophy shrivelled to nothing, its social fabric +ruined by the extravagances of financial adventure and its honor and +patriotism altogether dead, united itself, in a desperate effort to +continue, with all that was most bickeringly intolerant and destructive +in Christianity--only to achieve one common vast decay. All Europe to +this day is little more than the sequel to that failure. It is the Roman +Empire in disintegration. The very churches whose domes rise to the +northward of the ancient remains are built of looted stones and look +like parasitic and fungoid growths, and the tourists stream through +those spaces day by day, stare at the marble fragments, the arches, the +fallen carvings and rich capitals, with nothing greater in their minds +and nothing clearer.... + +I discovered I was putting all this into the form of a letter to Mary. +I was writing to her in my mind, as many people talk to themselves. And +I remember that I wandered upon the Palatine Hill musing over the idea +of writing a long letter to her, a long continuous letter to her, a sort +of diary of impressions and ideas, that somewhen, years ahead, I might +be able to put into her hands. + +One does not carry out such an idea into reality; it is so much easier +to leave the letter imagined and unwritten if there lives but little +hope of its delivery; yet for many years I kept up an impalpable +correspondence in my thoughts, a stream of expression to which no answer +came--until at last the habits of public writing and the gathering +interests of a new rôle in life diverted it to other ends. + + +§ 8 + +One morning on the way from Brindisi to Egypt I came up on deck at dawn +because my mind was restless and I could not sleep. Another solitary +passenger was already up, so intently watching a pink-lit rocky +coast-line away to the north of us that for a time he did not observe +me. + +"That's Crete," he said, when at last he became aware of me close at +hand. + +"Crete!" said I. + +"Yes," he said, "Crete." + +He came nearer to me. "That, sir," he said with a challenging emphasis, +"is the most wonderful island I've ever yet set eyes on,--quite the most +wonderful." + +"Five thousand years ago," he remarked after a pause that seemed to me +to be calculated, "they were building palaces there, better than the +best we can build to-day. And things--like modern things. They had +bathrooms there, beautifully fitted bathrooms--and admirable +sanitation--admirable. Practically--American. They had better artists to +serve them than your King Edward has, why! Minos would have laughed or +screamed at all that Windsor furniture. And the things they made of +gold, sir--you couldn't get them done anywhere to-day. Not for any +money. There was a Go about them.... They had a kind of writing, +too--before the Phoenicians. No man can read it now, and there it is. +Fifty centuries ago it was; and to-day--They grow oranges and lemons. +And they riot.... Everything else gone.... It's as if men struggled up +to a certain pitch and then--grew tired.... All this Mediterranean; it's +a tired sea...." + +That was the beginning of a curious conversation. He was an American, a +year or so younger than myself, going, he said, "to look at Egypt." + +"In our country," he explained, "we're apt to forget all these +worked-out regions. Too apt. We don't get our perspectives. We think the +whole blessed world is one everlasting boom. It hit me first down in +Yucatan that that wasn't so. Why! the world's littered with the remains +of booms and swaggering beginnings. Americanism!--there's always been +Americanism. This Mediterranean is just a Museum of old Americas. I +guess Tyre and Sidon thought they were licking creation all the time. +It's set me thinking. What's _really_ going on? Why--anywhere,--you're +running about among ruins--anywhere. And ruins of something just as good +as anything we're doing to-day. Better--in some ways. It takes the heart +out of you...." + +It was Gidding, who is now my close friend and ally. I remember very +vividly the flavor of morning freshness as we watched Crete pass away +northward and I listened to his talk. + +"I was coming out of New York Harbor a month ago and looking back at the +skyscrapers," he said, "and suddenly it hit me in the mind;--'That's +just the next ruin,' I thought." + +I remember that much of our first talk, but the rest of it now is +indistinct. + +We had however struck up an acquaintance, we were both alone, and until +he left me on his way to Abydos we seem now to have been conversing all +the time. And almost all the time we were discussing human destiny and +the causes of effort and decay, and whether the last few ascendant +centuries the world has seen have in them anything more persistent than +the countless beginnings that have gone before. + +"There's Science," said I a little doubtfully. + +"At Cnossus there they had Dædalus, sir, fifty centuries ago. Dædalus! +He was an F.R.S. all right. I haven't a doubt he flew. If they hadn't +steel they had brass. We're too conceited about our little modern +things." + + +§ 9 + +I found something very striking and dramatic in the passage from Europe +to Asia. One steams slowly through a desert that comes up close to the +ship; the sand stretches away, hillock and mound beyond hillock and +mound; one sees camels in the offing stringing out to some ancient +destination; one is manifestly passing across a barrier,--the canal has +changed nothing of that. Suez is a first dab of tumultuous Orientalism, +noisy and vivid. And then, after that gleam of turmoil, one opens out +into the lonely dark blue waters of the Red Sea. Right and left the +shore is a bitter, sun-scorched desolation; eastward frowns a great +rampart of lowering purple mountains towering up to Sinai. It is like no +European landscape. The boat goes slowly as if uncharted dangers lurked +ahead. It is a new world with a new atmosphere. Then comes wave upon +wave of ever more sultry air, and the punkahs begin to swing and the +white clothes appear. Everyone casts off Europe, assumes an Asiatic +livery. The very sun, rushing up angrily and abruptly after a heated +night, is unfamiliar, an Asiatic sun. + +And so one goes down that reef-fringed waterway to Aden; it is studded +with lonely-looking lighthouses that burn, it seems, untended, and +sometimes in their melancholy isolation swing great rhythmic arms of +light. And then, land and the last lateen sails of Aden vanishing +together, one stands out into the hot thundery monotonies of the Indian +Ocean; into imprisonment in a blue horizon across whose Titan ring the +engines seem to throb in vain. How one paces the ship day by day, and +eats and dozes and eats again, and gossips inanely and thanks Heaven +even for a flight of flying fish or a trail of smoke from over the +horizon to take one's mind a little out of one's oily quivering +prison!... A hot portentous delay; a sinister significant pause; that is +the voyage from Europe to India still. + +I suppose by the time that you will go to India all this prelude will +have vanished, you will rattle through in a train-de-luxe from Calais, +by way of Baku or Constantinople; you will have none of this effect of +a deliberate sullen approach across limitless miles of sea. But that is +how I went to India. Everything seemed to expand; I was coming out of +the frequent landfalls, the neighborly intimacies and neighborly +conflicts of the Mediterranean into something remoter; into larger seas +and greater lands, rarer communications and a vaster future.... + +To go from Europe to Asia is like going from Norway to Russia, from +something slight and "advanced" to something massive and portentous. I +felt that nearly nine years ago; to-day all Asia seems moving forward to +justify my feelings.... + +And I remember too that as I went down the Red Sea and again in the +Indian Ocean I had a nearly intolerable passion of loneliness. A wound +may heal and still leave pain. I was coming out of Europe as one comes +out of a familiar house into something larger and stranger, I seemed but +a little speck of life, and behind me, far away and silent and receding, +was the one other being to whom my thoughts were open. It seemed very +cruel to me that I could not write to her. + +Such moods were to come to me again and again, and particularly during +the inactivities of voyages and in large empty spaces and at night when +I was weary. At other times I could banish and overcome them by forcing +myself to be busy and by going to see novel and moving things. + + + + +CHAPTER THE EIGHTH + +THIS SWARMING BUSINESS OF MANKIND + + +§ 1 + +I do not think I could now arrange into a consecutive history my +travellings, my goings and returnings in my wandering effort to see and +comprehend the world. And certainly even if I could arrange my facts I +should still be at a loss to tell of the growth of ideas that is so much +more important than any facts, to trace the increasing light to its +innumerable sources, to a chink here, to a glowing reflection there, to +a leap of burning light from some long inert darkness close at hand. But +steadily the light grew, and this vast world of man, in which our world, +little son, is the world of a limited class in a small island, began to +take on definite forms, to betray broad universal movements; what seemed +at first chaotic, a drift and tangle of passions, traditions, foolish +ideas, blundering hostilities, careless tolerances, became confusedly +systematic, showed something persistent and generalized at work among +its multitudinous perplexity. + +I wonder now if I can put before you very briefly the main +generalizations that were growing up in my mind during my exile, the +simplified picture into which I translated the billions of sights and +sounds and--smells, for every part of the world has its distinctive +olfactory palette as much as its palette of colors--that rained daily +and nightly upon my mind. + +Before, my eyes again as I sit here in this quiet walled French garden, +the great space before the Jumna Musjid at Delhi reappears, as I saw it +in the evening stillness against a glowing sky of gold, and the memory +of countless worshippers within, praying with a devotion no European +displays. And then comes a memory of that long reef of staircases and +temples and buildings, the ghats of Benares, in the blazing morning sun, +swarming with a vast multitude of multicolored people and the water also +swarming with brown bodies. It has the colors of a bed of extravagantly +splendid flowers and the light that is Indian alone. Even as I sit here +these places are alive with happening. It is just past midday here; at +this moment the sun sinks in the skies of India, the Jumna Musjid +flushes again with the glow of sunset, the smoke of evening fires +streams heavenward against its subtle lines, and upon those steps at +Benares that come down the hillside between the conquering mosque of +Aurangzeb and the shining mirror of the Ganges a thousand silent seated +figures fall into meditation. And other memories recur and struggle with +one another; the crowded river-streets of Canton, the rafts and +houseboats and junks innumerable, riding over inky water, begin now to +twinkle with a thousand lights. They are ablaze in Osaka and Yokohama +and Tokio, and the swarming staircase streets of Hong Kong glitter with +a wicked activity now that night has come. I flash a glimpse of Burmese +temples, of villages in Java, of the sombre purple masses of the walls +of the Tartar city at Pekin with squat pagoda-guarded gates. How those +great outlines lowered at me in the twilight, full of fresh memories and +grim anticipations of baseness and violence and bloodshed! I sit here +recalling it--feeling it all out beyond the trellised vine-clad wall +that bounds my physical vision.... Vast crowded world that I have seen! +going from point to point seeking for clues, for generalities, until at +last it seems to me that there emerges--something understandable. + +I think I have got something understandable out of it all. + +What a fantastically courageous thing is this mind of ours! My thoughts +seem to me at once presumptuous and inevitable. I do not know why it is +that I should dare, that any of us should dream of this attempt to +comprehend. But we who think are everyone impelled to this amazing +effort to get it all together into some simple generality. It is not +reason but a deep-seated instinct that draws our intelligence towards +explanations, that sets us perpetually seeking laws, seeking statements +that will fit into infinite, incessantly interweaving complexities, and +be true of them all! There is I perceive a valiant and magnificent +stupidity about the human mind, a disregard of disproportion and +insufficiency--like the ferret which will turn from the leveret it has +seized to attack even man if he should interfere. By these desperate +feats of thinking it is that our species has achieved its victories. By +them it survives. By them it must stand the test of ultimate survival. +Some forgotten man in our ancestry--for every begetting man alive was in +my individual ancestry and yours three thousand years ago--first dared +to think of the world as round,--an astounding temerity. He rolled up +the rivers and mountains, the forests and plains and broad horizons +that stretched beyond his ken, that seemed to commonsense to go on +certainly for ever, into a ball, into a little ball "like an orange." +Magnificent feat of the imagination, outdoing Thor's deep draught of the +sea! And once he had done it, all do it and no one falters at the deed. +You are not yet seven as I write and already you are serenely aware that +you live upon a sphere. And in much the same manner it is that we, who +are sociologists and economists, publicists and philosophers and what +not, are attempting now to roll up the vast world of facts which concern +human intercourse, the whole indeed of history and archæology, into some +similar imaginable and manageable shape, that presently everyone will be +able to grasp. + +I suppose there was a time when nobody bothered at all about the shape +of the earth, when nobody had even had the idea that the earth could be +conceived as having a shape, and similarly it is true that it is only in +recent centuries that people have been able to suppose that there was a +shape to human history. It is indeed not much more than a century since +there was any real emergence from theological assumptions and pure +romanticism and accidentalism in these matters. Old Adam Smith it was, +probing away at the roots of economics, who set going the construction +of ampler propositions. From him spring all those new interpretations +which have changed the writing of history from a record of dramatic +reigns and wars and crises to an analysis of economic forces. How +impossible it would be for anyone now to write that great chapter of +Gibbon's in which he sweeps together into one contempt the history of +sixty Emperors and six hundred years of time. His note of weariness and +futility vanishes directly one's vision penetrates the immediate +surface. Those Heraclians and Isaurians and Comneni were not history, a +schoolboy nowadays knows that their record is not history, knows them +for the mere scum upon the stream. + +And still to-day we have our great interpretations to make. Ours is a +time of guesses, theories and provisional generalizations. Our phase +corresponds to the cosmography that was still a little divided between +discs and domes and spheres and cosmic eggs; that was still a thousand +years from measuring and weighing a planet. For a long time my mind +hovered about the stimulating theories of Socialism and particularly +about those more systematic forms of Socialist teaching that centre +about Karl Marx. He rose quite naturally out of those early economists +who saw all the world in terms of production and saving. He was a +necessary step for me at least, on the way to understanding. For a time +I did so shape the world in my mind that it seemed to me no more than a +vast enterprise for the organization and exploitation of labor. For a +time I thought human life was essentially a labor problem, that working +and controlling work and lending and selling and "speculating" made the +essential substance of human life, over which the forms of politics ran +as the stripes of a tiger's skin run and bend over its living muscles. I +followed my period in thinking that. You will find in Ferrero's "Roman +Decline," which was published early in this century, and which waits for +you in the library, almost exactly the method of interpretation that was +recommending itself to me in 1904 and 1905. + +Well, the labor problem concerns a great--_substantial_, shall I +say?--in human society. It is only I think the basis and matter of +society, not its shape and life and reality, but it had to be +apprehended before I could get on to more actual things. Insensibly the +idea that contemporary political forms mattered very fundamentally to +men, was fading out of my mind. The British Empire and the German +Empire, the Unity of Italy, and Anglo-Saxon ascendency, the Yellow Peril +and all the other vast phantoms of the World-politician's mythology were +fading out of my mind in those years, as the Olympic cosmogony must have +faded from the mind of some inquiring Greek philosopher in the days of +Heraclitus. And I revised my history altogether in the new light. The +world had ceased to be chaotic in my mind; it had become a vast if as +yet a quite inconclusive drama between employer and employed. + +It makes a wonderful history, this history of mankind as a history of +Labor, as a history of the perpetual attempts of an intelligent minority +to get things done by other people. It does not explain how that +aggression of the minority arose nor does it give any conception of a +primordial society which corresponds with our knowledge of the realities +of primitive communities. One begins rather in the air with a human +society that sells and barters and sustains contracts and permits land +to be privately owned, and having as hastily as possible got away from +that difficulty of beginnings, having ignored the large areas of the +world which remain under a pacific and unprogressive agriculture to this +day, the rest of the story becomes extremely convincing and +illuminating. It does indeed give a sustaining explanation to a large +part of recorded history, this generalization about the proclivity of +able and energetic people to make other people do things. One ignores +what is being done as if that mattered nothing, and concentrates upon +the use and enslavement of men. + +One sees that enslavement to labor progressing from crude directness to +the most subtly indirect methods. The first expedient of enterprise was +the sword and then the whip, and still there are remote and ugly corners +of the world, in the Mexican Valle Nazionale or in Portuguese South +Africa, where the whip whistles still and the threat of great suffering +and death follows hard upon the reluctant toiler. But the larger part of +our modern slavery is past the stage of brand and whip. We have fallen +into methods at once more subtle and more effective. We stand +benevolently in front of our fellow man, offering, almost as if it were +food and drink and shelter and love, the work we want him to do; and +behind him, we are acutely aware, is necessity, sometimes quite of our +making, as when we drive him to work by a hut-tax or a poll tax or a +rent, that obliges him to earn money, and sometimes not so obviously of +our making, sometimes so little of our making that it is easy to believe +we have no power to remove it. Instead of flicking the whip, we groan at +last with Harriet Martineau at the inexorable laws of political economy +that condemn us to comfort and direction, and those others to toil and +hardship and indignity.... + +And through the consideration of these latter later aspects it was that +I came at last to those subtler problems of tacit self-deception, of +imperfect and unwilling apprehension, of innocently assumed advantages, +of wilfully disregarded unfairness; and also to all those other problems +of motive, those forgotten questions of why we make others work for us +long after our personal needs are satisfied, why men aggrandize and +undertake, which gradually have become in my mind the essential problems +of human relationship, replacing the crude problems of labor altogether +in that position, making _them_ at last only questions of contrivance +and management on the way to greater ends. + +I have come to believe now that labor problems are problems merely by +the way. They have played their part in a greater scheme. This phase of +expropriation and enslavement, this half designed and half unconscious +driving of the duller by the clever, of the pacific by the bolder, of +those with weak appetites and imaginations by those with stronger +appetites and imaginations, has been a necessary phase in human +development. With my innate passionate desire to find the whole world +purposeful, I cannot but believe that. But however necessary it has +been, it is necessary no longer. Strangest of saviors, there rises over +the conflicts of mankind the glittering angular promise of the machine. +There is no longer any need for slavery, open or disguised. We do not +need slaves nor toilers nor mere laborers any more; they are no longer +essential to a civilization. Man has ridden on his brother man out of +the need of servitude. He struggles through to a new phase, a phase of +release, a phase when leisure and an unexampled freedom is possible to +every human being. Is possible. And it is there one halts seeing that +splendid possibility of aspiration and creation before mankind--and +seeing mankind for the most part still downcast, quite unaware or +incredulous, following the old rounds, the grooves of ancient and +superseded assumptions and subjections.... + +But here I will not trace in any detail the growth of my conviction +that the ancient and heavy obligation to work hard and continually +throughout life has already slipped from man's shoulders. Suffice it +that now I conceive of the task before mankind as a task essentially of +rearrangement, as a problem in relationships, extremely complex and +difficult indeed, but credibly solvable. During my Indian and Chinese +journey I was still at the Marxist stage. I went about the east looking +at labor, watching its organization and direction, seeing great +interests and enterprises replace the diffused life of an earlier phase; +the disputes and discussions in the Transvaal which had first opened my +mind to these questions came back to me, and steadily I lost my interest +in those mere political and national issues with their paraphernalia of +kings and flags and governments and parties that had hitherto blinded me +to these more fundamental interactions. + + +§ 2 + +It happened that in Bombay circumstances conspired to bring the crude +facts of labor enslavement vividly before me. I found a vigorous +agitation raging in the English press against the horrible sweating that +was going on in the cotton mills, I met the journalist most intimately +concerned in the business on my second day in India, and before a week +was out I was hard at work getting up the question and preparing a +memorandum with him on the possibility of immediate legislative +intervention. The very name of Bombay, which for most people recalls a +spacious and dignified landfall, lateen sails, green islands and +jutting precipices, a long city of trees and buildings like a bright and +various breakwater between the great harbor and the sea, and then +exquisite little temples, painted bullock carriages, Towers of Silence, +Parsis, and an amazingly kaleidoscopic population,--is for me a reminder +of narrow, foetid, plague-stricken streets and tall insanitary +tenement-houses packed and dripping with humanity, and of terrible +throbbing factories working far into the night, blazing with electric +light against the velvet-black night-sky of India, damp with the +steam-clouds that are maintained to moisten the thread, and swarming +with emaciated overworked brown children--for even the adults, spare and +small, in those mills seem children to a western eye. + +I plunged into this heated dreadful business with a passionate interest +and went back to the Yacht Club only when the craving for air and a good +bath and clean clothes and space and respect became unendurable. I waded +deep in labor, in this process of consuming humanity for gain, chasing +my facts through throbbing quivering sheds reeking of sweat and +excrement under the tall black-smoking chimneys,--chasing them in very +truth, because when we came prying into the mills after the hour when +child-labor should cease, there would be a shrill whistle, a patter of +feet and a cuffing and hiding of the naked little creatures we were +trying to rescue. They would be hidden under rugs, in boxes, in the most +impossible places, and we dragged them out scared and lying. Many of +them were perhaps seven years old at most; and the adults--men and women +of fourteen that is to say--we could not touch at all, and they worked +in that Indian heat, in a noisome air drenched with steam for fourteen +and fifteen hours a day. And essential to that general impression is a +memory of a slim Parsi mill-manager luminously explaining the inherited +passion for toil in the Indian weaver, and a certain bulky Hindu with a +lemon-yellow turban and a strip of plump brown stomach showing between +his clothes, who was doing very well, he said, with two wives and five +children in the mills. + +That is my Bombay, that and the columns of crossed circles marking +plague cases upon the corners of houses and a peculiar acrid smell, and +the polychromatic stir of crowded narrow streets between cliffs of +architecture with carved timbers and heavy ornamentations, into which +the sun strikes obliquely and lights a thousand vivid hues.... + +Bombay, the gateway of what silly people were still calling in those +days "the immemorial East," Bombay, which is newer than Boston or New +York, Bombay which has grown beneath the Englishman's shadow out of a +Portuguese fort in the last two hundred years.... + + +§ 3 + +I came out of these dark corners presently into the sunblaze of India. I +was now intensely interested in the whole question of employment and +engaged in preparing matter for my first book, "Enterprise and India," +and therein you may read how I went first to Assam and then down to +Ceylon following up this perplexing and complicated business of human +enslavement to toil, exercised by this great spectacle of human labor, +and at once attracted by and stimulated by and dissatisfied with those +socialist generalizations that would make all this vast harsh spectacle +of productive enterprise a kind of wickedness and outrage upon humanity. +And behind and about the things I was looking for were other things for +which I was not looking, that slowly came into and qualified the +problem. It dawned upon me by degrees that India is not so much one +country as a vast spectacle of human development at every stage, in +infinite variety. One ranges between naked savages and the most +sophisticated of human beings. I pursued my enquiries about great modern +enterprises, about railway labor, canal labor, tea-planting, across vast +stretches of country where men still lived, illiterate, agricultural, +unprogressive and simple, as men lived before the first stirrings of +recorded history. One sees by the tanks of those mud-built villages +groups of women with brass vessels who are identical in pose and figure +and quality with the women modelled in Tanagra figures, and the droning +wall-wheel is the same that irrigated the fields of ancient Greece, and +the crops and beasts and all the life is as it was in Greece and Italy, +Phoenicia and Judea before the very dawn of history. + +By imperceptible degrees I came to realize that this matter of +expropriation and enslavement and control, which bulks so vastly upon +the modern consciousness, which the Socialists treat as though it was +the comprehensive present process of mankind, is no more than one aspect +of an overlife that struggles out of a massive ancient and traditional +common way of living, struggles out again and again--blindly and always +so far with a disorderly insuccess.... + +I began to see in their proper proportion the vast enduring normal human +existence, the peasant's agricultural life, unlettered, laborious and +essentially unchanging on the one hand, and on the other those +excrescences of multitudinous city aggregation, those stormy excesses of +productive energy that flare up out of that life, establish for a time +great unstable strangenesses of human living, palaces, cities, roads, +empires, literatures, and then totter and fall back again into ruin. In +India even more than about the Mediterranean all this is spectacular. +There the peasant goes about his work according to the usage of fifty +thousand years. He has a primitive version of religion, a moral +tradition, a social usage, closely adapted by countless years of trial +and survival to his needs, and the whole land is littered with the +vestiges and abandoned material of those newer, bolder, more +experimental beginnings, beginnings that merely began. + +It was when I was going through the panther-haunted palaces of Akbar at +Fatehpur Sikri that I first felt how tremendously the ruins of the past +may face towards the future; the thing there is like a frozen wave that +rose and never broke; and once I had caught that light upon things, I +found the same quality in all the ruins I saw, in Amber and Vijayanagar +and Chitor, and in all that I have seen or heard of, in ancient Rome and +ancient Verona, in Pæstum and Cnossus and ancient Athens. None of these +places was ever really finished and done with; the Basilicas of Cæsar +and Constantine just as much as the baths and galleries and halls of +audience at Fatehpur Sikri express not ends achieved but thwarted +intentions of permanence. They embody repulse and rejection. They are +trials, abandoned trials, towards ends vaguely apprehended, ends felt +rather than known. Even so was I moved by the Bruges-like emptinesses of +Pekin, in the vast pretensions of its Forbidden City, which are like a +cry, long sustained, that at last dies away in a wail. I saw the place +in 1905 in that slack interval after the European looting and before the +great awakening that followed the Russo-Japanese war. Pekin in a century +or so may be added in its turn to the list of abandoned endeavors. +Insensibly the sceptre passes.... Nearer home than any of these places +have I imagined the same thing; in Paris it seemed to me I felt the +first chill shadow of that same arrest, that impalpable ebb and +cessation at the very crest of things, that voice which opposes to all +the hasty ambitions and gathering eagerness of men: "It is not here, it +is not yet." + +Only the other day as I came back from Paris to this quiet place and +walked across the fields from the railway station to this house, I saw +an old woman, a grandmother, a bent old crone with two children playing +about her as she cut grass by the wayside, and she cut it, except that +her sickle was steel, exactly as old women were cutting grass before +there was writing, before the dawn of history, before men laid the first +stones one upon the other of the first city that ever became a ruin.... + +You see Civilization has never yet existed, it has only continually and +obstinately attempted to be. Our Civilization is but the indistinct +twilight before the dawn. It is still only a confused attempt, a +flourish out of barbarism, and the normal life of men, the toiling +earthy life of the field and the byre, goes on still like a stream that +at once supports and carries to destruction the experimental ships of +some still imperfect inventor. India gives it all from first to last, +and now the modern movement, the latest half-conscious struggle of the +New Thing in mankind, throws up Bombay and Calcutta, vast feverish +pustules upon the face of the peninsula, bridges the sacred rivers with +hideous iron lattice-work and smears the sky of the dusty ruin-girdled +city of Delhi,--each ruin is the vestige of an empire,--with the black +smoke of factory chimneys. + +Altogether scattered over that sun-burnt plain there are the remains of +five or six extinguished Delhis, that played their dramas of frustration +before the Delhi of the Great Mogul. This present phase of human +living--its symbol at Delhi is now, I suppose, a scaffold-bristling pile +of neo-Georgian building--is the latest of the constructive synthetic +efforts to make a newer and fuller life for mankind. Who dares call it +the last? I question myself constantly whether this life we live to-day, +whether that too, is more than a trial of these blind constructive +forces, more universal perhaps, more powerful perhaps than any +predecessor but still a trial, to litter the world with rusting material +when the phase of recession recurs. + +But yet I can never quite think that is so. This time, surely, it is +different. This time may indeed be the beginning of a permanent change; +this time there are new elements, new methods and a new spirit at work +upon construction that the world has never known before. Mankind may be +now in the dawn of a fresh phase of living altogether. It is possible. +The forces of construction are proportionally gigantic. There was never +so much clear and critical thought in the world as there is now, never +so large a body of generally accessible knowledge and suggestion, never +anything like the same breadth of outlook, the same universality of +imaginative freedom. That is so in spite of infinite turmoil and +confusion. Moreover the effort now is less concentrated, less dramatic. +There is no one vital center to the modern movement which disaster can +strike or decay undermine. If Paris or New York slacken and grow dull +and materialist, if Berlin and London conspire for a mutual destruction, +Tokio or Baku or Valparaiso or Christiania or Smyrna or Delhi will +shelter and continue the onward impetus. + +And this time too it is not any one person, any one dynasty, any one +cult or race which carries our destiny. Human thought has begun to free +itself from individual entanglements and dramatic necessities and +accidental standards. It becomes a collective mind, a collective will +towards achievement, greater than individuals or cities or kingdoms or +peoples, a mind and will to which we all contribute and which none of us +may command nor compromise by our private errors. It ceases to be +aristocratic; it detaches itself from persons and takes possession of us +all. We are involved as it grows free and dominant, we find ourselves, +in spite of ourselves, in spite of quarrels and jealousies and +conflicts, helping and serving in the making of a new world-city, a new +greater State above our legal States, in which all human life becomes a +splendid enterprise, free and beautiful, whose aptest symbol in all our +world is a huge Gothic Cathedral lit to flame by the sun, whose scheme +is the towering conquest of the universe, whose every little detail is +the wrought-out effort of a human soul.... + +Such were the ideas that grew together in my mind as I went about India +and the East, across those vast sunlit plains, where men and women still +toil in their dusty fields for a harsh living and live in doorless +hovels on floors of trampled cow-dung, persecuted by a hundred hostile +beasts and parasites, caught and eaten by tigers and panthers as cats +eat mice, and grievously afflicted by periodic famine and pestilence, +even as men and women lived before the dawn of history, for untold +centuries, for hundreds of thousands of years. + + +§ 4 + +How strange we English seem in India, a little scattered garrison. Are +we anything more than accidental, anything more than the messenger-boy +who has brought the impetus of the new effort towards civilization +through the gates of the East? Are we makers or just a means, casually +taken up and used by the great forces of God? + +I do not know, I have never been able to tell. I have never been able to +decide whether we are the greatest or the dullest of peoples. + +I think we are an imaginative people with an imagination at once +gigantic, heroic and shy, and also we are a strangely restrained and +disciplined people who are yet neither subdued nor subordinated.... +These are flat contradictions to state, and yet how else can one render +the paradox of the English character and this spectacle of a handful of +mute, snobbish, not obviously clever and quite obviously ill-educated +men, holding together kingdoms, tongues and races, three hundred +millions of them, in a restless fermenting peace? Again and again in +India I would find myself in little circles of the official +English,-supercilious, pretentious, conventional, carefully "turned out" +people, living gawkily, thinking gawkily, talking nothing but sport and +gossip, relaxing at rare intervals into sentimentality and levity as +mean as a banjo tune, and a kind of despairful disgust would engulf me. +And then in some man's work, in some huge irrigation scheme, some feat +of strategic foresight, some simple, penetrating realization of +deep-lying things, I would find an effect, as if out of a thickly rusted +sheath one had pulled a sword and found it--flame.... + +I recall one evening I spent at a little station in Bengal, between +Lucknow and Delhi, an evening given over to private theatricals. The +theatre was a huge tent, and the little roughly improvised stage was lit +by a row of oil footlights and so small as barely to give a foothold for +the actors and actresses in the more crowded scenes. About me were the +great people, the colonel's wife, a touring young man of family, +officers and the wife of the manager of the big sugar refinery close at +hand. Behind were English of a more dubious social position, also +connected with the sugar refinery, a Eurasian family or so, very dressy +and aggressive and terribly snubbed, and then I think various Portuguese +and other nondescripts and groups of non-commissioned officers and men, +some with their wives. The play, admirably chosen, was that +crystallization of liberal Victorian snobbery, _Caste_, and I remember +there was a sub-current of amusement because the young officer who +played--what _is_ the name of the hero's friend? I forget--had in the +haste of his superficiality adopted a moustache that would not keep on +and an eyeglass that would not keep in. + +Everybody was acting very badly, nobody was word-perfect and a rasping +prompter would not keep ahead as he ought to have done; the scenery and +the make-ups were daubs, and I was filled with amazement that having +quite wantonly undertaken to do this thing these people could then do it +so slackly. Then a certain sudden warmth in the applause about me +quickened my attention, and I realized the satirical purport of drunken +old father Eccles, and the moral intention of his son-in-law, the +plumber. Between them they expressed the whole duty of the workingman as +the prosperous Victorians conceived it. He was to work hard always at +any job he could find for any wages he could get, and if he didn't he +was a "drunken shirker" and the dupe of "paid agitators." A comforting +but misleading doctrine. And here were these people a decade on in the +twentieth century, with Time, Death, and Judgment close upon them, still +eagerly applauding, eager to excuse their minds with this one-sided, +ungracious, old-fashioned nonsense, that has done so much to intensify +the deepening class antagonisms that strain us now at home almost to the +breaking point! + +How amazingly, it seemed, those people didn't understand and wouldn't +understand any class but their own, any race but their own, any usage +other than their use! Covertly I surveyed the colonel's profile. It +expressed nothing but entire satisfaction with these disastrous +interpretations. What a weather-worn thought-free face that grizzled +veteran showed the world! + +I was seized with a sudden curiosity to see how the private soldiers +behind me were taking old Eccles. I turned round to discover cropped +heads and faces as expressionless as masks, and behind them dusky faces +watching very alertly, and then other dusky faces, Eurasians, inferiors, +servants, natives. + +Then at a sharp edge the glare of our lighting ceased and the canvas +walls of our narrow world of illusion opened into a vast blue twilight. +At the opening stood two white-clad Sikhs, very, very still and +attentive, watching the performance, and beyond them was a great space +of sky over a dim profile of trees and roofs and a minaret, a sky +darkling down to the flushed red memory--such a short memory it is in +India--of a day that had gone for ever. + +I remained staring at that for some time. + +"Isn't old Eccles _good_?" whispered the colonel's wife beside me, and +recalled me to the play.... + +Somehow that picture of a narrow canvas tent in the midst of immensities +has become my symbol for the whole life of the governing English, the +English of India and Switzerland and the Riviera and the West End and +the public services.... + +But they are not England, they are not the English reality, which is a +thing at once bright and illuminating and fitful, a thing humorous and +wise and adventurous--Shakespeare, Dickens, Newton, Darwin, Nelson, +Bacon, Shelley--English names every one--like the piercing light of +lanterns swinging and swaying among the branches of dark trees at night. + + +§ 5 + +I went again to Ceylon to look into the conditions of Coolie +importation, and then I was going back into Assam once more, still in +the wake of indentured labor, when I chanced upon a misadventure. I had +my first and only experience of big game shooting in the Garo Hills, I +was clawed out of a tree by a wounded panther, he missed his hold and I +got back to my branch, but my shoulder was put out, my thigh was badly +torn, and my blood was poisoned by the wound. I had an evil +uncomfortable time. My injury hampered me greatly, and for a while it +seemed likely I should be permanently lamed. I had to keep to vehicles +and reasonably good roads. I wound up my convalescence with a voyage to +Singapore, and from thence I went on rather disconnectedly to a number +of exploratory journeys--excursions rather than journeys--into China. I +got to Pekin and then suddenly faced back to Europe, returning overland +through Russia. + +I wanted now to study the conditions of modern industrialism at its +sources, and my disablement did but a little accelerate a return already +decided upon. I had got my conception of the East as a whole and of the +shape of the historical process. I no longer felt adrift in a formless +chaos of forces. I perceived now very clearly that human life is +essentially a creative struggle out of the usage of immemorial years, +that the synthesis of our contemporary civilization is this creative +impulse rising again in its latest and greatest effort, the creative +impulse rising again, as a wave rises from the trough of its +predecessors, out of the ruins of our parent system, imperial Rome. But +this time, and for the first time, the effort is world-wide, and China +and Iceland, Patagonia and Central Africa all swing together with us to +make--or into another catastrophic failure to make--the Great State of +mankind. All this I had now distinctly in my mind. The new process I +perceive had gone further in the west; was most developed in the west. +The lighter end lifts first. So back I came away from the great body of +mankind, which is Asia, to its head. And since I was still held by my +promise from returning to England I betook myself first to the Pas de +Calais and then to Belgium and thence into industrial Germany, to study +the socialistic movement at its sources. + +And I was beginning to see too very clearly by the time of my return +that what is confusedly called the labor problem is really not one +problem at all, but two. There is the old problem, the problem as old as +Zimbabwe and the pyramids, the declining problem, the problem of +organizing masses of unskilled labor to the constructive ends of a Great +State, and there is the new modification due to machinery, which has +rendered unskilled labor and labor of a low grade of skill almost +unnecessary to mankind, added coal, oil, wind and water, the elementary +school and the printing-press to our sources of power, and superseded +the ancient shepherding and driving of men by the possibility of their +intelligent and willing co-operation. The two are still mixed in every +discussion, even as they are mixed in the practice of life, but +inevitably they will be disentangled. We break free from slavery, open +or disguised, just as we illuminate and develop this disentanglement.... + +I have long since ceased to trouble about the economics of human +society. Ours are not economic but psychological difficulties. There is +enough for everyone, and only a fool can be found to deny it. But our +methods of getting and making are still ruled by legal and social +traditions from the time before we had tapped these new sources of +power, before there was more than enough for everyone, and when a bare +supply was only secured by jealous possession and unremitting toil. We +have no longer to secure enough by a stern insistence. We have come to a +plenty. The problem now is to make that plenty go round, and _keep it +enough_ while we do. + +Our real perplexities are altogether psychological. There are no valid +arguments against a great-spirited Socialism but this, that people will +not. Indolence, greed, meanness of spirit, the aggressiveness of +authority, and above all jealousy, jealousy for our pride and vanity, +jealousy for what we esteem our possessions, jealousy for those upon +whom we have set the heavy fetters of our love, a jealousy of criticism +and association, these are the real obstacles to those brave large +reconstructions, those profitable abnegations and brotherly feats of +generosity that will yet turn human life--of which our individual lives +are but the momentary parts--into a glad, beautiful and triumphant +co-operation all round this sunlit world. + +If but humanity could have its imagination touched---- + +I was already beginning to see the great problem of mankind as indeed +nothing other than a magnification of the little problem of myself, as a +problem in escape from grooves, from preoccupations and suspicions, +precautions and ancient angers, a problem of escape from these spiritual +beasts that prowl and claw, to a new generosity and a new breadth of +view. + +For all of us, little son, as for each of us, salvation is that. We have +to get away from ourselves to a greater thing, to a giant's desire and +an unending life, ours and yet not our own. + + +§ 6 + +It is a queer experience to be even for a moment in the grip of a great +beast. I had been put into the fork of a tree, so that I could shoot +with the big stem behind my back. The fork wasn't, I suppose, more than +a score of feet from the ground. It was a safe enough place from a +tiger, and that is what we expected. We had been misled by our tracker, +who had mistaken the pugs of a big leopard for a tiger's,--they were +over rocky ground for the most part and he had only the spoor of a +chance patch of half-dried mud to go upon. The beast had killed a goat +and was beaten out of a thicket near by me in which he had been lying +up. The probability had seemed that he would go away along a tempting +ravine to where Captain Crosby, who was my host, awaited him; I, as the +amateur, was intended to be little more than a spectator. But he broke +back towards the wing of the line of beaters and came across the sunlit +rocks within thirty yards of my post. + +Seen going along in that way, flattened almost to the ground, he wasn't +a particularly impressive beast, and I shot at his shoulder as one might +blaze away at a rabbit,--perhaps just a little more carefully, feeling +as a Lord of Creation should who dispenses a merited death. I expected +him either to roll over or bolt. + +Then instantly he was coming in huge bounds towards me.... + +He came so rapidly that he was covered by the big limb of the tree on +which I was standing until he was quite beneath me, and my second shot, +which I thought in the instant must have missed him, was taken rapidly +as he crouched to spring up the trunk. + +Then you know came a sort of astonishment, and I think,--because +afterwards Crosby picked up a dropped cartridge at the foot of the +tree--that I tried to reload. I believe I was completely incredulous +that the beast was going to have me until he actually got me. The thing +was too completely out of my imaginative picture. I don't believe I +thought at all while he was coming up the tree. I merely noted how +astonishingly he resembled an angry cat. Then he'd got my leg, he was +hanging on to it first by two claws and then by one claw, and the whole +weight of him was pulling me down. It didn't seem to be my leg. I wasn't +frightened, I felt absolutely nothing, I was amazed. I slipped, tried to +get a hold on the tree trunk, felt myself being hauled down, and then +got my arm about the branch. I still clung to my unloaded gun as an +impoverished aristocrat might cling to his patent of nobility. That was, +I felt, my answer for him yet. + +I suppose the situation lasted a fraction of a second, though it seemed +to me to last an interminable time. Then I could feel my leggings rip +and his claw go scoring deeply down my calf. That hurt in a kind of +painless, impersonal interesting way. Was my leg coming off? Boot? The +weight had gone, that enormous weight! + +He'd missed his hold altogether! I heard his claws tear down the bark of +the tree and then his heavy, soft fall upon the ground. + +I achieved a cat-like celerity. In another second I was back in my fork +reloading, my legs tucked up as tightly as possible. + +I peered down through the branches ready for him. He wasn't there. Not +up the tree again?... Then I saw him making off, with a halting gait, +across the scorching rocks some thirty yards away, but I could not get +my gun into a comfortable position before he was out of sight behind a +ridge.... I wondered why the sunlight seemed to be flickering like an +electric light that fails, was somehow aware of blood streaming from my +leg down the tree-stem; it seemed a torrent of blood, and there was a +long, loose ribbon of flesh very sickening to see; and then I fainted +and fell out of the tree, bruising my arm and cheek badly and +dislocating my shoulder in the fall.... Some of the beaters saw me fall, +and brought Crosby in sufficient time to improvise a _torniquet_ and +save my life. + + + + +CHAPTER THE NINTH + +THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW WORLD + + +§ 1 + +I met Rachel again in Germany through the devices of my cousin the +Fürstin Letzlingen. I had finished seeing what I wanted to see in +Westphalia and I was preparing to go to the United States. There I +thought I should be able to complete and round off that large view of +the human process I had been developing in my mind. But my departure was +delayed by an attack of influenza that I picked up at a Socialist +Congress in Munich, and the dear Durchlaucht, hearing of this and having +her own views of my destiny, descended upon me while I was still in bed +there, made me get up and carried me off in her car, to take care of me +herself at her villa at Boppard, telling me nothing of any fellow-guests +I might encounter. + +She had a villa upon the Rhine under a hill of vineyards, where she +devoted herself--she was a widow--to matchmaking and belated regrets for +the childlessness that necessitated a perpetual borrowing of material +for her pursuit. She had a motor-car, a steam-launch, several rowing +boats and canoes, a tennis-lawn, a rambling garden, a devious house and +a rapid mind, and in fact everything that was necessary for throwing +young people together. She made her surprise seem easy and natural, and +with returning health I found myself already back upon my old footing of +friendly intimacy with Rachel. + +I found her a new and yet a familiar Rachel. She had grown up, she was +no longer a schoolgirl, crystalline clear with gleams of emotion and +understanding, and what she had lost in transparency she had gained in +depth. And she had become well-informed, she had been reading very +widely and well, I could see, and not simply reading but talking and +listening and thinking. She showed a vivid interest in the current of +home politics,--at that time the last government of Mr. Balfour was +ebbing to its end and my old Transvaal friends, the Chinese coolies, +were to avenge themselves on their importers. The Tariff Reformers my +father detested were still struggling to unseat the Premier from his +leadership of Conservatism.... + +It was queer to hear once more, after my Asiatic wanderings and +dreamings, those West-End dinner-table politics, those speculations +about "Winston's" future and the possibility of Lloyd George or Ramsay +Macdonald or Macnamara taking office with the Liberals and whether there +might not ultimately be a middle party in which Haldane and Balfour, +Grey and the Cecils could meet upon common ground. It seemed now not +only very small but very far off. She told me too of the huge popularity +of King Edward. He had proved to be interested, curious, understanding +and clever, an unexpectedly successful King. She described how he was +breaking out of the narrow official limits that had kept his mother in a +kind of social bandbox, extending his solvent informality of +friendliness to all sorts of men. He had won the heart of Will Crooks, +the labor member for Poplar, for example, made John Burns a social +success and warmed all France for England. + +I surveyed this novel picture of the English throne diffusing +amiability. + +"I suppose it's what the throne ought to do," said Rachel. "If it can't +be inspiration, at any rate it can tolerate and reconcile and take the +ill-bred bitterness out of politics." + +"My father might have said that." + +"I got that from your father," she said; and added after a momentary +pause, "I go over and talk to him." + +"You talk to my father!" + +"I like to. Or rather I listen and take it in. I go over in the +afternoon. I go sometimes twice or three times a week." + +"That's kind of you." + +"Not at all. You see---- It sounds impudent, I know, for a girl to say +so, but we've so many interests in common." + + +§ 2 + +I was more and more interested by Rachel as the days went on. A man must +be stupid who does not know that a woman is happy in his presence, and +for two years now and more I had met no one with a very strong personal +feeling for me. And quite apart from that, her mind was extraordinarily +interesting to me because it was at once so active and so clear and so +limited by her entirely English circumstances. She had the prosperous +English outlook. She didn't so much see the wide world as get glimpses +of it through the tangle of Westminster and of West End and week-end +limitations. She wasn't even aware of that greater unprosperous England, +already sulking and darkling outside her political world, that greater +England which was presently to make its first audible intimations of +discontent in that remarkable anti-climax to King George's Coronation, +the Railway Strike. India for her was the land of people's cousins, +Germany and the German Dreadnoughts bulked far larger, and all the +tremendous gathering forces of the East were beyond the range of her +imagination. I set myself to widen her horizons. + +I told her something of the intention and range of my travels, and +something of the views that were growing out of their experiences. + +I have a clear little picture in my mind of an excursion we made to that +huge national Denkmal which rears its head out of the amiable vineyards +of Assmannshausen and Rudesheim over against Bingen. We landed at the +former place, went up its little funicular to eat our lunch and drink +its red wine at the pleasant inn above, and then strolled along through +the woods to the monument. + +The Fürstin fell behind with her unwilling escort, a newly arrived +medical student from England, a very pleasant youngster named Berwick, +who was all too obviously anxious to change places with me. She devised +delays, and meanwhile I, as yet unaware of the state of affairs, went on +with Rachel to that towering florid monument with its vast gesticulating +Germania, which triumphs over the conquered provinces. + +We fell talking of war and the passions and delusions that lead to war. +Rachel's thoughts were strongly colored by those ideas of a natural +rivalry between Germany and England and of a necessary revenge for +France which have for nearly forty years diverted the bulk of European +thought and energy to the mere waste of military preparations. I jarred +with an edifice of preconceptions when I scoffed and scolded at these +assumptions. + +"Our two great peoples are disputing for the leadership of the world," I +said, "and meanwhile the whole world sweeps past us. We're drifting into +a quarrelsome backwater." + +I began to tell of the fermentation and new beginnings that were +everywhere perceptible throughout the East, of the vast masses of human +ability and energy that were coming into action in China and India, of +the unlimited future of both North and South America, of the mere +accidentalness of the European advantage. "History," I said, "is already +shifting the significance out of Western Europe altogether, and we +English cannot see it; we can see no further than Berlin, and these +Germans can think of nothing better than to taunt the French with such +tawdry effigies as _this_! Europe goes on to-day as India went on in the +eighteenth century, making aimless history. And the sands of opportunity +run and run...." + +I shrugged my shoulders and we stood for a little while looking down on +the shining crescent of the Rhine. + +"Suppose," said Rachel, "that someone were to say that--in the House." + +"The House," I said, "doesn't hear things at my pitch. Bat outcries. Too +shrill altogether." + +"It might. If _you_----" + +She halted, hesitated for a moment on the question and asked abruptly: + +"When are you coming back to England, Mr. Stratton?" + +"Certainly not for six months," I said. + +A movement of her eyes made me aware of the Fürstin and Berwick emerging +from the trees. "And then?" asked Rachel. + +I didn't want to answer that question, in which the personal note +sounded so clearly. "I am going to America to see America," I said, "and +America may be rather a big thing to see." + +"You must see it?" + +"I want to be sure of it--as something comprehensive. I want to get a +general effect of it...." + +Rachel hesitated, looked back to measure the distance of the Fürstin and +her companion and put her question again, but this time with a +significance that did not seem even to want to hide itself. "_Then_ will +you come back?" she said. + +Her face flamed scarlet, but her eyes met mine boldly. Between us there +was a flash of complete understanding. + +My answer, if it was lame and ungallant to such a challenge, was at +least perfectly honest. "I can't make up my mind," I said. "I've been +near making plans--taking steps.... Something holds me back...." + +I had no time for an explanation. + +"I can't make up my mind," I repeated. + +She stood for a moment rather stiffly, staring away towards the blue +hills of Alsace. + +Then she turned with a smiling and undisturbed countenance to the +Fürstin. Her crimson had given place to white. "The triumph of it," she +said with a slight gesture to the flamboyant Teutonism that towered +over us, and boldly repeating words I had used scarcely five minutes +before, "makes me angry. They conquered--ungraciously...." + +She had overlooked something in her effort to seem entirely +self-possessed. She collapsed. "My dear!" she cried,--"I forgot!" + +"Oh! I'm only a German by marriage!" cried the Fürstin. "And I can +assure you I quite understand--about the triumph of it...." She surveyed +the achievement of her countrymen. "It is--ungracious. But indeed it's +only a sort of artlessness if you see the thing properly.... It's not +vulgarity--it's childishness.... They've hardly got over it yet--their +intense astonishment at being any good at war.... That large throaty +Victory! She's not so militant as she seems. She's too plump.... Of +course what a German really appreciates is nutrition. But I quite agree +with you both.... I'm beginning to want my tea, Mr. Stratton.... +Rachel!" + +Her eyes had been on Rachel as she chattered. The girl had turned to the +distant hills again, and had forgotten even to pretend to listen to the +answer she had evoked. Now she came back sharply to the sound of her +name. + +"Tea?" said the Fürstin. + +"Oh!" cried Rachel. "Yes. Yes, certainly. Rather. Tea." + + +§ 3 + +It was clear to me that after that I must as people say "have things +out" with Rachel. But before I could do anything of the sort the +Fürstin pounced upon me. She made me sit up that night after her other +guests had gone to their rooms, in the cosy little turret apartment she +called her study and devoted to the reading of whatever was most +notorious in contemporary British fiction. "Sit down," said she, "by the +fire in that chair there and tell me all about it. It's no good your +pretending you don't know what I mean. What are you up to with her, and +why don't you go straight to your manifest destiny as a decent man +should?" + +"Because manifestly it isn't my destiny," I said. + +"Stuff," said the Fürstin. + +"You know perfectly well why I am out of England." + +"Everybody knows--except of course quite young persons who are being +carefully brought up." + +"Does _she_ know?" + +"She doesn't seem to." + +"Well, that's what I want to know." + +"Need she know?" + +"Well, it does seem rather essential----" + +"I suppose if you think so----" + +"Will you tell her?" + +"Tell her yourself, if she must be told. Down there in Surrey, she +_must_ have seen things and heard things. But I don't see that she wants +a lot of ancient history." + +"If it is ancient history!" + +"Oh! two years and a half,--it's an Era." + +I made no answer to that, but sat staring into the fire while my cousin +watched my face. At length I made my confession. "I don't think it is +ancient history at all," I said. "I think if I met Mary again now----" + +"You mean Lady Mary Justin?" + +"Of course." + +"It would be good for your mind if you remembered to call her by her +proper name.... You think if you met her again you two would begin to +carry on. But you see,--you aren't going to meet her. Everybody will see +that doesn't happen." + +"I mean that I---- Well----" + +"You'd better not say it. Besides, it's nonsense. I doubt if you've +given her a thought for weeks and weeks." + +"Until I came here perhaps that was almost nearly true. But you've +stirred me up, sweet cousin, and old things, old memories and habits +have come to the surface again. Mary wrote herself over my life--in all +sorts of places.... I can't tell you. I've never talked of her to +anyone. I'm not able, very well, to talk about my feelings.... Perhaps a +man of my sort--doesn't love twice over." + +I disregarded a note of dissent from my cousin. "That was all so magic, +all my youth, all my hope, all the splendid adventure of it. Why should +one pretend?... I'm giving none of that to Rachel. It isn't there any +more to give...." + +"One would think," remarked the Fürstin, "there was no gift of healing." + +She waited for me to speak, and then irritated by my silence struck at +me sharply with that wicked little tongue of hers. + +"Do you think that Lady Mary Justin thinks of you--as you think of her? +Do you think she hasn't settled down?" + +I looked up at her quickly. + +"She's just going to have a second child," the Fürstin flung out. + +Yes, that did astonish me. I suppose my face showed it. + +"That girl," said the Fürstin, "that clean girl would have sooner +died--ten thousand deaths.... And she's never--never been anything to +you." + +I think that for an instant she had been frightened at her own words. +She was now quite angry and short of breath. She had contrived a rapid +indignation against Mary and myself. + +"I didn't know Mary had had any child at all," I said. + +"This makes two," said the Fürstin, and held up a brace of fingers, +"with scarcely a year and a half between them. Not much more anyhow.... +It was natural, I suppose. A natural female indecency. I don't blame +her. When a woman gives in she ought to do it thoroughly. But I don't +see that it leaves _you_ much scope for philandering, Stephen, does +it?... And there you are, and here is Rachel. And why don't you make a +clean job of your life?..." + +"I didn't understand." + +"I wonder what you imagined." + +I reflected. "I wonder what I did. I suppose I thought of Mary--just as +I had left her--always." + +I remained with my mind filled with confused images of Mary, memories, +astonishment.... + +I perceived the Fürstin was talking. + +"Maundering about," she was saying, "like a huntsman without a horse.... +You've got work to do--blood in your veins. I'm not one of your ignorant +women, Stephen. You ought to have a wife...." + +"Rachel's too good," I said, at the end of a pause and perceiving I had +to say something, "to be that sort of wife." + +"No woman's too good for a man," said the Fürstin von Letzlingen with +conviction. "It's what God made her for." + + +§ 4 + +My visit to Boppard was drawing to an end before I had a clear +opportunity to have things out with Rachel. It was in a little garden, +under the very shadow of that gracious cathedral at Worms, the sort of +little garden to which one is admitted by ringing a bell and tipping a +custodian. I think Worms is in many respects one of the most beautiful +cathedrals I have ever seen, so perfectly proportioned, so delicately +faded, so aloof, so free from pride or presumption, and it rises over +this green and flowery peace, a towering, lithe, light brown, sunlit, +easy thing, as unconsciously and irrelevantly splendid as a tall ship in +the evening glow under a press of canvas. We looked up at it for a time +and then went on with the talk to which we had been coming slowly since +the Fürstin had packed us off for it, while she went into the town with +Berwick to buy toys for her gatekeeper's children. I had talked about +myself, and the gradual replacement of my ambition to play a part in +imperial politics by wider intentions. "You know," I asked abruptly, +"why I left England?" + +She thought through the briefest of pauses. "No," she decided at last. + +"I made love," I said, "to Lady Mary Justin, and we were found out. We +couldn't go away together----" + +"Why not?" she interjected. + +"It was impossible." + +For some moments neither of us spoke. "Something," she said, and then, +"Some vague report," and left these fragments to be her reply. + +"We were old playmates; we were children together. We +have--something--that draws us to each other. She--she made a mistake in +marrying. We were both very young and the situation was difficult. And +then afterwards we were thrown together.... But you see that has made a +great difference to my life; it's turned me off the rails on which men +of my sort usually run. I've had to look to these other things.... +They've become more to me than to most people if only because of +that...." + +"You mean these ideas of yours--learning as much as you can about the +world, and then doing what you can to help other people to a better +understanding." + +"Yes," I said. + +"And that--will fill your life." + +"It ought to." + +"I suppose it ought. I suppose--you find--it does." + +"Don't you think it ought to fill my life?" + +"I wondered if it did." + +"But why shouldn't it?" + +"It's so--so cold." + +My questioning silence made her attempt to explain. + +"One wants life more beautiful than that," she said. "One wants---- +There are things one needs, things nearer one." + +We became aware of a jangling at the janitor's bell. Our opportunity for +talk was slipping away. And we were both still undecided, both +blunderingly nervous and insecure. We were hurried into clumsy phrases +that afterwards we would have given much to recall. + +"But how could life be more beautiful," I said, "than when it serves big +human ends?" + +Her brows were knit. She seemed to be listening for the sound of the +unlocking gate. + +"But," she said, and plunged, "one wants to be loved. Surely one needs +that." + +"You see, for me--that's gone." + +"Why should it be gone?" + +"It is. One doesn't begin again. I mean--myself. _You_--can. You've +never begun. Not when you've loved--loved really." I forced that on her. +I over emphasized. "It was real love, you know; the real thing.... I +don't mean the mere imaginative love, blindfold love, but love that +sees.... I want you to understand that. I loved--altogether...." + +Across the lawn under its trim flowering-trees appeared Berwick loaded +with little parcels, and manifestly eager to separate us, and the +Fürstin as manifestly putting on the drag. + +"There's a sort of love," I hurried, "that doesn't renew itself ever. +Don't let yourself believe it does. Something else may come in its +place, but that is different. It's youth,--a wonderful newness.... Look +at that youngster. _He_ can love you like that. I've watched him. He +does. You know he does...." + +"Yes," she said, as hurriedly; "but then, you see, I don't love him." + +"You don't?" + +"I can't." + +"But he's such a fresh clean human being----" + +"That's not all," said Rachel. "That's not all.... You don't +understand." + +The two drew near. "It is so hard to explain," she said. "Things that +one hardly sees for oneself. Sometimes it seems one cannot help oneself. +You can't choose. You are taken...." She seemed about to say something +more, and stopped and bit her lip. + +In another moment I was standing up, and the Fürstin was calling to us +across ten feet of space. "Such amoosin' little toyshops. We've got a +heap of things. Just look at him!" + +He smiled over his load with anxious eyes upon our faces. + +"Ten separate parcels," he said, appealing for Rachel's sympathy. "I'm +doing my best not to complain." + +And rather adroitly he contrived to let two of them slip, and captured +Rachel to assist him. + +He didn't relinquish her again. + + +§ 5 + +The Fürstin and I followed them along the broad, pleasant, tree-lined +street towards the railway station. + +"A boy of that age ought not to marry a girl of that age," said the +Fürstin, breaking a silence. + +I didn't answer. + +"Well?" she said, domineering. + +"My dear cousin," I said, "I know all that you have in your mind. I +admit--I covet her. You can't make me more jealous than I am. She's +clean and sweet--it is marvellous how the God of the rest of the world +can have made a thing so brave and honest and wonderful. She's better +than flowers. But I think I'm going away to-night, nevertheless." + +"You don't mean you're going to carry chivalry to the point of giving +that boy a chance--for he hasn't one while you're about." + +"No. You see--I want to give Rachel a chance. You know as well as I +do--the things in my mind." + +"That you've got to forget." + +"That I don't forget." + +"That you're bound in honor to forget. And who could help you better?" + +"I'm going," I said and then, wrathfully, "If you think I want to use +Rachel as a sort of dressing--for my old sores----" + +I left the sentence unfinished. + +"Oh _nonsense_!" cried the Fürstin, and wouldn't speak to me again until +we got to that entirely Teutonic "art" station that is not the least +among the sights of Worms. + +"Sores, indeed!" said the Fürstin presently, as we walked up the end of +the platform. + +"There's nothing," said the Fürstin, with an unusual note of petulance, +"she'd like better." + +"I can't think what men are coming to," she went on. "You're in love +with her, or you wouldn't be so generous. And she's head over heels with +you. And here you are! I'll give you one more chance----" + +"I won't take it," I interrupted. "It isn't fair. I tell you I won't +take it. I'll go two days earlier to prevent you. Unless you promise +me---- Of course I see how things are with her. She's not a sphinx. But +it isn't fair. It isn't. Not to her, or to him--or myself. _He's_ got +some claims. He's got more right to her than I...." + +"A boy like that! No man has any rights about women--until he's thirty. +And as for me and all the pains _I've_ taken---- Oh! I _hate_ Worms. +Dust and ashes! Well here thank heaven! comes the train. If nothing else +could stir you, Stephen, at least I could have imagined some decent +impulse of gratitude to me. Stephen, you're disgusting. You've +absolutely spoilt this trip for me--absolutely. When only a little +reasonableness on your part---- Oh!" + +She left her sentence unfinished. + +Berwick and I had to make any conversation that was needed on the way +back to Boppard. Rachel did not talk and the Fürstin did not want to. + + +§ 6 + +Directly I had parted from Rachel's questioning eyes I wanted to go back +to them. It seems to me now that all the way across to America, in that +magnificent German liner I joined at Hamburg, I was thinking in confused +alternations of her and of Mary. There are turns of thought that still +bring back inseparably with them the faint echo of the airs of the +excellent but industrious band that glorified our crossing. + +I had been extraordinarily shocked and concerned at the thought of Mary +bearing children. It is a grotesque thing to confess but I had never let +myself imagine the possibility of such a thing for her who had been so +immensely mine.... + +We are the oddest creatures, little son, beasts and barbarians and +brains, neither one nor the other but all confusedly, and here was I who +had given up Mary and resigned her and freed myself from her as I +thought altogether, cast back again into my old pit by the most obvious +and necessary consequence of her surrender and mine. And it's just there +and in that relation that we men and women are so elaborately insecure. +We try to love as equals and behave as equals and concede a level +freedom, and then comes a crisis,--our laboriously contrived edifice of +liberty collapses and we perceive that so far as sex goes the woman +remains to the man no more than a possession--capable of loyalty or +treachery. + +There, still at that barbaric stage, the situation stands. You see I had +always wanted to own Mary, and always she had disputed that. That is our +whole story, the story of an instinctive subjugation struggling against +a passionate desire for fellowship. She had denied herself to me, taken +herself away; that much I could endure; but now came this blazing fact +that showed her as it seemed in the most material and conclusive +way--overcome. I had storms of retrospective passion at the thoroughness +of her surrender.... Yes, and that's in everyone of us,--in everyone. I +wonder if in all decent law-abiding London there lives a single healthy +adult man who has not at times longed to trample and kill.... + +For once I think the Fürstin miscalculated consequences. I think I +should have engaged myself to Rachel before I went to America if it had +not been for the Fürstin's revelation, but this so tore me that I could +no longer go on falling in love again, naturally and sweetly. No man +falls in love if he has just been flayed.... I could no longer think of +Rachel except as a foil to Mary. I was moved to marry her by a new set +of motives; to fling her so to speak in Mary's face, and from the fierce +vulgarity of that at least I recoiled--and let her go as I have told +you. + + +§ 7 + +I had thought all that was over. + +I remember my struggles to recover my peace. + +I remember how very late one night I went up to the promenade deck to +smoke a cigar before turning in. It was a warm moonlight night. The +broad low waves of ebony water that went seething past below, foamed +luminous and were streaked and starred with phosphorescence. The +recumbent moon, past its full and sinking westward, seemed bigger than I +had ever seen it before, and the roundness of the watery globe was +manifest about the edge of the sky. One had that sense so rare on land, +so common in the night at sea, of the world as a conceivable sphere, and +of interstellar space as of something clear and close at hand. + +There came back to me again that feeling I had lost for a time in +Germany of being not myself but Man consciously on his little planet +communing with God. + +But my spirit was saying all the time, "I am still in my pit, in my pit. +After all I am still in my pit." + +And then there broke the answer on my mind, that all our lives we must +struggle out of our pits, that to struggle out of our pit is this life, +there is no individual life but that, and that there comes no escape +here, no end to that effort, until the release of death. Continually or +frequently we may taste salvation, but never may we achieve it while we +are things of substance. Each moment in our lives we come to the test +and are lost again or saved again. To be assured of one's security is to +forget and fall away. + +And standing at the rail with these thoughts in my mind, suddenly I +prayed.... + +I remember how the engine-throbs beat through me like the beating of a +heart, and that far below, among the dim lights that came up from the +emigrants in the steerage, there was a tinkling music as I prayed and a +man's voice singing a plaintive air in some strange Slavonic tongue. + +That voice of the invisible singer and the spirit of the unknown +song-maker and the serenity of the sky, they were all, I perceived, no +more and no less than things in myself that I did not understand. They +were out beyond the range of understanding. And yet they fell into the +completest harmony that night with all that I seemed to understand.... + + +§ 8 + +The onset of New York was extraordinarily stimulating to me. I write +onset. It is indeed that. New York rides up out of the waters, a cliff +of man's making; its great buildings at a distance seem like long +Chinese banners held up against the sky. From Sandy Hook to the great +landing stages and the swirling hooting traffic of the Hudson River +there fails nothing in that magnificent crescendo of approach. + +And New York keeps the promise of its first appearance. There is no +such fulness of life elsewhere in all the world. The common man in the +streets is a bigger common man than any Old World city can show, +physically bigger; there is hope in his eyes and a braced defiance. New +York may be harsh and blusterous and violent, but there is a breeze from +the sea and a breeze of fraternity in the streets, and the Americans of +all peoples in the world are a nation of still unbroken men. + +I went to America curious, balancing between hope and scepticism. The +European world is full of the criticism of America, and for the matter +of that America too is full of it; hostility and depreciation +prevail,--overmuch, for in spite of rawness and vehemence and a scum of +blatant, oh! quite asinine folly, the United States of America remains +the greatest country in the world and the living hope of mankind. It is +the supreme break with the old tradition; it is the freshest and most +valiant beginning that has ever been made in human life. + +Here was the antithesis of India; here were no peasants whatever, no +traditional culture, no castes, no established differences (except for +the one schism of color); this amazing place had never had a famine, +never a plague; here were no temples and no priesthoods dominating the +lives of the people,--old Trinity church embedded amidst towering +sky-scrapers was a symbol for as much as they had of all that; and here +too there was no crown, no affectations of an ancient loyalty, no +visible army, no traditions of hostility, for the old defiance of +Britain is a thing now ridiculous and dead; and everyone I met had an +air as if he knew that to-morrow must be different from to-day and +different and novel and remarkable by virtue of himself and such as +himself. + +I went about New York, with the incredulous satisfaction of a man who +has long doubted, to find that after all America was coming true. The +very clatter pleased me, the crowds, the camp-like slovenliness, a +disorder so entirely different from the established and accepted +untidiness of China or India. Here was something the old world had never +shown me, a new enterprise, a fresh vigor. In the old world there is +Change, a mighty wave now of Change, but it drives men before it as if +it were a power outside them and not in them; they do not know, they do +not believe; but here the change is in the very blood and spirit of +mankind. They breathe it in even before the launch has brought their +feet to Ellis Island soil. In six months they are Americanized. Does it +matter that a thing so gigantic should be a little coarse and blundering +in detail, if this stumbling giant of the new time breaks a gracious +relic or so in his eager clutch and treads a little on the flowers? + + +§ 9 + +And in this setting of energy and activity, towering city life and +bracing sea breezes, I met Gidding again, whom I had last seen departing +into Egypt to look more particularly at the prehistoric remains and the +temples of the first and second dynasty at Abydos. It was at a +dinner-party, one of those large gatherings that welcome interesting +visitors. It wasn't, of course, I who was the centre of interest, but a +distinguished French portrait painter; I was there as just any guest. I +hadn't even perceived Gidding until he came round to me in that +precious gap of masculine intercourse that ensues upon the departure of +the ladies. That gap is one of the rare opportunities for conversation +men get in America. + +"I don't know whether you will remember me," he said, "but perhaps you +remember Crete--in the sunrise." + +"And no end of talk afterwards," I said, grasping his hand, "no end--for +we didn't half finish. Did you have a good time in Egypt?" + +"I'm not going to talk to you about Egypt," said Gidding. "I'm through +with ruins. I'm going to ask you--you know what I'm going to ask you." + +"What I think of America. It's the same inevitable question. I think +everything of it. It's the stepping-off place. I've come here at last, +because it matters most." + +"That's what we all want to believe," said Gidding. "That's what we want +you to tell us." + +He reflected. "It's immense, isn't it, perfectly immense? But---- I am +afraid at times we're too disposed to forget just what it's all about. +We've got to be reminded. That, you know, is why we keep on asking." + +He went on to question me where I had been, what I had done, what I made +of things. He'd never, he said, forgotten our two days' gossip in the +Levant, and all the wide questions about the world and ourselves that we +had broached then and left so open. I soon found myself talking very +freely to him. I am not a ready or abundant talker, but Gidding has the +knack of precipitating my ideas. He is America to my Europe, and at his +touch all that has been hanging in concentrated solution in my mind +comes crystallizing out. He has to a peculiar degree that directness +and simplicity which is the distinctive American quality. I tried to +explain to his solemnly nodding head and entirely intelligent eyes just +exactly what I was making of things, of the world, of humanity, of +myself.... + +It was an odd theme for two men to attempt after dinner, servants +hovering about them, their two faces a little flushed by wine and good +eating, their keen interest masked from the others around them by a +gossiping affectation, their hands going out as they talked for matches +or cigarette, and before we had gone further than to fling out a few +intimations to each other our colloquy was interrupted by our host +standing up and by the general stir that preluded our return to feminine +society. "We've got more to say than this," said Gidding. "We've got to +_talk_." He brought out a little engagement book that at once drew out +mine in response. And a couple of days after, we spent a morning and +afternoon together and got down to some very intimate conversation. We +motored out to lunch at a place called Nyack, above the Palisades, we +crossed on a ferry to reach it, and we visited the house of Washington +Irving near Yonkers on our way. + +I've still a vivid picture in my mind of the little lawn at Irvington +that looks out upon the rushing steel of Hudson River, where Gidding +opened his heart to me. I can see him now as he leant a little forward +over the table, with his wrists resting upon it, his long clean-shaven +face very solemn and earnest and grey against the hard American sunlight +in the greenery about us, while he told me in that deliberate American +voice of his and with the deliberate American solemnity, of his desire +to "do some decent thing with life." + +He was very anxious to set himself completely before me, I remember, on +that occasion. There was a peculiar mental kinship between us that even +the profound differences of our English and American trainings could not +mask. And now he told me almost everything material about his life. For +the first time I learnt how enormously rich he was, not only by reason +of his father's acquisitions, but also because of his own almost +instinctive aptitude for business. "I've got," he said, "to begin with, +what almost all men spend their whole lives in trying to get. And it +amounts to nothing. It leaves me with life like a blank sheet of paper, +and nothing in particular to write on it." + +"You know," he said, "it's--exasperating. I'm already half-way to +three-score and ten, and I'm still wandering about wondering what to do +with this piece of life God has given me...." + +He had "lived" as people say, he had been in scrapes and scandals, +tasted to the full the bitter intensities of the personal life; he had +come by a different route to the same conclusions as myself, was as +anxious as I to escape from memories and associations and feuds and that +excessive vividness of individual feeling which blinds us to the common +humanity, the common interest, the gentler, larger reality, which lies +behind each tawdrily emphatic self.... + +"It's a sort of inverted homoeopathy I want," he said. "The big thing to +cure the little thing...." + +But I will say no more of that side of our friendship, because the ideas +of it are spread all through this book from the first page to the +last.... What concerns me now is not our sympathy and agreement, but +that other aspect of our relations in which Gidding becomes impulse and +urgency. "Seeing we have these ideas," said he,--"and mind you there +must be others who have them or are getting to them, for nobody thinks +all alone in this world,--seeing we have these ideas what are we going +to _do_?" + + +§ 10 + +That meeting was followed by another before I left New York, and +presently Gidding joined me at Denver, where I was trying to measure the +true significance of a labor paper called _The Appeal to Reason_ that, +in spite of a rigid boycott by the ordinary agencies for news +distribution went out in the middle west to nearly half a million +subscribers, and was filled with such a fierceness of insurrection +against labor conditions, such a hatred, blind and impassioned, as I had +never known before. Gidding remained with me there and came back with me +to Chicago, where I wanted to see something of the Americanization of +the immigrant, and my survey of America, the social and economic problem +of America, resolved itself more and more into a conference with him. + +There is no more fruitless thing in the world than to speculate how life +would have gone if this thing or that had not happened. Yet I cannot +help but wonder how far I might have travelled along the lines of my +present work if I had gone to America and not met Gidding, or if I had +met him without visiting America. The man and his country are +inextricably interwoven in my mind. Yet I do think that his simplicity +and directness, his force of initiative that turned me from a mere +enquirer into an active writer and organizer, are qualities less his in +particular than America's in general. There is in America a splendid +crudity, a directness that cleared my spirit as a bracing wind will +sweep the clouds from mountain scenery. Compared with our older +continents America is mankind stripped for achievement. So many things +are not there at all, need not be considered; no institutional +aristocracy, no Kaisers, Czars, nor King-Emperors to maintain a +litigious sequel to the Empire of Rome; it has no uneducated immovable +peasantry rooted to the soil, indeed it has no rooting to the soil at +all; it is, from the Forty-ninth Parallel to the tip of Cape Horn, one +triumphant embodiment of freedom and deliberate agreement. For I mean +all America, Spanish-speaking as well as English-speaking; they have +this detachment from tradition in common. See how the United States, for +example, stands flatly on that bare piece of eighteenth-century +intellectualism the Constitution, and is by virtue of that a structure +either wilful and intellectual or absurd. That sense of incurable +servitude to fate and past traditions, that encumbrance with ruins, +pledges, laws and ancient institutions, that perpetual complication of +considerations and those haunting memories of preceding human failures +which dwarf the courage of destiny in Europe and Asia, vanish from the +mind within a week of one's arrival in the New World. Naturally one +begins to do things. One is inspired to do things. One feels that one +has escaped, one feels that the time is _now_. All America, North and +South alike, is one tremendous escape from ancient obsessions into +activity and making. + +And by the time I had reached America I had already come to see that +just as the issues of party politics at home and international politics +abroad are mere superficialities above the greater struggle of an +energetic minority to organize and exploit the labor of the masses of +mankind, so that struggle also is only a huge incident in the still more +than half unconscious impulse to replace the ancient way of human living +by a more highly organized world-wide social order, by a world +civilization embodying itself in a World State. And I saw now how that +impulse could neither cease nor could it on the other hand realize +itself until it became conscious and deliberate and merciful, free from +haste and tyranny, persuasive and sustained by a nearly universal +sympathy and understanding. For until that arrives the creative forces +must inevitably spend themselves very largely in blind alleys, futile +rushes and destructive conflicts. Upon that our two minds were agreed. + +"We have," said Gidding, "to understand and make understanding. That is +the real work for us to do, Stratton, that is our job. The world, as you +say, has been floundering about, half making civilization and never +achieving it. Now _we_, I don't mean just you and me, Stratton, +particularly, but every intelligent man among us, have got to set to and +make it thorough. There is no other sane policy for a man outside his +private passions but that. So let's get at it----" + +I find it now impossible to trace the phases by which I reached these +broad ideas upon which I rest all my work, but certainly they were +present very early in my discussions with Gidding. We two men had been +thinking independently but very similarly, and it is hard to say just +what completing touches either of us gave to the other's propositions. +We found ourselves rather than arrived at the conception of ourselves +as the citizens neither of the United States nor of England but of a +state that had still to come into being, a World State, a great unity +behind and embracing the ostensible political fabrics of to-day--a unity +to be reached by weakening antagonisms, by developing understandings and +toleration, by fostering the sense of brotherhood across the ancient +bounds. + +We believed and we believe that such a creative conception of a human +commonweal can be fostered in exactly the same way that the idea of +German unity was fostered behind the dukedoms, the free cities and +kingdoms of Germany, a conception so creative that it can dissolve +traditional hatreds, incorporate narrower loyalties and replace a +thousand suspicions and hostilities by a common passion for collective +achievement, so creative that at last the national boundaries of to-day +may become obstacles as trivial to the amplifying good-will of men as +the imaginary line that severs Normandy from Brittany, or Berwick from +Northumberland. + +And it is not only a great peace about the earth that this idea of a +World State means for us, but social justice also. We are both convinced +altogether that there survives no reason for lives of toil, for +hardship, poverty, famine, infectious disease, for the continuing +cruelties of wild beasts and the greater multitude of crimes, but +mismanagement and waste, and that mismanagement and waste spring from no +other source than ignorance and from stupid divisions and jealousies, +base patriotisms, fanaticisms, prejudices and suspicions that are all no +more than ignorance a little mingled with viciousness. We have looked +closely into this servitude of modern labor, we have seen its injustice +fester towards syndicalism and revolutionary socialism, and we know +these things for the mere aimless, ignorant resentments they are; +punishments, not remedies. We have looked into the portentous threat of +modern war, and it is ignorant vanity and ignorant suspicion, the +bargaining aggression of the British prosperous and the swaggering +vulgarity of the German junker that make and sustain that monstrous +European devotion to arms. And we are convinced there is nothing in +these evils and conflicts that light may not dispel. We believe that +these things can be dispelled, that the great universals, Science which +has limitations neither of race nor class, Art which speaks to its own +in every rank and nation, Philosophy and Literature which broaden +sympathy and banish prejudice, can flood and submerge and will yet flow +over and submerge every one of these separations between man and man. + +I will not say that this Great State, this World Republic of civilized +men, is our dream, because it is not a dream, it is a manifestly +reasonable possibility. It is our intention. It is what we are +deliberately making and what in a little while very many men and women +will be making. We are secessionists from all contemporary nationalities +and loyalties. We have set ourselves with all the capacity and energy at +our disposal to create a world-wide common fund of ideas and knowledge, +and to evoke a world-wide sense of human solidarity in which the +existing limitations of political structure must inevitably melt away. + +It was Gidding and his Americanism, his inborn predisposition to +innovation and the large freedom of his wealth that turned these ideas +into immediate concrete undertakings. I see more and more that it is +here that we of the old European stocks, who still grow upon the old +wood, differ most from those vigorous grafts of our race in America and +Africa and Australia on the one hand and from the renascent peoples of +the East on the other: that we have lost the courage of youth and have +not yet gained the courage of desperate humiliations, in taking hold of +things. To Gidding it was neither preposterous nor insufferably +magnificent that we should set about a propaganda of all science, all +knowledge, all philosophical and political ideas, round about the +habitable globe. His mind began producing concrete projects as a +fire-work being lit produces sparks, and soon he was "figuring out" the +most colossal of printing and publishing projects, as a man might work +out the particulars for an alteration to his bathroom. It was so +entirely natural to him, it was so entirely novel to me, to go on from +the proposition that understanding was the primary need of humanity to +the systematic organization of free publishing, exhaustive discussion, +intellectual stimulation. He set about it as a company of pharmacists +might organize the distribution of some beneficial cure. + +"Say, Stratton," he said, after a conversation that had seemed to me +half fantasy; "Let's _do_ it." + +There are moments still when it seems to me that this life of mine has +become the most preposterous of adventures. We two absurd human beings +are spending our days and nights in a sustained and growing attempt to +do what? To destroy certain obsessions and to give the universal human +mind a form and a desire for expression. We have put into the shape of +one comprehensive project that force of released wealth that has already +dotted America with universities, libraries, institutions for research +and enquiry. Already there are others at work with us, and presently +there will be a great number. We have started an avalanche above the old +politics and it gathers mass and pace.... + +And there never was an impulse towards endeavor in a human heart that +wasn't preposterous. Man is a preposterous animal. Thereby he ceases to +be a creature and becomes a creator, he turns upon the powers that made +him and subdues them to his service; by his sheer impudence he +establishes his claim to possess a soul.... + +But I need not write at all fully of my work here. This book is not +about that but about my coming to that. Long before this manuscript +reaches your hands--if ultimately I decide that it shall reach your +hands--you will be taking your share, I hope, in this open conspiracy +against potentates and prejudices and all the separating powers of +darkness. + + +§ 11 + +I would if I could omit one thing that I must tell you here, because it +goes so close to the very core of all this book has to convey. I wish I +could leave it out altogether. I wish I could simplify my story by +smoothing out this wrinkle at least and obliterating a thing that was at +once very real and very ugly. You see I had at last struggled up to a +sustaining idea, to a conception of work and duty to which I could +surely give my life. I had escaped from my pit so far. And it was +natural that now with something to give I should turn not merely for +consolation and service but for help and fellowship to that dear human +being across the seas who had offered them to me so straightly and +sweetly. All that is brave and good and as you would have me, is it not? +Only, dear son, that is not all the truth. + +There was still in my mind, for long it remained in my mind, a +bitterness against Mary. I had left her, I had lost her, we had parted; +but from Germany to America and all through America and home again to my +marriage and with me after my marriage, it rankled that she could still +go on living a life independent of mine. I had not yet lost my desire to +possess her, to pervade and dominate her existence; my resentment that +though she loved me she had first not married me and afterwards not +consented to come away with me was smouldering under the closed hatches +of my mind. And so while the better part of me was laying hold of this +work because it gave me the hope of a complete distraction and escape +from my narrow and jealous self, that lower being of the pit was also +rejoicing in the great enterprises before me and in the marriage upon +which I had now determined, because it was a last trampling upon my +devotion to Mary, because it defied and denied some lurking claims to +empire I could suspect in her. I want to tell you that particularly +because so I am made, so you are made, so most of us are made. There is +scarcely a high purpose in all the world that has no dwarfish footman at +its stirrup, no base intention over which there does not ride at least +the phantom of an angel. + +Constantly in those days, it seems to me now, I was haunted by my own +imagination of Mary amiably reconciled to Justin, bearing him children, +forgetful of or repudiating all the sweetness, all the wonder and beauty +we had shared.... It was an unjust and ungenerous conception, I knew it +for a caricature even as I entertained it, and yet it tormented me. It +stung me like a spur. It kept me at work, and if I strayed into +indolence brought me back to work with a mind galled and bleeding.... + + +§ 12 + +And I suppose it is mixed up with all this that I could not make love +easily and naturally to Rachel. I could not write love-letters to her. +There is a burlesque quality in these scruples, I know, seeing that I +was now resolved to marry her, but that is the quality, that is the +mixed texture of life. We overcome the greater things and are +conscience-stricken by the details. + +I wouldn't, even at the price of losing her--and I was now passionately +anxious not to lose her--use a single phrase of endearment that did not +come out of me almost in spite of myself. At any rate I would not cheat +her. And my offer of marriage when at last I sent it to her from Chicago +was, as I remember it, almost business-like. I atoned soon enough for +that arid letter in ten thousand sweet words that came of themselves to +my lips. And she paid me at any rate in my own coin when she sent me her +answer by cable, the one word "Yes." + +And indeed I was already in love with her long before I wrote. It was +only a dread of giving her a single undeserved cheapness that had held +me back so long. It was that and the perplexity that Mary still gripped +my feelings; my old love for her was there in my heart in spite of my +new passion for Rachel, it was blackened perhaps and ruined and changed +but it was there. It was as if a new crater burnt now in the ampler +circumference of an old volcano, which showed all the more desolate and +sorrowful and obsolete for the warm light of the new flames.... + +How impatiently I came home! Thoughts of England I had not dared to +think for three long years might now do what they would in me. I dreamt +of the Surrey Hills and the great woods of Burnmore Park, of the +changing skies and stirring soft winds of our grey green Motherland. +There was fog in the Irish Sea, and we lost the better part of a day +hooting our way towards Liverpool while I fretted about the ship with +all my luggage packed, staring at the grey waters that weltered under +the mist. It was the longest day in my life. My heart was full of +desire, my eyes ached for the little fields and golden October skies of +England, England that was waiting to welcome me back from my exile with +such open arms. I was coming home,--home. + +I hurried through London into Surrey and in my father's study, warned by +a telegram, I found a bright-eyed, resolute young woman awaiting me, +with the quality about her of one who embarks upon a long premeditated +adventure. And I found too a family her sisters and her brother all +gladly ready for me, my father too was a happy man, and on the eighth of +November in 1906 Rachel and I were married in the little church at +Shere. We stayed for a week or so in Hampshire near Ringwood, the season +was late that year and the trees still very beautiful; and then we went +to Portofino on the Ligurian coast. + +There presently Gidding joined us and we began to work out the schemes +we had made in America, the schemes that now fill my life. + + + + +CHAPTER THE TENTH + +MARY WRITES + + +§ 1 + +It was in the early spring of 1909 that I had a letter from Mary. + +By that time my life was set fully upon its present courses, Gidding and +I had passed from the stage of talking and scheming to definite +undertakings. Indeed by 1909 things were already organized upon their +present lines. We had developed a huge publishing establishment with one +big printing plant in Barcelona and another in Manchester, and we were +studying the peculiar difficulties that might attend the establishment +of a third plant in America. Our company was an English company under +the name of Alphabet and Mollentrave, and we were rapidly making it the +broadest and steadiest flow of publication the world had ever seen. Its +streams already reached further and carried more than any single firm +had ever managed to do before. We were reprinting, in as carefully +edited and revised editions as we could, the whole of the English, +Spanish and French literature, and we were only waiting for the release +of machinery to attack German, Russian and Italian, and were giving each +language not only its own but a very complete series of good +translations of the classical writers in every other tongue. We had a +little band of editors and translators permanently in our service at +each important literary centre. We had, for example, more than a score +of men at work translating Bengali fiction and verse into English,--a +lot of that new literature is wonderfully illuminating to an intelligent +Englishman--and we had a couple of men hunting about for new work in +Arabic. We meant to give so good and cheap a book, and to be so +comprehensive in our choice of books, excluding nothing if only it was +real and living, on account of any inferiority of quality, obscurity of +subject or narrowness of demand, that in the long run anybody, anywhere, +desiring to read anything would turn naturally and inevitably to our +lists. + +Ours was to be in the first place a world literature. Then afterwards +upon its broad currents of distribution and in the same forms we meant +to publish new work and new thought. We were also planning an +encyclopædia. Behind our enterprise of translations and reprints we were +getting together and putting out a series of guide-books, gazetteers, +dictionaries, text-books and books of reference, and we were organizing +a revising staff for these, a staff that should be constantly keeping +them up to date. It was our intention to make every copy we printed bear +the date of its last revision in a conspicuous place, and we hoped to +get the whole line of these books ultimately upon an annual basis, and +to sell them upon repurchasing terms that would enable us to issue a new +copy and take back and send the old one to the pulping mill at a narrow +margin of profit. Then we meant to spread our arms wider, and +consolidate and offer our whole line of text-books, guide-books and +gazetteers, bibliographies, atlases, dictionaries and directories as a +new World Encyclopædia, that should also annually or at longest +biennially renew its youth. + +So far we had gone in the creation of a huge international organ of +information, and of a kind of gigantic modern Bible of world literature, +and in the process of its distribution we were rapidly acquiring an +immense detailed knowledge of the book and publishing trade, finding +congestions here, neglected opportunities there, and devising and +drawing up a hundred schemes for relief, assistance, amalgamation and +rearrangement. We had branches in China, Japan, Peru, Iceland and a +thousand remote places that would have sounded as far off as the moon to +an English or American bookseller in the seventies. China in particular +was a growing market. We had a subsidiary company running a flourishing +line of book shops in the east-end of London, and others in New Jersey, +Chicago, Buenos Ayres, the South of France, and Ireland. Incidentally we +had bought up some thousands of miles of Labrador forest to ensure our +paper supply, and we could believe that before we died there would not +be a corner of the world in which any book of interest or value whatever +would not be easily attainable by any intelligent person who wanted to +read it. And already we were taking up the more difficult and ambitious +phase of our self-appointed task, and considering the problem of using +these channels we were mastering and deepening and supplementing for the +stimulation and wide diffusion of contemporary thought. + +There we went outside the province of Alphabet and Mollentrave and into +an infinitely subtler system of interests. We wanted to give sincere and +clear-thinking writers encouragement and opportunity, to improve the +critical tribunal and make it independent of advertising interests, so +that there would be a readier welcome for luminous thinking and writing +and a quicker explosion of intellectual imposture. We sought to provide +guides and intelligencers to contemporary thought. We had already set up +or subsidized or otherwise aided a certain number of magazines and +periodicals that seemed to us independent-spirited, out-spoken and well +handled, but we had still to devise our present scheme of financing +groups of men to create magazines and newspapers, which became their own +separate but inalienable property after so many years of success. + +But all this I hope you will already have become more or less familiar +with when this story reaches your hands, and I hope by the time it does +so we shall be far beyond our present stage of experiment and that you +will have come naturally to play your part in this most fascinating +business of maintaining an onward intellectual movement in the world, a +movement not simply independent of but often running counter to all +sorts of political and financial interests. I tell you this much here +for you to understand that already in 1909 and considering the business +side of my activities alone, I was a hard worker and very strenuously +employed. And in addition to all this huge network of enterprises I had +developed with Gidding, I was still pretty actively a student. I +wasn't--I never shall be--absolutely satisfied with my general ideas. I +was enquiring keenly and closely into those problems of group and crowd +psychology from which all this big publishing work has arisen, and +giving particular attention to the war-panics and outbreaks of +international hostility that were then passing in deepening waves +across Europe. I had already accumulated a mass of notes for the book +upon "Group Jealousy in Religious Persecution, Racial Conflicts and War" +which I hope to publish the year after next, and which therefore I hope +you will have read long before this present book can possibly come to +you. And moreover Rachel and I had established our home in London--in +the house we now occupy during the winter and spring--and both you and +your little sister had begun your careers as inhabitants of this earth. +Your little sister had indeed but just begun. + +And then one morning at the breakfast-table I picked a square envelope +out of a heap of letters, and saw the half-forgotten and infinitely +familiar handwriting of Lady Mary Justin.... The sight of it gave me an +odd mixture of sensations. I was startled, I was disturbed, I was a +little afraid. I hadn't forgiven her yet; it needed but this touch to +tell me how little I had forgotten.... + + +§ 2 + +I sat with it in my hand for a moment or so before I opened it, +hesitating as one hesitates before a door that may reveal a dramatic +situation. Then I pushed my chair a little back from the table and +ripped the envelope. + +It was a far longer letter than Mary had ever written me in the old +days, and in a handwriting as fine as ever but now rather smaller. I +have it still, and here I open its worn folds and, except for a few +trifling omissions, copy it out for you.... A few trifling omissions, I +say,--just one there is that is not trifling, but that I must needs +make.... + +You will never see any of these letters because I shall destroy them so +soon as this copy is made. It has been difficult--or I should have +destroyed them before. But some things can be too hard for us.... + +This first letter is on the Martens note-paper; its very heading was +familiar to me. The handwriting of the earlier sentences is a little +stiff and disjointed, and there are one or two scribbled obliterations; +it is like someone embarrassed in speaking; and then it passes into her +usual and characteristic ease.... + +And as I read, slowly my long-cherished anger evaporated, and the real +Mary, outspoken and simple, whom I had obscured by a cloud of fancied +infidelities, returned to me.... + +"My dear Stephen," she begins, "About six weeks ago I saw in the _Times_ +that you have a little daughter. It set me thinking, picturing you with +a mite of a baby in your arms--what _little_ things they are, +Stephen!--and your old face bent over it, so that presently I went to my +room and cried. It set me thinking about you so that I have at last +written you this letter.... I love to think of you with wife and +children about you Stephen,--I heard of your son for the first time +about a year ago, but--don't mistake me,--something wrings me too.... + +"Well, I too have children. Have you ever thought of me as a mother? I +am. I wonder how much you know about me now. I have two children and the +youngest is just two years old. And somehow it seems to me that now that +you and I have both given such earnests of our good behavior, such +evidence that _that_ side of life anyhow is effectually settled for us, +there is no reason remaining why we shouldn't correspond. You are my +brother, Stephen, and my friend and my twin and the core of my +imagination, fifty babies cannot alter that, we can live but once and +then die, and, promise or no promise, I will not be dead any longer in +your world when I'm not dead, nor will I have you, if I can help it, a +cold unanswering corpse in mine.... + +"Too much of my life and being, Stephen, has been buried, and I am in +rebellion. This is a breach of the tomb if you like, an irregular +private premature resurrection from an interment in error. Out of my +alleged grave I poke my head and say Hello! to you. Stephen, old friend! +dear friend! how are you getting on? What is it like to you? How do you +feel? I want to know about you.... I'm not doing this at all furtively, +and you can write back to me, Stephen, as openly as your heart desires. +I have told Justin I should do this. I rise, you see, blowing my own +Trump. Let the other graves do as they please.... + +"Your letters will be respected, Stephen.... If you choose to rise also +and write me a letter. + +"Stephen, I've been wanting to do this for--for all the time. If there +was thought-reading you would have had a thousand letters. But formerly +I was content to submit, and latterly I've chafed more. I think that as +what they call passion has faded, the immense friendliness has become +more evident, and made the bar less and less justifiable. You and I have +had so much between us beyond what somebody the other day--it was in a +report in the _Times_, I think--was calling _Materia Matrimoniala_. And +of course I hear about you from all sorts of people, and in all sorts +of ways--whatever you have done about me I've had a woman's sense of +honor about you and I've managed to learn a great deal without asking +forbidden questions. I've pricked up my ears at the faintest echo of +your name. + +"They say you have become a publisher with an American partner, a sort +of Harmsworth and Nelson and Times Book Club and Hooper and Jackson all +rolled into one. That seems so extraordinary to me that for that alone I +should have had to write to you. I want to know the truth of that. I +never see any advertisement of Stratton & Co. or get any inkling of what +it is you publish. Are you the power behind the respectable Murgatroyd +and the honest Milvain? I know them both and neither has the slightest +appearance of being animated by you. And equally perplexing is your +being mixed up with an American like that man Gidding in Peace +Conferences and Social Reform Congresses and so forth. It's +so--Carnegieish. There I'm surer because I've seen your name in reports +of meetings and I've read your last two papers in the _Fortnightly_. I +can't imagine you of all people, with your touch of reserve, launching +into movements and rubbing shoulders with faddists. What does it mean, +Stephen? I had expected to find you coming back into English +politics--speaking and writing on the lines of your old beginning, +taking up that work you dropped--it's six years now ago. I've been +accumulating disappointment for two years. Mr. Arthur, you see, on our +side,"--this you will remember was in 1909--"still steers our devious +party courses, and the Tariff Reformers have still to capture us. Weston +Massinghay was comparing them the other night, at a dinner at the +Clynes', to a crowded piratical galley trying to get alongside a good +seaman in rough weather. He was very funny about Leo Maxse in the poop, +white and shrieking with passion and the motion, and all the capitalists +armed to the teeth and hiding snug in the hold until the grappling-irons +were fixed.... Why haven't you come into the game? I'd hoped it if only +for the sake of meeting you again. What are you doing out beyond there? + +"We are in it so far as I can contrive. But I contrive very little. We +are pillars of the Conservative party--on that Justin's mind is firmly +settled--and every now and then I clamor urgently that we must do more +for it. But Justin's ideas go no further than writing cheques--doing +more for the party means writing a bigger cheque--and there are moments +when I feel we shall simply bring down a peerage upon our heads and bury +my ancient courtesy title under the ignominy of a new creation. He would +certainly accept it. He writes his cheque and turns back at the earliest +opportunity to his miniature gardens and the odd little freaks of +collecting that attract him. Have you ever heard of chintz oil jars? +'No,' you will say. Nor has anyone else yet except our immediate circle +of friends and a few dealers who are no doubt industriously increasing +the present scanty supply. We possess three. They are matronly shaped +jars about two feet or a yard high, of a kind of terra-cotta with wooden +tops surmounted by gilt acorns, and they have been covered with white +paint and on this flowers and birds and figures from some very rich old +chintz have been stuck very cunningly, and then everything has been +varnished--and there you are. Our first and best was bought for +seven-and-sixpence, brought home in the car, put upon a console table +on the second landing and worshipped. It's really a very pleasant mellow +thing to see. Nobody had ever seen the like. Guests, sycophantic people +of all sorts were taken to consider it. It was looked at with heads at +every angle, one man even kept his head erect and one went a little +upstairs and looked at it under his arm. Also the most powerful lenses +have been used for a minute examination, and one expert licked the +varnish and looked extremely thoughtful and wise at me as he turned the +booty over his gifted tongue. And now, God being with us, we mean to +possess every specimen in existence--before the Americans get hold of +the idea. Yesterday Justin got up and motored sixty miles to look at an +alleged fourth.... + +"Oh my dear! I am writing chatter. You perceive I've reached the +chattering stage. It is the fated end of the clever woman in a good +social position nowadays, her mind beats against her conditions for the +last time and breaks up into this carping talk, this spume of +observation and comment, this anecdotal natural history of the +restraining husband, as waves burst out their hearts in a foam upon a +reef. But it isn't chatter I want to write to you. + +"Stephen, I'm intolerably wretched. No creature has ever been gladder to +have been born than I was for the first five and twenty years of my +life. I was full of hope and I was full, I suppose, of vanity and rash +confidence. I thought I was walking on solid earth with my head reaching +up to the clouds, and that sea and sky and all mankind were mine for the +smiling. And I am nothing and worse than nothing, I am the ineffectual +mother of two children, a daughter whom I adore--but of her I may not +tell you--and a son,--a son who is too like his father for any fury of +worship, a stolid little creature.... That is all I have done in the +world, a mere blink of maternity, and my blue Persian who is scarcely +two years old, has already had nine kittens. My husband and I have never +forgiven each other the indefinable wrong of not pleasing each other; +that embitters more and more; to take it out of each other is our rôle; +I have done my duty to the great new line of Justin by giving it the +heir it needed, and now a polite and silent separation has fallen +between us. We hardly speak except in company. I have not been so much +married, Stephen, I find, as collected, and since our tragic +misadventure--but there were beautiful moments, Stephen, unforgettable +glimpses of beauty in that--thank God, I say impenitently for that--the +door of the expensively splendid cabinet that contains me, when it is +not locked, is very discreetly--watched. I have no men friends, no +social force, no freedom to take my line. My husband is my official +obstacle. We barb the limitations of life for one another. A little +while ago he sought to chasten me--to rouse me rather--through jealousy, +and made me aware indirectly but a little defiantly of a young person of +artistic gifts in whose dramatic career he was pretending a conspicuous +interest. I was jealous and roused, but scarcely in the way he desired. +'This,' I said quite cheerfully, 'means freedom for _me_, Justin,'--and +the young woman vanished from the visible universe with an incredible +celerity. I hope she was properly paid off and not simply made away with +by a minion, but I become more and more aware of my ignorance of a +great financier's methods as I become more and more aware of them.... + +"Stephen, my dear, my brother, I am intolerably unhappy. I do not know +what to do with myself, or what there is to hope for in life. I am like +a prisoner in a magic cage and I do not know the word that will release +me. How is it with you? Are you unhappy beyond measure or are you not; +and if you are not, what are you doing with life? Have you found any +secret that makes living tolerable and understandable? Write to me, +write to me at least and tell me that.... Please write to me. + +"Do you remember how long ago you and I sat in the old Park at Burnmore, +and how I kept pestering you and asking you what is all this _for_? And +you looked at the question as an obstinate mule looks at a narrow bridge +he could cross but doesn't want to. Well, Stephen, you've had +nearly--how many years is it now?--to get an answer ready. What _is_ it +all for? What do you make of it? Never mind my particular case, or the +case of Women with a capital _W_, tell me _your_ solution. You are +active, you keep doing things, you find life worth living. Is publishing +a way of peace for the heart? I am prepared to believe even that. But +justify yourself. Tell me what you have got there to keep your soul +alive." + + +§ 3 + +I read this letter to the end and looked up, and there was my home about +me, a room ruddy-brown and familiar, with the row of old pewter things +upon the dresser, the steel engravings of former Strattons that came to +me from my father, a convex mirror exaggerating my upturned face. And +Rachel just risen again sat at the other end of the table, a young +mother, fragile and tender-eyed. The clash of these two systems of +reality was amazing. It was as though I had not been parted from Mary +for a day, as though all that separation and all that cloud of bitter +jealousy had been a mere silence between two people in the same room. +Indeed it was extraordinarily like that, as if I had been sitting at a +desk, imagining myself alone, reading my present life as one reads in a +book at a shaded lamp, and then suddenly that silent other had spoken. + +And then I looked at the page of my life before me and became again a +character in the story. + +I met the enquiry in Rachel's eyes. "It's a letter from Mary Justin," I +said. + +She did not answer for a few moments. She became interested in the flame +of the little spirit lamp that kept her coffee hot. She finished what +she had to do with that and then remarked, "I thought you two were not +to correspond." + +"Yes," I said, putting the letter down; "that was the understanding." + +There was a little interval of silence, and then I got up and went to +the fireplace where the bacon and sausages stood upon a trivet. + +"I suppose," said Rachel, "she wants to hear from you again." + +"She thinks that now we have children, and that she has two, we can +consider what was past, past and closed and done with, and she wants to +hear--about me.... Apart from everything else--we were very great +friends." + +"Of course," said Rachel with lips a little awry, "of course. You must +have been great friends. And it's natural for her to write." + +"I suppose," she added, "her husband knows." + +"She's told him, she says...." + +Her eye fell on the letter in my hand for the smallest fraction of a +second, and it was as if hastily she snatched away a thought from my +observation. I had a moment of illuminating embarrassment. So far we had +contrived to do as most young people do when they marry, we had sought +to make our lives unreservedly open to one another, we had affected an +entire absence of concealments about our movements, our thoughts. If +perhaps I had been largely silent to her about Mary it was not so much +that I sought to hide things from her as that I myself sought to forget. +It is one of the things that we learn too late, the impossibility of any +such rapid and wilful coalescences of souls. But we had maintained a +convention of infinite communism since our marriage; we had shown each +other our letters as a matter of course, shared the secrets of our +friends, gone everywhere together as far as we possibly could. + +I wanted now to give her the letter in my hand to read--and to do so was +manifestly impossible. Something had arisen between us that made out of +our unity two abruptly separated figures masked and veiled. Here were +things I knew and understood completely and that I could not even +describe to Rachel. What would she make of Mary's "Write to me. Write to +me"? A mere wish to resume.... I would not risk the exposure of Mary's +mind and heart and unhappiness, to her possible misinterpretation.... + +That letter fell indeed like a pitiless searchlight into all that +region of differences ignored, over which we had built the vaulted +convention of our complete mutual understanding. In my memory it seems +to me now as though we hung silent for quite a long time over the +evasions that were there so abruptly revealed. + +Then I put the letter into my pocket with a clumsy assumption of +carelessness, and knelt down to the fender and sausages. + +"It will be curious," I said, "to write to her again.... To tell her +about things...." + +And then with immense interest, "Are these Chichester sausages you've +got here, Rachel, or some new kind?" + +Rachel roused herself to respond with an equal affectation, and we made +an eager conversation about bacon and sausages--for after that startling +gleam of divergence we were both anxious to get back to the +superficialities of life again. + + +§ 4 + +I did not answer Mary's letter for seven or eight days. + +During that period my mind was full of her to the exclusion of every +other interest. I re-read all that she had to say many times, and with +each reading the effect of her personality deepened. It was all so +intensely familiar, the flashes of insight, the blazing frankness, the +quick turns of thought, and her absurd confidence in a sort of sane +stupidity that she had always insisted upon my possessing. And her +unembarrassed affectionateness. Her quick irregular writing seemed to +bring back with it the changing light in her eyes, the intonations of +her voice, something of her gesture.... + +I didn't go on discussing with myself whether we two ought to +correspond; that problem disappeared from my thoughts. Her challenge to +me to justify myself took possession of my mind. That thrust towards +self-examination was the very essence of her ancient influence. How did +I justify myself? I was under a peculiar compulsion to answer that to +her satisfaction. She had picked me up out of my work and accumulating +routines with that demand, made me look at myself and my world again as +a whole.... I had a case. I have a case. It is a case of passionate +faith triumphing over every doubt and impossibility, a case real enough +to understand for those who understand, but very difficult to state. I +tried to convey it to her. + +I do not remember at all clearly what I wrote to her. It has disappeared +from existence. But it was certainly a long letter. Throughout this book +I have been trying to tell you the growth of my views of life and its +purpose, from my childish dreams and Harbury attitudes to those ideas of +human development that have made me undertake the work I do. It is not +glorious work I know, as the work of great artists and poets and leaders +is glorious, but it is what I find best suits my gifts and my want of +gifts. Greater men will come at last to build within my scaffoldings. In +some summary phrasing I must have set out the gist of this. I must have +explained my sense of the supreme importance of mental clarification in +human life. All this is manifest in her reply. And I think too I did my +best to tell her plainly the faith that was in me, and why life seemed +worth while to me.... + +Her second letter came after an interval of only a few days from the +despatch of mine. She began abruptly. + +"I won't praise your letter or your beliefs. They are fine and +large--and generous--like you. Just a little artificial (but you will +admit that), as though you had felt them _give_ here and there and had +made up your mind they shouldn't. At times it's oddly like looking at +the Alps, the real Alps, and finding that every now and then the +mountains have been eked out with a plank and canvas Earl's Court +background.... Yes, I like what you say about Faith. I believe you are +right. I wish I could--perhaps some day I shall--light up and _feel_ you +are right. But--but---- That large, _respectable_ project, the increase +of wisdom and freedom and self-knowledge in the world, the calming of +wars, the ending of economic injustice and so on and so on---- + +"When I read it first it was like looking at a man in profile and +finding him solid and satisfactory, and then afterwards when I thought +it all over and looked for the particular things that really matter to +me and tried to translate it into myself--nothing is of the slightest +importance in the world that one cannot translate into oneself--then I +began to realize just how amazingly deficient you are. It was like +walking round that person in profile and finding his left side wasn't +there--with everything perfect on the right, down to the buttons. A kind +of intellectual Lorelei--sideways. You've planned out your +understandings and tolerances and enquiries and clearings-up as if the +world were all just men--or citizens--and nothing doing but racial and +national and class prejudices and the exacting and shirking of labor, +and you seem to ignore altogether that man is a sexual animal +first--first, Stephen, first--that he has that in common with all the +animals, that it made him indeed because he has it more than they +have--and after that, a long way after that, he is the +labor-economizing, war-and feud-making creature you make him out to be. +A long way after that.... + +"Man is the most sexual of all the beasts, Stephen. Half of him, +womankind, rather more than half, isn't simply human at all, it's +specialized, specialized for the young, not only naturally and +physically as animals are, but mentally and artificially. Womankind +isn't human, it's reduced human. It's 'the sex' as the Victorians used +to say, and from the point of view of the Lex Julia and the point of +view of Mr. Malthus, and the point of view of biologists and saints and +artists and everyone who deals in feeling and emotion--and from the +point of view of all us poor specialists, smothered up in our clothes +and restrictions--the future of the sex is the centre of the whole +problem of the human future, about which you are concerned. All this +great world-state of your man's imagination is going to be wrecked by us +if you ignore us, we women are going to be the Goths and Huns of another +Decline and Fall. We are going to sit in the conspicuous places of the +world and _loot_ all your patient accumulations. We are going to abolish +your offspring and turn the princes among you into undignified slaves. +Because, you see, specialized as we are, we are not quite specialized, +we are specialized under duress, and at the first glimpse of a chance we +abandon our cradles and drop our pots and pans and go for the vast and +elegant side possibilities--of our specialization. Out we come, looking +for the fun the men are having. Dress us, feed us, play with us! We'll +pay you in excitement,--tremendous excitement. The State indeed! All +your little triumphs of science and economy, all your little +accumulations of wealth that you think will presently make the struggle +for life an old story and the millennium possible--_we spend_. And all +your dreams of brotherhood!--we will set you by the ears. We hold +ourselves up as my little Christian nephews--Philip's boys--do some +coveted object, and say _Quis?_ and the whole brotherhood shouts +'_Ego!_' to the challenge.... Back you go into Individualism at the word +and all your Brotherhood crumbles to dust again. + +"How are you going to remedy it, how are you going to protect that Great +State of your dreams from this anti-citizenship of sex? You give no +hint. + +"You are planning nothing, Stephen, nothing to meet this. You are +fighting with an army all looting and undisciplined, frantic with the +private jealousies that centre about _us_, feuds, cuts, expulsions, +revenges, and you are giving out orders for an army of saints. You treat +us as a negligible quantity, and we are about as negligible as a fire in +the woodwork of a house that is being built.... + +"I read what I have written, Stephen, and I perceive I have the makings +of a fine scold in me. Perhaps under happier conditions----... I should +certainly have scolded you, constantly, continually.... Never did a man +so need scolding.... And like any self-respecting woman I see that I use +half my words in the wrong meanings in order to emphasize my point. Of +course when I write woman in all that has gone before I don't mean +woman. It is a woman's privilege to talk or write incomprehensibly and +insist upon being understood. So that I expect you already to understand +that what I mean isn't that men are creative and unselfish and brotherly +and so forth and that women are spoiling and going to spoil the +game--although and notwithstanding that is exactly what I have +written--but that humans are creative and unselfish et cetera and so +forth, and that it is their sexual, egotistical, passionate side (which +is ever so much bigger relatively in a woman than in a man, and that is +why I wrote as I did) which is going to upset your noble and beautiful +apple-cart. But it is not only that by nature we are more largely and +gravely and importantly sexual than men but that men have shifted the +responsibility for attraction and passion upon us and made us pay in +servitude and restriction and blame for the common defect of the +species. So that you see really I was right all along in writing of this +as though it was women when it wasn't, and I hope now it is unnecessary +for me to make my meaning clearer than it is now and always has been in +this matter. And so, resuming our discourse, Stephen, which only my +sense of your invincible literalness would ever have interrupted, what +are you going to do with us? + +"I gather from a hint rather than accept as a statement that you propose +to give us votes. + +"Stephen!--do you really think that we are going to bring anything to +bear upon public affairs worth having? I know something of the +contemporary feminine intelligence. Justin makes no serious objection to +a large and various circle of women friends, and over my little +sitting-room fire in the winter and in my corners of our various gardens +in the summer and in walks over the heather at Martens and in Scotland +there are great talks and confessions of love, of mental freedom, of +ambitions, and belief and unbelief--more particularly of unbelief. I +have sometimes thought of compiling a dictionary of unbelief, a great +list of the things that a number of sweet, submissive, +value-above-rubies wives have told me they did not believe in. It would +amaze their husbands beyond measure. The state of mind of women about +these things, Stephen, is dreadful--I mean about all these +questions--you know what I mean. The bold striving spirits do air their +views a little, and always in a way that makes one realize how badly +they need airing--but most of the nicer women are very chary of talk, +they have to be drawn out, a hint of opposition makes them start back or +prevaricate, and I see them afterwards with their husbands, pretty +silken furry feathery jewelled _silences_. All their suppression doesn't +keep them orthodox, it only makes them furtive and crumpled and creased +in their minds--in just the way that things get crumpled and creased if +they are always being shoved back into a drawer. You have only to rout +about in their minds for a bit. They pretend at first to be quite +correct, and then out comes the nasty little courage of the darkness. +Sometimes there is even an apologetic titter. They are quite +emancipated, they say; I have misunderstood them. Their emancipation is +like those horrid white lizards that grow in the Kentucky caves out of +the sunlight. They tell you they don't see why they shouldn't do this or +that--mean things, underhand things, cheap, vicious, sensual things.... +Are there, I wonder, the same dreadful little caverns in men? I doubt +it. And then comes a situation that really tries their quality.... Think +of the quandary I got into with you, Stephen. And for my sex I'm rather +a daring person. The way in which I went so far--and then ran away. I +had a kind of excuse--in my illness. That illness! Such a queer untimely +feminine illness.... + +"We're all to pieces, Stephen. That's what brought down Rome. The women +went to pieces then, and the women are going to pieces to-day. What's +the good of having your legions in the Grampians and marching up to +Philae, while the wives are talking treason in your houses? It's no good +telling us to go back to the Ancient Virtues. The Ancient Virtues +haven't _kept_. The Ancient Virtues in an advanced state of decay is +what was the matter with Rome and what is the matter with us. You can't +tell a woman to go back to the spinning-wheel and the kitchen and the +cradle, when you have power-looms, French cooks, hotels, restaurants and +modern nurseries. We've overflowed. We've got to go on to a lot of New +Virtues. And in all the prospect before me--I can't descry one clear +simple thing to do.... + +"But I'm running on. I want to know, Stephen, why you've got nothing to +say about all this. It must have been staring you in the face ever since +I spent my very considerable superfluous energies in wrecking your +career. Because you know I wrecked it, Stephen. I _knew_ I was wrecking +it and I wrecked it. I knew exactly what I was doing all the time. I had +meant to be so fine a thing for you, a mothering friend, to have that +dear consecutive kindly mind of yours steadying mine, to have seen you +grow to power over men, me helping, me admiring. It was to have been so +fine. So fine! Didn't I urge you to marry Rachel, make you talk of her. +Don't you remember that? And one day when I saw you thinking of Rachel, +saw a kind of pride in your eyes!--suddenly I couldn't stand it. I went +to my room after you had gone and thought of you and her until I wanted +to scream. I couldn't bear it. It was intolerable. I was violent to my +toilet things. I broke a hand-glass. Your dignified, selfish, +self-controlled Mary _smashed_ a silver hand-mirror. I never told you +that. You know what followed. I pounced on you and took you. Wasn't I--a +soft and scented hawk? Was either of us better than some creature of +instinct that does what it does because it must? It was like a gust of +madness--and I cared, I found, no more for your career than I cared for +any other little thing, for honor, for Rachel, for Justin, that stood +between us.... + +"My dear, wasn't all that time, all that heat and hunger of desire, all +that secret futility of passion, the very essence of the situation +between men and women now? We are all trying most desperately to be +human beings, to walk erect, to work together--what was your +phrase?--'in a multitudinous unity,' to share what you call a common +collective thought that shall rule mankind, and this tremendous force +which seizes us and says to us: 'Make that other being yours, bodily +yours, mentally yours, wholly yours--at any price, no matter the price,' +bars all our unifications. It splits the whole world into couples +watching each other. Until all our laws, all our customs seem the +servants of that. It is the passion of the body swamping the brain; it's +an ape that has seized a gun, a beautiful modern gun. Here am I, +Justin's captive, and he mine, he mine because at the first escapade of +his I get my liberty. Here are we two, I and you, barred for ever from +the sight of one another, and I and you writing--I at any rate--in spite +of the ill-concealed resentment of my partner. We're just two, peeping +through our bars, of a universal multitude. Everywhere this prison of +sex. Have you ever thought just all that it means when every woman in +the world goes dressed in a costume to indicate her sex, her cardinal +fact, so that she dare not even mount a bicycle in knickerbockers, she +has her hair grown long to its longest because yours is short, and +everything conceivable is done to emphasize and remind us (and you) of +the fundamental trouble between us? As if there was need of reminding! +Stephen, is there no way out of this? Is there no way at all? Because if +there is not, then I had rather go back to the hareem than live as I do +now imprisoned in glass--with all of life in sight of me and none in +reach. I had rather Justin beat me into submission and mental +tranquillity and that I bore him an annual--probably deciduous--child. I +can understand so well now that feminine attitude that implies, 'Well, +if I must have a master, then the more master the better.' Perhaps that +is the way; that Nature will not let us poor humans get away from sex, +and I am merely--what is it?--an abnormality--with whiskers of enquiry +sprouting from my mind. Yet I don't feel like that.... + +"I'm pouring into these letters, Stephen, the concentrated venom of +years of brooding. My heart is black with rebellion against my lot and +against the lot of woman. I have been given life and a fine position in +the world, I made one fatal blunder in marrying to make these things +secure, and now I can do nothing with it all and I have nothing to do +with it. It astounds me to think of the size of our establishments, +Stephen, of the extravagant way in which whole counties and great +countries pay tribute to pile up the gigantic heap of wealth upon which +we two lead our lives of futile entanglement. In this place alone there +are fourteen gardeners and garden helps, and this is not one of our +garden places. Three weeks ago I spent a thousand pounds on clothes in +one great week of shopping, and our yearly expenditure upon personal +effect, upon our magnificence and our margins cannot be greatly less +than forty-five thousand pounds. I walk about our house and gardens, I +take one of the carriages or one of the automobiles and go to some large +pointless gathering of hundreds and thousands and thousands of pounds, +and we walk about and say empty little things, and the servants don't +laugh at us, the butlers don't laugh at us, the people in the street +tolerate us.... It has an effect of collective insanity.... You know the +story of one of those dear Barons of the Cinque Ports--a decent +plumber-body from Rye or Winchelsea--one of the six--or eight--who +claimed the privilege of carrying the canopy over the King"--she is +speaking of King Edward's coronation of course--"how that he was +discovered suddenly to be speaking quite audibly to the sacred presence +so near to him: 'It is very remarkable--we should be here, your +majesty--very remarkable.' And then he subsided--happily unheard--into +hopeless embarrassment. That is exactly how I feel, Stephen. I feel I +can't stand it much longer, that presently I shall splutter and spoil +the procession.... + +"Perhaps I don't properly estimate our position in the fabric, but I +can't get away from the feeling that everything in social life leads up +to this--to us,--the ridiculous canopy. If so, then the universe +means--_nothing_; it's blowing great forms and shapes as a swamp blows +bubbles; a little while ago it was megatheriums and plesiosauriums--if +that's the name for them--and now it is country-houses and motor-cars +and coronation festivals. And in the end--it is all nonsense, Stephen. +It is utter nonsense. + +"If it isn't nonsense, tell me what it is. For me at any rate it's +nonsense, and for every intelligent woman about me--for I talk to some +of them, we indulge in seditious whisperings and wit--and there isn't +one who seems to have been able to get to anything solider than I have +done. Each of us has had her little fling at maternity--about as much as +a washerwoman does in her odd time every two or three years--and that is +our uttermost reality. All the rest,--trimmings! We go about the world, +Stephen, dressing and meeting each other with immense ceremony, we have +our seasonal movements in relation to the ritual of politics and sport, +we travel south for the Budget and north for the grouse, we play games +to amuse the men who keep us--not a woman would play a game for its own +sake--we dabble with social reform and politics, for which few of us +care a rap except as an occupation, we 'discover' artists or musicians +or lecturers (as though we cared), we try to believe in lovers or, still +harder, try to believe in old or new religions, and most of us--I +don't--do our best to give the gratifications and exercise the +fascinations that are expected of us.... + +"Something has to be done for women, Stephen. We are the heart of life, +birth and begetting, the home where the future grows, and your schemes +ignore us and slide about over the superficialities of things. We are +spoiling the whole process of progress, we are turning all the +achievements of mankind to nothingness. Men invent, create, do miracles +with the world, and we translate it all into shopping, into a glitter of +dresses and households, into an immense parade of pride and excitement. +We excite men, we stir them to get us and keep us. Men turn from their +ideas of brotherhood to elaborate our separate cages.... + +"I am Justin's wife; not a thing in my heavens or my earth that is not +subordinated to that. + +"Something has to be done for women, Stephen, something--urgently--and +nothing is done until that is done, some release from their intolerable +subjection to sex, so that for us everything else in life, respect, +freedom, social standing, is entirely secondary to that. But what has to +be done? We women do not know. Our efforts to know are among the most +desolating of spectacles. I read the papers of those suffrage women; the +effect is more like agitated geese upon a common than anything human has +a right to be.... That's why I turn to you. Years ago I felt, and now I +know, there is about you a simplicity of mind, a foolishness of faith, +that is stronger and greater than the cleverness of any woman alive. You +are one of those strange men who take high and sweeping views--as larks +soar. It isn't that you yourself are high and sweeping.... No, but still +I turn to you. In the old days I used to turn to you and shake your mind +and make you think about things you seemed too sluggish to think about +without my clamor. Once do you remember at Martens I shook you by the +ears.... And when I made you think, you thought, as I could never do. +Think now--about women. + +"Stephen, there are moments when it seems to me that this futility of +women, this futility of men's effort _through_ women, is a fated +futility in the very nature of things. We may be saddled with it as we +are with all the animal infirmities we have, with appendixes and +suchlike things inside of us, and the passions and rages of apes and a +tail--I believe we have a tail curled away somewhere, haven't we? +Perhaps mankind is so constituted that badly as they get along now they +couldn't get along at all if they let women go free and have their own +way with life. Perhaps you can't have _two_ sexes loose together. You +must shut up one. I've a horrible suspicion that all these anti-suffrage +men like Lord Cromer and Sir Ray Lankester must know a lot about life +that I do not know. And that other man Sir Something-or-other Wright, +who said plainly that men cannot work side by side with women because +they get excited.... And yet, you know, women have had glimpses of a +freedom that was not mischievous. I could have been happy as a Lady +Abbess--I must have space and dignity, Stephen--and those women had +things in their hands as no women have things in their hands to-day. +They came to the House of Lords. But they lost all that. Was there some +sort of natural selection?... + +"Stephen, you were made to answer my mind, and if you cannot do it +nobody can. What is your outlook for women? Are we to go back to +seclusion or will it be possible to minimize sex? If you are going to +minimize sex how are you going to do it? Suppression? There is plenty of +suppression now. Increase or diminish the pains and penalties? My +nephew, Philip's boy, Philip Christian, was explaining to me the other +day that if you boil water in an open bowl it just boils away, and that +if you boil it in a corked bottle it bangs everything to pieces, and +you have, he says, 'to look out.' But I feel that's a bad image. +Boiling-water isn't frantically jealous, and men and women are. But +still suppose, suppose you trained people not to make such an awful fuss +about things. _Now_ you train them to make as much fuss as possible.... + +"Oh bother it all, Stephen! Where's your mind in these matters? Why +haven't you tackled these things? Why do you leave it to _me_ to dig +these questions into you--like opening a reluctant oyster? Aren't they +patent? You up and answer them, Stephen--or this correspondence will +become abusive...." + + +§ 5 + +It was true that I did ignore or minimize sexual questions as much as I +could. I was forced now to think why I did this. That carried me back to +those old days of passion, memories I had never stirred for many years. +And I wrote to Mary that there was indeed no reason but a reasonable +fear, that in fact I had dismissed them because they had been beyond my +patience and self-control, because I could not think very much about +them without an egotistical reversion to the bitterness of my own case. +And in avoiding them I was only doing what the great bulk of men in +business and men in affairs find themselves obliged to do. They train +themselves not to think of the rights and wrongs of sexual life, not to +tolerate liberties even in their private imaginations. They know it is +like carrying a torch into a powder magazine. They feel they cannot +trust their own minds beyond the experience, tested usages, and +conventions of the ages, because they know how many of those who have +ventured further have been blinded by mists and clouds of rhetoric, lost +in inexplicable puzzles and wrecked disastrously. There in those half +explored and altogether unsettled hinterlands, lurk desires that sting +like adders and hatreds cruel as hell.... + +And then I went on--I do not clearly remember now the exact line of +argument I adopted--to urge upon her that our insoluble puzzles were not +necessarily insoluble puzzles for the world at large, that no one +soldier fights anything but a partial battle, and that it wasn't an +absolute condemnation of me to declare that I went on living and working +for social construction with the cardinal riddles of social order, so +far as they affected her, unsolved. Wasn't I at any rate preparing +apparatus for that huge effort at solution that mankind must ultimately +make? Wasn't this dredging out and deepening of the channels of thought +about the best that we could hope to do at the present time, seeing that +to launch a keel of speculation prematurely was only to strand oneself +among hopeless reefs and confusions? Better prepare for a voyage +to-morrow than sail to destruction to-day. + +Whatever I put in that forgotten part of my letter was put less +strikingly than my first admissions, and anyhow it was upon these that +Mary pounced to the disregard of any other point. "There you are," she +wrote, with something like elation, "there is a tiger in the garden and +you won't talk or think about it for fear of growing excited. That is my +grievance against so much historical and political and social +discussion; its hopeless futility because of its hopeless omissions. You +plan the world's future, taking the women and children for granted, with +Egotistical Sex, as you call it, a prowling monster upsetting +everything you do...." + +But I will not give you that particular letter in its order, nor its +successors. Altogether she wrote me twenty-two letters, and I one or two +more than that number to her, and--a thing almost inevitable in a +discussion by correspondence--there is a lot of overlapping and +recapitulation. Those letters spread over a space of nearly two and a +half years. Again and again she insists upon the monstrous exaggeration +of the importance of sex in human life and of the need of some reduction +of its importance, and she makes the boldest experimental suggestions +for the achievement of that end. But she comes slowly to recognize that +there is a justification for an indirect attack, that sex and the +position of women do not constitute the primary problem in that +bristling system of riddles that lies like a hostile army across the +path of mankind. And she realized too that through art, through science +and literature and the whole enquiring and creative side of man's +nature, lies the path by which those positions are to be outflanked, and +those eternal-looking impossibles and inconceivables overcome. Here is a +fragment--saturated with the essence of her thought. Three-quarters of +her earlier letters are variations on this theme.... + +"What you call 'social order,' Stephen, all the arrangements seem to me +to be _built_ on subjection to sex even more than they are built (as you +say) on labor subjection. And this is an age of release, you say it is +an age of release for the workers and they know it. And so do the women. +Just as much. 'Wild hopes' indeed! The workers' hopes are nothing to the +women's! It is not only the workers who are saying let us go free, +manage things differently so that we may have our lives relieved from +this intolerable burthen of constant toil, but the women also are saying +let us go free. They are demanding release just as much from their +intolerable endless specialization as females. The tramp on the roads +who won't work, the swindler and the exploiter who contrive not to work, +the strikers who throw down their tools, no longer for twopences and +sixpences as you say but because their way of living is no longer +tolerable to them, and we women, who don't bear children or work or +help; we are all in one movement together. We are part of the General +Strike. I have been a striker all my life. We are doing nothing--by the +hundred thousand. Your old social machine is working without us and in +spite of us, it carries us along with it and we are sand in the +bearings. I'm not a wheel, Stephen, I'm grit. What you say about the +reactionaries and suppressionists who would stifle the complaints of +labor and crush out its struggles to be free, is exactly true about the +reactionaries and suppressionists who would stifle the discussion of the +woman's position and crush out her hopes of emancipation...." + +And here is a page of the peculiar doubt that was as characteristic of +her as the quick changes of her eyes. It gives just that pessimistic +touch that tempered her valiant adventurousness, that gave a color at +last to the tragedy of her death.... + +"Have you ever thought, Stephen, that perhaps these (repressionist) +people are righter than you are--that if the worker gets free he _won't_ +work and that if the woman gets free she won't furl her sex and stop +disturbing things? Suppose she _is_ wicked as a sex, suppose she _will_ +trade on her power of exciting imaginative men. A lot of these new +women run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, beguile some poor +innocent of a man to ruin them and then call in fathers, brother, +husbands, friends, chivalry, all the rest of it, and make the best of +both sides of a sex. Suppose we go on behaving like that. After we've +got all our emancipations. Suppose that the liberation of common people +simply means loafing, no discipline, nothing being done, an end to labor +and the beginning of nothing to replace it, and that the liberation of +women simply means the elaboration of mischief. Suppose that it is so. +Suppose you are just tumbling the contents of the grate into the middle +of the room. Then all this emancipation _is_ a decay, even as +conservative-minded people say,--it's none the less a decay because we +want it,--and the only thing to stop it is to stop it, and to have more +discipline and more suppression and say to women and the common people: +'Back to the Sterner Virtues; Back to Servitude!' I wish I hadn't these +reactionary streaks in my thoughts, but I have and there you are...." + +And then towards the second year her letters began to break away from +her preoccupation with her position as a woman and to take up new +aspects of life, more general aspects of life altogether. It had an +effect not of her having exhausted the subject but as if, despairing of +a direct solution, she turned deliberately to the relief of other +considerations. She ceased to question her own life, and taking that for +granted, wrote more largely of less tangible things. She remembered that +she had said that life, if it was no more than its present appearances, +was "utter nonsense." She went back to that. "One says things like +that," she wrote "and not for a moment does one believe it. I grumble +at my life, I seem to be always weakly and fruitlessly fighting my life, +and I love it. I would not be willingly dead--for anything. I'd rather +be an old match-woman selling matches on a freezing night in the streets +than be dead. Nothing nonsensical ever held me so tightly or kept me so +interested. I suppose really I am full of that very same formless faith +on which you rely. But with me it's not only shapeless but +intangible.... I nibble at religion. I am immensely attracted. I stand +in the doorway. Only when they come out to persuade me to come in I am +like a shy child and I go away. The temples beguile me and the music, +but not the men. I feel I want to join _it_ and they say 'join _us_.' +They are--like vergers. Such small things! Such dreadful little +_arguing_ men! They don't let you come in, they want you to say they are +right. All the really religious people seem to be outside nowadays and +all the pretending, cheating, atheistical, vain and limited people +within.... + +"But the beautiful things religion gives! The beauty! Do you know Saint +Paul's, Stephen? Latterly I have been there time after time. It is the +most beautiful interior in all the world, so great, so sombrely +dignified, so perfectly balanced--and filled with such wonderful music, +brimming with music just as crystal water brims in a bowl of crystal. +The other day I went there, up into a little gallery high up under the +dome, to hear Bach's Passion Music, the St. Matthew Passion. One hangs +high and far above the little multitudes below, the white-robed singers, +the white-robed musicians, ranks and ranks, the great organ, the rows +and rows and rows of congregation, receding this way, that way, into the +haze of the aisle and the transepts, and out of it all streams the +sound and the singing, it pours up past you like a river, a river that +rushes upward to some great sea, some unknown sea. The whole place is +music and singing.... I hang on to the railings, Stephen, and weep--I +have to weep--and I wonder and wonder.... + +"One prays then as naturally as one drinks when one is thirsty and cold +water comes to hand. I don't know whom I pray to, but I pray;--of course +I pray. Latterly, Stephen, I have been reading devotional works and +trying to catch that music again. I never do--definitely. Never. But at +times I put down the book and it seems to me that surely a moment ago I +heard it, that if I sit very still in a moment I shall hear it again. +And I can feel it is there, I know it is there, like a bat's cry, +pitched too high for my ears. I know it is there, just as I should still +know there was poetry somewhere if some poor toothless idiot with no +roof to his mouth and no knowledge of any but the commonest words tried +to read Shelley to me.... + +"I wish I could pray with you, Stephen; I wish I could kneel down +somewhere with you of all people and pray." + + +§ 6 + +Presently our correspondence fell away. The gaps between our letters +lengthened out. We never wrote regularly because for that there must be +a free exchange upon daily happenings, and neither of us cared to dwell +too closely on our immediate lives. We had a regard for one another that +left our backgrounds vague and shadowy. She had made her appeal across +the sundering silences to me and I had answered, and we had poured out +certain things from our minds. We could not go on discussing. I was a +very busy man now, and she did not write except on my replies. + +For a gap of nearly four months neither of us had anything to say in a +letter at all. I think that in time our correspondence might have +altogether died away. Then she wrote again in a more familiar strain to +tell me of certain definite changes of relationship and outlook. She +said that the estrangement between herself and Justin had increased +during the past year; that they were going to live practically apart; +she for the most part in the Surrey house where her two children lived +with their governesses and maids. But also she meant to snatch weeks and +seasons for travel. Upon that they had been disputing for some time. "I +know it is well with the children," she wrote; "why should I be in +perpetual attendance? I do nothing for them except an occasional kiss, +or half-an-hour's romping. Why should one pretend? Justin and I have +wrangled over this question of going away, for weeks, but at last +feminine persistence has won. I am going to travel in my own fashion and +see the world. With periodic appearances at his side in London and +Scotland. We have agreed at least on one thing, and that is upon a +companion; she is to be my secretary in title, my moral guarantor in +fact, and her name which is her crowning glory is Stella Summersley +Satchel. She is blonde, erect, huffy-mannered and thoroughly up to both +sides of her work. I partly envy her independence and rectitude--partly +only. It's odd and quite inconsistent of me that I don't envy her +altogether. In theory I insist that a woman should not have charm,--it +is our undoing. But when I meet one without it----! + +"I shall also trail a maid, but I guess that young woman will learn what +it is to be left behind in half the cities of Europe before I have done +with her. I always lose my maids. They are so much more passive and +forgettable than luggage--abroad that is. And Justin usually in the old +days used to remember about them. And his valet used to see after +them,--a most attentive man. Justin cannot, he says, have his wife +abroad with merely a companion; people would talk; maid it must be as +well. And so in a week or less I shall start, unusually tailor-made, for +South Germany and all that jolly country, companioned and maided. I +shall tramp--on the feet God has given me--in stout boots. Miss +Summersley Satchel marches, I understand, like the British infantry but +on a vegetarian 'basis,'--fancy calling your nourishment a 'basis'!--the +maid and so forth by _Èilgut_...." + + +§ 7 + +After the letter containing that announcement she wrote to me twice +again, once from Oban and then after a long interval from Siena. The +former was a scornfully minute description of the English at their +holidays and how the conversation went among the women after dinner. +"They are like a row of Japanese lanterns, all blown out long ago and +swinging about in a wind," she wrote--an extravagant image that yet +conveys something of the large, empty, unilluminating effect of a sort +of social intercourse very vividly. In the second letter she was +concerned chiefly with the natural beauty of Italy and how latterly she +had thrice wept at beautiful things, and what this mystery of beauty +could be that had such power over her emotions. + +"All up the hillside before the window as I write the herbage is thick +with anemones. They aren't scattered evenly and anyhow amongst the other +things but in little clusters and groups that die away and begin again, +like the repetitions of an air in some musical composition. I have been +sitting and looking at them for the better part of an hour, loving them +more and then more, and the sweet sunlight that is on them and in among +them.... How marvellous are these things, Stephen! All these little +exquisite things that are so abundant in the world, the gleaming lights +and blossoms, the drifting scents! At times these things bring me to +weeping.... I can't help it. It is as if God who is so stern and high, +so terrible to all our appeals, took pity for a moment and saw fit to +speak very softly and tenderly...." + +That was the last letter I was ever to have from her. + + + + +CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH + +THE LAST MEETING + + +§ 1 + +In the summer of 1911 immediately after the coronation of King George +there came one of those storms of international suspicion that ever and +again threaten Europe with war. It seems to have been brewed by some +German adepts at Welt-Politik, those privileged makers of giant bombs +who sit at the ears of foreign ministers suggesting idiotic wickedness, +and it was brewed with a sublime ignorance of nearly every reality in +the case. A German warship without a word of notice seized Agadir on the +Atlantic coast of Morocco, within the regions reserved to French +influence; an English demand for explanations was uncivilly disregarded +and England and France and presently Germany began vigorous preparations +for war. All over the world it was supposed that Germany had at last +flung down the gauntlet. In England the war party was only too eager to +grasp what it considered to be a magnificent opportunity. Heaven knows +what the Germans had hoped or intended by their remarkable coup; the +amazing thing to note is that they were not prepared to fight, they had +not even the necessary money ready and they could not get it; they had +perhaps never intended to fight, and the autumn saw the danger disperse +again into diplomatic bickerings and insincerely pacific professions. +But in the high summer the danger had not dispersed, and in common with +every reasonable man I found myself under the shadow of an impending +catastrophe that would have been none the less gigantic and tragic +because it was an imbecility. It was an occasion when everyone needs +must act, however trivially disproportionate his action may be to the +danger. I cabled Gidding who was in America to get together whatever +influences were available there upon the side of pacific intervention, +and I set such British organs as I could control or approach in the same +direction. It seemed probable that Italy would be drawn into any +conflict that might ensue; it happened that there was to be a Conference +of Peace Societies in Milan early in September, and thither I decided to +go in the not very certain hope that out of that assemblage some form of +European protest might be evolved. + +That August I was very much run down. I had been staying in London +through almost intolerably hot weather to attend a Races Congress that +had greatly disappointed me. I don't know particularly now why I had +been disappointed nor how far the feeling was due to my being generally +run down by the pressure of detailed work and the stress of thinking +about large subjects in little scraps of time. But I know that a kind of +despair came over me as I sat and looked at that multicolored assembly +and heard in succession the heavy platitudes of white men, the slick, +thin cleverness of Hindoos, the rich-toned florid rhetoric of negroes. I +lost sight of any germ of splendid possibility in all those people, and +saw all too plainly the vanity, the jealousy, the self-interests that +show up so harshly against the professions of every altruistic movement. +It seemed all such a windy business against the firm prejudices, the +vast accumulated interests that grind race against race. We had no +common purpose at all at that conference, no proposal to hold us +together. So much of it was like bleating on a hillside.... + +I wanted a holiday badly, and then came this war crisis and I felt +unable to go away for any length of time. Even bleating it seemed to me +was better than acquiescence in a crime against humanity. So to get +heart to bleat at Milan I snatched at ten days in the Swiss mountains en +route. A tour with some taciturn guide involving a few middling climbs +and glacier excursions seemed the best way of recuperating. I had never +had any time for Switzerland since my first exile there years ago. I +took the advice of a man in the club whose name I now forget--if ever I +knew it, a dark man with a scar--and went up to the Schwarzegg Hut above +Grindelwald, and over the Strahlegg to the Grimsel. I had never been up +into the central mass of the Bernese Oberland before, and I was amazed +and extraordinarily delighted by the vast lonely beauty of those +interminable uplands of ice. I wished I could have lingered up there. +But that is the tragedy of those sunlit desolations; one may not stay; +one sees and exclaims and then looks at a watch. I wonder no one has +ever taken an arctic equipment up into that wilderness, and had a good +healing spell of lonely exaltation. I found the descent from the +Strahlegg as much of a climb as I was disposed to undertake; for an hour +we were coming down frozen snow that wasn't so much a slope as a +slightly inclined precipice.... + +From the Grimsel I went over the Rhone glacier to the inn on the Furka +Pass, and then, paying off my guide and becoming frankly a pedestrian, I +made my way round by the Schöllenen gorge to Goeschenen, and over the +Susten Joch to the Susten Pass and Stein, meaning to descend to +Meiringen. + +But I still had four days before I went on to Italy, and so I decided to +take one more mountain. I slept at the Stein inn, and started in the +morning to do that agreeable first mountain of all, the Titlis, whose +shining genial head attracted me. I did not think a guide necessary, but +a boy took me up by a track near Gadmen, and left me to my Siegfried map +some way up the great ridge of rocks that overlooks the Engstlen Alp. I +a little overestimated my mountaineering, and it came about that I was +benighted while I was still high above the Joch Pass on my descent. Some +of this was steep and needed caution. I had to come down slowly with my +folding lantern, in which a reluctant candle went out at regular +intervals, and I did not reach the little inn at Engstlen Alp until long +after eleven at night. By that time I was very tired and hungry. + +They told me I was lucky to get a room, only one stood vacant; I should +certainly not have enjoyed sleeping on a billiard table after my day's +work, and I ate a hearty supper, smoked for a time, meditated emptily, +and went wearily to bed. + +But I could not sleep. Usually, I am a good sleeper, but ever and again +when I have been working too closely or over-exerting myself I have +spells of wakefulness, and that night after perhaps an hour's heavy +slumber I became thinly alert and very weary in body and spirit, and I +do not think I slept again. The pain in my leg that the panther had torn +had been revived by the day's exertion. For the greater part of my life +insomnia has not been disagreeable to me. In the night, in the +stillness, one has a kind of detachment from reality, one floats there +without light, without weight, feeling very little of one's body. One +has a certain disembodiment and one can achieve a magnanimity of +thought, forgiveness and self-forgetfulness that are impossible while +the body clamors upon one's senses. But that night, because, I suppose, +I was so profoundly fatigued, I was melancholy and despondent. I could +feel again the weight of the great beast upon me as he clawed me down +and I clung--desperately, in that interminable instant before he lost +his hold.... + +Yes, I was extraordinarily wretched that night. I was filled with +self-contempt and self-disgust. I felt that I was utterly weak and vain, +and all the pretensions and effort of my life mere florid, fruitless +pretensions and nothing more. I had lost all control over my mind. +Things that had seemed secondary before became primary, difficult things +became impossible things. I had been greatly impeded and irritated in +London by the manoeuvres of a number of people who were anxious to make +capital out of the crisis, self-advertising people who wanted at any +cost to be lifted into a position of unique protest.... You see, that +unfortunate Nobel prize has turned the advocacy of peace into a highly +speculative profession; the qualification for the winner is so vaguely +defined that a vast multitude of voluntary idealists has been created +and a still greater number diverted from the unendowed pursuit of human +welfare in other directions. Such a man as myself who is known to +command a considerable publicity is necessarily a prey to those moral +_entrepreneurs_. All sorts of ridiculous and petty incidents had forced +this side of public effort upon me, but hitherto I had been able to say, +with a laugh or sigh as the case warranted, "So much is dear old +humanity and all of us"; and to remember the great residuum of nobility +that remained. Now that last saving consideration refused to be +credible. I lay with my body and my mind in pain thinking these people +over, thinking myself over too with the rest of my associates, thinking +drearily and weakly, recalling spites, dishonesties and vanities, feuds +and absurdities, until I was near persuaded that all my dreams of wider +human understandings, of great ends beyond the immediate aims and +passions of common everyday lives, could be at best no more than the +refuge of shy and weak and ineffective people from the failure of their +personal lives.... + +We idealists are not jolly people, not honest simple people; the strain +tells upon us; even to ourselves we are unappetizing. Aren't the burly, +bellowing fellows after all righter, with their simple natural hostility +to everything foreign, their valiant hatred of everything unlike +themselves, their contempt for aspiring weakness, their beer and lush +sentiment, their here-to-day-and-gone-tomorrow conviviality and +fellowship? Good fellows! While we others, lost in filmy speculations, +in moon-and-star snaring and the chase of dreams, stumble where even +they walk upright.... + +You know I have never quite believed in myself, never quite believed in +my work or my religion. So it has always been with me and always, I +suppose, will be. I know I am purblind, I know I do not see my way +clearly nor very far; I have to do with things imperfectly apprehended. +I cannot cheat my mind away from these convictions. I have a sort of +hesitation of the soul as other men have a limp in their gait. God, I +suppose, has a need for lame men. God, I suppose, has a need for blind +men and fearful and doubting men, and does not intend life to be +altogether swallowed up in staring sight. Some things are to be reached +best by a hearing that is not distracted by any clearer senses. But so +it is with me, and this is the innermost secret I have to tell you. + +I go valiantly for the most part I know, but despair is always near to +me. In the common hours of my life it is as near as a shark may be near +a sleeper in a ship; the thin effectual plank of my deliberate faith +keeps me secure, but in these rare distresses of the darkness the plank +seems to become transparent, to be on the verge of dissolution, a sense +of life as of an abyssmal flood, full of cruelty, densely futile, +blackly aimless, penetrates my defences.... + +I don't think I can call these stumblings from conviction unbelief; the +limping man walks for all his limping, and I go on in spite of my falls. +"Though he slay me yet will I trust in him...." + +I fell into an inconsecutive review of my life under this light that +touched every endeavor with the pale tints of failure. And as that flow +of melancholy reflection went on, it was shot more and more frequently +with thoughts of Mary. It was not a discursive thinking about Mary but a +definite fixed direction of thought towards her. I had not so thought of +her for many years. I wanted her, I felt, to come to me and help me out +of this distressful pit into which my spirit had fallen. I believed she +could. I perceived our separation as an irreparable loss. She had a +harder, clearer quality than I, a more assured courage, a readier, surer +movement of the mind. Always she had "lift" for me. And then I had a +curious impression that I had heard her voice calling my name, as one +might call out in one's sleep. I dismissed it as an illusion, and then I +heard it again. So clearly that I sat up and listened--breathless.... + +Mixed up with all this was the intolerable uproar and talking of a +little cascade not fifty yards from the hotel. It is curious how +distressing that clamor of running water, which is so characteristic of +the Alpine night, can become. At last those sounds can take the likeness +of any voice whatever. The water, I decided, had called to me, and now +it mocked and laughed at me.... + +The next morning I descended at some late hour by Swiss reckoning, and +discovered two ladies in the morning sunlight awaiting breakfast at a +little green table. One rose slowly at the sight of me, and stood and +surveyed me with a glad amazement. + + +§ 2 + +There she stood real and solid, a little unfamiliar in her tweeds and +with her shining eyes intimate and unforgettable, as though I had never +ceased to see them for all those intervening years. And bracing us both +and holding back our emotion was, quite unmistakably, Miss Summersley +Satchel, a blonde business-like young woman with a stumpy nose very +cruelly corrugated and inflamed by a pince-nez that savagely did much +more than its duty by its name. She remained seated, tilting her chair +a little, pushing herself back from the table and regarding +me--intelligently. + +It was one of those moments in life when one is taken unawares. I think +our common realization of the need of masking the reality of our +encounter, the hasty search in our minds for some plausible face upon +this meeting, must have been very obvious to the lady who observed us. +Mary's first thought was for a pseudonym. Mine was to make it plain we +met by accident. + +"It's Mr.--Stephen!" said Mary. + +"It's you!" + +"Dropped out of the sky!" + +"From over there. I was benighted and go there late." + +"Very late?" + +"One gleam of light--and a yawning waiter. Or I should have had to break +windows.... And then I meet you!" + +Then for a moment or so we were silent, with our sense of the immense +gravity of this position growing upon us. A little tow-headed waiter-boy +appeared with their coffee and rolls on a tray poised high on his hand. + +"You'll have your coffee out here with us?" said Mary. + +"Where else?" said I, as though there was no conceivable alternative, +and told the tow-headed waiter. + +Belatedly Mary turned to introduce me to her secretary: "My friend Miss +Summersley Satchel. Mr.--Stephen." Miss Satchel and I bowed to each +other and agreed that the lake was very beautiful in the morning light. +"Mr. Stephen," said Mary, in entirely unnecessary explanation, "is an +old friend of my mother's. And I haven't seen him for years. How is +Mrs. Stephen--and the children?" + +I answered briefly and began to tell of my climb down the Titlis. I +addressed myself with unnecessary explicitness to Miss Satchel. I did +perhaps over-accentuate the extreme fortuitousness of my appearance.... +From where I stood, the whole course of the previous day after I had +come over the shoulder was visible. It seemed a soft little shining +pathway to the top, but the dangers of the descent had a romantic +intensification in the morning light. "The rule of the game," said I, +"is that one stops and waits for daylight. I wonder if anyone keeps that +rule." + +We talked for a time of mountains, I still standing a little aloof until +my coffee came. Miss Summersley Satchel produced that frequent and most +unpleasant bye-product of a British education, an intelligent interest +in etymology. "I wonder," she said, with a brow of ruffled omniscience +and eyeing me rather severely with a magnified eye, "why it is _called_ +Titlis. There must be _some_ reason...." + +Presently Miss Satchel was dismissed indoors on a transparent excuse and +Mary and I were alone together. We eyed one another gravely. Perhaps all +the more gravely because of the wild excitement that was quickening our +pulse and breathing, and thrilling through our nerves. She pushed back +the plate before her and put her dear elbows on the table and dropped +her chin between her hands in an attitude that seemed all made of little +memories. + +"I suppose," she said, "something of this kind was bound to happen." + +She turned her eyes to the mountains shining in the morning light. "I'm +glad it has happened in a beautiful place. It might have +been--anywhere." + +"Last night," I said, "I was thinking of you and wanting to hear your +voice again. I thought I did." + +"I too. I wonder--if we had some dim perception...." + +She scanned my face. "Stephen, you're not much changed. You're looking +well.... But your eyes--they're dog-tired eyes. Have you been working +too hard?" + +"A conference--what did you call them once?--a Carnegieish conference in +London. Hot weather and fussing work and endless hours of weak grey +dusty speeches, and perhaps that clamber over there yesterday was too +much. It _was_ too much. In India I damaged a leg.... I had meant to +rest here for a day." + +"Well,--rest here." + +"With you!" + +"Why not? Now you are here." + +"But---- After all, we've promised." + +"It's none of our planning, Stephen." + +"It seems to me I ought to go right on--so soon as breakfast is over." + +She weighed that with just the same still pause, the same quiet moment +of lips and eyes that I recalled so well. It was as things had always +been between us that she should make her decision first and bring me to +it. + +"It isn't natural," she decided, "with the sun rising and the day still +freshly beginning that you should go or that I should go. I've wanted to +meet you like this and talk about things,--ten thousand times. And as +for me Stephen I _won't_ go. And I won't let you go if I can help it. +Not this morning, anyhow. No. Go later in the day if you will, and let +us two take this one talk that God Himself has given us. We've not +planned it. It's His doing, not ours." + +I sat, yielding. "I am not so sure of God's participation," I said. "But +I know I am very tired, and glad to be with you. I can't tell you how +glad. So glad---- I think I should weep if I tried to say it...." + +"Three, four, five hours perhaps--even if people know. Is it so much +worse than thirty minutes? We've broken the rules already; we've been +flung together; it's not our doing, Stephen. A little while longer--adds +so little to the offence and means to us----" + +"Yes," I said, "but--if Justin knows?" + +"He won't." + +"Your companion?" + +There was the briefest moment of reflection. "She's discretion itself," +she said. + +"Still----" + +"If he's going to know the harm is done. We may as well be hung for a +sheep as a lamb. And he won't know. No one will know." + +"The people here." + +"Nobody's here. Not a soul who matters. I doubt if they know my name.... +No one ever talks to me." + +I sat in the bright sunshine, profoundly enervated and quite convinced, +but still maintaining out of mere indolence a show of hesitation.... + +"You take the good things God sends you, Stephen--as I do. You stay and +talk with me now, before the curtain falls again. We've tired of +letters. You stay and talk to me. + +"Here we are, Stephen, and it's the one chance that is ever likely to +come to us in all our lives. We'll keep the point of honor; and you +shall go to-day. But don't let's drive the point of honor into the +quick. Go easy Stephen, old friend.... My dear, my dear! What has +happened to you? Have you forgotten? Of course! Is it possible for you +to go, mute, with so much that we can say.... And these mountains and +this sunlight!..." + +I looked up to see her with her elbows on the table and her hands +clasped under her chin; that face close to mine, her dear blue eyes +watching me and her lips a little apart. + +No other human being has ever had that effect upon me, so that I seem to +feel the life and stir in that other body more than I feel my own. + + +§ 3 + +From the moment when I confessed my decision to stay we gave no further +thought to the rightfulness or wisdom of spending the next few hours +together. We thought only of those hours. Things lent themselves to us. +We stood up and walked out in front of the hotel and there moored to a +stake at the edge of the water was a little leaky punt, the one vessel +on the Engstlen See. We would take food with us as we decided and row +out there to where the vast cliffs came sheer from the water, out of +earshot or interference and talk for all the time we had. And I remember +now how Mary stood and called to Miss Satchel's window to tell her of +this intention, and how I discovered again that exquisite slender grace +I knew so well. + +You know the very rowing out from the shore had in it something sweet +and incredible. It was as if we were but dreaming together and might at +any moment awaken again, countless miles and a thousand things apart. I +rowed slowly with those clumsy Swiss oars that one must thrust forward, +breaking the smooth crystal of the lake, and she sat sideways looking +forward, saying very little and with much the same sense I think of +enchantment and unreality. And I saw now for the first time as I watched +her over my oars that her face was changed; she was graver and, I +thought, stronger than the Mary I had known. + +Even now I can still doubt if that boat and lake were real. And yet I +remember even minute and irrelevant details of the day's impressions +with an extraordinary and exquisite vividness. Perhaps it is that very +luminous distinctness which distinguishes these events from the common +experiences of life and puts them so above the quality of things that +are ordinarily real. + +We rowed slowly past a great headland and into the bay at the upper end +of the water. We had not realized at first that we could row beyond the +range of the hotel windows. The rock that comes out of the lake is a +clear dead white when it is dry, and very faintly tinted, but when it is +wetted it lights warmly with flashes and blotches of color, and is seen +to be full of the most exquisite and delicate veins. It splinters +vertically and goes up in cliffs, very high and sculptured, with a +quality almost of porcelain, that at a certain level suddenly become +more rude and massive and begin to overhang. Under the cliffs the water +is very deep and blue-green, and runs here and there into narrow clefts. +This place where we landed was a kind of beach left by the recession of +the ice, all the rocks immediately about us were ice-worn, and the place +was paved with ice-worn boulders. Two huge bluffs put their foreheads +together above us and hid the glacier from us, but one could feel the +near presence of ice in the air. Out between them boiled a little +torrent, and spread into a hundred intercommunicating channels amidst +the great pebbles. And those pebbles were covered by a network of +marvellously gnarled and twisted stems bearing little leaves and +blossoms, a network at once very ancient and very fresh, giving a +peculiar gentleness and richness to the Alpine severity that had dwarfed +and tangled them. It was astounding that any plant could find +nourishment among those stones. The great headland, with patches of +yellowish old snow still lingering here and there upon its upper masses, +had crept insensibly between us and the remote hotel and now hid it +altogether. There was nothing to remind us of the world that had +separated us, except that old and leaky boat we had drawn up upon the +stones at the limpid water's edge. + +"It is as if we had come out of life together," she whispered, giving a +voice to my thought. + +She sat down upon a boulder and I sat on a lower slab a yard or so away, +and we looked at one another. "It's still unreal," she said. + +I felt awkward and at a loss as I sat there before her, as a man unused +to drawing-rooms might feel in the presence of a strange hostess. + +"You are so _you_," I said; "so altogether my nearest thing--and so +strange too, so far off, that I feel--shy.... + +"I'm shy," I repeated. "I feel that if I speak loudly all this will +vanish...." + +I looked about me. "But surely this is the most beautiful place in the +whole world! Is it indeed in the world?" + +"Stephen, my dear," she began presently, "what a strange thing life is! +Strange! The disproportions! The things that will not fit together. The +little things that eat us up, and the beautiful things that might save +us and don't save us, don't seem indeed to have any meaning in regard to +ordinary sensible affairs.... This _beauty_.... + +"Do you remember, Stephen, how long ago in the old park you and I talked +about immortality and you said then you did not want to know anything of +what comes after life. Even now do you want to know? You are too busy +and I am not busy enough. I want to be sure, not only to know, but to +know that it is so, that this life--no, not _this_ life, but that life, +is only the bleak twilight of the morning. I think death--just dead +death--after the life I have had is the most impossible of ends.... You +don't want--particularly? I want to passionately. I _want_ to live +again--out of this body, Stephen, and all that it carves with it, to be +free--as beautiful things are free. To be free as this is free--an +exquisite clean freedom.... + +"I can't believe that the life of this earth is all that there is for +us--or why should we ever think it strange? Why should we still find the +ordinary matter-of-fact things of everyday strange? We do--because they +aren't--_us_.... Eating. Stuffing into ourselves thin slices of what +were queer little hot and eager beasts.... The perpetual need to do such +things. And all the mad fury of sex, Stephen!... We don't live, we +suffocate in our living bodies. They storm and rage and snatch; it isn't +_us_, Stephen, really. It can't be us. It's all so excessive--if it is +anything more than the first furious rush into existence of beings that +will go on--go on at last to quite beautiful real things. Like this +perhaps. To-day the world is beautiful indeed with the sun shining and +love shining and you, my dear, so near to me.... It's so incredible that +you and I must part to-day. It's as if--someone told me the sun was a +little mad. It's so perfectly natural to be with you again...." + +Her voice sank. She leant a little forward towards me. "Stephen, suppose +that you and I were dead to-day. Suppose that when you imagined you were +climbing yesterday, you died. Suppose that yesterday you died and that +you just thought you were still climbing as you made your way to me. +Perhaps you are dead up there on the mountain and I am lying dead in my +room in this hotel, and this is the Great Beginning.... + +"Stephen, I am talking nonsense because I am so happy to be with you +here...." + + +§ 4 + +For a time we said very little. Then irregularly, disconnectedly, we +began to tell each other things about ourselves. + +The substance of our lives seemed strangely objective that day; we had +as it were come to one another clean out of our common conditions. She +told me of her troubles and her secret weaknesses; we bared our spirits +and confessed. Both of us had the same tale of mean and angry and hasty +impulses, both of us could find kindred inconsistencies, both had an +exalted assurance that the other would understand completely and forgive +and love. She talked for the most part, she talked much more than I, +with a sort of wonder at the things that had happened to her, and for +long spaces we did not talk at all nor feel the need of talking, and +what seems very strange to me now, seeing that we had been impassioned +lovers, we never kissed; we never kissed at all; I do not even remember +that I thought of kissing her. We had a shyness between us that kept us +a little apart, and I cannot remember that we ever touched one another +except that for a time she took me and led me by the hand towards a +little place of starry flowers that had drawn her eyes and which she +wished me to see. Already for us two our bodies were dead and gone. We +were shy, shy of any contact, we were a little afraid of one another, +there was a kind of awe between us that we had met again. + +And in that strange and beautiful place her fancy that we were dead +together had a fitness that I cannot possibly convey to you. I cannot +give you by any writing the light and the sweet freshness of that high +desolation. You would need to go there. What was lovely in our talk, +being said in that setting, would seem but a rambling discourse were I +to write it down,--as I believe that even now I could write it +down--word for word almost, every thought of it, so fresh does it remain +with me.... + +My dear, some moments are eternal. It seems to me that as I write to +tell you of this I am telling you not of something that happened two +years ago but of a thing immortal. It is as if I and Mary were together +there holding the realities of our lives before us as though they were +little sorry tales written in books upon our knees.... + + +§ 5 + +It was still in the early afternoon that we came down again across the +meandering ice-water streams to our old boat, and pushed off and rowed +slowly out of that magic corner back to every-day again.... + +Little we knew to what it was we rowed. + +As we glided across the water and rounded the headland and came slowly +into view of the hotel again, Mary was reminded of our parting and for a +little while she was disposed to make me remain. "If you could stay a +little longer," she said,--"Another day? If any harm is done, it's +done." + +"It has been beautiful," I said, "this meeting. It's just as if--when I +was so jaded and discouraged that I could have put my work aside and +despaired altogether,--some power had said, 'Have you forgotten the +friendship I gave you?' ... But we shall have had our time. We've +met,--we've seen one another, we've heard one another. We've hurt no +one...." + +"You will go?" + +"To-day. Before sunset. Isn't it right that I should go?" + +"Stay," she whispered, with a light in her eyes. + +"No. I dare not." + +She did not speak for a long time. + +"Of course," she said at last, "you're right. You only said--I would +have said it for you if you had not. You're so right, Stephen.... I +suppose, poor silly little things, that if you stayed we should +certainly begin making love to each other. It would be--necessary. We +should fence about a little and then there it would be. No barrier--to +stop us. And neither of us wants it to happen. It isn't what we want. +You would become urgent, I suppose, and I should be--coquettish. In +spite of ourselves that power would make us puppets. As if already we +hadn't made love.... I could find it in my heart now.... Stephen I could +_make_ you stay.... + +"Oh! Why are we so tormented, Stephen? In the next world we shall meet, +and this will trouble us no longer. The love will be there--oh, the love +will be there, like something that has at last got itself fully born, +got itself free from some queer clinging seed-case.... + +"We shall be rid of jealousy, Stephen, that inflammation of the mind, +that bitterness, that pitiless sore, so that I shan't be tormented by +the thought of Rachel and she will be able to tolerate me. She was so +sweet and wonderful a girl--with those dark eyes. And I've never done +her justice--never. Nor she me. I snatched you from her. I snatched +you.... + +"Someday we shall be different.... All this putting oneself round +another person like a fence, against everyone else, almost against +everything else; it's so wicked, so fierce. + +"It's so possible to be different. Sometimes now, sometimes for long +parts of a day I have no base passions at all--even in this life. To be +like that always! But I can't see clearly how these things can be; one +dreams of them in a kind of luminous mist, and if one looks directly at +them, they vanish again...." + + +§ 6 + +And at last we came to the landing, and moored the little boat and +walked up the winding path to the hotel. The dull pain of separation was +already upon us. + +I think we had forgotten Miss Summersley Satchel altogether. But she +appeared as we sat down to tea at that same table at which we had +breakfasted, and joined us as a matter of course. Conceivably she found +the two animated friends of the morning had become rather taciturn. +Indeed there came a lapse of silence so portentous that I roused myself +to effort and told her, all over again, as I realized afterwards, the +difficulties that had benighted me upon Titlis. Then Miss Satchel +regaled Mary with some particulars of the various comings and goings of +the hotel. I became anxious to end this tension and went into the inn to +pay my bill and get my knapsack. When I came out Mary stood up. + +"I'll come just a little way with you, Stephen," she said, and I could +have fancied the glasses of the companion flashed to hear the surname of +the morning reappear a Christian name in the afternoon.... + +"Is that woman behind us safe?" I asked, breaking the silence as we went +up the mountain-side. + +Mary looked over her shoulder for a contemplative second. + +"She's always been--discretion itself." + +We thought no more of Miss Satchel. + +"This parting," said Mary, "is the worst of the price we have to +pay.... Now it comes to the end there seem a thousand things one hasn't +said...." + +And presently she came back to that. "We shan't remember this so much +perhaps. It was there we met, over there in the sunlight--among those +rocks. I suppose--perhaps--we managed to say something...." + +As the ascent grew steeper it became clear that if I was to reach the +Melch See Inn by nightfall, our moment for parting had come. And with a +"Well," and a white-lipped smile and a glance at the Argus-eyed hotel, +she held out her hand to me. "I shall live on this, brother Stephen," +she said, "for years." + +"I too," I answered.... + +It was wonderful to stand and face her there, and see her real and +living with the warm sunlight on her, and her face one glowing +tenderness. We clasped hands; all the warm life of our hands met and +clung and parted. + +I went on alone up the winding path,--it zigzags up the mountain-side in +full sight of the hotel for the better part of an hour--climbing +steadily higher and looking back and looking back until she was just a +little strip of white--that halted and seemed to wave to me. I waved +back and found myself weeping. "You fool!" I said to myself, "Go on"; +and it was by an effort that I kept on my way instead of running back to +her again. Presently the curvature of the slope came up between us and +hid her altogether, hid the hotel, hid the lakes and the cliffs.... + +It seemed to me that I could not possibly see her any more. It was as if +I knew that sun had set for ever. + + +§ 7 + +I lay at the Melch See Inn that night, and rose betimes and started down +that wild grey gorge in the early morning light. I walked to Sachseln, +caught an early train to Lucerne and went on in the afternoon to Como. +And there I stayed in the sunshine taking a boat and rowing alone far up +the lake and lying in it, thinking of love and friendship and the +accidents and significance of my life, and for the most part not +thinking at all but feeling, feeling the glow of our meeting and the +finality of our separation, as one feels the clear glow of a sunset when +the wind rises and the cold night draws near. Everything was pervaded by +the sense of her. Just over those mountains, I thought, is Mary. I was +alone in my boat, but her presence filled the sky. It seemed to me that +at any moment I could go to her. And the last vestige of any cloud +between us for anything we had done or failed to do in these crises of +distress and separation, had vanished and gone altogether. + +In the afternoon I wrote to Rachel. I had not written to her for three +days, and even now I told her nothing of my meeting with Mary. I had not +written partly because I could not decide whether I should tell her of +that or not; in the end I tried to hide it from her. It seemed a little +thing in regard to her, a thing that could not hurt her, a thing as +detached from her life and as inconsecutive as a dream in my head. + +Three days later I reached Milan, a day before the formal opening of the +Peace Congress. But I found a telegram had come that morning to the +Poste Restante to banish all thought of my pacific mission from my +mind. It came from Paris and its blue ribbon of text ran: + + + _"Come back at once to London. Justin has been told of our meeting + and is resolved upon divorce. Will do all in my power to explain + and avert but feel you should know at once."_ + + +There are some things so monstrously destructive to all we hold dear +that for a time it is impossible to believe them. I remember now that as +I read that amazing communication through--at the first reading it was a +little difficult to understand because the Italian operator had guessed +at one or two of the words, no real sense of its meaning came to me. +That followed sluggishly. I felt as one might feel when one opens some +offensive anonymous letter or hears some preposterous threat. + +"What _nonsense_!" I said, faint-heartedly. I stood for a time at my +bedroom window trying to shake this fact altogether off my mind. But it +stayed, and became more and more real. Suddenly with a start I perceived +it was real. I had to do things forthwith. + +I rang the bell and asked for an _Orario_. "I shan't want these rooms. I +have to go back to England," I said. "Yes,--I have had bad news." ... + + +§ 8 + +"We've only got to explain," I told myself a hundred times during that +long sleepless journey. The thundering wheels so close beneath my head +echoed: "Explain. Oh yes! Explain! Explain! Explain!" + +And something, a voice to which I would not listen, urged: "Suppose +they do not choose to believe what you explain." + +When I sat face to face with Maxwell Hartington, my solicitor, in his +ink-splashed, dirty, yellow-grained room with its rows of black tin +boxes, I could no longer ignore that possibility. Maxwell Hartington sat +back in his chair after his fashion, listening to my story, breathing +noisily through his open mouth, perspiring little beads and looking more +out of condition than ever. I never knew a man so wine-sodden and so +sharp-witted. + +"That's all very well, Stratton," he said, "between ourselves. Very +unfortunate and all that sort of thing. But it doesn't satisfy Justin +evidently; and we've got to put a different look on it if we can, before +we go before a jury: You see----" He seemed to be considering and +rejecting unpalatable phrases "They won't understand." + +"But," I said, "after all--, a mere chance of the same hotel. There must +be more evidence than that." + +"You spent the night in adjacent rooms," he said dryly. + +"Adjacent rooms!" I cried. + +He regarded me for a moment with something bordering on admiration. +"Didn't you know?" he said. + +"No." + +"They've routed that out. You were sleeping with your two heads within a +yard of one another anyhow. Thirty-six you had, and she had +thirty-seven." + +"But," I said and stopped. + +Maxwell Hartington's admiration gave place I think to a slight +resentment at my sustained innocence. "And Lady Mary changed rooms with +her secretary two nights before--to be near the vacant room. The +secretary went into number 12 on the floor below,--a larger room, at +thirteen francs a day, and one not exposed to the early daylight...." + +He turned over a paper on his desk. "You didn't know, of course," he +said. "But what I want to have"--and his voice grew wrathful--"is sure +evidence that you didn't know. No jury on earth is going to believe you +didn't know. No jury!---- Why,"--his mask dropped--"no man on earth is +going to believe a yarn like that! If that's all you have, Stratton----" + + +§ 9 + +Our London house was not shut up--two servants were there on board-wages +against the possibility of such a temporary return as I was now +making--Rachel was away with you three children at Cromingham. I had not +told her I was returning to London, and I had put up at one of my clubs. +Until I had had a second interview with Maxwell Hartington I still would +not let myself think that it was possible that Mary and I would fail +with our explanations. We had the common confidence of habitually +unchallenged people that our word would be accepted. I had hoped indeed +to get the whole affair settled and abolished without anything of it +coming to Rachel's ears. Then at my leisure I should be able to tell her +exactly how things had come about. But each day made it clearer that +things were not going to be settled, that the monstrous and the +incredible was going to happen and that Justin had set his mind +implacably upon a divorce. My sense of complete innocence had already +been shaken by Maxwell Hartington; I had come to perceive that we had +been amazingly indiscreet, I was beginning to think we had been +criminally indiscreet. + +I saw Maxwell Hartington for a second time, and it became clear to me I +must abandon any hope of keeping things further from Rachel. I took my +luggage round to my house, to the great astonishment of the two +servants,--they had supposed of course that I was in Italy--and then +went down on the heels of a telegram to Rachel. I forget the wording of +that telegram, but it was as little alarming as possible; I think I said +something about "back in London for documents; shall try to get down to +you." I did not specify any particular train or indeed state definitely +that I was coming that day. + +I had never been to Cromingham before. I went to the house you occupied +on the Esplanade and learnt that you were all upon the beach. I walked +along the sea-wall scrutinizing the various bright groups of children +and nursemaids and holiday people that were scattered over the sands. It +was a day of blazing sunshine, and, between the bright sky and the +silver drabs of the sand stretched the low levels of a sea that had its +customary green-grey touched for once with something of the sapphire +glow of the Mediterranean. Here and there were gay little umbrella tents +or canvas shelters, and a bather or so and pink and white wading +children broke the dazzling edge of foam. And I sought you with a kind +of reluctance as though finding you would bring nearer the black +irrational disaster that hung over us all. + +And when I found you at last you were all radiantly happy and healthy, +the prettiest of families, and only your mother was touched with any +gravity deeper than the joy of sunshine and sea. You and Mademoiselle +Potin--in those days her ministrations were just beginning--were busy +constructing a great sea-wall that should really and truly stop the +advancing tide. Rachel Two was a little apart, making with infinite +contentment an endless multitude of conical sand pies with her little +tin pail. Margaret, a pink inarticulate lump, scrabbled in the warm sand +under Jessica's care. Your mother sat and watched you--thoughtfully. And +before any of you knew that I was there my shadow fell across you all. + +You accepted my appearance when I ought to have been in Italy with the +unquestioning confidence with which you still take all my comings and +goings. For you, Italy, America, any place is just round the corner. I +was kissed with affection but haste, and you got back to your sand-works +as speedily as possible. I inspected Rachel Two's mounds,--she was +giving them the names of her various aunts and uncles--and patted the +crowing Margaret, who ignored me. Rachel had sprung to her feet and +kissed me and now hovered radiant over me as I caressed you youngsters. +It was all so warm, so real, that for an instant the dark threat that +hung over us all vanished from my skies, to return with the force of a +blow. + +"And what has brought you back?" said Rachel. "I had expected a month of +widowhood. What can have brought you back?" + +The dancing gladness in her eyes vanished swiftly as she waited for an +answer to her question. She caught the note of tragedy from my face. +"Why have you come back from Italy?" she asked in an altered voice. + +"Rachel," I said taking her arm, with a desolating sense of the +futility in my gesture of protection; "let us walk along the beach. I +want to tell you something---- Something rather complicated." + +"Is there going to be war, Stephen?" she asked abruptly. + +It seemed then that this question which merely concerned the welfare of +a hundred million people or so and pain, destruction and disaster beyond +measure, was the most trivial of digressions. + +"No," I said. "I haven't thought about the war." + +"But I thought--you were thinking of nothing else." + +"This has put it out of my head. It's something---- Something disastrous +to us." + +"Something has happened to our money?" + +"I wish that was all." + +"Then what is it?" Her mind flashed out. "It has something to do with +Mary Justin." + +"How did you know that?" + +"I guessed." + +"Well. It is. You see--in Switzerland we met." + +"You _met_!" + +"By accident. She had been staying at the hotel on Engstlen Alp." + +"You slept there!" cried Rachel. + +"I didn't know she was in the hotel until the next day." + +"And then you came away!" + +"That day." + +"But you talked together?" + +"Yes." + +"And for some reason---- You never told me, Stephen! You never told me. +And you met. But---- Why is this, disaster?" + +"Because Justin knows and he means to divorce her--and it may be he +will succeed...." + +Rachel's face had become white, for some time she said nothing. Then +slowly, "And if he had not known and done that--I should never have +known." + +I had no answer to make to that. It was true. Rachel's face was very +still, and her eyes stared at the situation laid bare to her. + +"When you began," she choked presently, "when she wrote--I knew--I +felt----" + +She ceased for fear she might weep, and for a time we walked in silence. + +"I suppose," she said desperately at last, "he will get his divorce." + +"I am afraid he will." + +"There's no evidence--you didn't...." + +"No." + +"And I never dreamt----!" + +Then her passion tore at her. "Stephen my dear," she wept, "you didn't? +you didn't? Stephen, indeed you didn't, did you? You kept faith with me +as a husband should. It was an accident--a real accident--and there was +no planning for you to meet together. It was as you say? I've never +doubted your word ever--I've never doubted you." + +Well, at any rate I could answer that plainly, and I did. + +"And you know, Stephen," she said, "I believe you. And I _can't_ believe +you. My heart is tormented. Why did you write to her? Why did you two +write and go on writing? And why did you tell me nothing of that +meeting? I believe you because I can't do anything but believe you. It +would kill me not to believe you in a thing that came so near to us. And +yet, there it is, like a knife being twisted in my heart--that you met. +Should I have known of your meeting, Stephen--ever? I know I'm talking +badly for you.... But this thing strikes me suddenly. Out of this clear +beautiful sky! And the children there--so happy in the sunshine! I was +so happy. So happy. With you coming.... It will mean shames and +law-courts and newspapers, losses of friends, losses of money and +freedom.... My mother and my people!... And you and all the work you +do!... People will never forget it, never forgive it. They will say you +promised.... If she had never written, if she had kept to her +bargain----" + +"We should still have met." + +"Stephen!... Stephen, you must bear with me...." + +"This is a thing," I said, "that falls as you say out of the sky. It +seemed so natural--for her to write.... And the meeting ... it is like +some tremendous disaster of nature. I do not feel I have deserved it. It +is--irrational. But there it is, little Rachel of my heart, and we have +to face it. Whatever happens we have to go on. It doesn't alter the work +we have to do. If it clips our wings--we have to hop along with clipped +wings.... For you--I wish it could spare you. And she--she too is a +victim, Rachel." + +"She need not have written," said Rachel. "She need not have written. +And then if you had met----" + +She could not go on with that. + +"It is so hard," I said, "to ask you to be just to her--and me. I wish I +could have come to you and married you--without all that legacy--of +things remembered.... I was what I was.... One can't shake off a thing +in one's blood. And besides--besides----" + +I stopped helplessly. + + +§ 10 + +And then Mary came herself to tell me there would be no divorce. + +She came to me unexpectedly. I had returned to town that evening, and +next morning as I was sitting down in my study to answer some +unimportant questions Maxwell Hartington had sent me, my parlormaid +appeared. "Can you speak," she asked, "to Lady Mary Justin?" + +I stood up to receive my visitor. + +She came in, a tall dark figure, and stood facing me in silence until +the door had closed behind her. Her face was white and drawn and very +grave. She stooped a little, I could see she had had no sleep, never +before had I seen her face marked by pain. And she hesitated.... "My +dear!" I said; "why have you come to me?" + +I put a chair for her and she sat down. + +For a moment she controlled herself with difficulty. She put her hand +over her eyes, she seemed on the verge of bitter weeping.... + +"I came," she said at last.... "I came. I had to come ... to see you." + +I sat down in a chair beside her. + +"It wasn't wise," I said. "But--never mind. You look so tired, my dear!" + +She sat quite still for a little while. + +Then she moved her arm as though she felt for me blindly, and I put my +arms about her and drew her head to my shoulder and she wept.... + +"I knew," she sobbed, "if I came to you...." + +Presently her weeping was over. + +"Get me a little cold water, Stephen," she said. "Let me have a little +cold water on my face. I've got my courage now again. Just then,--I was +down too low. Yes--cold water. Because I want to tell you--things you +will be glad to hear." + +"You see, Stephen," she said--and now all her self-possession had +returned; "there mustn't be a divorce. I've thought it all out. And +there needn't be a divorce." + +"Needn't be?" + +"No." + +"What do you mean?" + +"I can stop it." + +"But how?" + +"I can stop it. I can manage---- I can make a bargain.... It's very +sweet, dear Stephen, to be here talking to you again." + +She stood up. + +"Sit at your desk, my dear," she said. "I'm all right now. That water +was good. How good cold things can be! Sit down at your desk and let me +sit here. And then I will talk to you. I've had such a time, my dear. +Ah!" + +She paused and stuck her elbows on the desk and looked me in the eyes. +And suddenly that sweet, frank smile of hers swept like sunshine across +the wintry desolation of her face. "We've both been having a time," she +said. "This odd little world,--it's battered us with its fists. For such +a little. And we were both so ridiculously happy. Do you remember it, +the rocks and the sunshine and all those twisted and tangled little +plants? And how the boat leaked and you baled it out! And the parting, +and how you trudged up that winding path away from me! A grey figure +that stopped and waved--a little figure--such a virtuous figure! And +then, this storm! this _awful_ hullabaloo! Lawyers, curses, threats----. +And Stella Summersley Satchel like a Fury of denunciation. What hatred +that woman has hidden from me! It must have accumulated.... It's +terrible to think, Stephen, how much I must have tried her.... Oh! how +far away those Alps are now, Stephen! Like something in another life.... +And here we are!--among the consequences." + +"But,--you were saying we could stop the divorce." + +"Yes. We can. I can. But I wanted to see you,--before I did. Somehow I +don't feel lonely with you. I had to see you.... It's good to see you." + +She looked me in the face. Her tired eyes lit with a gleam of her former +humor. + +"Have you thought," she asked, "of all that will happen if there is a +divorce?" + +"I mean to fight every bit of it." + +"They'll beat you." + +"We'll see that." + +"But they will. And then?" + +"Why should one meet disaster half way?" + +"Stephen!" she said; "what will happen to you when I am not here to make +you look at things? Because I shan't be here. Not within reach of +you.... There are times when I feel like a mother to you. Never more +than now...." + +And then with rapid touches she began to picture the disaster before +me. She pictured the Court and our ineffectual denials, she made me +realize the storm of hostility that was bound to burst over us. "And +think of me," she said. "Stripped I shall be and outcast." + +"Not while I live!" + +"But what can you do for me? You will have Rachel. How can you stand by +me? You can't be cruel to Rachel. You know you can't be cruel to Rachel. +Look me in the face, Stephen; tell me. Yes.... Then how can you stand by +me?" + +"Somehow!" I cried foolishly and stopped. + +"They'll use me to break your back with costs and damages. There'll be +those children of yours to think of...." + +"My God!" I cried aloud. "Why do you torment me? Haven't I thought +enough of those things?... Haven't I seen the ruin and the shame, the +hopeless trap, men's trust in me gone, my work scattered and ended +again, my children growing up to hear this and that exaggeration of our +story. And you----. All the bravery of your life scattered and wasted. +The thing will pursue us all, cling to us. It will be all the rest of +our lives for us...." + +I covered my face with my hands. + +When I looked up, her face was white and still, and full of a strange +tenderness. "I wouldn't have you, Stephen--I wouldn't have you be cruel +to Rachel.... I just wanted to know--something.... But we're wandering. +We're talking nonsense. Because as I said, there need be no divorce. +There will be no divorce at all. That's what I came to tell you. I shall +have to pay--in a way, Stephen.... Not impossibly. Don't think it is +anything impossible...." + +Then she bit her lips and sat still.... + +"My dear," I whispered, "if we had taken one another at the +beginning...." + +But she went on with her own thoughts. + +"You love those little children of yours," she said. "And that trusting +girl-wife.... Of course you love them. They're yours. Oh! they're so +deeply--yours.... Yours...." + +"Oh my dear! don't torture me! I do love them. But I love you too." + +"No," she said, "not as you do them." + +I made a movement of protest. + +"No," she said, whitely radiant with a serenity I had never seen before +in her face. "You love me with your brain. With your soul if you like. I +_know_, my poor bleeding Stephen!--Aren't those tears there? Don't mind +my seeing them, Stephen.... Poor dear! Poor dear!.... You love _them_ +with your inmost heart. Why should you mind that I see you do?... All my +life I've been wrong, Stephen, and now I know too late. It's the things +we own we love, the things we buy with our lives.... Always I have been +hard, I've been a little hard.... Stephen, my dear, I loved you, always +I have loved you, and always I have tried to keep myself.... It's too +late.... I don't know why I am talking like this.... But you see I can +make a bargain now--it's not an impossible bargain--and save you and +save your wife and save your children----" + +"But how?" I said, still doubting. + +"Never mind how, Stephen. Don't ask me how now. Nothing very difficult. +Easy. But I shall write you no more letters--see you--no more. Never. +And that's why I had to come, you see, why I was able to come to you, +just to see you and say good-bye to you, and take leave of you, dear +Love that I threw away and loved too late...." + +She bit her lip and faced me there, a sweet flushed living thing, with a +tear coursing down her cheek, and her mouth now firm and steady. + +"You can stop this divorce?" I said, "But how, Mary?" + +"No, don't ask me how. At a price. It's a bargain. No, no! Don't think +that,--a bargain with Justin, but not degrading. Don't, my dear, let the +thought of it distress you. I have to give earnests.... Never, dear, +never through all the dusty rest of life again will you and I speak +together. Never! Even if we come face to face once more--no word...." + +"Mary," I said, "what is it you have to do? You speak as if---- What is +it Justin demands?" + +"No! do not ask me that.... Tell me--you see we've so much to talk +about, Stephen--tell me of all you are going to do. Everything. Because +I've got to make a great vow of renunciation--of you. Not to think +again--not even to think of you again.... No, no. I'm not even to look +for you in the papers any more. There's to be no tricks this time. And +so you see I want to fill up my mind with you. To store myself with you. +Tell me your work is worth it--that it's not like the work of everyone. +Tell me, Stephen--_that_. I want to believe that--tremendously. Don't be +modest now. That will be cruel. I want to believe that I am at last to +do something that is worth doing, something not fruitless...." + +"Are you to go into seclusion," I asked suddenly, "to be a nun----?" + +"It is something like that," she said; "very like that. But I have +promised--practically--not to tell you that. Tell me your soul, Stephen, +now. Give me something I may keep in my mind through--through all those +years of waiting...." + +"But where?" I cried. "What years of waiting?" + +"In a lonely place, my dear--among mountains. High and away. Very +beautiful, but lonely. A lake. Great rocks.... Yes,--like that place. So +odd.... I shall have so much time to think, and I shall have no +papers--no news. I mustn't talk to you of that. Don't let me talk to you +of that. I want to hear about this world, this world I am going to +leave, and how you think you are going on fighting in the hot and dusty +struggle--to make the world cool and kind and reasonable, to train minds +better, to broaden ideas ... all those things you believe in. All those +things you believe in and stick to--even when they are dull. Now I am +leaving it, I begin to see how fine it is--to fight as you want to +fight. A tiresome inglorious lifelong fight.... You really believe, +Stephen?" + + +§ 11 + +And then suddenly I read her purpose. + +"Mary," I cried, and stood up and laid my hand upon her arm, "Tell me +what is it you mean to do. What do you mean to do?" + +She looked up at me defensively and for a moment neither of us spoke. + +"Mary," I said, and could not say what was in my thoughts. + +"You are wrong," she lied at last.... + +She stood up too and faced me. I held her shoulder and looked into her +eyes. + +The gong of my little clock broke the silence. + +"I must go, Stephen," she said. "I did not see how the time was slipping +by." + +I began to entreat her and she to deny. "You don't understand," she +said, "you don't understand. Stephen!--I had hoped you would understand. +You see life,--not as I see it. I wanted--all sorts of splendid things +and you--begin to argue. You are shocked, you refuse to understand.... +No. No. Take your hands off me, Stephen dear, and let me go. Let me go!" + +"But," I said, stupid and persistent, "what are you going to do?" + +"I've told you. Stephen. I've told you. As much as I can tell you. And +you think--this foolish thing. As though I could do that! Stephen, if I +promise, will you let me go?..." + + +§ 12 + +My mind leaps from that to the moment in the afternoon, when torn by +intolerable distresses and anxiety I knocked and rang, and again knocked +at the door of the house she occupied in South Street, with the +intention of making one last appeal to her to live--if, indeed, it was +death she had in mind. I had let her go from me and instantly a hundred +neglected things had come into my head. I could go away with her, I +could threaten to die with her; it seemed to me that nothing in all the +world mattered if only I could thrust back the dark hand of death to +which she had so manifestly turned. I knew, I knew all along that her +extorted promise would not bind her. I knew and I let the faintest +shadow of uncertainty weaken and restrain me. And I went to her too +late. I saw instantly that I was too late when the door opened and +showed me the scared face of a young footman whose eyes were red with +tears. + +"Are you Doctor----?" he asked of my silence. + +"I want----" I said. "I must speak to Lady Mary." + +He was wordless for a moment. "She--she died, sir," he said. "She's died +suddenly." His face quivered, he was blubbering. He couldn't say +anything more; he stood snivelling in the doorway. + +For some moments I remained confronting him as if I would dispute his +words. Some things the mind contests in the face of invincible +conviction. One wants to thrust back time.... + + + + +CHAPTER THE TWELFTH + +THE ARRAIGNMENT OF JEALOUSY + + +§ 1 + +I sit here in this graciously proportioned little room which I shall +leave for ever next week, for already your mother begins to pack for +England again. I look out upon the neat French garden that I have +watched the summer round, and before me is the pile of manuscript that +has grown here, the story of my friendship and love for Mary and of its +tragic end, and of all the changes of my beliefs and purposes that have +arisen out of that. I had meant it to be the story of my life, but how +little of my life is in it! It gives, at most, certain acute points, +certain salient aspects. I begin to realize for the first time how thin +and suggestive and sketchy a thing any novel or biography must be. How +we must simplify! How little can we convey the fullness of life, the +glittering interests, the interweaving secondary aspects, the dawns and +dreams and double refractions of experience! Even Mary, of whom I have +labored to tell you, seems not so much expressed as hidden beneath these +corrected sheets. She who was so abundantly living, who could love like +a burst of sunshine and give herself as God gives the world, is she here +at all in this pile of industrious inexpert writing? + +Life is so much fuller than any book can be. All this story can be +read, I suppose, in a couple of hours or so, but I have been living and +reflecting upon and reconsidering the substance of it for over forty +years. I do not see how this book can give you any impression but that +of a career all strained upon the frame of one tragic relationship, yet +no life unless it is a very short young life can have that simplicity. +Of all the many things I have found beautiful and wonderful, Mary was +the most wonderful to me, she is in my existence like a sunlit lake seen +among mountains, of all the edges by which life has wrought me she was +the keenest. Nevertheless she was not all my life, nor the form of all +my life. For a time after her death I could endure nothing of my home, I +could not bear the presence of your mother or you, I hated the +possibility of consolation, I went away into Italy, and it was only by +an enormous effort that I could resume my interest in that scheme of +work to which my life is given. But it is manifest I still live, I live +and work and feel and share beauty.... + +It seems to me more and more as I live longer, that most poetry and most +literature and particularly the literature of the past is discordant +with the vastness and variety, the reserves and resources and +recuperations of life as we live it to-day. It is the expression of life +under cruder and more rigid conditions than ours, lived by people who +loved and hated more naïvely, aged sooner and died younger than we do. +Solitary persons and single events dominated them as they do not +dominate us. We range wider, last longer, and escape more and more from +intensity towards understanding. And already this astounding blow begins +to take its place among other events, as a thing strange and terrible +indeed, but related to all the strangeness and mystery of life, part of +the universal mysteries of despair and futility and death that have +troubled my consciousness since childhood. For a time the death of Mary +obscured her life for me, but now her living presence is more in my mind +again. I begin to see that it is the reality of her existence and not +the accidents of her end that matter most. It signifies less that she +should have flung out of life when it seemed that her living could only +have meant disaster to herself and to all she loved, than that all her +life should have been hampered and restricted. Through all her life this +brave and fine and beautiful being was for the most part of her +possibilities, wasted in a splendid setting, magnificently wasted if you +will, but wasted. + + +§ 2 + +It was that idea of waste that dominated my mind in a strange interview +I had with Justin. For it became necessary for me to see Justin in order +that we should stamp out the whispers against her that followed her +death. He had made it seem an accidental death due to an overdose of the +narcotic she employed, but he had not been able to obliterate altogether +the beginnings of his divorce proceedings. There had been talk on the +part of clerks and possible witnesses. But of all that I need not tell +you here; what matters is that Justin and I could meet without hatred or +violence. I met a Justin grey-haired and it seemed to me physically +shrunken, more than ever slow-speaking, with his habit of attentive +silences more marked and that dark scar spread beyond his brows. + +We had come to our parting, we had done our business with an +affectation of emotional aloofness, and then suddenly he gripped me by +the arm. "Stratton," he said, "we two---- We killed her. We tore her to +pieces between us...." + +I made no answer to this outbreak. + +"We tore her to pieces," he repeated. "It's so damned silly. One gets +angry--like an animal." + +I became grotesquely anxious to assure him that, indeed, she and I had +been, as they say, innocent throughout our last day together. "You were +wrong in all that," I said. "She kept her faith with you. We never +planned to meet and when we met----. If we had been brother and +sister----. Indeed there was nothing." + +"I suppose," he said, "I ought to be glad of that. But now it doesn't +seem to matter very much. We killed her.... What does that matter to me +now?" + + +§ 3 + +And it is upon this effect of sweet and beautiful possibilities, caught +in the net of animal jealousies and thoughtless motives and ancient +rigid institutions, that I would end this writing. In Mary, it seems to +me, I found both womanhood and fellowship, I found what many have dreamt +of, love and friendship freely given, and I could do nothing but clutch +at her to make her my possession. I would not permit her to live except +as a part of my life. I see her now and understand her better than when +she was alive, I recall things that she said and wrote and it is clear +to me, clearer perhaps than it ever was to her, that she, with her +resentment at being in any sense property, her self-reliant thought, her +independence of standard, was the very prototype of that sister-lover +who must replace the seductive and abject womanhood, owned, mastered and +deceiving, who waste the world to-day. And she was owned, she was +mastered, she was forced into concealment. What alternative was there +for her? What alternative is there for any woman? She might perhaps have +kept her freedom by some ill-paid work and at the price of every other +impulse in her swift and eager nature. She might have become one of +those poor neuters, an independent woman.... Life was made impossible +for her and she was forced to die, according to the fate of all untimely +things. She was destroyed, not merely by the unconsidered, undisciplined +passions of her husband and her lover, but by the vast tradition that +sustains and enforces the subjugation of her sex. What I had from her, +and what she was, is but a mere intimation of all that she and I might +have made of each other and the world. + +And perhaps in this story I have said enough for you to understand why +Mary has identified herself with something world-wide, has added to +herself a symbolical value, and why it is I find in the whole crowded +spectacle of mankind, a quality that is also hers, a sense of fine +things entangled and stifled and unable to free themselves from the +ancient limiting jealousies which law and custom embody. For I know that +a growing multitude of men and women outwear the ancient ways. The +blood-stained organized jealousies of religious intolerance, the +delusions of nationality and cult and race, that black hatred which +simple people and young people and common people cherish against all +that is not in the likeness of themselves, cease to be the undisputed +ruling forces of our collective life. We want to emancipate our lives +from this slavery and these stupidities, from dull hatreds and +suspicion. The ripening mind of our race tires of these boorish and +brutish and childish things. A spirit that is like hers, arises and +increases in human affairs, a spirit that demands freedom and gracious +living as our inheritance too long deferred, and I who loved her so +blindly and narrowly now love her spirit with a dawning understanding. + +I will not be content with that compromise of jealousies which is the +established life of humanity to-day. I give myself, and if I can I will +give you, to the destruction of jealousy and of the forms and shelters +and instruments of jealousy, both in my own self and in the thought and +laws and usage of the world. + + +THE END + + * * * * * + +Popular Copyright Novels + +AT MODERATE PRICES + +Ask your dealer for a complete list of A. L. Burt Company's Popular +Copyright Fiction + + +Abner Daniel _Will N. 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Burt Company's Popular +Copyright Fiction + + +Phra the Phoenician _Edwin Lester Arnold_ +Pidgin Island _Harold MacGrath_ +Place of Honeymoons, The _Harold MacGrath_ +Pleasures and Palaces _Juliet Wilbor Tompkins_ +Plunderer, The _Roy Norton_ +Pole Baker _Will N. Harben_ +Pool of Flame, The _Louis Joseph Vance_ +Polly of the Circus _Margaret Mayo_ +Poppy _Cynthia Stockley_ +Port of Adventure, The _C. N. and A. M. Williamson_ +Postmaster, The _Joseph C. Lincoln_ +Power and the Glory, The _Grace McGowan Cooke_ +Price of the Prairie, The _Margaret Hill McCarter_ +Prince of Sinners, A _E. Phillips Oppenheim_ +Prince or Chauffeur _Lawrence Perry_ +Princess Passes, The _C. N. and A. M. Williamson_ +Princess Virginia, The _C. N. and A. M. Williamson_ +Prisoners of Chance _Randall Parrish_ +Prodigal Son, The _Hall Caine_ +Purple Parasol, The _George Barr McCutcheon_ +R. J.'s Mother _Margaret Deland_ +Ranching for Sylvia _Harold Bindloss_ +Reason Why, The _Elinor Glyn_ +Redemption of Kenneth Galt, The _Will N. Harben_ +Red Cross Girl, The _Richard Harding Davis_ +Red Lane, The _Holman Day_ +Red Pepper Burns _Grace S. Richmond_ +Red Republic, The _Robert W. Chambers_ +Refugees, The _A. Conan Doyle_ +Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary, The _Anne Warner_ +Rise of Roscoe Paine, The _Joseph C. Lincoln_ +Road to Providence, The _Maria Thompson Daviess_ +Robinetta _Kate Douglas Wiggin_ +Rose in the Ring, The _George Barr McCutcheon_ +Rose of the World _Agnes and Egerton Castle_ +Rose of Old Harpeth, The _Maria Thompson Daviess_ +Round the Corner in Gay Street _Grace S. Richmond_ +Routledge Rides Alone _Will Levington Comfort_ +Rue: With a Difference _Rosa N. Carey_ +St. Elmo (Illustrated Edition) _Augusta J. Evans_ +Seats of the Mighty, The _Gilbert Parker_ + + * * * * * + +Popular Copyright Novels + +AT MODERATE PRICES + +Ask your dealer for a complete list of A. L. Burt Company's Popular +Copyright Fiction + + +Second Violin, The _Grace S. Richmond_ +Self-Raised (Illustrated) _Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth_ +Septimus _William J. Locke_ +Set in Silver _C. N. and A. M. Williamson_ +Sharrow _Bettina Von Hutten_ +Shepherd of the Hills, The _Harold Bell Wright_ +Sheriff of Dyke Hole, The _Ridgwell Cullum_ +Ship's Company _W. W. Jacobs_ +Sidney Carteret, Rancher _Harold Bindloss_ +Sign at Six, The _Stewart Edward White_ +Silver Horde, The _Rex Beach_ +Simon the Jester _William J. Locke_ +Sir Nigel _A. Conan Doyle_ +Sir Richard Calmady _Lucas Malet_ +Sixty-First Second, The _Owen Johnson_ +Slim Princess, The _George Ade_ +Speckled Bird, A _Augusta Evans Wilson_ +Spirit in Prison, A _Robert Hichens_ +Spirit of the Border, The _Zane Grey_ +Spoilers, The _Rex Beach_ +Strawberry Acres _Grace S. Richmond_ +Strawberry Handkerchief, The _Amelia E. Barr_ +Streets of Ascalon, The _Robert W. Chambers_ +Sunnyside of the Hill, The _Rosa N. Carey_ +Sunset Trail, The _Alfred Henry Lewis_ +Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop _Anne Warner_ +Sword of the Old Frontier, A _Randall Parrish_ +Tales of Sherlock Holmes _A. Conan Doyle_ +Tarzan of the Apes _Edgar Rice Burroughs_ +Taste of Apples, The _Jennette Lee_ +Tennessee Shad, The _Owen Johnson_ +Tess of the D'Urbervilles _Thomas Hardy_ +Texican, The _Dane Coolidge_ +That Affair Next Door _Anna Katharine Green_ +That Printer of Udell's _Harold Bell Wright_ +Their Yesterdays _Harold Bell Wright_ +Throwback, The _Alfred Henry Lewis_ +Thurston of Orchard Valley _Harold Blindloss_ +To M. L. G.; Or, He Who Passed _Anonymous_ +To Him That Hath _Leroy Scott_ + + * * * * * + +Popular Copyright Novels + +AT MODERATE PRICES + +Ask your dealer for a complete list of A. L. 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Dell_ +Weavers, The _Gilbert Parker_ +West Wind, The _Cyrus Townsend Brady_ +Wheel of Life, The _Ellen Glasgow_ +When Wilderness Was King _Randall Parrish_ +Where the Trail Divides _Will Lillibridge_ +Where There's A Will _Mary Roberts Rinehart_ +White Sister, The _Marion Crawford_ +Wind Before the Dawn, The _Dell H. Munger_ +Window at the White Cat, The _Mary Roberts Rinehart_ +Winning of Barbara Worth, The _Harold Bell Wright_ +With Juliet in England _Grace S. Richmond_ +With the Best Intentions _Bruno Lessing_ +Woman in the Alcove, The _Anna Katharine Green_ +Woman Haters, The _Joseph C. Lincoln_ +Woodcarver of 'Lympus, The _Mary E. Waller_ +Woodfire in No. 3, The _F. Hopkinson Smith_ +Wrecker, The _Robert Louis Stevenson_ +Younger Set, The _Robert W. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Passionate Friends + +Author: Herbert George Wells + +Release Date: October 26, 2009 [EBook #30340] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS *** + + + + +Produced by Carl Hudkins, Martin Pettit and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<h1>The<br />Passionate Friends</h1> + +<h2>By H. G. WELLS</h2> + +<h3>Author of "Marriage."</h3> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/i002.jpg" width='150' height='142' alt="Decoration" /></div> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<h3>WITH FRONTISPIECE</h3> + +<h2>A. L. BURT COMPANY, PUBLISHERS</h2> + +<h3>114-120 East Twenty-third Street - - New York</h3> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Published by Arrangement with Harper & Brothers</span></h4> + +<hr /> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<h4>COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY HARPER & BROTHERS<br /> +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA<br /> +PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1913</h4> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<h4>TO<br />L. E. N. S.</h4> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/i001.jpg" width='700' height='520' alt="See p. 85 OUR KISSES WERE KISSES OF MOONLIGHT" /></div> + +<h4>"OUR KISSES WERE KISSES OF MOONLIGHT" [See p. 85</h4> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<hr /> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<div class="index"> +<ul> +<li><span class="mono"> CHAP.</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#CHAPTER_THE_FIRST">I.</a></span> <span class="smcap">Mr. Stratton to his Son</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#CHAPTER_THE_SECOND">II.</a></span> <span class="smcap">Boyhood</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#CHAPTER_THE_THIRD">III.</a></span> <span class="smcap">Intentions and the Lady Mary Christian</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#CHAPTER_THE_FOURTH">IV.</a></span> <span class="smcap">The Marriage of the Lady Mary Christian</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#CHAPTER_THE_FIFTH">V.</a></span> <span class="smcap">The War in South Africa</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#CHAPTER_THE_SIXTH">VI.</a></span> <span class="smcap">Lady Mary Justin</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#CHAPTER_THE_SEVENTH">VII.</a></span> <span class="smcap">Beginning Again</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#CHAPTER_THE_EIGHTH">VIII.</a></span> <span class="smcap">This Swarming Business of Mankind</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#CHAPTER_THE_NINTH">IX.</a></span> <span class="smcap">The Spirit of the New World</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#CHAPTER_THE_TENTH">X.</a></span> <span class="smcap">Mary Writes</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#CHAPTER_THE_ELEVENTH">XI.</a></span> <span class="smcap">The Last Meeting</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#CHAPTER_THE_TWELFTH">XII.</a></span> <span class="smcap">The Arraignment of Jealousy</span></li> +<li><span class="mono"> <a href="#ADVERTISEMENTS">ADVERTISEMENTS</a></span></li> +</ul> +</div> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> + +<h1>THE<br />PASSIONATE FRIENDS</h1> + + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_THE_FIRST" id="CHAPTER_THE_FIRST"></a>CHAPTER THE FIRST</h2> + +<h3><span class="smcap">Mr. Stratton to his Son</span></h3> + +<h3>§ 1</h3> + +<p>I want very much to set down my thoughts and my experiences of life. I +want to do so now that I have come to middle age and now that my +attitudes are all defined and my personal drama worked out I feel that +the toil of writing and reconsideration may help to clear and fix many +things that remain a little uncertain in my thoughts because they have +never been fully stated, and I want to discover any lurking +inconsistencies and unsuspected gaps. And I have a story. I have lived +through things that have searched me. I want to tell that story as well +as I can while I am still a clear-headed and active man, and while many +details that may presently become blurred and altered are still rawly +fresh in my mind. And to one person in particular do I wish to think I +am writing, and that is to you, my only son. I want to write my story +not indeed to the child you are now, but to the man you are going to be. +You are half<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> my blood and temperamentally altogether mine. A day will +come when you will realize this, and want to know how life has gone with +me, and then it may be altogether too late for me to answer your +enquiries. I may have become inaccessible as old people are sometimes +inaccessible. And so I think of leaving this book for you—at any rate, +I shall write it as if I meant to leave it for you. Afterwards I can +consider whether I will indeed leave it....</p> + +<p>The idea of writing such a book as this came to me first as I sat by the +dead body of your grandfather—my father. It was because I wanted so +greatly such a book from him that I am now writing this. He died, you +must know, only a few months ago, and I went to his house to bury him +and settle all his affairs.</p> + +<p>At one time he had been my greatest friend. He had never indeed talked +to me about himself or his youth, but he had always showed an +extraordinary sympathy and helpfulness for me in all the confusion and +perplexities into which I fell. This did not last to the end of his +life. I was the child of his middle years, and suddenly, in a year or +less, the curtains of age and infirmity fell between us. There came an +illness, an operation, and he rose from it ailing, suffering, dwarfed +and altogether changed. Of all the dark shadows upon life I think that +change through illness and organic decay in the thoughts and spirits of +those who are dear and close to us is the most evil and distressing and +inexplicable. Suddenly he was a changeling, a being querulous and +pitiful, needing indulgence and sacrifices.</p> + +<p>In a little while a new state of affairs was established. I ceased to +consider him as a man to whom one told<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> things, of whom one could expect +help or advice. We all ceased to consider him at all in that way. We +humored him, put pleasant things before him, concealed whatever was +disagreeable. A poor old man he was indeed in those concluding years, +weakly rebellious against the firm kindliness of my cousin, his +housekeeper and nurse. He who had once been so alert was now at times +astonishingly apathetic. At times an impish malice I had never known in +him before gleamed in little acts and speeches. His talk rambled, and +for the most part was concerned with small, long-forgotten contentions. +It was indistinct and difficult to follow because of a recent loss of +teeth, and he craved for brandy, to restore even for a moment the sense +of strength and well-being that ebbed and ebbed away from him. So that +when I came to look at his dead face at last, it was with something like +amazement I perceived him grave and beautiful—more grave and beautiful +than he had been even in the fullness of life.</p> + +<p>All the estrangement of the final years was wiped in an instant from my +mind as I looked upon his face. There came back a rush of memories, of +kind, strong, patient, human aspects of his fatherhood. And I remembered +as every son must remember—even you, my dear, will some day remember +because it is in the very nature of sonship—insubordinations, +struggles, ingratitudes, great benefits taken unthankfully, slights and +disregards. It was not remorse I felt, nor repentance, but a tremendous +regret that so things had happened and that life should be so. Why is +it, I thought, that when a son has come to manhood he cannot take his +father for a friend? I had a curious sense of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>unprecedented communion +as I stood beside him now. I felt that he understood my thoughts; his +face seemed to answer with an expression of still and sympathetic patience.</p> + +<p>I was sensible of amazing gaps. We had never talked together of love, +never of religion.</p> + +<p>All sorts of things that a man of twenty-eight would not dream of hiding +from a coeval he had hidden from me. For some days I had to remain in +his house, I had to go through his papers, handle all those intimate +personal things that accumulate around a human being year by +year—letters, yellowing scraps of newspaper, tokens, relics kept, +accidental vestiges, significant litter. I learnt many things I had +never dreamt of. At times I doubted whether I was not prying, whether I +ought not to risk the loss of those necessary legal facts I sought, and +burn these papers unread. There were love letters, and many such +touching things.</p> + +<p>My memories of him did not change because of these new lights, but they +became wonderfully illuminated. I realized him as a young man, I began +to see him as a boy. I found a little half-bound botanical book with +stencil-tinted illustrations, a good-conduct prize my father had won at +his preparatory school; a rolled-up sheet of paper, carbonized and dry +and brittle, revealed itself as a piece of specimen writing, stiff with +boyish effort, decorated in ambitious and faltering flourishes and still +betraying the pencil rulings his rubber should have erased. Already your +writing is better than that. And I found a daguerreotype portrait of him +in knickerbockers against a photographer's stile. His face then was not +unlike yours. I stood with that in my hand at the little bureau in his +bedroom, and looked at his dead face.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p><p>The flatly painted portrait of his father, my grandfather, hanging +there in the stillness above the coffin, looking out on the world he had +left with steady, humorous blue eyes that followed one about the +room,—that, too, was revivified, touched into reality and participation +by this and that, became a living presence at a conference of lives. +Things of his were there also in that life's accumulation....</p> + +<p>There we were, three Strattons together, and down in the dining-room +were steel engravings to take us back two generations further, and we +had all lived full lives, suffered, attempted, signified. I had a +glimpse of the long successions of mankind. What a huge inaccessible +lumber-room of thought and experience we amounted to, I thought; how +much we are, how little we transmit. Each one of us was but a variation, +an experiment upon the Stratton theme. All that I had now under my hands +was but the merest hints and vestiges, moving and surprising indeed, but +casual and fragmentary, of those obliterated repetitions. Man is a +creature becoming articulate, and why should those men have left so much +of the tale untold—to be lost and forgotten? Why must we all repeat +things done, and come again very bitterly to wisdom our fathers have +achieved before us? My grandfather there should have left me something +better than the still enigma of his watching face. All my life so far +has gone in learning very painfully what many men have learnt before me; +I have spent the greater part of forty years in finding a sort of +purpose for the uncertain and declining decades that remain. Is it not +time the generations drew together and helped one another? Cannot we +begin now to make a better use of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>experiences of life so that our +sons may not waste themselves so much, cannot we gather into books that +men may read in an hour or so the gist of these confused and +multitudinous realities of the individual career? Surely the time is +coming for that, when a new private literature will exist, and fathers +and mothers behind their rôles of rulers, protectors, and supporters, +will prepare frank and intimate records of their thought and their +feeling, told as one tells things to equals, without authority or +reserves or discretions, so that, they being dead, their children may +rediscover them as contemporaries and friends.</p> + +<p>That desire for self-expression is indeed already almost an instinct +with many of us. Man is disposed to create a traditional wisdom. For me +this book I contemplate is a need. I am just a year and a half from a +bitter tragedy and the loss of a friend as dear as life to me. It is +very constantly in my mind. She opened her mind to me as few people open +their minds to anyone. In a way, little Stephen, she died for you. And I +am so placed that I have no one to talk to quite freely about her. The +one other person to whom I talk, I cannot talk to about her; it is +strange, seeing how we love and trust one another, but so it is; you +will understand that the better as this story unfolds. For eight long +years before the crisis that culminated in her tragic death I never saw +her; yet, quite apart from the shock and distresses of that time, it has +left me extraordinarily lonely and desolate.</p> + +<p>And there was a kind of dreadful splendor in that last act of hers, +which has taken a great hold upon my imagination; it has interwoven with +everything else in my mind, it bears now upon every question. I cannot +get away from it, while it is thus pent from utterance.... Perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> +having written this to you I may never show it you or leave it for you +to see. But yet I must write it. Of all conceivable persons you, when +you have grown to manhood, are the most likely to understand.</p> + +<h3>§ 2</h3> + +<p>You did not come to see your dead grandfather, nor did you know very +much about the funeral. Nowadays we do not bring the sweet egotisms, the +vivid beautiful personal intensities of childhood, into the cold, vast +presence of death. I would as soon, my dear, have sent your busy little +limbs toiling up the Matterhorn. I have put by a photograph of my father +for you as he lay in that last stillness of his, that you will see at a +properer time.</p> + +<p>Your mother and I wore black only at his funeral and came back colored +again into your colored world, and in a very little while your interest +in this event that had taken us away for a time turned to other, more +assimilable things. But there happened a little incident that laid hold +upon me; you forgot it, perhaps, in a week or less, but I shall never +forget it; and this incident it was that gathered up the fruits of those +moments beside my father's body and set me to write this book. It had +the effect of a little bright light held up against the vague dark +immensities of thought and feeling that filled my mind because of my +father's death.</p> + +<p>Now that I come to set it down I see that it is altogether trivial, and +I cannot explain how it is that it is to me so piercingly significant. I +had to whip you. Your respect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> for the admirable and patient +Mademoiselle Potin, the protectress and companion of your public +expeditions, did in some slight crisis suddenly fail you. In the extreme +publicity of Kensington Gardens, in the presence of your two little +sisters, before a startled world, you expressed an opinion of her, in +two languages and a loud voice, that was not only very unjust, but +extremely offensive and improper. It reflected upon her intelligence and +goodness; it impeached her personal appearance; it was the kind of +outcry no little gentleman should ever permit himself, however deeply he +may be aggrieved. You then, so far as I was able to disentangle the +evidence, assaulted her violently, hurled a stone at her, and fled her +company. You came home alone by a route chosen by yourself, flushed and +wrathful, braving the dangers of Kensington High Street. This, after my +stern and deliberate edict that, upon pain of corporal punishment, +respect and obedience must be paid to Mademoiselle Potin. The logic of +the position was relentless.</p> + +<p>But where your behavior was remarkable, where the affair begins to touch +my imagination, was that you yourself presently put the whole business +before me. Alone in the schoolroom, you seem to have come to some +realization of the extraordinary dreadfulness of your behavior. Such +moments happen in the lives of all small boys; they happened to me times +enough, to my dead father, to that grandfather of the portrait which is +now in my study, to his father and his, and so on through long series of +Strattons, back to inarticulate, shock-haired little sinners slinking +fearfully away from the awful wrath, the bellowings and limitless +violence of the hairy Old Man of the herd. The bottom goes out of your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> +heart then, you are full of a conviction of sin. So far you did but +carry on the experience of the race. But to ask audience of me, to come +and look me in the eye, to say you wanted my advice on a pressing +matter, that I think marks almost a new phase in the long developing +history of father and son. And your account of the fracas struck me as +quite reasonably frank and honest. "I didn't seem able," you observed, +"not to go on being badder and badder."</p> + +<p>We discussed the difficulties of our situation, and you passed sentence +upon yourself. I saw to it that the outraged dignity of Mademoiselle +Potin was mocked by no mere formality of infliction. You did your best +to be stoical, I remember, but at last you yelped and wept. Then, +justice being done, you rearranged your costume. The situation was a +little difficult until you, still sobbing and buttoning—you are really +a shocking bad hand at buttons—and looking a very small, tender, +ruffled, rueful thing indeed, strolled towards my study window. "The +pear tree is out next door," you remarked, without a trace of animosity, +and sobbing as one might hiccough.</p> + +<p>I suppose there are moments in the lives of all grown men when they come +near to weeping aloud. In some secret place within myself I must have +been a wild river of tears. I answered, however, with the same admirable +detachment from the smarting past that you had achieved, that my study +window was particularly adapted to the appreciation of our neighbor's +pear tree, because of its height from the ground. We fell into a +conversation about blossom and the setting of fruit, kneeling together +upon my window-seat and looking up into the pear tree against the sky, +and then down through its black branches<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> into the gardens all +quickening with spring. We were on so friendly a footing when presently +Mademoiselle Potin returned and placed her dignity or her resignation in +my hands, that I doubt if she believed a word of all my assurances until +the unmistakable confirmation of your evening bath. Then, as I +understood it, she was extremely remorseful to you and indignant against my violence....</p> + +<p>But when I knelt with you, little urchin, upon my window-seat, it came +to me as a thing almost intolerably desirable that some day you should +become my real and understanding friend. I loved you profoundly. I +wanted to stretch forward into time and speak to you, man myself to the +man you are yet to be. It seemed to me that between us there must needs +be peculiar subtleties of sympathy. And I remembered that by the time +you were a man fully grown and emerging from the passionately tumultuous +openings of manhood, capable of forgiving me all my blundering +parentage, capable of perceiving all the justifying fine intention of my +ill-conceived disciplines and misdirections, I might be either an old +man, shriveling again to an inexplicable egotism, or dead. I saw myself +as I had seen my father—first enfeebled and then inaccessibly tranquil. +When presently you had gone from my study, I went to my writing-desk and +drew a paper pad towards me, and sat thinking and making idle marks upon +it with my pen. I wanted to exceed the limits of those frozen silences +that must come at last between us, write a book that should lie in your +world like a seed, and at last, as your own being ripened, flower into +living understanding by your side.</p> + +<p>This book, which before had been only an idea for a book, competing +against many other ideas and the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>demands of that toilsome work for +peace and understanding to which I have devoted the daily energies of my +life, had become, I felt, an imperative necessity between us.</p> + +<h3>§ 3</h3> + +<p>And then there happened one of those crises of dread and apprehension +and pain that are like a ploughing of the heart. It was brought home to +me that you might die even before the first pages of this book of yours +were written. You became feverish, complained of that queer pain you had +felt twice before, and for the third time you were ill with +appendicitis. Your mother and I came and regarded your touzled head and +flushed little face on the pillow as you slept uneasily, and decided +that we must take no more risks with you. So soon as your temperature +had fallen again we set about the business of an operation.</p> + +<p>We told each other that nowadays these operations were as safe as going +to sleep in your bed, but we knew better. Our own doctor had lost his +son. "That," we said, "was different." But we knew well enough in our +hearts that you were going very near to the edge of death, nearer than +you had ever been since first you came clucking into the world.</p> + +<p>The operation was done at home. A capable, fair-complexioned nurse took +possession of us; and my study, because it has the best light, was +transfigured into an admirable operating-room. All its furnishings were +sent away, every cloth and curtain, and the walls and floor were covered +with white sterilized sheets. The high little mechanical table they +erected before the window<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> seemed to me like an altar on which I had to +offer up my son. There were basins of disinfectants and towels +conveniently about, the operator came, took out his array of scalpels +and forceps and little sponges from the black bag he carried, put them +ready for his hand, and then covered them from your sight with a white +cloth, and I brought you down in my arms, wrapped in a blanket, from +your bedroom to the anæsthetist. You were beautifully trustful and +submissive and unafraid. I stood by you until the chloroform had done +its work, and then left you there, lest my presence should in the +slightest degree embarrass the surgeon. The anæsthetic had taken all the +color out of your face, and you looked pinched and shrunken and greenish +and very small and pitiful. I went into the drawing-room and stood there +with your mother and made conversation. I cannot recall what we said, I +think it was about the moorland to which we were going for your +convalescence. Indeed, we were but the ghosts of ourselves; all our +substance seemed listening, listening to the little sounds that came to +us from the study.</p> + +<p>Then after long ages there was a going to and fro of feet, a bump, the +opening of a door, and our own doctor came into the room rubbing his +hands together and doing nothing to conceal his profound relief. +"Admirable," he said, "altogether successful." I went up to you and saw +a tumbled little person in the bed, still heavily insensible and moaning +slightly. By the table were bloody towels, and in a shallow glass tray +was a small object like a damaged piece of earthworm. "Not a bit too +soon," said the surgeon, holding this up in his forceps for my +inspection. "It's on the very verge of perforation." I affected a +detached and scientific interest, but the prevailing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> impression in my +mind was that this was a fragment from very nearly the centre of your being.</p> + +<p>He took it away with him, I know not whither. Perhaps it is now in +spirits in a specimen jar, an example to all medical students of what to +avoid in an appendix; perhaps it was stained and frozen, and +microtomized into transparent sections as they do such things, and +mounted on glass slips and distributed about the world for curious +histologists to wreak their eyes upon. For a time you lay uneasily still +and then woke up to pain. Even then you got a fresh purchase on my +heart. It has always been our custom to discourage weeping and outcries, +and you did not forget your training. "I shan't mind so much, dadda," +you remarked to me, "if I may yelp." So for a day, by special +concession, you yelped, and then the sting of those fresh wounds departed.</p> + +<p>Within a fortnight, so quickly does an aseptic wound heal up again, you +were running about in the sun, and I had come back, as one comes back to +a thing forgotten, to the first beginnings of this chapter on my desk. +But for a time I could not go on working at it because of the fear I had +felt, and it is only now in June, in this house in France to which we +have come for the summer, with you more flagrantly healthy than I have +ever known you before, that my heart creeps out of its hole again, and I +can go on with my story.</p> + +<hr /><p> + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p> + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_THE_SECOND" id="CHAPTER_THE_SECOND"></a>CHAPTER THE SECOND</h2> + +<h3><span class="smcap">Boyhood</span></h3> + +<h3>§ 1</h3> + +<p>I was a Harbury boy as my father and grandfather were before me and as +you are presently to be. I went to Harbury at the age of fourteen. Until +then I was educated at home, first by a governess and then by my +father's curate, Mr. Siddons, who went from us to St. Philip's in +Hampstead, and, succeeding marvellously there, is now Bishop of +Exminster. My father became rector of Burnmore when I was nine; my +mother had been dead four years, and my second cousin, Jane Stratton, +was already his housekeeper. My father held the living until his +resignation when I was nearly thirty. So that all the most +impressionable years of my life centre upon the Burnmore rectory and the +easy spaciousness of Burnmore Park. My boyhood and adolescence +alternated between the ivied red-brick and ancient traditions of Harbury +(and afterwards Christ-church) and that still untroubled countryside.</p> + +<p>I was never a town dweller until I married and we took our present house +in Holland Park. I went into London at last as one goes into an arena. +It cramps me and wearies me and at times nearly overwhelms me,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> but +there it is that the life of men centres and my work lies. But every +summer we do as we have done this year and go to some house in the +country, near to forests or moorland or suchlike open and uncultivated +country, where one may have the refreshment of freedom among natural and +unhurried things. This year we are in a walled garden upon the Seine, +about four miles above Château Galliard, and with the forest reaching up +to the paddock beyond the orchard close....</p> + +<p>You will understand better when I have told you my story why I saw +Burnmore for the last time when I was one-and-twenty and why my memories +of it shine so crystalline clear. I have a thousand vivid miniatures of +it in my mind and all of them are beautiful to me, so that I could quite +easily write a whole book of landscapes from the Park alone. I can still +recall quite vividly the warm beauty-soaked sensation of going out into +the morning sunshine of the Park, with my lunch in a little green Swiss +tin under my arm and the vast interminable day all before me, the +gigantic, divinely unconditional day that only boyhood knows, and the +Park so great and various that it was more than two hours' going for me +to reach its eastern fences. I was only a little older then than you are +now. Sometimes I went right up through the woods to the house to +companion with Philip and Guy Christian and their sister—I loved her +then, and one day I was to love her with all my heart—but in those +boyish times I liked most to go alone.</p> + +<p>My memories of the Park are all under blue sky and sunshine, with just a +thunderstorm or so; on wet days and cold days I was kept to closer +limits; and it seems to me now rather an intellectual conviction than a +positive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> memory that save for a few pine-clad patches in the extreme +south-east, its soil was all thick clay. That meant for me only +beautiful green marshes, a number of vividly interesting meres upon the +course of its stream, and a wealth of gigantic oaks. The meres lay at +various levels, and the hand of Lady Ladislaw had assisted nature in +their enrichment with lilies and water plants. There were places of +sedge and scented rush, amidst which were sapphire mists of +forget-me-not for long stretches, skirmishing commandoes of yellow iris +and wide wastes of floating water-lilies. The gardens passed insensibly +into the Park, and beyond the house were broad stretches of grass, +sun-lit, barred with the deep-green shadows of great trees, and animated +with groups and lines of fallow deer. Near the house was an Italianate +garden, with balustradings and statuary, and a great wealth of roses and +flowering shrubs.</p> + +<p>Then there were bracken wildernesses in which the does lurked with the +young fawns, and a hollow, shallow and wide, with the turf greatly +attacked by rabbits, and exceptionally threadbare, where a stricken oak, +lightning-stripped, spread out its ghastly arms above contorted rotting +branches and the mysterious skeletons of I should think five several +deer. In the evening-time the woods behind this place of bones—they +were woods of straight-growing, rather crowded trees and standing as it +were a little aloof—became even under the warmest sunset grey and +cold—and as if they waited....</p> + +<p>And in the distant corner where the sand was, rose suddenly a steep +little hill, surmounted by a wild and splendid group of pines, through +which one looked across a vale of cornfields at an ancient town that +became<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> strange and magical as the sun went down, so that I was held +gazing at it, and afterwards had to flee the twilight across the windy +spaces and under the dim and darkling trees. It is only now in the +distant retrospect that I identify that far-off city of wonder, and +luminous mist with the commonplace little town, through whose narrow +streets we drove to the railway station. But, of course, that is what it +must have been.</p> + +<p>There are persons to be found mixed up in those childish memories,—Lady +Ladislaw, tall and gracious, in dresses of floating blue or grey, or +thin, subtly folding, flowering stuffs, Philip and his sister, Guy, the +old butler, a multitude of fainter figures long become nameless and +featureless; they are far less vivid in my memory than the fine +solitudes of the Park itself—and the dreams I had there.</p> + +<p>I wonder if you dream as I dreamt. I wonder whether indeed I dreamt as +now I think I did. Have I, in these latter years, given form and +substance and a name to things as vague in themselves as the urgencies +of instinct? Did I really go into those woods and waving green places as +one keeps a tryst, expectant of a fellowship more free and delicate and +delightful than any I knew. Did I know in those days of nymphs and +dryads and fauns and all those happy soulless beings with which the +desire of man's heart has animated the wilderness. Once certainly I +crawled slowly through the tall bracken and at last lay still for an +interminable while, convinced that so I should see those shadows +populous with fairies, with green little people. How patiently I lay! +But the stems creaked and stirred, and my heart would keep on beating +like a drum in my throat.</p> + +<p>It is incredible that once a furry whispering half-human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> creature with +bright brown eyes came and for a time played with me near where the tall +ferns foam in a broad torrent from between the big chestnuts down to the +upper mere. That must have been real dreaming, and yet now, with all my +sanities and scepticisms, I could half believe it real.</p> + +<h3>§ 2</h3> + +<p>You become reserved. Perhaps not exceptionally so, but as all children +become reserved. Already you understand that your heart is very +preciously your own. You keep it from me and everyone, so much so, so +justifiably so, that when by virtue of our kindred and all that we have +in common I get sudden glimpses right into your depths, there mixes with +the swift spasm of love I feel, a dread—lest you should catch me, as it +were, spying into you and that one of us, I know not which, should feel ashamed.</p> + +<p>Every child passes into this secret stage; it closes in from its first +frankness; it carries off the growing jewel of its consciousness to hide +from all mankind.... I think I can see why this should be so, but I +cannot tell why in so many cases no jewel is given back again at last, +alight, ripened, wonderful, glowing with the deep fires of experience. I +think that is what ought to happen; it is what does happen now with true +poets and true artists. Someday I think it will be the life of all +normal human souls. But usually it does not seem to happen at all. +Children pass out of a stage—open, beautiful, exquisitely simple—into +silences and discretions beneath an imposed and artificial life. And +they are lost. Out of the finished,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> careful, watchful, restrained and +limited man or woman, no child emerges again....</p> + +<p>I remember very distinctly how I myself came by imperceptible increments +of reservation to withdraw those early delicacies of judgments, those +original and personal standards and appreciations, from sight and +expression. I can recall specific moments when I perceive now that my +little childish figure stood, as it were, obstinately and with a sense +of novelty in a doorway denying the self within.</p> + +<p>It was partly, I think, a simple instinct that drew that curtain of +silences and concealments, it was much more a realization that I had no +power of lucidity to save the words and deeds I sought to make +expressive from complete misunderstanding. But most of all it was the +perception that I was under training and compulsion for ends that were +all askew and irrelevant to the trend of my imaginations, the quality of +my dreams. There was around me something unfriendly to this inner +world—something very ready to pass from unfriendliness to acute +hostility; and if, indeed, I succeeded in giving anything of my inner +self to others, it was only, as people put it, to give myself away.</p> + +<p>My nurses, my governess, my tutor, my father, the servants about me, +seemed all bent upon imposing an artificial personality upon me. Only in +a very limited sense did they want me. What they wanted was something +that could be made out of me by extensive suppressions and additions. +They ignored the fact that I had been born with a shape of my own; they +were resolved I should be pressed into a mould and cast.</p> + +<p>It was not that they wanted outer conformity to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>certain needs and +standards—that, I think, would be a reasonable thing enough to +demand—but they wanted me to subdue my most private thoughts to their +ideals. My nurses and my governesses would rate me for my very feelings, +would clamor for gratitude and reproach me bitterly for betraying that I +did not at some particular moment—love.</p> + +<p>(Only yesterday I heard Mademoiselle Potin doing that very same thing to +you. "It is that you do not care, Master Steve. It is that you do not +care. You do not want to care.")</p> + +<p>They went too far in that invasion of my personal life, but I perceive +quite clearly the present need for most of the process of moulding and +subjugation that children must undergo. Human society is a new thing +upon the earth, an invention of the last ten thousand years. Man is a +creature as yet not freely and instinctively gregarious; in his more +primordial state he must have been an animal of very small groups and +limited associations, an animal rather self-centred and fierce, and he +is still but imperfectly adapted either morally or physically to the +wider social life his crowding interactions force upon him. He still +learns speech and computation and civility and all the devices of this +artificially extended and continually broadening tribal life with an +extreme reluctance. He has to be shaped in the interests of the species, +I admit, to the newer conditions; the growing social order must be +protected from the keen edge of his still savage individuality, and he +must be trained in his own interests to save himself from the +destruction of impossible revolts. But how clumsily is the thing done! +How we are caught and jammed and pressed and crippled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> into citizenship! +How excessive and crushing is the suppression, and how inadequate!</p> + +<p>Every child feels that, even if every child does not clearly know it. +Every child presently begins to hide itself from the confused tyrannies +of the social process, from the searching inspections and injunctions +and interferences of parent and priest and teacher.</p> + +<p>"I have got to be <i>so</i>," we all say deep down in ourselves and more or +less distinctly according to the lucidities of our minds; "but in my +heart I am <i>this</i>."</p> + +<p>And in the outcome we all try to seem at least to be <i>so</i>, while an +ineffectual rebel struggles passionately, like a beast caught in a trap, +for ends altogether more deep and dangerous, for the rose and the star +and the wildfire,—for beauty and beautiful things. These, we all know +in our darkly vital recesses, are the real needs of life, the obediences +imposed upon us by our crude necessities and jostling proximities, mere +incidentals on our way to those profounder purposes....</p> + +<p>And when I write thus of our selves I mean our bodies quite as much as +our imaginations; the two sides of us are covered up alike and put alike +into disguises and unnatural shapes, we are taught and forced to hide +them for the same reasons, from a fear of ourselves and a fear of the +people about us. The sense of beauty, the sense of one's body, the +freedom of thought and of desire and the wonder of life, are all +interwoven strands. I remember that in the Park of Burnmore one great +craving I had was to take off my clothes there altogether, and bathe in +a clear place among loosestrife and meadowsweet, and afterwards lie wet +and naked upon the soft green turf with the sun shining upon me. But I +thought also that that was a very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> wicked and shameful craving to have, +and I never dared give way to it.</p> + +<h3>§ 3</h3> + +<p>As I think of myself and all these glowing secrecies and hidden fancies +within, walking along beside old Siddons, and half listening to his +instructive discourse, I see myself as though I was an image of all +humanity under tuition for the social life.</p> + +<p>I write "old Siddons," for so he seemed to me then. In truth he was +scarcely a dozen years older than I, and the other day when I exchanged +salutations with his gaitered presence in the Haymarket, on his way I +suppose to the Athenæum, it struck me that he it is who is now the +younger man. But at Burnmore he was eighteen inches or more above my +head and all the way of school and university beyond me; full of the +world they had fitted him for and eager to impart its doctrines. He went +along in his tweeds that were studiously untidy, a Norfolk jacket of one +clerically-greyish stuff and trousers of another somewhat lighter +pattern, in thick boots, the collar of his calling, and a broad-minded +hat, bearing his face heavenward as he talked, and not so much aware of +me as appreciating the things he was saying. And sometimes he was +manifestly talking to himself and airing his outlook. He carried a +walking-stick, a manly, homely, knobby, donnish walking-stick.</p> + +<p>He forced the pace a little, for his legs were long and he had acquired +the habit of strenuous pedestrianism at Oxford with all the other +things; he obliged me to go at a kind of skipping trot, and he preferred +the high roads<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> towards Wickenham for our walks, because they were +flatter and there was little traffic upon them in those days before the +motor car, and we could keep abreast and go on talking uninterruptedly. +That is to say, he could.</p> + +<p>What talk it was!</p> + +<p>Of all the virtues that the young should have. He spoke of courage and +how splendid it was to accustom oneself not even to feel fear; of truth, +and difficult cases when one might conceivably injure others by telling +the truth and so perhaps, perhaps qualify the rigor of one's integrity, +but how one should never hesitate to injure one's own self in that +matter. Then in another phase he talked of belief—and the +disagreeableness of dissenters. But here, I remember, there was a +discussion. I have forgotten how I put the thing, but in some boyish +phrasing or other I must have thrown out the idea that thought is free +and beliefs uncontrollable. What of conformity, if the truth was that +you doubted? "Not if you make an effort," I remember him saying, "not if +you make an effort. I have had my struggles. But if you say firmly to +yourself, the Church teaches this. If you dismiss mere carping and say that."</p> + +<p>"But suppose you can't," I must have urged.</p> + +<p>"You can if you will," he said with a note near enthusiasm. "I have been +through all that. I did it. I dismissed doubts. I wouldn't listen. I +felt, <i>This won't do. All this leads nowhere.</i>"</p> + +<p>And he it was told me the classic story of that presumptuous schoolboy +who went to his Head Master and declared himself an atheist. There were +no dialectics but a prompt horse-whipping. "In after life," said Mr. +Siddons, with unctuous gratification, "he came to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> recognize that +thrashing as the very best thing that had ever happened to him. The kindest thing."</p> + +<p>"Yes," urged the obstinate rebel within me, "but—the Truth, that +fearless insistence on the Truth!"</p> + +<p>I could, however, find nothing effective to say aloud, and Siddons +prevailed over me. That story made my blood boil, it filled me with an +anticipatory hatred of and hostility to Head Masters, and at the same +time there was something in it, brutally truer to the conditions of +human association than any argument.</p> + +<p>I do not remember the various steps by which I came to be discussing +doubts so early in my life. I could not have been much more than +thirteen when that conversation occurred. I am I think perhaps +exceptionally unconscious about myself. I find I can recall the sayings +and even the gestures of other people far more distinctly than the +things I said and did myself. Even my dreams and imaginings are more +active than my positive thoughts and proceedings. But I was no doubt +very much stimulated by the literature lying about my home and the +gleans and echoes of controversies that played like summer lightning +round and about the horizons of my world. Over my head and after I had +gone to bed, my father and Siddons were talking, my cousin was listening +with strained apprehensions, there was a new spirit in my father's +sermons; it was the storm of Huxley-Darwin controversies that had at +last reached Burnmore. I was an intelligent little listener, an eager +reader of anything that came to hand, Mr. Siddons had a disposition to +fight his battles over again in his monologues to me; and after all at +thirteen one isn't a baby. The small boy of the lower classes used in +those days to start life for himself long before then.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p><p>How dramatic a phase it was in the history of the human mind when +science suddenly came into the vicarages, into all the studies and quiet +places that had been the fastnesses of conviction and our ideals, and +denied, with all the power of evidence it had been accumulating for so +long, and so obscurely and inaggressively, with fossils and strata, with +embryology and comparative anatomy, the doctrine of the historical Fall +and all the current scheme of orthodoxy that was based on that! What a +quickening shock it must have been in countless thousands of educated +lives! And my father after a toughly honest resistance was won over to +Darwinism, the idea of Evolution got hold of him, the idea that life +itself was intolerant of vain repetitions; and he had had to "consider +his position" in the church. To him as to innumerable other honest, +middle-aged and comfortable men, Darwinism came as a dreadful invitation +to go out into the wilderness. Over my head and just out of range of my +ears he was debating that issue with Siddons as a foil and my cousin as +a horrified antagonist. Slowly he was developing his conception of +compromise. And meanwhile he wasn't going out into the wilderness at +all, but punctually to and fro, along the edge of the lawn by the bed of +hollyhocks and through the little green door in the garden wall, and +across the corner of the churchyard to the vestry and the perennial +services and sacraments of the church.</p> + +<p>But he never talked to me privately of religion. He left that for my +cousin and Mr. Siddons to do or not to do as they felt disposed, and in +those silences of his I may have found another confirmation of my +growing feeling that religion was from one point of view a thing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> +somehow remote and unreal, claiming unjustifiable interventions in the +detailed conduct of my life, and from another a peculiar concern of my +father's and Mr. Siddons', to which they went—through the vestry, +changing into strange garments on the way.</p> + +<h3>§ 4</h3> + +<p>I do not want to leave the impression which my last section may have +conveyed that at the age of thirteen or thereabouts I walked about with +Mr. Siddons discussing doubt in a candid and intelligent manner and +maintaining theological positions. That particular conversation, you +must imagine with Mr. Siddons somewhat monologuing, addressing himself +not only to my present self, but with an unaccustomed valiance to my +absent father. What I may have said or not said, whether I did indeed +dispute or merely and by a kind of accident implied objections, I have +altogether forgotten long ago.</p> + +<p>A boy far more than a man is mentally a discontinuous being. The +drifting chaos of his mind makes its experimental beginnings at a +hundred different points and in a hundred different spirits and +directions; here he flashes into a concrete realization, here into a +conviction unconsciously incompatible; here is something originally +conceived, here something uncritically accepted. I know that I +criticized Mr. Siddons quite acutely, and disbelieved in him. I know +also that I accepted all sorts of suggestions from him quite +unhesitatingly and that I did my utmost to satisfy his standards and +realize his ideals of me.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p><p>Like an outer casing to that primordial creature of senses and dreams +which came to the surface in the solitudes of the Park was my +Siddonsesque self, a high-minded and clean and brave English boy, +conscientiously loyal to queen and country, athletic and a good +sportsman and acutely alive to good and bad "form." Mr. Siddons made me +aware of my clothed self as a visible object, I surveyed my garmented +being in mirrors and was trained to feel the "awfulness" of various +other small boys who appeared transitorily in the smaller Park when Lady +Ladislaw extended her wide hospitality to certain benevolent London +associations. Their ill-fitting clothing, their undisciplined outcries, +their slouching, their bad throwing and defective aspirates were made +matters for detestation in my plastic mind. Those things, I was assured, +placed them outside the pale of any common humanity.</p> + +<p>"Very unfortunate and all that," said Mr. Siddons, "and uncommonly good +of Lady Ladislaw to have them down. But dirty little cads, Stephen, +dirty little cads; so don't go near 'em if you can help it."</p> + +<p>They played an indecent sort of cricket with coats instead of a wicket!</p> + +<p>Mr. Siddons was very grave about games and the strict ritual and proper +apparatus for games. He believed that Waterloo was won by the indirect +influence of public school cricket—disregarding many other contributory +factors. We did not play very much, but we "practised" sedulously at a +net in the paddock with the gardener and the doctor's almost grown-up +sons. I thought missing a possible catch was an impropriety. I +studiously maintained the correct attitude, alert and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> elastic, while I +was fielding. Moreover I had a shameful secret, that I did not really +know where a ball ought to pitch. I wasn't clear about it and I did not +dare to ask. Also until I was nearly thirteen I couldn't bowl overarm. +Such is the enduring force of early suggestion, my dear son, that I feel +a faint twinge of shame as I set this down for your humiliated eyes. But +so it was. May you be more precocious!</p> + +<p>Then I was induced to believe that I really liked hunting and killing +things. In the depths of my being I was a gentle and primitive savage +towards animals; I believed they were as subtle and wise as myself and +full of a magic of their own, but Mr. Siddons nevertheless got me out +into the south Warren, where I had often watched the rabbits setting +their silly cock-eared sentinels and lolloping out to feed about +sundown, and beguiled me into shooting a furry little fellow-creature—I +can still see its eyelid quiver as it died—and carrying it home in +triumph. On another occasion I remember I was worked up into a ferocious +excitement about the rats in the old barn. We went ratting, just as +though I was Tom Brown or Harry East or any other of the beastly little +models of cant and cruelty we English boys were trained to imitate. It +was great sport. It was a tremendous spree. The distracted movements, +the scampering and pawing of the little pink forefeet of one squawking +little fugitive, that I hit with a stick and then beat to a shapeless +bag of fur, haunted my dreams for years, and then I saw the bowels of +another still living victim that had been torn open by one of the +terriers, and abruptly I fled out into the yard and was violently sick; +the best of the fun was over so far as I was concerned.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p><p>My cousin saved me from the uttermost shame of my failure by saying +that I had been excited too soon after my dinner....</p> + +<p>And also I collected stamps and birds' eggs.</p> + +<p>Mr. Siddons hypnotized me into believing that I really wanted these +things; he gave me an egg-cabinet for a birthday present and told me +exemplary stories of the wonderful collections other boys had made. My +own natural disposition to watch nests and establish heaven knows what +friendly intimacy with the birds—perhaps I dreamt their mother might +let me help to feed the young ones—gave place to a feverish artful +hunting, a clutch, and then, detestable process, the blowing of the egg. +Of course we were very humane; we never took the nest, but just +frightened off the sitting bird and grabbed a warm egg or so. And the +poor perforated, rather damaged little egg-shells accumulated in the +drawers, against the wished-for but never actually realized day of glory +when we should meet another collector who wouldn't have—something that +we had. So far as it was for anything and not mere imbecile +imitativeness, it was for that.</p> + +<p>And writing thus of eggs reminds me that I got into a row with Mr. +Siddons for cruelty.</p> + +<p>I discovered there was the nest of a little tit in a hole between two +stones in the rock bank that bordered the lawn. I found it out when I +was sitting on the garden seat near by, learning Latin irregular verbs. +I saw the minute preposterous round birds going and coming, and I found +something so absurdly amiable and confiding about them—they sat +balancing and oscillating on a standard rose and cheeped at me to go and +then dived nestward and gave away their secret out of sheer +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>impatience—that I could not bring myself to explore further, and kept +the matter altogether secret from the enthusiasm of Mr. Siddons. And in +a few days there were no more eggs and I could hear the hungry little +nestlings making the minutest of fairy hullabaloos, the very finest spun +silk of sound; a tremendous traffic in victual began and I was the +trusted friend of the family.</p> + +<p>Then one morning I was filled with amazement and anguish. There was a +rock torn down and lying in the path; a paw had gone up to that little +warm place. Across the gravel, shreds of the nest and a wisp or so of +down were scattered. I could imagine the brief horrors of that night +attack. I started off, picking up stones as I went, to murder that sandy +devil, the stable cat. I got her once—alas! that I am still glad to +think of it—and just missed her as she flashed, a ginger streak, +through the gate into the paddock.</p> + +<p>"<i>Now</i> Steve! Now!" came Mr. Siddons' voice behind me....</p> + +<p>How can one explain things of that sort to a man like Siddons? I took my +lecture on the Utter Caddishness of Wanton Cruelty in a black rebellious +silence. The affair and my own emotions were not only far beyond my +powers of explanation, but far beyond my power of understanding. Just +then my soul was in shapeless and aimless revolt against something +greater and higher and deeper and darker than Siddons, and his +reproaches were no more than the chattering of a squirrel while a storm +uproots great trees. I wanted to kill the cat. I wanted to kill whatever +had made that cat.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p> + +<h3>§ 5</h3> + +<p>Mr. Siddons it was who first planted the conception of Life as a Career +in my mind.</p> + +<p>In those talks that did so much towards shaping me into the likeness of +a modest, reserved, sporting, seemly, clean and brave, patriotic and +decently slangy young Englishman, he was constantly reverting to that +view of existence. He spoke of failures and successes, talked of +statesmen and administrators, peerages and Westminster Abbey. "Nelson," +he said, "was once a clergyman's son like you."</p> + +<p>"England has been made by the sons of the clergy."</p> + +<p>He talked of the things that led to failure and the things that had made +men prominent and famous.</p> + +<p>"Discursiveness ruins a man," I remember him saying. "Choose your goal +and press to it."</p> + +<p>"Never do anything needlessly odd. It's a sort of impertinence to all +the endless leaders of the past who created our traditions. Do not +commit yourself hastily to opinions, but once you have done so, stick to +them. The world would far rather have a firm man wrong, than a weak man +hesitatingly right. Stick to them."</p> + +<p>"One has to remember," I recall him meditating, far over my head with +his face upturned, "that Institutions are more important than Views. +Very often one adopts a View only to express one's belief in an +Institution.... Men can do with almost all sorts of Views, but only with +certain Institutions. All this Doubt doesn't touch a truth like that. +One does not refuse to live in a house because of the old symbols one +finds upon the door.... If they <i>are</i> old symbols...."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p><p>Out of such private contemplations he would descend suddenly upon me.</p> + +<p>"What are <i>you</i> going to do with your life, Steve?" he would ask.</p> + +<p>"There is no happiness in life without some form of service. Where do +you mean to serve? With your bent for science and natural history, it +wouldn't be difficult for you to get into the I.C.S. I doubt if you'd do +anything at the law; it's a rough game, Steve, though the prizes are +big. Big prizes the lawyers get. I've known a man in the Privy Council +under forty—and that without anything much in the way of a family.... +But always one must concentrate. The one thing England will not stand is +a loafer, a wool-gatherer, a man who goes about musing and half-awake. +It's our energy. We're western. It's that has made us all we are."</p> + +<p>I knew whither that pointed. Never so far as I can remember did Mr. +Siddons criticize either myself or my father directly, but I understood +with the utmost clearness that he found my father indolent and +hesitating, and myself more than a little bit of a mollycoddle, and in +urgent need of pulling together.</p> + +<h3>§ 6</h3> + +<p>Harbury went on with that process of suppressing, encrusting, hardening, +and bracing-up which Mr. Siddons had begun. For a time I pulled myself +together very thoroughly. I am not ungrateful nor unfaithful to Harbury; +in your turn you will go there, you will have to live your life in this +British world of ours and you must learn its language and manners, +acquire its reserves and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> develop the approved toughness and patterning +of cuticle. Afterwards if you please you may quarrel with it. But don't +when the time comes quarrel with the present conditions of human +association and think it is only with Harbury you quarrel. What man has +become and may become beneath the masks and impositions of civilization, +in his intimate texture and in the depths of his being, I begin now in +my middle age to appreciate. No longer is he an instinctive savage but a +creature of almost incredible variability and wonderful new +possibilities. Marvels undreamt of, power still inconceivable, an empire +beyond the uttermost stars; such is man's inheritance. But for the +present, until we get a mastery of those vague and mighty intimations at +once so perplexing and so reassuring, if we are to live at all in the +multitudinousness of human society we must submit to some scheme of +clumsy compromises and conventions or other,—and for us Strattons the +Harbury system is the most convenient. You will have to go to the old school.</p> + +<p>I went to Rendle's. I just missed getting into college; I was two places +below the lowest successful boy. I was Maxton's fag to begin with, and +my chief chum was Raymond, who is your friend also, and who comes so +often to this house. I preferred water to land, boats to cricket, +because of that difficulty about pitch I have already mentioned. But I +was no great sportsman. Raymond and I shared a boat, and spent most of +the time we gave to it under the big trees near Dartpool Lock, reading +or talking. We would pull up to Sandy Hall perhaps once a week. I never +rowed in any of the eights, though I was urged to do so. I swam fairly +well, and got my colors on the strength of my diving.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p><p>On the whole I found Harbury a satisfactory and amusing place, I was +neither bullied nor do I think I greatly bullied, and of all that +furtive and puerile lasciviousness of which one hears so many hints +nowadays—excitable people talk of it as though it was the most +monstrous and singular of vices instead of a slightly debasing but +almost unavoidable and very obvious result of heaping boys together +under the inefficient control of a timid pretentious class of men—of +such uncleanness as I say, scarcely more than a glimpse and a whisper +and a vague tentative talk or so reached me. Little more will reach you, +for that kind of thing, like the hells of Swedenborg, finds its own.</p> + +<p>I had already developed my growing instinct for observance to a very +considerable extent under Siddons, and at Harbury I remember myself, and +people remember me, as an almost stiffly correct youth. I was pretty +good at most of the work, and exceptionally so at history, geology, and +the biological side of natural science. I had to restrain my interest in +these latter subjects lest I should appear to be a "swat," and a +modern-side swat at that. I was early in the sixth, and rather a +favorite with old Latimer. He incited me to exercise what he called a +wholesome influence on the younger boys, and I succeeded in doing this +fairly well without any gross interventions. I implied rather than +professed soundly orthodox views about things in general, and I was +extremely careful to tilt my straw hat forward over my nose so as just +not to expose the crown of my head behind, and to turn up my trousers +with exactly that width of margin which the judgment of my +fellow-creatures had decided was correct. My socks were spirited without +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>being vulgar, and the ties I wore were tied with a studious avoidance +of either slovenliness or priggish neatness. I wrote two articles in the +Harburonian, became something of a debater in the Literacy and +Political, conducted many long conversations with my senior +contemporaries upon religion, politics, sport and social life, and +concealed my inmost thoughts from every human being. Indeed, so +effective had been the training of Harbury and Mr. Siddons, that I think +at that time I came very near concealing them from myself. I could +suppress wonder, I could pass by beauty as if I did not see it, almost I +think I did not see it for a time, and yet I remember it in those years +too—a hundred beautiful things.</p> + +<p>Harbury itself is a very beautiful place. The country about it has all +the charm of river scenery in a settled and ancient land, and the great +castle and piled town of Wetmore, cliffs of battlemented grey wall +rising above a dense cluster of red roofs, form the background to +innumerable gracious prospects of great stream-fed trees, level meadows +of buttercups, sweeping curves of osier and rush-rimmed river, the +playing fields and the sedgy, lily-spangled levels of Avonlea. The +college itself is mostly late Tudor and Stuart brickwork, very ripe and +mellow now, but the great grey chapel with its glorious east window +floats over the whole like a voice singing in the evening. And the +evening cloudscapes of Harbury are a perpetual succession of glorious +effects, now serene, now mysteriously threatening and profound, now +towering to incredible heights, now revealing undreamt-of distances of +luminous color. Assuredly I must have delighted in all those aspects, or +why should I remember them so well? But I recall, I mean, no confessed +recognition of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> them; no deliberate going-out of my spirit, open and +unashamed, to such things.</p> + +<p>I suppose one's early adolescence is necessarily the period of maximum +shyness in one's life. Even to Raymond I attempted no extremities of +confidence. Even to myself I tried to be the thing that was expected of +me. I professed a modest desire for temperate and tolerable achievement +in life, though deep in my lost depths I wanted passionately to excel; I +worked hard, much harder than I allowed to appear, and I said I did it +for the credit of the school; I affected a dignified loyalty to queen +and country and church; I pretended a stoical disdain for appetites and +delights and all the arts, though now and then a chance fragment of +poetry would light me like a fire, or a lovely picture stir unwonted +urgencies, though visions of delight haunted the shadows of my +imagination and did not always fly when I regarded them. But on the +other hand I affected an interest in games that I was far from feeling. +Of some boys I was violently jealous, and this also I masked beneath a +generous appreciation. Certain popularities I applauded while I doubted. +Whatever my intimate motives I became less and less disposed to obey +them until I had translated them into a plausible rendering of the +accepted code. If I could not so translate them I found it wise to +control them. When I wanted urgently one summer to wander by night over +the hills towards Kestering and lie upon heather and look up at the +stars and wonder about them, I cast about and at last hit upon the +well-known and approved sport of treacling for moths, as a cloak for so +strange an indulgence.</p> + +<p>I must have known even then what a mask and front<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> I was, because I knew +quite well how things were with other people. I listened politely and +respected and understood the admirable explanations of my friends. When +some fellow got a scholarship unexpectedly and declared it was rotten +bad luck on the other chap, seeing the papers he had done, and doubted +whether he shouldn't resign, I had an intuitive knowledge that he +wouldn't resign, and I do not remember any time in my career as the +respectful listener to Mr. Siddons' aspirations for service and +devotion, when I did not perceive quite clearly his undeviating eye upon +a bishopric. He thought of gaiters though he talked of wings.</p> + +<p>How firmly the bonds of an old relationship can hold one! I remember +when a few years ago he reached that toiled-for goal, I wrote in a tone +of gratified surprise that in this blatant age, such disinterested +effort as his should receive even so belated a recognition. Yet what +else was there for me to write? We all have our Siddonses, with whom +there are no alternatives but insincerity or a disproportionate +destructiveness. I am still largely Siddonsized, little son, and so, I +fear, you will have to be.</p> + +<h3>§ 7</h3> + +<p>The clue to all the perplexities of law and custom lies in this, that +human association is an artificiality. We do not run together naturally +and easily as grazing deer do or feeding starlings or a shoal of fish. +We are a sort of creature which is only resuming association after a +long heredity of extreme separation. We are beings strongly +individualized, we are dominated by that passion which is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> no more and +no less than individuality in action,—jealousy. Jealousy is a fierce +insistence on ourselves, an instinctive intolerance of our +fellow-creatures, ranging between an insatiable aggression as its +buoyant phase and a savage defensiveness when it is touched by fear. In +our expansive moments we want to dominate and control everyone and +destroy every unlikeness to ourselves; in our recessive phases our homes +are our castles and we want to be let alone.</p> + +<p>Now all law, all social order, all custom, is a patch-up and a +concession to this separating passion of self-insistence. It is an +evasion of conflict and social death. Human society is as yet only a +truce and not an alliance.</p> + +<p>When you understand that, you will begin to understand a thousand +perplexing things in legislation and social life. You will understand +the necessity of all those restrictions that are called +"conventionality," and the inevitableness of the general hostility to +singularity. To be exceptional is to assert a difference, to disregard +the banked-up forces of jealousy and break the essential conditions of +the social contract. It invites either resentment or aggression. So we +all wear much the same clothing, affect modesty, use the same phrases, +respect one another's "rights," and pretend a greater disinterestedness +than we feel....</p> + +<p>You have to face this reality as you must face all reality. This is the +reality of laws and government; this is the reality of customs and +institutions; <i>a convention between jealousies</i>. This is reality, just +as the cat's way with the nestlings was reality, and the squealing rat +one smashed in a paroxysm of cruelty and disgust in the barn.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p><p>But it isn't the only reality. Equally real is the passionate revolt of +my heart against cruelty, and the deep fluctuating impulse not to +pretend, to set aside fear and jealousy, to come nakedly out of the +compromises and secretive methods of every-day living into the light, +into a wide impersonal love, into a new way of living for mankind....</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p> + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_THE_THIRD" id="CHAPTER_THE_THIRD"></a>CHAPTER THE THIRD</h2> + +<h3><span class="smcap">Intentions and the Lady Mary Christian</span></h3> + +<h3>§ 1</h3> + +<p>I know that before the end of my Harbury days I was already dreaming of +a Career, of some great and conspicuous usefulness in the world. That +has always haunted my mind and haunts it now. I may be cured perhaps of +the large and showy anticipations of youth, I may have learnt to drop +the "great and conspicuous," but still I find it necessary to believe +that I matter, that I play a part no one else can play in a progress, in +a universal scheme moving towards triumphant ends.</p> + +<p>Almost wholly I think I was dreaming of public service in those days. +The Harbury tradition pointed steadfastly towards the state, and all my +world was bare of allurements to any other type of ambition. Success in +art or literature did not appeal to us, and a Harbury boy would as soon +think of being a great tinker as a great philosopher. Science we called +"stinks"; our three science masters were <i>ex officio</i> ridiculous and the +practical laboratory a refuge for oddities. But a good half of our +fathers at least were peers or members of parliament, and our sense of +politics was close and keen. History, and particularly history as it +came up through the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>eighteenth century to our own times, supplied us +with a gallery of intimate models, our great uncles and grandfathers and +ancestors at large figured abundantly in the story and furnished the +pattern to which we cut our anticipations of life. It was a season of +Imperialism, the picturesque Imperialism of the earlier Kipling phase, +and we were all of us enthusiasts for the Empire. It was the empire of +the White Man's Burthen in those days; the sordid anti-climax of the +Tariff Reform Movement was still some years ahead of us. It was easier +for us at Harbury to believe then than it has become since, in our own +racial and national and class supremacy. We were the Anglo-Saxons, the +elect of the earth, leading the world in social organization, in science +and economic method. In India and the east more particularly we were the +apostles of even-handed justice, relentless veracity, personal +cleanliness, and modern efficiency. In a spirit of adventurous +benevolence we were spreading those blessings over a reluctant and +occasionally recalcitrant world of people for the most part "colored." +Our success in this had aroused the bitter envy and rivalry of various +continental nations, and particularly of France, Russia, and Germany. +But France had been diverted to North Africa, Russia to Eastern Asia, +and Germany was already the most considered antagonist in our path +towards an empire over the world.</p> + +<p>This was the spacious and by no means ignoble project of the later +nineties. Most of us Harbury boys, trained as I had been trained to be +uncritical, saw the national outlook in those terms. We knew little or +nothing, until the fierce wranglings of the Free Traders and Tariff +Reformers a few years later brought it home to us, of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>commercial, +financial and squalid side of our relations with the vast congeries of +exploited new territories and subordinated and subjugated populations. +We knew nothing of the social conditions of the mass of people in our +own country. We were blankly ignorant of economics. We knew nothing of +that process of expropriation and the exploitation of labor which is +giving the world the Servile State. The very phrase was twenty years +ahead of us. We believed that an Englishman was a better thing in every +way than any other sort of man, that English literature, science and +philosophy were a shining and unapproachable light to all other peoples, +that our soldiers were better than all other soldiers and our sailors +than all other sailors. Such civilization and enterprise as existed in +Germany for instance we regarded as a shadow, an envious shadow, +following our own; it was still generally believed in those days that +German trade was concerned entirely with the dishonest imitation of our +unapproachable English goods. And as for the United States, well, the +United States though blessed with a strain of English blood, were +nevertheless "out of it," marooned in a continent of their own and—we +had to admit it—corrupt.</p> + +<p>Given such ignorance, you know, it wasn't by any means ignoble to be +patriotic, to dream of this propagandist Empire of ours spreading its +great peace and culture, its virtue and its amazing and unprecedented +honesty,—its honesty!—round the world.</p> + +<h3>§ 2</h3> + +<p>When I look and try to recover those early intentions of mine I am +astonished at the way in which I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> took them ready-made from the world +immediately about me. In some way I seem to have stopped looking—if +ever I had begun looking—at the heights and depths above and below that +immediate life. I seem to have regarded these profounder realities no +more during this phase of concentration than a cow in a field regards +the sky. My father's vestments, the Burnmore altar, the Harbury pulpit +and Mr. Siddons, stood between me and the idea of God, so that it needed +years and much bitter disillusionment before I discovered my need of it. +And I was as wanting in subtlety as in depth. We did no logic nor +philosophy at Harbury, and at Oxford it was not so much thought we came +to deal with as a mistranslation and vulgarization of ancient and alien +exercises in thinking. There is no such effective serum against +philosophy as the scholarly decoction of a dead philosopher. The +philosophical teaching of Oxford at the end of the last century was not +so much teaching as a protective inoculation. The stuff was administered +with a mysterious gilding of Greek and reverence, old Hegel's monstrous +web was the ultimate modernity, and Plato, that intellectual +journalist-artist, that bright, restless experimentalist in ideas, was +as it were the God of Wisdom, only a little less omniscient (and on the +whole more of a scholar and a gentleman) than the God of fact....</p> + +<p>So I fell back upon the empire in my first attempts to unify my life. I +would serve the empire. That should be my total significance. There was +a Roman touch, I perceive, in this devotion. Just how or where I should +serve the empire I had not as yet determined. At times I thought of the +civil service, in my more ambitious moments I turned my thoughts to +politics. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> it was doubtful whether my private expectations made the +last a reasonable possibility.</p> + +<p>I would serve the empire.</p> + +<h3>§ 3</h3> + +<p>And all the while that the first attempts to consolidate, to gather +one's life together into a purpose and a plan of campaign, are going on +upon the field of the young man's life, there come and go and come again +in the sky above him the threatening clouds, the ethereal cirrus, the +red dawns and glowing afternoons of that passion of love which is the +source and renewal of being. There are times when that solicitude +matters no more than a spring-time sky to a runner who wins towards the +post, there are times when its passionate urgency dominates every fact in his world.</p> + +<h3>§ 4</h3> + +<p>One must have children and love them passionately before one realizes +the deep indignity of accident in life. It is not that I mind so much +when unexpected and disconcerting things happen to you or your sisters, +but that I mind before they happen. My dreams and anticipations of your +lives are all marred by my sense of the huge importance mere chance +encounters and incalculable necessities will play in them. And in +friendship and still more here, in this central business of love, +accident rules it seems to me almost altogether. What personalities you +will encounter in life, and have for a chief interest in life, is nearly +as much a matter of chance as the drift of a grain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> of pollen in the +pine forest. And once the light hazard has blown it has blown, never to +drive again. In other schoolrooms and nurseries, in slum living-rooms +perhaps or workhouse wards or palaces, round the other side of the +earth, in Canada or Russia or China, other little creatures are trying +their small limbs, clutching at things about them with infantile hands, +who someday will come into your life with a power and magic monstrous +and irrational and irresistible. They will break the limits of your +concentrating self, call you out to the service of beauty and the +service of the race, sound you to your highest and your lowest, give you +your chance to be godlike or filthy, divine or utterly ignoble, react +together with you upon the very core and essence of your being. These +unknowns are the substance of your fate. You will in extreme intimacy +love them, hate them, serve them, struggle with them, and in that +interaction the vital force in you and the substance of your days will be spent.</p> + +<p>And who they may chance to be and their peculiar quality and effect is +haphazard, utterly beyond designing.</p> + +<p>Law and custom conspire with the natural circumstances of man to +exaggerate every consequence of this accumulating accident, and make it +definite and fatal....</p> + +<p>I find it quite impossible now to recall the steps and stages by which +this power of sex invaded my life. It seems to me now that it began very +much as a gale begins, in catspaws upon the water and little rustlings +among the leaves, and then stillness and then a distant soughing again +and a pause, and then a wider and longer disturbance and so more and +more, with a gathering continuity, until at last the stars were hidden, +the heavens were hidden; all the heights and depths of life were +obscured by stormy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> impulses and passionate desires. I suppose that +quite at the first there were simple curiosities; no doubt they were +vivid at the time but they have left scarcely a trace; there were vague +first intimations of a peculiar excitement. I do remember more +distinctly phases when there was a going-out from myself towards these +things, these interests, and then a reaction of shame and concealment.</p> + +<p>And these memories were mixed up with others not sexual at all, and +particularly with the perception of beauty in things inanimate, with +lights seen at twilight and the tender mysteriousness of the dusk and +the confused disturbing scents of flowers in the evening and the +enigmatical serene animation of stars in the summer sky....</p> + +<p>I think perhaps that my boyhood was exceptionally free from vulgarizing +influences in this direction. There were few novels in my father's house +and I neither saw nor read any plays until I was near manhood, so that I +thought naturally about love and not rather artificially round and about +love as so many imaginative young people are trained to do. I fell in +love once or twice while I was still quite a boy. These earliest +experiences rarely got beyond a sort of dumb awe, a vague, vast, +ineffectual desire for self-immolation. For a time I remember I +worshipped Lady Ladislaw with all my being. Then I talked to a girl in a +train—I forget upon what journey—but I remember very vividly her quick +color and a certain roguish smile. I spread my adoration at her feet, +fresh and frank. I wanted to write to her. Indeed I wanted to devote all +my being to her. I begged hard, but there was someone called Auntie who +had to be considered, an Atropos for that thread of romance.</p> + +<p>Then there was a photograph in my father's study of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> the Delphic Sibyl +from the Sistine Chapel, that for a time held my heart, and—Yes, there +was a girl in a tobacconist's shop in the Harbury High Street. Drawn by +an irresistible impulse I used to go and buy cigarettes—and sometimes +converse about the weather. But afterwards in solitude I would meditate +tremendous conversations and encounters with her. The cigarettes +increased the natural melancholy of my state and led to a reproof from +old Henson. Almost always I suppose there is that girl in the +tobacconist's shop....</p> + +<p>I believe if I made an effort I could disinter some dozens of such +memories, more and more faded until the marginal ones would be +featureless and all but altogether effaced. As I look back at it now I +am struck by an absurd image; it is as if a fish nibbled at this bait +and then at that.</p> + +<p>Given but the slightest aid from accidental circumstances and any of +those slight attractions might have become a power to deflect all my life.</p> + +<p>The day of decision arrived when, the Lady Mary Christian came smiling +out of the sunshine to me into the pavilion at Burnmore. With that the +phase of stirrings and intimations was over for ever in my life. All +those other impressions went then to the dusty lumber room from which I +now so slightingly disinter them.</p> + +<h3>§ 5</h3> + +<p>We five had all been playmates together. There were Lord Maxton, who was +killed at Paardeberg while I was in Ladysmith, he was my senior by +nearly a year, Philip, who is now Earl Ladislaw and who was about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> +eighteen months younger than I, Mary, my contemporary within eight days, +and Guy, whom we regarded as a baby and who was called, apparently on +account of some early linguistic efforts, "Brugglesmith." He did his +best to avenge his juniority as time passed on by an enormous length of +limb. I had more imagination than Maxton and was a good deal better +read, so that Mary and I dominated most of the games of Indians and +warfare and exploration in which we passed our long days together. When +the Christians were at Burnmore, and they usually spent three or four +months in the year there, I had a kind of standing invitation to be with +them. Sometimes there would also be two Christian cousins to swell our +party, and sometimes there would be a raid of the Fawney children with a +detestable governess who was perpetually vociferating reproaches, but +these latter were absent-minded, lax young persons, and we did not +greatly love them.</p> + +<p>It is curious how little I remember of Mary's childhood. All that has +happened between us since lies between that and my present self like +some luminous impenetrable mist. I know we liked each other, that I was +taller than she was and thought her legs unreasonably thin, and that +once when I knelt by accident on a dead stick she had brought into an +Indian camp we had made near the end of the west shrubbery, she flew at +me in a sudden fury, smacked my face, scratched me and had to be +suppressed, and was suppressed with extreme difficulty by the united +manhood of us three elder boys. Then it was I noted first the blazing +blueness of her eyes. She was light and very plucky, so that none of us +cared to climb against her, and she was as difficult to hold as an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> eel. +But all these traits and characteristics vanished when she was transformed.</p> + +<p>For what seems now a long space of time I had not seen her or any of the +family except Philip; it was certainly a year or more, probably two; +Maxton was at a crammer's and I think the others must have been in +Canada with Lord Ladislaw. Then came some sort of estrangement between +him and his wife, and she returned with Mary and Guy to Burnmore and +stayed there all through the summer.</p> + +<p>I was in a state of transition between the infinitely great and the +infinitely little. I had just ceased to be that noble and potent being, +that almost statesmanlike personage, a sixth form boy at Harbury, and I +was going to be an Oxford undergraduate. Philip and I came down together +by the same train from Harbury, I shared the Burnmore dog-cart and +luggage cart, and he dropped me at the rectory. I was a long-limbed +youngster of seventeen, as tall as I am now, and fair, so fair that I +was still boyish-faced while most of my contemporaries and Philip (who +favored his father) were at least smudgy with moustaches. With the +head-master's valediction and the grave elder-brotherliness of old +Henson, and the shrill cheers of a little crowd of juniors still echoing +in my head, I very naturally came home in a mood of exalted gravity, and +I can still remember pacing up and down the oblong lawn behind the +rockery and the fig-tree wall with my father, talking of my outlook with +all the tremendous <i>savoir faire</i> that was natural to my age, and noting +with a secret gratification that our shoulders were now on a level. No +doubt we were discussing Oxford and all that I was to do at Oxford; I +don't remember a word of our speech<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> though I recall the exact tint of +its color and the distinctive feeling of our measured equal paces in the sunshine....</p> + +<p>I must have gone up to Burnmore House the following afternoon. I went up +alone and I was sent out through the little door at the end of the big +gallery into the garden. In those days Lady Ladislaw had made an Indian +pavilion under the tall trees at the east end of the house, and here I +found her with her cousin Helena Christian entertaining a mixture of +people, a carriageful from Hampton End, the two elder Fawneys and a man +in brown who had I think ridden over from Chestoxter Castle. Lady +Ladislaw welcomed me with ample graciousness—as though I was a +personage. "The children" she said were still at tennis, and as she +spoke I saw Guy, grown nearly beyond recognition and then a shining +being in white, very straight and graceful, with a big soft hat and +overshadowed eyes that smiled, come out from the hurried endearments of +the sunflakes under the shadows of the great chestnuts, into the glow of +summer light before the pavilion.</p> + +<p>"Steve arrived!" she cried, and waved a welcoming racquet.</p> + +<p>I do not remember what I said to her or what else she said or what +anyone said. But I believe I could paint every detail of her effect. I +know that when she came out of the brightness into the shadow of the +pavilion it was like a regal condescension, and I know that she was +wonderfully self-possessed and helpful with her mother's hospitalities, +and that I marvelled I had never before perceived the subtler sweetness +in the cadence of her voice. I seem also to remember a severe internal +struggle for my self-possession, and that I had to recall my exalted +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>position in the sixth form to save myself from becoming tongue-tied and +abashed and awkward and utterly shamed.</p> + +<p>You see she had her hair up and very prettily dressed, and those +aggressive lean legs of hers had vanished, and she was sheathed in +muslin that showed her the most delicately slender and beautiful of +young women. And she seemed so radiantly sure of herself!</p> + +<p>After our first greeting I do not think I spoke to her or looked at her +again throughout the meal. I took things that she handed me with an +appearance of supreme indifference, was politely attentive to the elder +Miss Fawney, and engaged with Lady Ladislaw and the horsey little man in +brown in a discussion of the possibility of mechanical vehicles upon the +high road. That was in the early nineties. We were all of opinion that +it was impossible to make a sufficiently light engine for the purpose. +Afterwards Mary confessed to me how she had been looking forward to our +meeting, and how snubbed I had made her feel....</p> + +<p>Then a little later than this meeting in the pavilion, though I am not +clear now whether it was the same or some subsequent afternoon, we are +walking in the sunken garden, and great clouds of purple clematis and +some less lavish heliotrope-colored creeper, foam up against the ruddy +stone balustrading. Just in front of us a fountain gushes out of a +grotto of artificial stalagmite and bathes the pedestal of an absurd +little statuette of the God of Love. We are talking almost easily. She +looks sideways at my face, already with the quiet controlled +watchfulness of a woman interested in a man, she smiles and she talks of +flowers and sunshine, the Canadian winter—and with an abrupt +transition, of old times we've had together<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> in the shrubbery and the +wilderness of bracken out beyond. She seems tremendously grown-up and +womanly to me. I am talking my best, and glad, and in a manner scared at +the thrill her newly discovered beauty gives me, and keeping up my +dignity and coherence with an effort. My attention is constantly being +distracted to note how prettily she moves, to wonder why it is I never +noticed the sweet fall, the faint delightful whisper of a lisp in her voice before.</p> + +<p>We agree about the flowers and the sunshine and the Canadian +winter—about everything. "I think so often of those games we used to +invent," she declares. "So do I," I say, "so do I." And then with a +sudden boldness: "Once I broke a stick of yours, a rotten stick you +thought a sound one. Do you remember?"</p> + +<p>Then we laugh together and seem to approach across a painful, +unnecessary distance that has separated us. It vanishes for ever. "I +couldn't now," she says, "smack your face like that, Stephen."</p> + +<p>That seems to me a brilliantly daring and delightful thing for her to +say, and jolly of her to use my Christian name too! "I believe I +scratched," she adds.</p> + +<p>"You never scratched," I assert with warm conviction. "Never."</p> + +<p>"I did," she insists and I deny. "You couldn't."</p> + +<p>"We're growing up," she cries. "That's what has happened to us. We shall +never fight again with our hands and feet, never—until death do us part."</p> + +<p>"For better, or worse," I say, with a sense of wit and enterprise beyond +all human precedent.</p> + +<p>"For richer, or poorer," she cries, taking up my challenge with a +lifting laugh in her voice.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p><p>And then to make it all nothing again, she exclaims at the white lilies +that rise against masses of sweet bay along the further wall....</p> + +<p>How plainly I can recall it all! How plainly and how brightly! As we +came up the broad steps at the further end towards the tennis lawn, she +turned suddenly upon me and with a novel assurance of command told me to +stand still. "<i>There</i>," she said with a hand out and seemed to survey me +with her chin up and her white neck at the level of my eyes. "Yes. A +whole step," she estimated, "and more, taller than I. You will look down +on me, Stephen, now, for all the rest of our days."</p> + +<p>"I shall always stand," I answered, "a step or so below you."</p> + +<p>"No," she said, "come up to the level. A girl should be smaller than a +man. You are a man, Stephen—almost.... You must be near six feet.... +Here's Guy with the box of balls."</p> + +<p>She flitted about the tennis court before me, playing with Philip +against Guy and myself. She punished some opening condescensions with a +wicked vigor—and presently Guy and I were straining every nerve to save +the set. She had a low close serve I remember that seemed perfectly +straightforward and simple, and was very difficult to return.</p> + +<h3>§ 6</h3> + +<p>All that golden summer on the threshold of my manhood was filled by +Mary. I loved her with the love of a boy and a man. Either I was with +Mary or I was hoping and planning to be with Mary or I was full of some +vivid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> new impression of her or some enigmatical speech, some pregnant +nothing, some glance or gesture engaged and perplexed my mind. In those +days I slept the profound sweet sleep of youth, but whenever that deep +flow broke towards the shallows, as I sank into it at night and came out +of it at morning, I passed through dreams of Mary to and from a world of +waking thought of her.</p> + +<p>There must have been days of friendly intercourse when it seemed we +talked nothings and wandered and meandered among subjects, but always we +had our eyes on one another. And afterwards I would spend long hours in +recalling and analyzing those nothings, questioning their nothingness, +making out of things too submerged and impalpable for the rough drags of +recollection, promises and indications. I would invent ingenious things +to say, things pushing out suddenly from nothingness to extreme +significance. I rehearsed a hundred declarations.</p> + +<p>It was easy for us to be very much together. We were very free that +summer and life was all leisure. Lady Ladislaw was busied with her own +concerns; she sometimes went away for two or three days leaving no one +but an attenuated governess with even the shadow of a claim to interfere +with Mary. Moreover she was used to seeing me with her children at +Burnmore; we were still in her eyes no more than children.... And also +perhaps she did not greatly mind if indeed we did a little fall in love +together. To her that may have seemed a very natural and slight and +transitory possibility....</p> + +<p>One afternoon of warm shadows in the wood near the red-lacquered Chinese +bridge, we two were alone together and we fell silent. I was trembling +and full of a wild courage. I can feel now the exquisite surmise, the +doubt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> of that moment. Our eyes met. She looked up at me with an +unwonted touch of fear in her expression and I laid my hands on her. She +did not recoil, she stood mute with her lips pressed together, looking +at me steadfastly. I can feel that moment now as a tremendous +hesitation, blank and yet full of light and life, like a clear sky in +the moment before dawn....</p> + +<p>She made a little move towards me. Impulsively, with no word said, we kissed.</p> + +<h3>§ 7</h3> + +<p>I would like very much to give you a portrait of Mary as she was in +those days. Every portrait I ever had of her I burnt in the sincerity of +what was to have been our final separation, and now I have nothing of +her in my possession. I suppose that in the files of old illustrated +weeklies somewhere, a score of portraits must be findable. Yet +photographs have a queer quality of falsehood. They have no movement and +always there was a little movement about Mary just as there is always a +little scent about flowers. She was slender and graceful, so that she +seemed taller than she was, she had beautifully shaped arms and a +brightness in her face; it seemed to me always that there was light in +her face, more than the light that shone upon it. Her fair, very +slightly reddish hair—it was warm like Australian gold—flowed with a +sort of joyous bravery back from her low broad forehead; the color under +her delicate skin was bright and quick, and her mouth always smiled +faintly. There was a peculiar charm for me about her mouth, a +whimsicality, a sort of humorous resolve in the way in which the upper +lip fell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> upon the lower and in a faint obliquity that increased with +her quickening smile. She spoke with a very clear delicate intonation +that made one want to hear her speak again; she often said faintly +daring things, and when she did, she had that little catch in the +breath—of one who dares. She did not talk hastily; often before she +spoke came a brief grave pause. Her eyes were brightly blue except when +the spirit of mischief took her and then they became black, and there +was something about the upper and lower lids that made them not only the +prettiest but the sweetest and kindliest eyes in the world. And she +moved with a quiet rapidity, without any needless movements, to do +whatever she had a mind to do....</p> + +<p>But how impossible it is to convey the personal charm of a human being. +I catalogue these things and it is as if she moved about silently behind +my stumbling enumeration and smiled at me still, with her eyes a little +darkened, mocking me. That phantom will never be gone from my mind. It +was all of these things and none of these things that made me hers, as I +have never been any other person's....</p> + +<p>We grew up together. The girl of nineteen mingles in my memory with the +woman of twenty-five.</p> + +<p>Always we were equals, or if anything she was the better of us two. I +never made love to her in the commoner sense of the word, a sense in +which the woman is conceived of as shy, unawakened, younger, more +plastic, and the man as tempting, creating responses, persuading and +compelling. We made love to each other as youth should, we were friends +lit by a passion.... I think that is the best love. If I could wish your +future I would have you love someone neither older and stronger nor +younger<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> and weaker than yourself. I would have you have neither a toy +nor a devotion, for the one makes the woman contemptible and the other +the man. There should be something almost sisterly between you. Love +neither a goddess nor a captive woman. But I would wish you a better +fate in your love than chanced to me.</p> + +<p>Mary was not only naturally far more quick-minded, more swiftly +understanding than I, but more widely educated. Mine was the stiff +limited education of the English public school and university; I could +not speak and read and think French and German as she could for all that +I had a pedantic knowledge of the older forms of those tongues; and the +classics and mathematics upon which I had spent the substance of my +years were indeed of little use to me, have never been of any real use +to me, they were ladders too clumsy to carry about and too short to +reach anything. My general ideas came from the newspapers and the +reviews. She on the other hand had read much, had heard no end of good +conversation, the conversation of people who mattered, had thought for +herself and had picked the brains of her brothers. Her mother had let +her read whatever books she liked, partly because she believed that was +the proper thing to do, and partly because it was so much less trouble +to be liberal in such things.</p> + +<p>We had the gravest conversations.</p> + +<p>I do not remember that we talked much of love, though we were very much +in love. We kissed; sometimes greatly daring we walked hand in hand; +once I took her in my arms and carried her over a swampy place beyond +the Killing Wood, and held her closely to me; that was a great event +between us; but we were shy of one another,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> shy even of very intimate +words; and a thousand daring and beautiful things I dreamt of saying to +her went unsaid. I do not remember any endearing names from that time. +But we jested and shared our humors, shaped our developing ideas in +quaint forms to amuse one another and talked—as young men talk together.</p> + +<p>We talked of religion; I think she was the first person to thaw the +private silences that had kept me bound in these matters even from +myself for years. I can still recall her face, a little flushed and +coming nearer to mine after avowals and comparisons. "But Stephen," she +says; "if none of these things are really true, why do they keep on +telling them to us? What is true? What are we for? What is Everything for?"</p> + +<p>I remember the awkwardness I felt at these indelicate thrusts into +topics I had come to regard as forbidden.</p> + +<p>"I suppose there's a sort of truth in them," I said, and then more +Siddonsesquely: "endless people wiser than we are——"</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said. "But that doesn't matter to us. Endless people wiser +than we are have said one thing, and endless people wiser than we are +have said exactly the opposite. It's <i>we</i> who have to understand—for +ourselves.... We don't understand, Stephen."</p> + +<p>I was forced to a choice between faith and denial. But I parried with +questions. "Don't you," I asked, "feel there is a God?"</p> + +<p>She hesitated. "There is something—something very beautiful," she said +and stopped as if her breath had gone. "That is all I know, Stephen...."</p> + +<p>And I remember too that we talked endlessly about the things I was to do +in the world. I do not remember<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> that we talked about the things she was +to do, by some sort of instinct and some sort of dexterity she evaded +that, from the very first she had reserves from me, but my career and +purpose became as it were the form in which we discussed all the +purposes of life. I became Man in her imagination, the protagonist of +the world. At first I displayed the modest worthy desire for respectable +service that Harbury had taught me, but her clear, sceptical little +voice pierced and tore all those pretences to shreds. "Do some decent +public work," I said, or some such phrase.</p> + +<p>"But is that All you want?" I hear her asking. "Is that All you want?"</p> + +<p>I lay prone upon the turf and dug up a root of grass with my penknife. +"Before I met you it was," I said.</p> + +<p>"And now?"</p> + +<p>"I want you."</p> + +<p>"I'm nothing to want. I want you to want all the world.... <i>Why +shouldn't you?</i>"</p> + +<p>I think I must have talked of the greatness of serving the empire. "Yes, +but splendidly," she insisted. "Not doing little things for other +people—who aren't doing anything at all. I want you to conquer people +and lead people.... When I see you, Stephen, sometimes—I almost wish I +were a man. In order to be able to do all the things that you are going to do."</p> + +<p>"For you," I said, "for you."</p> + +<p>I stretched out my hand for hers, and my gesture went disregarded.</p> + +<p>She sat rather crouched together with her eyes gazing far away across +the great spaces of the park.</p> + +<p>"That is what women are for," she said. "To make<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> men see how splendid +life can be. To lift them up—out of a sort of timid grubbiness——" She +turned upon me suddenly. "Stephen," she said, "promise me. Whatever you +become, you promise and swear here and now never to be grey and grubby, +never to be humpy and snuffy, never to be respectable and modest and +dull and a little fat, like—like everybody. Ever."</p> + +<p>"I swear," I said.</p> + +<p>"By me."</p> + +<p>"By you. No book to kiss! Please, give me your hand."</p> + +<h3>§ 8</h3> + +<p>All through that summer we saw much of each other. I was up at the House +perhaps every other day; we young people were supposed to be all in a +company together down by the tennis lawns, but indeed we dispersed and +came and went by a kind of tacit understanding, Guy and Philip each with +one of the Fawney girls and I with Mary. I put all sorts of +constructions upon the freedom I was given with her, but I perceive now +that we still seemed scarcely more than children to Lady Ladislaw, and +that the idea of our marriage was as inconceivable to her as if we had +been brother and sister. Matrimonially I was as impossible as one of the +stable boys. All the money I could hope to earn for years to come would +not have sufficed even to buy Mary clothes. But as yet we thought little +of matters so remote, glad in our wonderful new discovery of love, and +when at last I went off to Oxford, albeit the parting moved us to much +tenderness and vows and embraces, I had no suspicion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> that never more in +all our lives would Mary and I meet freely and gladly without +restriction. Yet so it was. From that day came restraints and +difficulties; the shadow of furtiveness fell between us; our +correspondence had to be concealed.</p> + +<p>I went to Oxford as one goes into exile; she to London. I would post to +her so that the letters reached Landor House before lunch time when the +sun of Lady Ladislaw came over the horizon, but indeed as yet no one was +watching her letters. Afterwards as she moved about she gave me other +instructions, and for the most part I wrote to her in envelopes +addressed for her by one of the Fawney girls, who was under her spell +and made no enquiry for what purpose these envelopes were needed.</p> + +<p>To me of course Mary wrote without restraint. All her letters to me were +destroyed after our crisis, but some of mine to her she kept for many +years; at last they came back to me so that I have them now. And for all +their occasional cheapness and crudity, I do not find anything in them +to be ashamed of. They reflect, they are chiefly concerned with that +search for a career of fine service which was then the chief +preoccupation of my mind, the bias is all to a large imperialism, but it +is manifest that already the first ripples of a rising tide of criticism +against the imperialist movement had reached and were exercising me. In +one letter I am explaining that imperialism is not a mere +aggressiveness, but the establishment of peace and order throughout half +the world. "We may never withdraw," I wrote with all the confidence of a +Foreign Secretary, "from all these great territories of ours, but we +shall stay only to raise their peoples ultimately to an equal +citizenship with ourselves." And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> then in the same letter: "and if I do +not devote myself to the Empire what else is there that gives anything +like the same opportunity of a purpose in life." I find myself in +another tolerantly disposed to "accept socialism," but manifestly +hostile to "the narrow mental habits of the socialists." The large note +of youth! And in another I am clearly very proud and excited and a +little mock-modest over the success of my first two speeches in the Union.</p> + +<p>On the whole I like the rather boyish, tremendously serious young man of +those letters. An egotist, of course, but what youth was ever anything +else? I may write that much freely now, for by this time he is almost as +much outside my personality as you or my father. He is the young +Stratton, one of a line. I like his gravity; if youth is not grave with +all the great spectacle of life opening at its feet, then surely no age +need be grave. I love and envy his simplicity and honesty. His sham +modesty and so forth are so translucent as scarcely to matter. It is +clear I was opening my heart to myself as I opened it to Mary. I wasn't +acting to her. I meant what I said. And as I remember her answers she +took much the same high tone with me, though her style of writing was +far lighter than mine, more easy and witty and less continuous. She +flashed and flickered. As for confessed love-making there is very +little,—I find at the end of one of my notes after the signature, "I +love you, I love you." And she was even more restrained. Such little +phrases as "Dear Stevenage"—that was one of her odd names for me—"I +wish you were here," or "Dear, <i>dear</i> Stevenage," were epistolary +events, and I would re-read the blessed wonderful outbreak a hundred times....</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p><p>Our separation lengthened. There was a queer detached unexpected +meeting in London in December, for some afternoon gathering. I was shy +and the more disconcerted because she was in winter town clothes that +made her seem strange and changed. Then came the devastating intimation +that all through the next summer the Ladislaws were to be in Scotland.</p> + +<p>I did my boyish utmost to get to Scotland. They were at Lankart near +Invermoriston, and the nearest thing I could contrive was to join a +reading party in Skye, a reading party of older men who manifestly had +no great desire for me. For more than a year we never met at all, and +all sorts of new things happened to us both. I perceived they happened +to me, but I did not think they happened to her. Of course we changed. +Of course in a measure and relatively we forgot. Of course there were +weeks when we never thought of each other at all. Then would come phases +of hunger. I remember a little note of hers. "Oh Stevenage," it was +scrawled, "perhaps next Easter!" Next Easter was an aching desolation. +The blinds of Burnmore House remained drawn; the place was empty except +for three old servants on board-wages. The Christians went instead to +the Canary Isles, following some occult impulse of Lady Ladislaw's. Lord +Ladislaw spent the winter in Italy.</p> + +<p>What an empty useless beauty the great Park possessed during those +seasons of intermission! There were a score of places in it we had made our own....</p> + +<p>Her letters to Oxford would cease for weeks, and suddenly revive and +become frequent. Now and then would come a love-letter that seemed to +shine like stars as I read it; for the most part they were low-pitched,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> +friendly or humorous letters in a roundish girlish writing that was +maturing into a squarely characteristic hand. My letters to her too I +suppose varied as greatly. We began to be used to living so apart. There +were weeks of silence....</p> + +<p>Yet always when I thought of my life as a whole, Mary ruled it. With her +alone I had talked of my possible work and purpose; to her alone had I +confessed to ambitions beyond such modest worthiness as a public school +drills us to affect....</p> + +<p>Then the whole sky of my life lit up again with a strange light of +excitement and hope. I had a note, glad and serenely friendly, to say +they were to spend all the summer at Burnmore.</p> + +<p>I remember how I handled and scrutinized that letter, seeking for some +intimation that our former intimacy was still alive. We were to meet. +How should we meet? How would she look at me? What would she think of me?</p> + +<h3>§ 9</h3> + +<p>Of course it was all different. Our first encounter in this new phase +had a quality of extreme disillusionment. The warm living creature, who +would whisper, who would kiss with wonderful lips, who would say strange +daring things, who had soft hair one might touch with a thrilling and +worshipful hand, who changed one at a word or a look into a God of +pride, became as if she had been no more than a dream. A self-possessed +young aristocrat in white and brown glanced at me from amidst a group of +brilliant people on the terrace, nodded as it seemed quite carelessly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> +in acknowledgment of my salutation, and resumed her confident +conversation with a tall stooping man, no less a person than Evesham, +the Prime Minister. He was lunching at Burnmore on his way across +country to the Rileys. I heard that dear laugh of hers, as ready and +easy as when she laughed with me. I had not heard it for nearly three +years—nor any sound that had its sweetness. "But Mr. Evesham," she was +saying, "nowadays we don't believe that sort of thing——"</p> + +<p>"There are a lot of things still for you to believe," says Mr. Evesham +beaming. "A lot of things! One's capacity increases. It grows with +exercise. Justin will bear me out."</p> + +<p>Beyond her stood an undersized, brown-clad middle-aged man with a big +head, a dark face and expressive brown eyes fixed now in unrestrained +admiration on Mary's laughing face. This then was Justin, the incredibly +rich and powerful, whose comprehensive operations could make and break a +thousand fortunes in a day. He answered Evesham carelessly, with his +gaze still on Mary, and in a voice too low for my straining ears. There +was some woman in the group also, but she has left nothing upon my mind +whatever except an effect of black and a very decorative green sunshade. +She greeted Justin's remark, I remember, with the little yelp of +laughter that characterized that set. I think too there was someone else +in the group; but I cannot clearly recall who....</p> + +<p>Presently as I and Philip made unreal conversation together I saw Mary +disengage herself and come towards us. It was as if a princess came +towards a beggar. Absurd are the changes of phase between women and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> +men. A year or so ago and all of us had been but "the children" +together; now here were I and Philip mere youths still, nobodies, echoes +and aspirations, crude promises at the best, and here was Mary in full +flower, as glorious and central as the Hampton Court azaleas in spring.</p> + +<p>"And this is Stephen," she said, aglow with happy confidence.</p> + +<p>I made no memorable reply, and there was a little pause thick with mute questionings.</p> + +<p>"After lunch," she said with her eye on mine, "I am going to measure +against you on the steps. I'd hoped—when you weren't looking—I might +creep up——"</p> + +<p>"I've taken no advantage," I said.</p> + +<p>"You've kept your lead."</p> + +<p>Justin had followed her towards us, and now held out a hand to Philip. +"Well, Philip my boy," he said, and defined our places. Philip made some +introductory gesture with a word or so towards me. Justin glanced at me +as one might glance at someone's new dog, gave an expressionless nod to +my stiff movement of recognition, and addressed himself at once to Mary.</p> + +<p>"Lady Mary," he said, "I've wanted to tell you——"</p> + +<p>I caught her quick eye for a moment and knew she had more to say to me, +but neither she nor I had the skill and alacrity to get that said.</p> + +<p>"I wanted to tell you," said Justin, "I've found a little Japanese who's +done exactly what you wanted with that group of dwarf maples."</p> + +<p>She clearly didn't understand.</p> + +<p>"But what did I want, Mr. Justin?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Don't say that you forget?" cried Justin. "Oh don't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> tell me you +forget! You wanted a little exact copy of a Japanese house—— I've had +it done. Beneath the trees...."</p> + +<p>"And so you're back in Burnmore, Mr. Stratton," said Lady Ladislaw +intervening between me and their duologue. And I never knew how pleased +Mary was with this faithful realization of her passing and forgotten +fancy. My hostess greeted me warmly and pressed my hand, smiled +mechanically and looked over my shoulder all the while to Mr. Evesham +and her company generally, and then came the deep uproar of a gong from +the house and we were all moving in groups and couples luncheonward.</p> + +<p>Justin walked with Lady Mary, and she was I saw an inch taller than his +squat solidity. A tall lady in rose-pink had taken possession of Guy, +Evesham and Lady Ladislaw made the two centres of a straggling group who +were bandying recondite political allusions. Then came one or two +couples and trios with nothing very much to say and active ears. Philip +and I brought up the rear silently and in all humility. Even young Guy +had gone over our heads. I was too full of a stupendous realization for +any words. Of course, during those years, she had been doing—no end of +things! And while I had been just drudging with lectures and books and +theorizing about the Empire and what I could do with it, and taking +exercise, she had learnt, it seemed—the World.</p> + +<h3>§ 10</h3> + +<p>Lunch was in the great dining-room. There was a big table and two +smaller ones; we sat down anyhow, but the first comers had grouped +themselves about Lady<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> Ladislaw and Evesham and Justin and Mary in a +central orb, and I had to drift perforce to one of the satellites. I +secured a seat whence I could get a glimpse ever and again over Justin's +assiduous shoulders of a delicate profile, and I found myself +immediately engaged in answering the innumerable impossible questions of +Lady Viping, the widow of terrible old Sir Joshua, that devastating +divorce court judge who didn't believe in divorces. His domestic +confidences had I think corrupted her mind altogether. She cared for +nothing but evidence. She was a rustling, incessant, sandy, peering +woman with a lorgnette and rapid, confidential lisping undertones, and +she wanted to know who everybody was and how they were related. This +kept us turning towards the other tables—and when my information failed +she would call upon Sir Godfrey Klavier, who was explaining, rather +testily on account of her interruptions, to Philip Christian and a +little lady in black and the elder Fawney girl just why he didn't +believe Lady Ladislaw's new golf course would succeed. There were two or +three other casual people at our table; one of the Roden girls, a young +guardsman and, I think, some other man whom I don't clearly remember.</p> + +<p>"And so that's the great Mr. Justin," rustled Lady Viping and stared across me.</p> + +<p>(I saw Evesham, leaning rather over the table to point some remark at +Mary, and noted her lips part to reply.)</p> + +<p>"What <i>is</i> the word?" insisted Lady Viping like a fly in my ear.</p> + +<p>I turned on her guiltily.</p> + +<p>"Whether it's brachy," said Lady Viping, "or whether it's dolly—<i>I</i> can +never remember?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p><p>I guessed she was talking of Justin's head. "Oh!—brachycephalic," I +said.</p> + +<p>I had lost Mary's answer.</p> + +<p>"They say he's a woman hater," said Lady Viping. "It hardly looks like +it now, does it?"</p> + +<p>"Who?" I asked. "What?—oh!—Justin."</p> + +<p>"The great financial cannibal. Suppose she turned him into a +philanthropist! Stranger things have happened. Look!—now. The man's +face is positively tender."</p> + +<p>I hated looking, and I could not help but look. It was as if this +detestable old woman was dragging me down and down, down far below all +dignity to her own level of a peeping observer. Justin was saying +something to Mary in an undertone, something that made her glance up +swiftly and at me before she answered, and there I was with my head side +by side with those quivering dyed curls, that flighty black bonnet, that +remorseless observant lorgnette. I could have sworn aloud at the +hopeless indignity of my pose.</p> + +<p>I saw Mary color quickly before I looked away.</p> + +<p>"Charming, isn't she?" said Lady Viping, and I discovered those infernal +glasses were for a moment honoring me. They shut with a click. "Ham," +said Lady Viping. "I told him no ham—and now I remember—I like ham. Or +rather I like spinach. I forgot the spinach. One has the ham for the +spinach,—don't you think? Yes,—tell him. She's a perfect Dresden +ornament, Mr. Stratton. She's adorable ... (lorgnette and search for +fresh topics). Who is the dark lady with the slight moustache—sitting +there next to Guy? Sir Godfrey, who is the dark lady? No, I don't mean +Mary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> Fitton. Over there! Mrs. Roperstone. Ooh. <i>The</i> Mrs. Roperstone. +(Renewed lorgnette and click.) Yes—ham. With spinach. A lot of spinach. +There's Mr. Evesham laughing again. He's greatly amused. Unusual for him +to laugh twice. At least, aloud. (Rustle and adjustment of lorgnette.) +Mr. Stratton, don't you think?—exactly like a little shepherdess. Only +I can't say I think Mr. Justin is like a shepherd. On the whole, more +like a large cloisonné jar. Now Guy would do. As a pair they're +beautiful. Pity they're brother and sister. Curious how that boy manages +to be big and yet delicate. H'm. Mixed mantel ornaments. Sir Godfrey, +how old <i>is</i> Mrs. Roperstone?... You never know on principle. I think I +shall make Mr. Stratton guess. What do you think, Mr. Stratton?... You +never guess on principle! Well, we're all very high principled. (Fresh +exploratory movements of the lorgnette.) Mr. Stratton, tell me; is that +little peaked man near Lady Ladislaw Mr. Roperstone? I thought as much!"</p> + +<p>All this chatter is mixed up in my mind with an unusual sense of +hovering attentive menservants, who seemed all of them to my heated +imagination to be watching me (and particularly one clean-shaven, +reddish-haired, full-faced young man) lest I looked too much at the Lady +Mary Christian. Of course they were merely watching our plates and +glasses, but my nerves and temper were now in such a state that if my +man went off to the buffet to get Sir Godfrey the pickled walnuts, I +fancied he went to report the progress of my infatuation, and if a +strange face appeared with the cider cup, that this was a new observer +come to mark the revelation of my behavior. My food embarrassed me. I +found hidden meanings in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> the talk of the Roden girl and her guardsman, +and an ironical discovery in Sir Godfrey's eye....</p> + +<p>I felt indignant with Mary. I felt she disowned me and deserted me and +repudiated me, that she ought in some manner to have recognized me. I +gave her no credit for her speech to me before the lunch, or her promise +to measure against me again. I blinded myself to all her frank +friendliness. I felt she ought not to notice Justin, ought not to answer him....</p> + +<p>Clearly she liked those men to flatter her, she liked it....</p> + +<p>I remember too, so that I must have noted it and felt it then as a thing +perceived for the first time, the large dignity of the room, the tall +windows and splendid rich curtains, the darkened Hoppners upon the +walls. I noted too the quality and abundance of the table things, and +there were grapes and peaches, strawberries, cherries and green almonds, +piled lavishly above the waiting dessert plates with the golden knives +and forks, upon a table in the sunshine of the great bay. The very +sunshine filtered through the tall narrow panes from the great chestnut +trees without, seemed of a different quality from the common light of day....</p> + +<p>I felt like a poor relation. I sympathized with Anarchists. We had come +out of the Park now finally, both Mary and I—into this....</p> + +<p>"Mr. Stratton I am sure agrees with me."</p> + +<p>For a time I had been marooned conversationally, and Lady Viping had +engaged Sir Godfrey. Evidently he was refractory and she was back at me.</p> + +<p>"Look at it now in profile," she said, and directed me once more to that +unendurable grouping. Justin again!</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p><p>"It's a heavy face," I said.</p> + +<p>"It's a powerful face. I wouldn't care anyhow to be up against it—as +people say." And the lorgnette shut with a click. "What is this? +Peaches!—Yes, and give me some cream." ...</p> + +<p>I hovered long for that measuring I had been promised on the steps, but +either Mary had forgotten or she deemed it wiser to forget.</p> + +<h3>§ 11</h3> + +<p>I took my leave of Lady Ladislaw when the departure of Evesham broke the +party into dispersing fragments. I started down the drive towards the +rectory and then vaulted the railings by the paddock and struck across +beyond the mere. I could not go home with the immense burthen of thought +and new ideas and emotions that had come upon me. I felt confused and +shattered to incoherence by the new quality of Mary's atmosphere. I +turned my steps towards the wilder, lonelier part of the park beyond the +Killing Wood, and lay down in a wide space of grass between two +divergent thickets of bracken, and remained there for a very long time.</p> + +<p>There it was in the park that for the first time I pitted myself against +life upon a definite issue, and prepared my first experience of defeat. +"I <i>will</i> have her," I said, hammering at the turf with my fist. "I +will. I do not care if I give all my life...."</p> + +<p>Then I lay still and bit the sweetness out of joints of grass, and +presently thought and planned.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p> + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_THE_FOURTH" id="CHAPTER_THE_FOURTH"></a>CHAPTER THE FOURTH</h2> + +<h3><span class="smcap">The Marriage of the Lady Mary Christian</span></h3> + +<h3>§ 1</h3> + +<p>For three or four days I could get no word with Mary. I could not now +come and go as I had been able to do in the days when we were still "the +children." I could not work, I could not rest, I prowled as near as I +could to Burnmore House hoping for some glimpse of her, waiting for the +moment when I could decently present myself again at the house.</p> + +<p>When at last I called, Justin had gone and things had some flavor of the +ancient time. Lady Ladislaw received me with an airy intimacy, all the +careful responsibility of her luncheon party manner thrown aside. "And +how goes Cambridge?" she sang, sailing through the great saloon towards +me, and I thought that for the occasion Cambridge instead of Oxford +would serve sufficiently well. "You'll find them all at tennis," said +Lady Ladislaw, and waved me on to the gardens. There I found all four of +them and had to wait until their set was finished.</p> + +<p>"Mary," I said at the first chance, "are we never to talk again?"</p> + +<p>"It's all different," she said.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p><p>"I am dying to talk to you—as we used to talk."</p> + +<p>"And I—Stevenage. But—— You see?"</p> + +<p>"Next time I come," I said, "I shall bring you a letter. There is so +much——"</p> + +<p>"No," she said. "Can't you get up in the morning? Very early—five or +six. No one is up until ever so late."</p> + +<p>"I'd stay up all night."</p> + +<p>"Serve!" said Maxton, who was playing the two of us and had stopped I +think to tighten a shoe.</p> + +<p>Things conspired against any more intimacy for a time. But we got our +moment on the way to tea. She glanced back at Philip, who was loosening +the net, and then forward to estimate the distance of Maxton and Guy. +"They're all three going," she said, "after Tuesday. Then—before six."</p> + +<p>"Wednesday?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Suppose after all," she threw out, "I can't come."</p> + +<p>"Fortunes of war."</p> + +<p>"If I can't come one morning I may come another," she spoke hastily, and +I perceived that Guy and Maxton had turned and were waiting for us.</p> + +<p>"You know the old Ice House?"</p> + +<p>"Towards the gardens?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. On the further side. Don't come by the road, come across by the +end of the mere. Lie in the bracken until you see me coming.... I've not +played tennis a dozen times this year. Not half a dozen."</p> + +<p>This last was for the boys.</p> + +<p>"You've played twenty times at least since you've been here," said Guy, +with the simple bluntness of a brother. "I'm certain."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p> + +<h3>§ 2</h3> + +<p>To this day a dewy morning in late August brings back the thought of +Mary and those stolen meetings. I have the minutest recollection of the +misty bloom upon the turf, and the ragged, filmy carpet of gossamer on +either hand, of the warm wetness of every little blade and blossom and +of the little scraps and seeds of grass upon my soaking and discolored +boots. Our footsteps were dark green upon the dew-grey grass. And I feel +the same hungry freshness again at the thought of those stolen meetings. +Presently came the sunrise, blinding, warming, dew-dispelling arrows of +gold smiting through the tree stems, a flood of light foaming over the +bracken and gilding the under sides of the branches. Everything is +different and distinctive in those opening hours; everything has a +different value from what it has by day. All the little things upon the +ground, fallen branches, tussocks, wood-piles, have a peculiar intensity +and importance, seem magnified, because of the length of their shadows +in the slanting rays, and all the great trees seem lifted above the +light and merged with the sky. And at last, a cool grey outline against +the blaze and with a glancing iridescent halo about her, comes Mary, +flitting, adventurous, friendly, wonderful.</p> + +<p>"Oh Stevenage!" she cries, "to see you again!"</p> + +<p>We each hold out both our hands and clasp and hesitate and rather shyly kiss.</p> + +<p>"Come!" she says, "we can talk for an hour. It's still not six. And +there is a fallen branch where we can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> sit and put our feet out of the +wet. Oh! it's so good to be out of things again—clean out of +things—with you. Look! there is a stag watching us."</p> + +<p>"You're glad to be with me?" I ask, jealous of the very sunrise.</p> + +<p>"I am always glad," she says, "to be with you. Why don't we always get +up at dawn, Stevenage, every day of our lives?"</p> + +<p>We go rustling through the grass to the prostrate timber she has chosen. +(I can remember even the thin bracelet on the wrist of the hand that +lifted her skirt.) I help her to clamber into a comfortable fork from +which her feet can swing....</p> + +<p>Such fragments as this are as bright, as undimmed, as if we had met this +morning. But then comes our conversation, and that I find vague and +irregularly obliterated. But I think I must have urged her to say she +loved me, and beat about the bush of that declaration, too fearful to +put my heart's wish to the issue, that she would promise to wait three +years for me—until I could prove it was not madness for her to marry +me. "I have been thinking of it all night and every night since I have +been here," I said. "Somehow I will do something. In some way—I will +get hold of things. Believe me!—with all my strength."</p> + +<p>I was standing between the forking boughs, and she was looking down upon me.</p> + +<p>"Stephen dear," she said, "dear, dear Boy; I have never wanted to kiss +you so much in all my life. Dear, come close to me."</p> + +<p>She bent her fresh young face down to mine, her fingers were in my hair.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p><p>"My Knight," she whispered close to me. "My beautiful young Knight."</p> + +<p>I whispered back and touched her dew fresh lips....</p> + +<p>"And tell me what you would do to conquer the world for me?" she asked.</p> + +<p>I cannot remember now a word of all the vague threatenings against the +sundering universe with which I replied. Her hand was on my shoulder as she listened....</p> + +<p>But I do know that even on this first morning she left me with a sense +of beautiful unreality, of having dipped for some precious moments into +heroic gossamer. All my world subjugation seemed already as evanescent +as the morning haze and the vanishing dews as I stood, a little hidden +in the shadows of the Killing Wood and ready to plunge back at the first +hint of an observer, and watched her slender whiteness flit +circumspectly towards the house.</p> + +<h3>§ 3</h3> + +<p>Our next three or four meetings are not so clearly defined. We did not +meet every morning for fear that her early rising should seem too +punctual to be no more than a chance impulse, nor did we go to the same +place. But there stands out very clearly a conversation in a different +mood. We had met at the sham ruins at the far end of the great +shrubbery, a huge shattered Corinthian portico of rather damaged stucco +giving wide views of the hills towards Alfridsham between its three +erect pillars, and affording a dry seat upon its fallen ones. It was an +overcast morning, I remember probably the hour was earlier; a kind of +twilight clearness made the world seem strange<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> and the bushes and trees +between us and the house very heavy and still and dark. And we were at +cross purpose, for now it was becoming clear to me that Mary did not +mean to marry me, that she dreaded making any promise to me for the +future, that all the heroic common cause I wanted with her, was quite +alien to her dreams.</p> + +<p>"But Mary," I said looking at her colorless delicate face, "don't you +love me? Don't you want me?"</p> + +<p>"You know I love you, Stevenage," she said. "You know."</p> + +<p>"But if two people love one another, they want to be always together, +they want to belong to each other."</p> + +<p>She looked at me with her face very intent upon her meaning. +"Stevenage," she said after one of those steadfast pauses of hers, "I +want to belong to myself."</p> + +<p>"Naturally," I said with an air of disposing of an argument, and then paused.</p> + +<p>"Why should one have to tie oneself always to one other human being?" +she asked. "Why must it be like that?"</p> + +<p>I do not remember how I tried to meet this extraordinary idea. "One +loves," I may have said. The subtle scepticisms of her mind went +altogether beyond my habits of thinking; it had never occurred to me +that there was any other way of living except in these voluntary and +involuntary mutual servitudes in which men and women live and die. "If +you love me," I urged, "if you love me—— I want nothing better in all +my life but to love and serve and keep you and make you happy."</p> + +<p>She surveyed me and weighed my words against her own.</p> + +<p>"I love meeting you," she said. "I love your going<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> because it means +that afterwards you will come again. I love this—this slipping out to +you. But up there, there is a room in the house that is <i>my</i> +place—me—my own. Nobody follows me there. I want to go on living, +Stevenage, just as I am living now. I don't want to become someone's +certain possession, to be just usual and familiar to anyone. No, not even to you."</p> + +<p>"But if you love," I cried.</p> + +<p>"To you least of all. Don't you see?—I want to be wonderful to you, +Stevenage, more than to anyone. I want—I want always to make your heart +beat faster. I want always to be coming to you with my own heart beating +faster. Always and always I want it to be like that. Just as it has been +on these mornings. It has been beautiful—altogether beautiful."</p> + +<p>"Yes," I said, rather helplessly, and struggled with great issues I had +never faced before.</p> + +<p>"It isn't," I said, "how people live."</p> + +<p>"It is how I want to live," said Mary.</p> + +<p>"It isn't the way life goes."</p> + +<p>"I want it to be. Why shouldn't it be? Why at any rate shouldn't it be for me?"</p> + +<h3>§ 4</h3> + +<p>I made some desperate schemes to grow suddenly rich and powerful, and I +learnt for the first time my true economic value. Already my father and +I had been discussing my prospects in life and he had been finding me +vague and difficult. I was full of large political intentions, but so +far I had made no definite plans for a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> living that would render my +political ambitions possible. It was becoming apparent to me that for a +poor man in England, the only possible route to political distinction is +the bar, and I was doing my best to reconcile myself to the years of +waiting and practice that would have to precede my political début.</p> + +<p>My father disliked the law. And I do not think it reconciled him to the +idea of my being a barrister that afterwards I hoped to become a +politician. "It isn't in our temperament, Stephen," he said. "It's a +pushing, bullying, cramming, base life. I don't see you succeeding +there, and I don't see myself rejoicing even if you do succeed. You have +to shout, and Strattons don't shout; you have to be smart and tricky and +there's never been a smart and tricky Stratton yet; you have to snatch +opportunities and get the better of the people and misrepresent the +realities of every case you touch. You're a paid misrepresenter. They +say you'll get a fellowship, Stephen. Why not stay up, and do some +thinking for a year or so. There'll be enough to keep you. Write a little."</p> + +<p>"The bar," I said, "is only a means to an end."</p> + +<p>"If you succeed."</p> + +<p>"If I succeed. One has to take the chances of life everywhere."</p> + +<p>"And what is the end?"</p> + +<p>"Constructive statesmanship."</p> + +<p>"Not in that way," said my father, pouring himself a second glass of +port, and turned over my high-sounding phrase with a faint hint of +distaste; "Constructive Statesmanship. No. Once a barrister always a +barrister. You'll only be a party politician.... Vulgar men.... +Vulgar.... If you succeed that is...."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p><p>He criticized me but he did not oppose me, and already in the beginning +of the summer we had settled that I should be called to the bar.</p> + +<p>Now suddenly I wanted to go back upon all these determinations. I began +to demand in the intellectual slang of the time "more actuality," and to +amaze my father with talk about empire makers and the greatness of Lord +Strathcona and Cecil Rhodes. Why, I asked, shouldn't I travel for a year +in search of opportunity? At Oxford I had made acquaintance with a son +of Pramley's, the big Mexican and Borneo man, and to him I wrote, +apropos of a half-forgotten midnight talk in the rooms of some common +friend. He wrote back with the suggestion that I should go and talk to +his father, and I tore myself away from Mary and went up to see that +great exploiter of undeveloped possibilities and have one of the most +illuminating and humiliating conversations in the world. He was, I +remember, a little pale-complexioned, slow-speaking man with a humorous +blue eye, a faint, just perceptible northern accent and a trick of +keeping silent for a moment after you had finished speaking, and he +talked to me as one might talk to a child of eight who wanted to know +how one could become a commander-in-chief. His son had evidently +emphasized my Union reputation, and he would have been quite willing, I +perceived, to give me employment if I had displayed the slightest +intelligence or ability in any utilizable direction. But quite +dreadfully he sounded my equipment with me and showed me the emptiness of my stores.</p> + +<p>"You want some way that gives you a chance of growing rich rapidly," he +said. "Aye. It's not a bad idea.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> But there's others, you know, have +tried that game before ye.</p> + +<p>"You don't want riches just for riches but for an end. Aye! Aye! It's +the spending attracts ye. You'd not have me think you'd the sin of +avarice. I'm clear on that about ye.</p> + +<p>"Well," he explained, "it's all one of three things we do, you +know—prospecting and forestalling and—just stealing, and the only +respectable way is prospecting. You'd prefer the respectable way, I +suppose?... I knew ye would. Well, let's see what chances ye have."</p> + +<p>And he began to probe my practical knowledge. It was like an unfit man +stripping for a medical inspection. Did I know anything of oil, of +rubber, of sugar, of substances generally, had I studied mineralogy or +geology, had I any ideas of industrial processes, of technical +chemistry, of rare minerals, of labor problems and the handling of alien +labor, of the economics of railway management or of camping out in dry, +thinly populated countries, or again could I maybe speak Spanish or +Italian or Russian? The little dons who career about Oxford afoot and +awheel, wearing old gowns and mortarboards, giggling over Spooner's +latest, and being tremendous "characters" in the intervals of concocting +the ruling-class mind, had turned my mind away from such matters +altogether. I had left that sort of thing to Germans and east-end Jews +and young men from the upper-grade board schools of Sheffield and +Birmingham. I was made to realize appalling wildernesses of ignorance....</p> + +<p>"You see," said old Pramley, "you don't seem to know anything whatever. +It's a deeficulty. It'll stand in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> your way a little now, though no +doubt you'd be quick at the uptake—after all the education they've +given ye.... But it stands in your way, if ye think of setting out to do +something large and effective, just immediately...."</p> + +<p>Moreover it came out, I forget now how, that I hadn't clearly grasped +the difference between cumulative and non-cumulative preference shares....</p> + +<p>I remember too how I dined alone that evening in a mood between frantic +exasperation and utter abasement in the window of the Mediated +Universities Club, of which I was a junior member under the +undergraduate rule. And I lay awake all night in one of the austere club +bedrooms, saying to old Pramley a number of extremely able and +penetrating things that had unhappily not occurred to me during the +progress of our interview. I didn't go back to Burnmore for several +days. I had set my heart on achieving something, on returning with some +earnest of the great attack I was to make upon the separating great +world between myself and Mary. I am far enough off now from that angry +and passionate youngster to smile at the thought that my subjugation of +things in general and high finance in particular took at last the form +of proposing to go into the office of Bean, Medhurst, Stockton, and +Schnadhorst upon half commission terms. I was awaiting my father's reply +to this startling new suggestion when I got a telegram from Mary. "We +are going to Scotland unexpectedly. Come down and see me." I went home +instantly, and told my father I had come to talk things over with him. A +note from Mary lay upon the hall-table as I came in and encountered my +father. "I thought it better to come down to you," I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> said with my +glance roving to find that, and then I met his eye. It wasn't altogether +an unkindly eye, but I winced dishonestly.</p> + +<p>"Talking is better for all sorts of things," said my father, and wanted +to know if the weather had been as hot in London as it had been in Burnmore.</p> + +<p>Mary's note was in pencil, scribbled hastily. I was to wait after eleven +that night near the great rose bushes behind the pavilion. Long before +eleven I was there, on a seat in a thick shadow looking across great +lakes of moonlight towards the phantom statuary of the Italianate garden +and the dark laurels that partly masked the house. I waited nearly an +hour, an hour of stillness and small creepings and cheepings and goings +to and fro among the branches.</p> + +<p>In the bushes near by me a little green glow-worm shared my vigil.</p> + +<p>And then, wrapped about in a dark velvet cloak, still in her white +dinner dress, with shining, gleaming, glancing stones about her dear +throat, warm and wonderful and glowing and daring, Mary came flitting +out of the shadows to me.</p> + +<p>"My dear," she whispered, panting and withdrawing a little from our +first passionate embrace, "Oh my dear!... How did I come? Twice before, +when I was a girl, I got out this way. By the corner of the conservatory +and down the laundry wall. You can't see from here, but it's easy—easy. +There's a tree that helps. And now I have come that way to you. <i>You!...</i></p> + +<p>"Oh! love me, my Stephen, love me, dear. Love me as if we were never to +love again. Am I beautiful, my dear? Am I beautiful in the moonlight? Tell me!...</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p><p>"Perhaps this is the night of our lives, dear! Perhaps never again will +you and I be happy!...</p> + +<p>"But the wonder, dear, the beauty! Isn't it still? It's as if nothing +really stood solid and dry. As if everything floated....</p> + +<p>"Everyone in all the world has gone to sleep to-night and left the world +to us. Come! Come this way and peep at the house, there. Stoop—under +the branches. See, not a light is left! And all its blinds are drawn and +its eyes shut. One window is open, <i>my</i> little window, Stephen! but that +is in the shadow where that creeper makes everything black.</p> + +<p>"Along here a little further is night-stock. Now—Now! Sniff, Stephen! +Sniff! The scent of it! It lies—like a bank of scented air.... And +Stephen, there! Look!... A star—a star without a sound, falling out of +the blue! It's gone!"</p> + +<p>There was her dear face close to mine, soft under the soft moonlight, +and the breath of her sweet speech mingled with the scent of the night-stock....</p> + +<p>That was indeed the most beautiful night of my life, a night of +moonlight and cool fragrance and adventurous excitement. We were +transported out of this old world of dusty limitations; it was as if for +those hours the curse of man was lifted from our lives. No one +discovered us, no evil thing came near us. For a long time we lay close +in one another's arms upon a bank of thyme. Our heads were close +together; her eyelashes swept my cheek, we spoke rarely and in soft +whispers, and our hearts were beating, beating. We were as solemn as +great mountains and as innocent as sleeping children. Our kisses were +kisses of moonlight. And it seemed to me that nothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> that had ever +happened or could happen afterwards, mattered against that happiness....</p> + +<p>It was nearly three when at last I came back into my father's garden. No +one had missed me from my room and the house was all asleep, but I could +not get in because I had closed a latch behind me, and so I stayed in +the little arbor until day, watching the day break upon long beaches of +pale cloud over the hills towards Alfridsham. I slept at last with my +head upon my arms upon the stone table, until the noise of shooting +bolts and doors being unlocked roused me to watch my chance and slip +back again into the house, and up the shuttered darkened staircase to my +tranquil, undisturbed bedroom.</p> + +<h3>§ 5</h3> + +<p>It was in the vein of something evasive in Mary's character that she let +me hear first of her engagement to Justin through the <i>Times</i>. Away +there in Scotland she got I suppose new perspectives, new ideas; the +glow of our immediate passion faded. The thing must have been drawing in +upon her for some time. Perhaps she had meant to tell me of it all that +night when she had summoned me to Burnmore. Looking back now I am the +more persuaded that she did. But the thing came to me in London with the +effect of an immense treachery. Within a day or so of the newspaper's +announcement she had written me a long letter answering some argument of +mine, and saying nothing whatever of the people about her. Even then +Justin must have been asking her to marry him. Her mind must have been +full of that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> question. Then came a storm of disappointment, humiliation +and anger with this realization. I can still feel myself writing and +destroying letters to her, letters of satire, of protest. Oddly enough I +cannot recall the letter that at last I sent her, but it is eloquent of +the weak boyishness of my position that I sent it in our usual furtive +manner, accepted every precaution that confessed the impossibility of +our relationship. "No," she scribbled back, "you do not understand. I +cannot write. I must talk to you."</p> + +<p>We had a secret meeting.</p> + +<p>With Beatrice Normandy's connivance she managed to get away for the +better part of the day, and we spent a long morning in argument in the +Botanical Gardens—that obvious solitude—and afterwards we lunched upon +ham and ginger beer at a little open-air restaurant near the Broad Walk +and talked on until nearly four. We were so young that I think we both +felt, beneath our very real and vivid emotions, a gratifying sense of +romantic resourcefulness in this prolonged discussion. There is +something ridiculously petty and imitative about youth, something too, +naïvely noble and adventurous. I can never determine if older people are +less generous and imaginative or merely less absurd. I still recall the +autumnal melancholy of that queer, neglected-looking place, in which I +had never been before, and which I have never revisited—a memory of +walking along narrow garden paths beside queer leaf-choked artificial +channels of water under yellow-tinted trees, of rustic bridges going +nowhere in particular, and of a kind of brickwork ruined castle, greatly +decayed and ivy-grown, in which we sat for a long time looking out upon +a lawn and a wide<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> gravel path leading to a colossal frontage of +conservatory.</p> + +<p>I must have been resentful and bitter in the beginning of that talk. I +do not remember that I had any command of the situation or did anything +but protest throughout that day. I was too full of the egotism of the +young lover to mark Mary's moods and feelings. It was only afterwards +that I came to understand that she was not wilfully and deliberately +following the course that was to separate us, that she was taking it +with hesitations and regrets. Yet she spoke plainly enough, she spoke +with a manifest sincerity of feeling. And while I had neither the grasp +nor the subtlety to get behind her mind I perceive now as I think things +out that Lady Ladislaw had both watched and acted, had determined her +daughter's ideas, sown her mind with suggestions, imposed upon her a +conception of her situation that now dominated all her thoughts.</p> + +<p>"Dear Stephen," reiterated Mary, "I love you. I do, clearly, definitely, +deliberately love you. Haven't I told you that? Haven't I made that plain to you?"</p> + +<p>"But you are going to marry Justin!"</p> + +<p>"Stephen dear, can I possibly marry you? Can I?"</p> + +<p>"Why not? Why not make the adventure of life with me? Dare!"</p> + +<p>She looked down on me. She was sitting upon a parapet of the brickwork +and I was below her. She seemed to be weighing possibilities.</p> + +<p>"Why not?" I cried. "Even now. Why not run away with me, throw our two +lives together? Do as lovers have dared to do since the beginning of +things! Let us go somewhere together——"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p><p>"But Stephen," she asked softly, "<i>where</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Anywhere!"</p> + +<p>She spoke as an elder might do to a child. "No! tell me where—exactly. +Where would it be? Where should we go? How should we live? Tell me. Make +me see it, Stephen."</p> + +<p>"You are too cruel to me, Mary," I said. "How can I—on the spur of the +moment—arrange——?"</p> + +<p>"But dear, suppose it was somewhere very grimy and narrow! +Something—like some of those back streets I came through to get here. +Suppose it was some dreadful place. And you had no money. And we were +both worried and miserable. One gets ill in such places. If I loved you, +Stephen—I mean if you and I—if you and I were to be together, I should +want it to be in sunshine, I should want it to be among beautiful +forests and mountains. Somewhere very beautiful...."</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"Because—to-day I know. There are no such places in the world for us. +Stephen, they are dreams."</p> + +<p>"For three years now," I said, "I have dreamed such dreams.</p> + +<p>"Oh!" I cried out, stung by my own words, "but this is cowardice! Why +should we submit to this old world! Why should we give up—things you +have dreamed as well as I! You said once—to hear my voice—calling in +the morning.... Let us take each other, Mary, now. <i>Now!</i> Let us take +each other, and"—I still remember my impotent phrase—"afterwards count +the cost!"</p> + +<p>"If I were a queen," said Mary. "But you see I am not a queen." ...</p> + +<p>So we talked in fragments and snatches of argument,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> and all she said +made me see more clearly the large hopelessness of my desire. "At +least," I urged, "do not marry Justin now. Give me a chance. Give me +three years, Mary, three short years, to work, to do something!"</p> + +<p>She knew so clearly now the quality of her own intentions.</p> + +<p>"Dear Stephen," she explained, "if I were to come away with you and +marry you, in just a little time I should cease to be your lover, I +should be your squaw. I should have to share your worries and make your +coffee—and disappoint you, disappoint you and fail you in a hundred +ways. Think! Should I be any good as a squaw? How can one love when one +knows the coffee isn't what it should be, and one is giving one's lover +indigestion? And I don't <i>want</i> to be your squaw. I don't want that at +all. It isn't how I feel for you. I don't <i>want</i> to be your servant and +your possession."</p> + +<p>"But you will be Justin's—squaw, you are going to marry him!"</p> + +<p>"That is all different, Stevenage. Between him and me there will be +space, air, dignity, endless servants——"</p> + +<p>"But," I choked. "You! He! He will make love to you, Mary."</p> + +<p>"You don't understand, Stephen."</p> + +<p>"He will make love to you, Mary. Mary! don't you understand? These +things—— We've never talked of them.... You will bear him children!"</p> + +<p>"No," she said.</p> + +<p>"But——"</p> + +<p>"No. He promises. Stephen,—I am to own myself."</p> + +<p>"But—He marries you!"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p><p>"Yes. Because he—he admires me. He cannot live without me. He loves my +company. He loves to be seen with me. He wants me with him to enjoy all +the things he has. Can't you understand, Stephen?"</p> + +<p>"But do you mean——?"</p> + +<p>Our eyes met.</p> + +<p>"Stephen," she said, "I swear."</p> + +<p>"But—— He hopes."</p> + +<p>"I don't care. He has promised. I have his promise. I shall be free. Oh! +I shall be free—free! He is a different man from you, Stephen. He isn't +so fierce; he isn't so greedy."</p> + +<p>"But it parts us!"</p> + +<p>"Only from impossible things."</p> + +<p>"It parts us."</p> + +<p>"It does not even part us, Stevenage. We shall see one another! we shall +talk to one another."</p> + +<p>"I shall lose you."</p> + +<p>"I shall keep you."</p> + +<p>"But I—do you expect me to be content with <i>this</i>?"</p> + +<p>"I will make you content. Oh! Stephen dear, can't there be love—love +without this clutching, this gripping, this carrying off?"</p> + +<p>"You will be carried altogether out of my world."</p> + +<p>"If I thought that, Stephen, indeed I would not marry him."</p> + +<p>But I insisted we should be parted, and parted in the end for ever, and +there I was the wiser of the two. I knew the insatiable urgency within +myself. I knew that if I continued to meet Mary I should continue to +desire her until I possessed her altogether.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p> + +<h3>§ 6</h3> + +<p>I cannot reproduce with any greater exactness than this the quality and +gist of our day-long conversation. Between us was a deep affection, and +instinctive attraction, and our mental temperaments and our fundamental +ideas were profoundly incompatible. We were both still very young in +quality, we had scarcely begun to think ourselves out, we were greatly +swayed by the suggestion of our circumstances, complex, incoherent and +formless emotions confused our minds. But I see now that in us there +struggled vast creative forces, forces that through a long future, in +forms as yet undreamt of, must needs mould the destiny of our race. Far +more than Mary I was accepting the conventions of our time. It seemed to +me not merely reasonable but necessary that because she loved me she +should place her life in my youthful and inexpert keeping, share my +struggles and the real hardships they would have meant for her, devote +herself to my happiness, bear me children, be my inspiration in +imaginative moments, my squaw, helper and possession through the whole +twenty-four hours of every day, and incidentally somehow rear whatever +family we happened to produce, and I was still amazed in the depths of +my being that she did not reciprocate this simple and comprehensive +intention. I was ready enough I thought for equivalent sacrifices. I was +prepared to give my whole life, subordinate all my ambitions, to the +effort to maintain our home. If only I could have her, have her for my +own, I was ready to pledge every hour I had still to live to that +service. It seemed mere perversity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> to me then that she should turn even +such vows as that against me.</p> + +<p>"But I don't want it, Stevenage," she said. "I don't want it. I want you +to go on to the service of the empire, I want to see you do great +things, do all the things we've talked about and written about. Don't +you see how much better that is for you and for me—and for the world +and our lives? I don't want you to become a horrible little specialist +in feeding and keeping me."</p> + +<p>"Then—then <i>wait</i> for me!" I cried.</p> + +<p>"But—I want to live myself! I don't want to wait. I want a great house, +I want a great position, I want space and freedom. I want to have +clothes—and be as splendid as your career is going to be. I want to be +a great and shining lady in your life. I can't always live as I do now, +dependent on my mother, whirled about by her movements, living in her +light. Why should I be just a hard-up Vestal Virgin, Stephen, in your +honor? You will not be able to marry me for years and years and +years—unless you neglect your work, unless you throw away everything +that is worth having between us in order just to get me."</p> + +<p>"But I want <i>you</i>, Mary," I cried, drumming at the little green table +with my fist. "I want you. I want nothing else in all the world unless +it has to do with you."</p> + +<p>"You've got me—as much as anyone will ever have me. You'll always have +me. Always I will write to you, talk to you, watch you. Why are you so +greedy, Stephen? Why are you so ignoble? If I were to come now and marry +you, it wouldn't help you. It would turn you into—a wife-keeper, into +the sort of uninteresting <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>preoccupied man one sees running after and +gloating over the woman he's bought—at the price of his money and his +dignity—and everything.... It's not proper for a man to live so for a +woman and her children. It's dwarfish. It's enslaving. It's—it's +indecent. Stephen! I'd hate you so." ...</p> + +<h3>§ 7</h3> + +<p>We parted at last at a cab-rank near a bridge over the Canal at the +western end of Park Village. I remember that I made a last appeal to her +as we walked towards it, and that we loitered on the bridge, careless of +who might see us there, in a final conflict of our wills. "Before it is +too late, Mary, dear," I said.</p> + +<p>She shook her head, her white lips pressed together.</p> + +<p>"But after the things that have happened. That night—the moonlight!"</p> + +<p>"It's not fair," she said, "for you to talk of that. It isn't fair."</p> + +<p>"But Mary. This is parting. This indeed is parting."</p> + +<p>She answered never a word.</p> + +<p>"Then at least talk to me again for one time more."</p> + +<p>"Afterwards," she said. "Afterwards I will talk to you. Don't make +things too hard for me, Stephen."</p> + +<p>"If I could I would make this impossible. It's—it's hateful."</p> + +<p>She turned to the kerb, and for a second or so we stood there without +speaking. Then I beckoned to a hansom.</p> + +<p>She told me Beatrice Normandy's address.</p> + +<p>I helped her into the cab. "Good-bye," I said with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> weak affectation +of an everyday separation, and I turned to the cabman with her instructions.</p> + +<p>Then again we looked at one another. The cabman waited. "All right, +sir?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Go ahead!" I said, and lifted my hat to the little white face within.</p> + +<p>I watched the cab until it vanished round the curve of the road. Then I +turned about to a world that had become very large and empty and meaningless.</p> + +<h3>§ 8</h3> + +<p>I struggled feebly to arrest the course of events. I wrote Mary some +violent and bitter letters. I treated her as though she alone were +responsible for my life and hers; I said she had diverted my energies, +betrayed me, ruined my life. I hinted she was cold-blooded, mercenary, +shameless. Someday you, with that quick temper of yours and your power +of expression, will understand that impulse to write, to pour out a +passionately unjust interpretation of some nearly intolerable situation, +and it is not the least of all the things I owe to Mary that she +understood my passion and forgave those letters and forgot them. I tried +twice to go and see her. But I do not think I need tell you, little son, +of these self-inflicted humiliations and degradations. An angry man is +none the less a pitiful man because he is injurious. The hope that had +held together all the project of my life was gone, and all my thoughts +and emotions lay scattered in confusion....</p> + +<p>You see, my little son, there are two sorts of love;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> we use one name +for very different things. The love that a father bears his children, +that a mother feels, that comes sometimes, a strange brightness and +tenderness that is half pain, at the revelation of some touching aspect +of one long known to one, at the sight of a wife bent with fatigue and +unsuspicious of one's presence, at the wretchedness and perplexity of +some wrong-doing brother, or at an old servant's unanticipated tears, +that is love—like the love God must bear us. That is the love we must +spread from those of our marrow until it reaches out to all mankind, +that will some day reach out to all mankind. But the love of a young man +for a woman takes this quality only in rare moments of illumination and +complete assurance. My love for Mary was a demand, it was a wanton claim +I scored the more deeply against her for every moment of happiness she +gave me. I see now that as I emerged from the first abjection of my +admiration and began to feel assured of her affection, I meant nothing +by her but to possess her, I did not want her to be happy as I want you +to be happy even at the price of my life; I wanted her. I wanted her as +barbarians want a hunted enemy, alive or dead. It was a flaming jealousy +to have her mine. That granted, then I was prepared for all devotions....</p> + +<p>This is how men love women. Almost as exclusively and fiercely I think +do women love men. And the deepest question before humanity is just how +far this jealous greed may be subdued to a more generous passion. The +fierce jealousy of men for women and women for men is the very heart of +all our social jealousies, the underlying tension of this crowded modern +life that has grown out of the ampler, simpler, ancient life of men. +That is why<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> we compete against one another so bitterly, refuse +association and generous co-operations, keep the struggle for existence +hard and bitter, hamper and subordinate the women as they in their turn +would if they could hamper and subordinate the men—because each must +thoroughly have his own.</p> + +<p>And I knew my own heart too well to have any faith in Justin and his +word. He was taking what he could, and his mind would never rest until +some day he had all. I had seen him only once, but the heavy and +resolute profile above his bent back and slender shoulders stuck in my memory.</p> + +<p>If he was cruel to Mary, I told her, or broke his least promise to her, +I should kill him.</p> + +<h3>§ 9</h3> + +<p>My distress grew rather than diminished in the days immediately before +her marriage, and that day itself stands out by itself in my memory, a +day of wandering and passionate unrest. My imagination tormented me with +thoughts of Justin as a perpetual privileged wooer.</p> + +<p>Well, well,—I will not tell you, I will not write the ugly mockeries my +imagination conjured up. I was constantly on the verge of talking and +cursing aloud to myself, or striking aimlessly at nothing with clenched +fists. I was too stupid to leave London, too disturbed for work or any +distraction of my mind. I wandered about the streets of London all day. +In the morning I came near going to the church and making some +preposterous interruptions.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> And I remember discovering three or four +carriages adorned with white favors and a little waiting crowd outside +that extinguisher-spired place at the top of Regent Street, and +wondering for a moment or so at their common preoccupation, and then +understanding. Of course, another marriage! Of all devilish institutions!</p> + +<p>What was I to do with my life now? What was to become of my life? I can +still recall the sense of blank unanswerableness with which these +questions dominated my mind, and associated with it is an effect of +myself as a small human being, singular and apart, wandering through a +number of London landscapes. At one time I was in a great grey +smoke-rimmed autumnal space of park, much cut up by railings and worn by +cricket pitches, far away from any idea of the Thames, and in the +distance over the tops of trees I discovered perplexingly the clustering +masts and spars of ships. I have never seen that place since. Then the +Angel at Islington is absurdly mixed up with the distresses of this day. +I attempted some great detour thence, and found myself with a dumb +irritation returning to the place from another direction. I remember too +a wide street over which passes a thundering railway bridge borne upon +colossal rounded pillars of iron, and carrying in white and blue some +big advertisement, I think of the <i>Daily Telegraph</i>. Near there I +thought a crowd was gathered about the victim of some accident, and +thrusting myself among the people with a vague idea of help, discovered +a man selling a remedy for corns. And somewhere about this north region +I discovered I was faint with hunger, and got some bread and cheese and +beer in a gaudily decorated saloon bar with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> sanded floor. I resisted +a monstrous impulse to stay in that place and drink myself into +inactivity and stupefaction with beer.</p> + +<p>Then for a long time I sat upon an iron seat near some flower beds in a +kind of garden that had the headstones of graves arranged in a row +against a yellow brick wall. The place was flooded with the amber +sunshine of a September afternoon. I shared the seat with a nursemaid in +charge of a perambulator and several scuffling uneasy children, and I +kept repeating to myself: "By now it is all over. The thing is done."</p> + +<p>My sense of the enormity of London increased with the twilight, and +began to prevail a little against my intense personal wretchedness. I +remember wastes of building enterprise, interminable vistas of wide dark +streets, with passing trams, and here and there at strategic corners +coruscating groups of shops. And somewhere I came along a narrow street +suddenly upon the distant prospect of a great monstrous absurd place on +a steep hill against the last brightness of the evening sky, a burlesque +block of building with huge truncated pyramids at either corner, that I +have since learnt was the Alexandra Palace. It was so queer and bulky +that it arrested and held my attention, struck on my memory with an +almost dreamlike quality, so that years afterwards I went to Muswell +Hill to see if indeed there really was such a place on earth, or whether +I had had a waking nightmare during my wanderings....</p> + +<p>I wandered far that night, very far. Some girl accosted me, a thin-faced +ruined child younger by a year or so than myself. I remembered how I +talked to her, foolish rambling talk. "If you loved a man, and he was +poor, you'd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> wait," I said, "you'd stick to him. You'd not leave him +just to get married to a richer man."</p> + +<p>We prowled talking for a time, and sat upon a seat somewhere near the +Regent's Park canal. I rather think I planned to rescue her from a +fallen life, but somehow we dropped that topic. I know she kissed me. I +have a queer impression that it came into my head to marry her. I put +all my loose money in her hands at last and went away extraordinarily +comforted by her, I know not how, leaving her no doubt wondering +greatly.</p> + +<p>I did not go to bed that night at all, nor to the office next morning. I +never showed myself in the office again. Instead I went straight down to +my father, and told him I wanted to go to the war forthwith. I had an +indistinct memory of a promise I had made Mary to stay in England, but I +felt it was altogether unendurable that I should ever meet her again. My +father sat at table over the remains of his lunch, and regarded me with +astonishment, with the beginnings of protest.</p> + +<p>"I want to get away," I said, and to my own amazement and shame I burst +into tears.</p> + +<p>"My boy!" he gasped, astonished and terrified. "You've—you've not +done—some foolish thing?"</p> + +<p>"No," I said, already wiping the tears from my face, "nothing.... But I +want to go away."</p> + +<p>"You shall do as you please," he said, and sat for a moment regarding +his only son with unfathomable eyes.</p> + +<p>Then he got up with a manner altogether matter-of-fact, came half-way +round the table and mixed me a whisky and soda. "It won't be much of a +war, I'm told," he said with the syphon in his hands, breaking a +silence. "I sometimes wish—I had seen a bit of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> soldiering. And this +seems to be an almost unavoidable war. Now, at any rate, it's +unavoidable.... Drink this and have a biscuit."</p> + +<p>He turned to the mantelshelf, and filled his pipe with his broad back to +me. "Yes," he said, "you—— You'll be interested in the war. I hope—— +I hope you'll have a good time there...."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p> + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_THE_FIFTH" id="CHAPTER_THE_FIFTH"></a>CHAPTER THE FIFTH</h2> + +<h3><span class="smcap">The War in South Africa</span></h3> + +<h3>§ 1</h3> + +<p>Mary and I did not meet again for five years, and for nearly all that +time I remained in South Africa. I went from England a boy; I came back +seasoned into manhood. They had been years of crowded experience, rapid +yet complicated growth, disillusionment and thought. Responsibility had +come to me. I had seen death, I had seen suffering, and held the lives +of men in my hands.</p> + +<p>Of course one does not become a soldier on active service at once for +the wishing, and there was not at first that ready disposition on the +part of the home military authorities which arose later, to send out +young enthusiasts. I could ride and shoot fairly well, and accordingly I +decided to go on my own account to Durban—for it was manifest that +things would begin in Natal—and there attach myself to some of the +local volunteer corps that would certainly be raised. This took me out +of England at once, a thing that fell in very well with my mood. I +would, I was resolved, begin life afresh. I would force myself to think +of nothing but the war. I would never if I could help it think of Mary again.</p> + +<p>The war had already begun when I reached Durban. The town was seething +with the news of a great British<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> victory at Dundee. We came into the +port through rain and rough weather and passed a big white liner loaded +up feverishly from steam tenders with wealthy refugees going +England-ward. From two troopships against the wharves there was a great +business of landing horses—the horses of the dragoons and hussars from +India. I spent the best part of my first night in South Africa in the +streets looking in vain for a bedroom, and was helped at last by a +kindly rickshaw Zulu to a shanty where I slept upon three chairs. I +remember I felt singularly unwanted.</p> + +<p>The next day I set about my volunteering. By midday I had opened +communications with that extremely untried and problematical body, the +Imperial Light Horse, and in three days more I was in the company of a +mixed batch of men, mostly Australian volunteers, on my way to a place I +had never heard of before called Ladysmith, through a country of +increasing picturesqueness and along a curious curving little line whose +down traffic seemed always waiting in sidings, and consisted of crowded +little trains full of pitiful fugitives, white, brown, and black, +stifled and starving. They were all clamoring to buy food and drink—and +none seemed forthcoming. We shunted once to allow a southbound train to +pass, a peculiar train that sent everyone on to the line to +see—prisoners of war! There they were, real live enemies, rather glum, +looking out at us with faces very like our own—but rather more +unshaven. They had come from the battle of Elandslaagte....</p> + +<p>I had never been out of England before except for a little +mountaineering in the French Alps and one walking excursion in the Black +Forest, and the scenery<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> of lower Natal amazed me. I had expected +nothing nearly so tropical, so rich and vivid. There were little +Mozambique monkeys chattering in the thick-set trees beside the line and +a quantity of unfamiliar birds and gaudy flowers amidst the abundant +deep greenery. There were aloe and cactus hedges, patches of unfamiliar +cultivation upon the hills; bunchy, frondy growths that I learnt were +bananas and plantains, and there were barbaric insanitary-looking Kaffir +kraals which I supposed had vanished before our civilization. There +seemed an enormous quantity of Kaffirs all along the line—and all of +them, men, women, and children, were staring at the train. The scenery +grew finer and bolder, and more bare and mountainous, until at last we +came out into the great basin in which lay this Ladysmith. It seemed a +poor unimportant, dusty little street of huts as we approached it, but +the great crests beyond struck me as very beautiful in the morning light....</p> + +<p>I forgot the beauty of those hills as we drew into the station. It was +the morning after the surrender of Nicholson's Nek. I had come to join +an army already tremendously astonished and shattered. The sunny +prospect of a triumphal procession to Pretoria which had been still in +men's minds at Durban had vanished altogether. In rather less than a +fortnight of stubborn fighting we had displayed a strategy that was +flighty rather than brilliant, and lost a whole battery of guns and +nearly twelve hundred prisoners. We had had compensations, our common +soldiers were good stuff at any rate, but the fact was clear that we +were fighting an army not only very much bigger than ours but better +equipped, with bigger guns, better information, and it seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> superior +strategy. We were being shoved back into this Ladysmith and encircled. +This confused, disconcerted, and thoroughly bad-tempered army, whose +mules and bullocks cumbered the central street of the place, was all +that was left of the British Empire in Natal. Behind it was an +unprotected country and the line to Pietermaritzburg, Durban, and the sea.</p> + +<p>You cannot imagine how amazed I felt at it. I had been prepared for a +sort of Kentucky quality in the enemy, illiteracy, pluck, guile and good +shooting, but to find them with more modern arms than our own, more +modern methods! Weren't we there, after all, to teach <i>them</i>! Weren't we +the Twentieth and they the Eighteenth Century? The town had been shelled +the day before from those very hills I had admired; at any time it might +be shelled again. The nose of a big gun was pointed out to me by a +blasphemous little private in the Devons. It was a tremendous, a +profoundly impressive, black snout. His opinions of the directing wisdom +at home were unquotable. The platform was a wild confusion of women and +children and colored people,—there was even an invalid lady on a +stretcher. Every non-combatant who could be got out of Ladysmith was +being hustled out that day. Everyone was smarting with the sense of +defeat in progress, everyone was disappointed and worried; one got short +answers to one's questions. For a time I couldn't even find out where I had to go....</p> + +<h3>§ 2</h3> + +<p>I fired my first shot at a fellow-creature within four days of my +arrival. We rode out down the road to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> south to search some hills, +and found the Boers in fair strength away to the east of us. We were +dismounted and pushed up on foot through a wood to a grassy crest. There +for the first time I saw the enemy, little respectable-looking +unsoldierlike figures, mostly in black, dodging about upon a ridge +perhaps a mile away. I took a shot at one of these figures just before +it vanished into a gully. One or two bullets came overhead, and I tried +to remember what I had picked up about cover. They made a sound, +<i>whiff-er-whiff</i>, a kind of tearing whistle, and there was nothing but a +distant crackling to give one a hint of their direction until they took +effect. I remember the peculiar smell of the grass amidst which I +crouched, my sudden disgust to realize I was lying, and had to lie now +for an indefinite time, in the open sunlight and far from any shade, and +how I wondered whether after all I had wanted to come to this war.</p> + +<p>We lay shooting intermittently until the afternoon, I couldn't +understand why; we went forward a little, and at last retired upon +Ladysmith. On the way down to the horses, I came upon my first dead man. +He was lying in a crumpled heap not fifty yards from where I had been +shooting. There he lay, the shattered mirror of a world. One side of his +skull over the ear had been knocked away by a nearly spent bullet, and +he was crumpled up and face upward as though he had struggled to his +feet and fallen back. He looked rather horrible, with blue eyes wide +open and glassily amazed, and the black flies clustering upon his +clotted wound and round his open mouth....</p> + +<p>I halted for a moment at the sight, and found the keen scrutiny of a +fellow trooper upon me. "No good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> waiting for him," I said with an +affectation of indifference. But all through the night I saw him again, +and marvelled at the stupendous absurdity of such a death. I was a +little feverish, I remember, and engaged in an interminable theological +argument with myself, why when a man is dead he should leave so queer +and irrelevant a thing as a body to decay....</p> + +<p>I was already very far away from London and Burnmore Park. I doubt if I +thought of Mary at all for many days.</p> + +<h3>§ 3</h3> + +<p>It isn't my business to write here any consecutive story of my war +experiences. Luck and some latent quality in my composition made me a +fairly successful soldier. Among other things I have an exceptionally +good sense of direction, and that was very useful to me, and in Burnmore +Park I suppose I had picked up many of the qualities of a scout. I did +some fair outpost work during the Ladysmith siege, I could report as +well as crawl and watch, and I was already a sergeant when we made a +night attack and captured and blew up Long Tom. There, after the fight, +while we were covering the engineers, I got a queer steel ball about the +size of a pea in my arm, a bicycle bearings ball it was, and had my +first experience of an army surgeon's knife next day. It was much less +painful than I had expected. I was also hit during the big assault on +the sixth of January in the left shoulder, but so very slightly that I +wasn't technically disabled. They were the only wounds I got in the war, +but I went under with dysentery before the relief; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> though I was by +no means a bad case I was a very yellow-faced, broken-looking +convalescent when at last the Boer hosts rolled northward again and +Buller's men came riding across the flats....</p> + +<p>I had seen some stimulating things during those four months of actual +warfare, a hundred intense impressions of death, wounds, anger, +patience, brutality, courage, generosity and wasteful destruction—above +all, wasteful destruction—to correct the easy optimistic patriotism of +my university days. There is a depression in the opening stages of fever +and a feebleness in a convalescence on a starvation diet that leads men +to broad and sober views. (Heavens! how I hated the horse +extract—'chevril' we called it—that served us for beef tea.) When I +came down from Ladysmith to the sea to pick up my strength I had not an +illusion left about the serene, divinely appointed empire of the +English. But if I had less national conceit, I had certainly more +patriotic determination. That grew with every day of returning health. +The reality of this war had got hold of my imagination, as indeed for a +time it got hold of the English imagination altogether, and I was now +almost fiercely keen to learn and do. At the first chance I returned to +active service, and now I was no longer a disconsolate lover taking war +for a cure, but an earnest, and I think reasonably able, young officer, +very alert for chances.</p> + +<p>I got those chances soon enough. I rejoined our men beyond Kimberley, on +the way to Mafeking,—we were the extreme British left in the advance +upon Pretoria—and I rode with Mahon and was ambushed with him in a +little affair beyond Koodoosrand. It was a sudden brisk encounter. We +got fired into at close quarters, but we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> knew our work by that time, +and charged home and brought in a handful of prisoners to make up for +the men we had lost. A few days later we came into the flattened ruins +of the quaintest siege in history....</p> + +<p>Three days after we relieved Mafeking I had the luck to catch one of +Snyman's retreating guns rather easily, the only big gun that was taken +at Mafeking. I came upon it unexpectedly with about twenty men, spotted +a clump of brush four hundred yards ahead, galloped into it before the +Boers realized the boldness of our game, shot all the draught oxen while +they hesitated, and held them up until Chambers arrived on the scene. +The incident got perhaps a disproportionate share of attention in the +papers at home, because of the way in which Mafeking had been kept in +focus. I was mentioned twice again in despatches before we rode across +to join Roberts in Pretoria and see what we believed to be the end of +the war. We were too late to go on up to Komatipoort, and had some +rather blank and troublesome work on the north side of the town. That +was indeed the end of the great war; the rest was a struggle with guerillas.</p> + +<p>Everyone thought things were altogether over. I wrote to my father +discussing the probable date of my return. But there were great chances +still to come for an active young officer; the guerilla war was to +prolong the struggle yet for a whole laborious, eventful year, and I was +to make the most of those later opportunities....</p> + +<p>Those years in South Africa are stuck into my mind like—like those pink +colored pages about something else one finds at times in a railway +<i>Indicateur</i>. Chance had put this work in my way, and started me upon +it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> with a reputation that wasn't altogether deserved, and I found I +could only live up to it and get things done well by a fixed and extreme +concentration of my attention. But the whole business was so interesting +that I found it possible to make that concentration. Essentially warfare +is a game of elaborate but witty problems in precaution and +anticipation, with amazing scope for invention. You so saturate your +mind with the facts and possibilities of the situation that intuitions +emerge. It did not do to think of anything beyond those facts and +possibilities and dodges and counterdodges, for to do so was to let in +irrelevant and distracting lights. During all that concluding year of +service I was not so much myself as a forced and artificial thing I made +out of myself to meet the special needs of the time. I became a +Boer-outwitting animal. When I was tired of this specialized thinking, +then the best relief, I found, was some quite trivial +occupation—playing poker, yelling in the chorus of some interminable +song one of the men would sing, or coining South African Limericks or +playing burlesque <i>bouts-rimés</i> with Fred Maxim, who was then my second +in command....</p> + +<p>Yet occasionally thought overtook me. I remember lying one night out +upon a huge dark hillside, in a melancholy wilderness of rock-ribbed +hills, waiting for one of the flying commandoes that were breaking +northward from Cape Colony towards the Orange River in front of Colonel +Eustace. We had been riding all day, I was taking risks in what I was +doing, and there is something very cheerless in a fireless bivouac. My +mind became uncontrollably active.</p> + +<p>It was a clear, still night. The young moon set early in a glow of white +that threw the jagged contours of a hill<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> to the south-east into +strange, weird prominence. The patches of moonshine evaporated from the +summits of the nearer hills, and left them hard and dark. Then there was +nothing but a great soft black darkness below that jagged edge and above +it the stars very large and bright. Somewhere under that enormous +serenity to the south of us the hunted Boers must be halting to snatch +an hour or so of rest, and beyond them again extended the long thin net +of the pursuing British. It all seemed infinitely small and remote, +there was no sound of it, no hint of it, no searchlight at work, no +faintest streamer of smoke nor the reflection of a solitary fire in the sky....</p> + +<p>All this business that had held my mind so long was reduced to +insignificance between the blackness of the hills and the greatness of +the sky; a little trouble, it seemed of no importance under the Southern +Cross. And I fell wondering, as I had not wondered for long, at the +forces that had brought me to this occupation and the strangeness of +this game of war which had filled the minds and tempered the spirit of a +quarter of a million of men for two hard-living years.</p> + +<p>I fell thinking of the dead.</p> + +<p>No soldier in a proper state of mind ever thinks of the dead. At times +of course one suspects, one catches a man glancing at the pair of boots +sticking out stiffly from under a blanket, but at once he speaks of +other things. Nevertheless some suppressed part of my being had been +stirring up ugly and monstrous memories, of distortion, disfigurement, +torment and decay, of dead men in stained and ragged clothes, with their +sole-worn boots drawn up under them, of the blood trail of a dying man +who had crawled up to a dead comrade rather than die alone,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> of Kaffirs +heaping limp, pitiful bodies together for burial, of the voices of +inaccessible wounded in the rain on Waggon Hill crying in the night, of +a heap of men we found in a donga three days dead, of the dumb agony of +shell-torn horses, and the vast distressful litter and heavy brooding +stench, the cans and cartridge-cases and filth and bloody rags of a +shelled and captured laager. I will confess I have never lost my horror +of dead bodies; they are dreadful to me—dreadful. I dread their stiff +attitudes, their terrible intent inattention. To this day such memories +haunt me. That night they nearly overwhelmed me.... I thought of the +grim silence of the surgeon's tent, the miseries and disordered ravings +of the fever hospital, of the midnight burial of a journalist at +Ladysmith with the distant searchlight on Bulwana flicking suddenly upon +our faces and making the coffin shine silver white. What a vast trail of +destruction South Africa had become! I thought of the black scorched +stones of burnt and abandoned farms, of wretched natives we had found +shot like dogs and flung aside, rottenly amazed, decaying in infinite +indignity; of stories of treachery and fierce revenges sweeping along in +the trail of the greater fighting. I knew too well of certain +atrocities,—one had to believe them incredibly stupid to escape the +conviction that they were incredibly evil.</p> + +<p>For a time my mind could make no headway against its monstrous +assemblage of horror. There was something in that jagged black hill +against the moonshine and the gigantic basin of darkness out of which it +rose that seemed to gather all these gaunt and grisly effects into one +appalling heap of agonizing futility. That rock rose up and crouched +like something that broods and watches.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span></p><p>I remember I sat up in the darkness staring at it.</p> + +<p>I found myself murmuring: "Get the proportions of things, get the +proportions of things!" I had an absurd impression of a duel between +myself and the cavernous antagonism of the huge black spaces below me. I +argued that all this pain and waste was no more than the selvedge of a +proportionately limitless fabric of sane, interested, impassioned and +joyous living. These stiff still memories seemed to refute me. But why +us? they seemed to insist. In some way it's essential,—this margin. I +stopped at that.</p> + +<p>"If all this pain, waste, violence, anguish is essential to life, why +does my spirit rise against it? What is wrong with me?" I got from that +into a corner of self-examination. Did I respond overmuch to these +painful aspects in life? When I was a boy I had never had the spirit +even to kill rats. Siddons came into the meditation, Siddons, the +essential Englishman, a little scornful, throwing out contemptuous +phrases. Soft! Was I a soft? What was a soft? Something not rough, not +hearty and bloody! I felt I had to own to the word—after years of +resistance. A dreadful thing it is when a great empire has to rely upon +soft soldiers.</p> + +<p>Was civilization breeding a type of human being too tender to go on +living? I stuck for a time as one does on these nocturnal occasions at +the word "hypersensitive," going round it and about it....</p> + +<p>I do not know now how it was that I passed from a mood so darkened and +sunless to one of exceptional exaltation, but I recall very clearly that +I did. I believe that I made a crowning effort against this despair and +horror that had found me out in the darkness and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>overcome. I cried in +my heart for help, as a lost child cries, to God. I seem to remember a +rush of impassioned prayer, not only for myself, not chiefly for myself, +but for all those smashed and soiled and spoilt and battered residues of +men whose memories tormented me. I prayed to God that they had not lived +in vain, that particularly those poor Kaffir scouts might not have lived +in vain. "They are like children," I said. "It was a murder of +children.... <i>By children!</i>"</p> + +<p>My horror passed insensibly. I have to feel the dreadfulness of these +things, I told myself, because it is good for such a creature as I to +feel them dreadful, but if one understood it would all be simple. Not +dreadful at all. I clung to that and repeated it,—"it would all be +perfectly simple." It would come out no more horrible than the things +that used to frighten me as a child,—the shadow on the stairs, the +white moonrise reflected on a barked and withered tree, a peculiar dream +of moving geometrical forms, an ugly illustration in the "Arabian Nights." ...</p> + +<p>I do not know how long I wrestled with God and prayed that night, but +abruptly the shadows broke; and very suddenly and swiftly my spirit +seemed to flame up into space like some white beacon that is set alight. +Everything became light and clear and confident. I was assured that all +was well with us, with us who lived and fought and with the dead who +rotted now in fifty thousand hasty graves....</p> + +<p>For a long time it seemed I was repeating again and again with soundless +lips and finding the deepest comfort in my words:—"And out of our +agonies comes victory, out of our agonies comes victory! Have pity on +us, God our Father!"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p><p>I think that mood passed quite insensibly from waking to a kind of +clear dreaming. I have an impression that I fell asleep and was aroused +by a gun. Yet I was certainly still sitting up when I heard that gun.</p> + +<p>I was astonished to find things darkly visible about me. I had not noted +that the stars were growing pale until the sound of this gun very far +away called my mind back to the grooves in which it was now accustomed +to move. I started into absolute wakefulness. A gun?...</p> + +<p>I found myself trying to see my watch.</p> + +<p>I heard a slipping and clatter of pebbles near me, and discovered Fred +Maxim at my side. "Look!" he said, hoarse with excitement. "Already!" He +pointed to a string of dim little figures galloping helter-skelter over +the neck and down the gap in the hills towards us.</p> + +<p>They came up against the pale western sky, little nodding swaying black +dots, and flashed over and were lost in the misty purple groove towards +us. They must have been riding through the night—the British following. +To them we were invisible. Behind us was the shining east, we were in a +shadow still too dark to betray us.</p> + +<p>In a moment I was afoot and called out to the men, my philosophy, my +deep questionings, all torn out of my mind like a page of scribbled +poetry plucked out of a business note-book. Khaki figures were up all +about me passing the word and hurrying to their places. All the +dispositions I had made overnight came back clear and sharp into my +mind. We hadn't long for preparations....</p> + +<p>It seems now there were only a few busy moments before the fighting +began. It must have been much longer in reality. By that time we had +seen their gun come over and a train of carts. They were blundering +right<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> into us. Every moment it was getting lighter, and the moment of +contact nearer. Then "Crack!" from down below among the rocks, and there +was a sudden stoppage of the trail of dark shapes upon the hillside. +"Crack!" came a shot from our extreme left. I damned the impatient men +who had shot away the secret of our presence. But we had to keep them at +a shooting distance. Would the Boers have the wit to charge through us +before the daylight came, or should we hold them? I had a swift, +disturbing idea. Would they try a bolt across our front to the left? Had +we extended far enough across the deep valley to our left? But they'd +hesitate on account of their gun. The gun couldn't go that way because +of the gullies and thickets.... But suppose they tried it! I hung +between momentous decisions....</p> + +<p>Then all up the dim hillside I could make out the Boers halting and +riding back. One rifle across there flashed.</p> + +<p>We held them!...</p> + +<p>We had begun the fight of Pieters Nek which ended before midday with the +surrender of Simon Botha and over seven hundred men. It was the crown of +all my soldiering.</p> + +<h3>§ 4</h3> + +<p>I came back to England at last when I was twenty-six. After the peace of +Vereeniging I worked under the Repatriation Commission which controlled +the distribution of returning prisoners and concentrated population to +their homes; for the most part I was distributing stock and grain, and +presently manœuvring a sort of ploughing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> flying column that the +dearth of horses and oxen made necessary, work that was certainly as +hard as if far less exciting than war. That particular work of +replanting the desolated country with human beings took hold of my +imagination, and for a time at least seemed quite straightforward and +understandable. The comfort of ceasing to destroy!</p> + +<p>No one has written anything that really conveys the quality of that +repatriation process; the queer business of bringing these suspicious, +illiterate, despondent people back to their desolated homes, reuniting +swarthy fathers and stockish mothers, witnessing their touchingly +inexpressive encounters, doing what one could to put heart into their +resumption. Memories come back to me of great littered heaps of luggage, +bundles, blankets, rough boxes, piled newly purchased stores, ready-made +doors, window sashes heaped ready for the waggons, slow-moving, +apathetic figures sitting and eating, an infernal squawking of parrots, +sometimes a wailing of babies. Repatriation went on to a parrot +obligato, and I never hear a parrot squawk without a flash of South +Africa across my mind. All the prisoners, I believe, brought back +parrots—some two or three. I had to spread these people out, over a +country still grassless, with teams of war-worn oxen, mules and horses +that died by the dozen on my hands. The end of each individual instance +was a handshake, and one went lumbering on, leaving the children one had +deposited behind one already playing with old ration-tins or hunting +about for cartridge-cases, while adults stared at the work they had to do.</p> + +<p>There was something elementary in all that redistribution. I felt at +times like a child playing in a nursery and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> putting out its bricks and +soldiers on the floor. There was a kind of greatness too about the +process, a quality of atonement. And the people I was taking back, the +men anyhow, were for the most part charming and wonderful people, very +simple and emotional, so that once a big bearded man, when I wanted him +in the face of an overflowing waggon to abandon about half-a-dozen great +angular colored West Indian shells he had lugged with him from Bermuda, +burst into tears of disappointment. I let him take them, and at the end +I saw them placed with joy and reverence in a little parlor, to become +the war heirlooms no doubt of a long and bearded family. As we shook +hands after our parting coffee he glanced at them with something between +gratitude and triumph in his eyes.</p> + +<p>Yes, that was a great work, more especially for a ripening youngster +such as I was at that time. The memory of long rides and tramps over +that limitless veld returns to me, lonely in spite of the creaking, +lumbering waggons and transport riders and Kaffirs that followed behind. +South Africa is a country not only of immense spaces but of an immense +spaciousness. Everything is far apart; even the grass blades are far +apart. Sometimes one crossed wide stony wastes, sometimes came great +stretches of tall, yellow-green grass, wheel-high, sometimes a little +green patch of returning cultivation drew nearer for an hour or so, +sometimes the blundering, toilsome passage of a torrent interrupted our +slow onward march. And constantly one saw long lines of torn and twisted +barbed wire stretching away and away, and here and there one found +archipelagoes as it were in this dry ocean of the skeletons of cattle, +and there were places<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> where troops had halted and their scattered +ration-tins shone like diamonds in the sunshine. Occasionally I struck +talk, some returning prisoner, some group of discharged British soldiers +become carpenters or bricklayers again and making their pound a day by +the work of rebuilding; always everyone was ready to expatiate upon the +situation. Usually, however, I was alone, thinking over this immense now +vanished tornado of a war and this equally astonishing work of healing +that was following it.</p> + +<p>I became keenly interested in all this great business, and thought at +first of remaining indefinitely in Africa. Repatriation was presently +done and finished. I had won Milner's good opinion, and he was anxious +for me to go on working in relation to the labor difficulty that rose +now more and more into prominence behind the agricultural re-settlement. +But when I faced that I found myself in the middle of a tangle +infinitely less simple than putting back an agricultural population upon its land.</p> + +<h3>§ 5</h3> + +<p>For the first time in my life I was really looking at the social +fundamental of Labor.</p> + +<p>There is something astonishingly naïve in the unconsciousness with which +people of our class float over the great economic realities. All my life +I had been hearing of the Working Classes, of Industrialism, of Labor +Problems and the Organization of Labor; but it was only now in South +Africa, in this chaotic, crude illuminating period of putting a smashed +and desolated social order together again, that I perceived these +familiar phrases represented<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> something—something stupendously real. +There were, I began to recognize, two sides to civilization; one +traditional, immemorial, universal, the side of the homestead, the side +I had been seeing and restoring; and there was another, ancient, too, +but never universal, as old at least as the mines of Syracuse and the +building of the pyramids, the side that came into view when I emerged +from the dusty station and sighted the squat shanties and slender +chimneys of Johannesburg, that uprooted side of social life, that +accumulation of toilers divorced from the soil, which is Industrialism +and Labor and which carries such people as ourselves, and whatever +significance and possibilities we have, as an elephant carries its rider.</p> + +<p>Now all Johannesburg and Pretoria were discussing Labor and nothing but +Labor. Bloemfontein was in conference thereon. Our work of repatriation +which had loomed so large on the southernward veld became here a +business at once incidental and remote. One felt that a little sooner or +a little later all that would resume and go on, as the rains would, and +the veld-grass. But this was something less kindred to the succession of +the seasons and the soil. This was a hitch in the upper fabric. Here in +the great ugly mine-scarred basin of the Rand, with its bare hillsides, +half the stamps were standing idle, machinery was eating its head off, +time and water were running to waste amidst an immense exasperated +disputation. Something had given way. The war had spoilt the Kaffir +"boy," he was demanding enormous wages, he was away from Johannesburg, +and above all, he would no longer "go underground."</p> + +<p>Implicit in all the argument and suggestion about me was this profoundly +suggestive fact that some people,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> quite a lot of people, scores of +thousands, had to "go underground." Implicit too always in the discourse +was the assumption that the talker or writer in question wasn't for a +moment to be expected to go there. Those others, whoever they were, had +to do that for us. Before the war it had been the artless Portuguese +Kaffir, but he alas! was being diverted to open-air employment at +Delagoa Bay. Should we raise wages and go on with the fatal process of +"spoiling the workers," should we by imposing a tremendous hut-tax drive +the Kaffir into our toils, should we carry the labor hunt across the +Zambesi into Central Africa, should we follow the lead of Lord Kitchener +and Mr. Creswell and employ the rather dangerous unskilled white labor +(with "ideas" about strikes and socialism) that had drifted into +Johannesburg, should we do tremendous things with labor-saving +machinery, or were we indeed (desperate yet tempting resort!) to bring +in the cheap Indian or Chinese coolie?</p> + +<p>Steadily things were drifting towards that last tremendous experiment. +There was a vigorous opposition in South Africa and in England (growing +there to an outcry), but behind that proposal was the one vitalizing +conviction in modern initiative:—indisputably it would pay, <i>it would pay</i>!...</p> + +<p>The human mind has a much more complex and fluctuating process than most +of those explanatory people who write about psychology would have us +believe. Instead of that simple, direct movement, like the movement of a +point, forward and from here to there, one's thoughts advance like an +army, sometimes extended over an enormous front, sometimes in échelon, +sometimes bunched in a column throwing out skirmishing clouds of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> +emotion, some flying and soaring, some crawling, some stopping and +dying.... In this matter of Labor, for example, I have thought so much, +thought over the ground again and again, come into it from this way and +from that way, that for the life of me I find it impossible to state at +all clearly how much I made of these questions during that Johannesburg +time. I cannot get back into those ancient ignorances, revive my old +astonishments and discoveries. Certainly I envisaged the whole process +much less clearly than I do now, ignored difficulties that have since +entangled me, regarded with a tremendous perplexity aspects that have +now become lucidly plain. I came back to England confused, and doing +what confused people are apt to do, clinging to an inadequate phrase +that seemed at any rate to define a course of action. The word +"efficiency" had got hold of me. All our troubles came, one assumed, +from being "inefficient." One turned towards politics with a bustling +air, and was all for fault-finding and renovation.</p> + +<p>I sit here at my desk, pen in hand, and trace figures on the +blotting-paper, and wonder how much I understood at that time. I came +back to England to work on the side of "efficiency," that is quite +certain. A little later I was writing articles and letters about it, so +that much is documented. But I think I must have apprehended too by that +time some vague outline at least of those wider issues in the sæcular +conflict between the new forms of human association and the old, to +which contemporary politics and our national fate are no more than +transitory eddies and rufflings of the surface waters. It was all so +nakedly plain there. On the one hand was the primordial, on the other +the rankly new. The farm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> on the veld stood on the veld, a thing of the +veld, a thing rooted and established there and nowhere else. The dusty, +crude, brick-field desolation of the Rand on the other hand did not +really belong with any particularity to South Africa at all. It was one +with our camps and armies. It was part of something else, something +still bigger: a monstrous shadowy arm had thrust out from Europe and +torn open this country, erected these chimneys, piled these heaps—and +sent the ration-tins and cartridge-cases to follow them. It was gigantic +kindred with that ancient predecessor which had built the walls of +Zimbabwe. And this hungry, impatient demand for myriads of toilers, this +threatening inundation of black or brown or yellow bond-serfs was just +the natural voice of this colossal system to which I belonged, which had +brought me hither, and which I now perceived I did not even begin to understand....</p> + +<p>One day when asking my way to some forgotten destination, I had pointed +out to me the Grey and Roberts Deep Mine. Some familiarity in the name +set me thinking until I recalled that this was the mine in which I had +once heard Lady Ladislaw confess large holdings, this mine in which +gangs of indentured Chinamen would presently be sweating to pay the +wages of the game-keepers and roadmenders in Burnmore Park....</p> + +<p>Yes, this was what I was taking in at that time, but it found +me—inexpressive; what I was saying on my return to England gave me no +intimation of the broad conceptions growing in my mind. I came back to +be one of the many scores of energetic and ambitious young men who were +parroting "Efficiency," stirring up people and more particularly +stirring up themselves with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> utmost vigor,—and all the time within +their secret hearts more than a little at a loss....</p> + +<h3>§ 6</h3> + +<p>While I had been in South Africa circumstances had conspired to alter my +prospects in life very greatly. Unanticipated freedoms and opportunities +had come to me, and it was no longer out of the question for me to think +of a parliamentary career. Our fortunes had altered. My father had +ceased to be rector of Burnmore, and had become a comparatively wealthy man.</p> + +<p>My second cousin, Reginald Stratton, had been drowned in Finland, and +his father had only survived the shock of his death a fortnight; his +sister, Arthur Mason's first wife, had died in giving birth to a +stillborn child the year before, and my father found himself suddenly +the owner of all that large stretch of developing downland and building +land which old Reginald had bought between Shaddock and Golding on the +south and West Esher station on the north, and in addition of +considerable investments in northern industrials. It was an odd +collusion of mortality; we had had only the coldest relations with our +cousins, and now abruptly through their commercial and speculative +activities, which we had always affected to despise and ignore, I was in +a position to attempt the realization of my old political ambitions.</p> + +<p>My cousins' house had not been to my father's taste. He had let it, and +I came to a new home in a pleasant, plain red-brick house, a hundred and +fifty years old perhaps, on an open and sunny hillside, sheltered by +trees<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> eastward and northward, a few miles to the south-west of +Guildford. It had all the gracious proportions, the dignified +simplicity, the roomy comfort of the good building of that time. It +looked sunward; we breakfasted in sunshine in the library, and outside +was an old wall with peach trees and a row of pillar roses heavily in +flower. I had a little feared this place; Burnmore Rectory had been so +absolutely home to me with its quiet serenities, its ample familiar +garden, its greenhouses and intimately known corners, but I perceived I +might have trusted my father's character to preserve his essential +atmosphere. He was so much himself as I remembered him that I did not +even observe for a day or so that he had not only aged considerably but +discarded the last vestiges of clerical costume in his attire. He met me +in front of the house and led me into a wide panelled hall and wrung my +hand again and again, deeply moved and very inexpressive. "Did you have +a good journey?" he asked again and again, with tears in his eyes. "Did +you have a comfortable journey?"</p> + +<p>"I've not seen the house," said I. "It looks fine."</p> + +<p>"<i>You're</i> a man," he said, and patted my shoulder. "Of course! It was at Burnmore."</p> + +<p>"You're not changed," I said. "You're not an atom changed."</p> + +<p>"How could I?" he replied. "Come—come and have something to eat. You +ought to have something to eat."</p> + +<p>We talked of the house and what a good house it was, and he took me out +into the garden to see the peaches and grape vine and then brought me +back without showing them to me in order to greet my cousin. "It's very +like Burnmore," he said with his eyes devouring me, "very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> like. A +little more space and—no services. No services at all. That makes a gap +of course. There's a little chap about here, you'll find—his name is +Wednesday—who sorts my papers and calls himself my secretary.... Not +necessary perhaps but—<i>I missed the curate</i>."</p> + +<p>He said he was reading more than he used to do now that the parish was +off his hands, and he was preparing material for a book. It was, he +explained later, to take the form of a huge essay ostensibly on Secular +Canons, but its purport was to be no less than the complete +secularization of the Church of England. At first he wanted merely to +throw open the cathedral chapters to distinguished laymen, irrespective +of their theological opinions, and to make each English cathedral a +centre of intellectual activity, a college as it were of philosophers +and writers. But afterwards his suggestions grew bolder, the Articles of +Religion were to be set aside, the creeds made optional even for the +clergy. His dream became more and more richly picturesque until at last +he saw Canterbury a realized Thelema, and St. Paul's a new Academic +Grove. He was to work at that remarkable proposal intermittently for +many years, and to leave it at last no more than a shapeless mass of +memoranda, fragmentary essays, and selected passages for quotation. Yet +mere patchwork and scrapbook as it would be, I still have some thought +of publishing it. There is a large human charity about it, a sun too +broad and warm, a reasonableness too wide and free perhaps for the timid +convulsive quality of our time, yet all good as good wine for the wise. +Is it incredible that a day should come when our great grey monuments to +the Norman spirit should cease to be occupied by narrow-witted parsons +and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>besieged by narrow-souled dissenters, the soul of our race in exile +from the home and place our fathers built for it?...</p> + +<p>If he was not perceptibly changed, I thought my cousin Jane had become +more than a little sharper and stiffer. She did not like my uncle's own +personal secularization, and still less the glimpses she got of the +ampler intentions of his book. She missed the proximity to the church +and her parochial authority. But she was always a silent woman, and made +her comments with her profile and not with her tongue....</p> + +<p>"I'm glad you've come back, Stephen," said my father as we sat together +after dinner and her departure, with port and tall silver candlesticks +and shining mahogany between us. "I've missed you. I've done my best to +follow things out there. I've got, I suppose, every press mention +there's been of you during the war and since. I've subscribed to two +press-cutting agencies, so that if one missed you the other fellow got +you. Perhaps you'll like to read them over one of these days.... You +see, there's not been a soldier in the family since the Peninsular War, +and so I've been particularly interested.... You must tell me all the +things you're thinking of, and what you mean to do. This last +stuff—this Chinese business—it puzzles me. I want to know what you +think of it—and everything."</p> + +<p>I did my best to give him my ideas such as they were. And as they were +still very vague ideas I have no doubt he found me rhetorical. I can +imagine myself talking of the White Man's Burthen, and how in Africa it +had seemed at first to sit rather staggeringly upon our under-trained +shoulders. I spoke of slackness and planlessness.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p><p>"I've come back in search of efficiency." I have no doubt I said that +at any rate.</p> + +<p>"We're trying to run this big empire," I may have explained, "with +under-trained, under-educated, poor-spirited stuff, and we shall come a +cropper unless we raise our quality. I'm still Imperialist, more than +ever I was. But I'm an Imperialist on a different footing. I've no great +illusions left about the Superiority of the Anglo-Saxons. All that has +gone. But I do think it will be a monstrous waste, a disaster to human +possibilities if this great liberal-spirited empire sprawls itself +asunder for the want of a little gravity and purpose. And it's here the +work has to be done, the work of training and bracing up and stimulating +the public imagination...."</p> + +<p>Yes, that would be the sort of thing I should have said in those days. +There's an old <i>National Review</i> on my desk as I write, containing an +article by me with some of those very phrases in it. I have been looking +at it in order to remind myself of my own forgotten eloquence.</p> + +<p>"Yes," I remember my father saying. "Yes." And then after reflection, +"But those coolies, those Chinese coolies. You can't build up an +imperial population by importing coolies."</p> + +<p>"I don't like that side of the business myself," I said. "It's detail."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps. But the Liberals will turn you out on it next year. And then +start badgering public houses and looting the church.... And then this +Tariff talk! Everybody on our side seems to be mixing up the unity of +the empire with tariffs. It's a pity. Salisbury wouldn't have stood it. +Unity! Unity depends on a common literature and a common language and +common<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> ideas and sympathies. It doesn't unite people for them to be +forced to trade with each other. Trading isn't friendship. I don't trade +with my friends and I don't make friends with my tradesmen. Natural +enemies—polite of course but antagonists. Are you keen over this Tariff +stuff, Steve?"</p> + +<p>"Not a bit," I said. "That too seems a detail."</p> + +<p>"It doesn't seem to be keeping its place as a detail," said my father. +"Very few men can touch tariffs and not get a little soiled. I hate all +this international sharping, all these attempts to get artificial +advantages, all this making poor people buy inferior goods dear, in the +name of the flag. If it comes to that, damn the flag! Custom-houses are +ugly things, Stephen; the dirty side of nationality. Dirty things, +ignoble, cross, cunning things.... They wake you up in the small hours +and rout over your bags.... An imperial people ought to be an urbane +people, a civilizing people—above such petty irritating things. I'd as +soon put barbed wire along the footpath across that field where the +village children go to school. Or claim that our mushrooms are +cultivated. Or prosecute a Sunday-Society Cockney for picking my +primroses. Custom-houses indeed! It's Chinese. There are things a Great +Country mustn't do, Stephen. A country like ours ought to get along +without the manners of a hard-breathing competitive cad.... If it can't +I'd rather it didn't get along.... What's the good of a huckster +country?—it's like having a wife on the streets. It's no excuse that +she brings you money. But since the peace, and that man Chamberlain's +visit to Africa, you Imperialists seem to have got this nasty spirit all +over you.... The Germans do it, you say!"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p><p>My father shut one eye and regarded the color of his port against the +waning light. "Let <i>'em</i>," he said.... "Fancy!—quoting the <i>Germans</i>! +When I was a boy, there weren't any Germans. They came up after '70. +Statecraft from Germany! And statesmen from Birmingham! German silver +and Electroplated Empires.... No."</p> + +<p>"It's just a part of our narrow outlook," I answered from the hearthrug, +after a pause. "It's because we're so—limited that everyone is +translating the greatness of empire into preferential trading and +jealousy of Germany. It's for something bigger than that that I've returned."</p> + +<p>"Those big things come slowly," said my father. And then with a sigh: +"Age after age. They seem at times—to be standing still. Good things go +with the bad; bad things come with the good...."</p> + +<p>I remember him saying that as though I could still hear him.</p> + +<p>It must have been after dinner, for he was sitting, duskily indistinct, +against the light, with a voice coming out to him. The candles had not +been brought in, and the view one saw through the big plate glass window +behind him was very clear and splendid. Those little Wealden hills in +Surrey and Sussex assume at times, for all that by Swiss standards they +are the merest ridges of earth, the dignity and mystery of great +mountains. Now, the crests of Hindhead and Blackdown, purple black +against the level gold of the evening sky, might have been some +high-flung boundary chain. Nearer there gathered banks and pools of +luminous lavender-tinted mist out of which hills of pinewood rose like +islands out of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> the sea. The intervening spaces were magnified to +continental dimensions. And the closer lowlier things over which we +looked, the cottages below us, were grey and black and dim, pierced by a +few luminous orange windows and with a solitary street lamp shining like +a star; the village might have been nestling a mountain's height below +instead of a couple of hundred feet.</p> + +<p>I left my hearthrug, and walked to the window to survey this.</p> + +<p>"Who's got all that land stretching away there; that little blunted +sierra of pines and escarpments I mean?"</p> + +<p>My father halted for an instant in his answer, and glanced over his shoulder.</p> + +<p>"Wardingham and Baxter share all those coppices," he remarked. "They +come up to my corner on each side."</p> + +<p>"But the dark heather and pine land beyond. With just the gables of a +house among the trees."</p> + +<p>"Oh? <i>that</i>," he said with a careful note of indifference. +"That's—Justin. You know Justin. He used to come to Burnmore Park."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p> + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_THE_SIXTH" id="CHAPTER_THE_SIXTH"></a>CHAPTER THE SIXTH</h2> + +<h3><span class="smcap">Lady Mary Justin</span></h3> + +<h3>§ 1</h3> + +<p>I did not see Lady Mary Justin for nearly seven months after my return +to England. Of course I had known that a meeting was inevitable, and I +had taken that very carefully into consideration before I decided to +leave South Africa. But many things had happened to me during those +crowded years, so that it seemed possible that that former magic would +no longer sway and distress me. Not only had new imaginative interests +taken hold of me but—I had parted from adolescence. I was a man. I had +been through a great war, seen death abundantly, seen hardship and +passion, and known hunger and shame and desire. A hundred disillusioning +revelations of the quality of life had come to me; once for example when +we were taking some people to the concentration camps it had been +necessary to assist at the premature birth of a child by the wayside, a +startlingly gory and agonizing business for a young man to deal with. +Heavens! how it shocked me! I could give a score of such grim +pictures—and queer pictures....</p> + +<p>And it wasn't only the earthlier aspects of the life about me but also +of the life within me that I had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> discovering. The first wonder and +innocence, the worshipping, dawn-clear passion of youth, had gone out of +me for ever....</p> + +<h3>§ 2</h3> + +<p>We met at a dinner. It was at a house the Tarvrilles had taken for the +season in Mayfair. The drawing-room was a big white square apartment +with several big pictures and a pane of plate glass above the fireplace +in the position in which one usually finds a mirror; this showed another +room beyond, containing an exceptionally large, gloriously colored +portrait in pastel—larger than I had ever thought pastels could be. +Except for the pictures both rooms were almost colorless. It was a +brilliant dinner, with a predominating note of ruby; three of the women +wore ruby velvet; and Ellersley was present just back from Arabia, and +Ethel Manton, Lady Hendon and the Duchess of Clynes. I was greeted by +Lady Tarvrille, spoke to Ellersley and Lady Hendon, and then discovered +a lady in a dress of blue and pearls standing quite still under a +picture in the opposite corner of the room and regarding me attentively. +It was Mary. Some man was beside her, a tall grey man with a broad +crimson ribbon, and I think he must have spoken of me to her. It was as +if she had just turned to look at me.</p> + +<p>Constantly during those intervening months I had been thinking of +meeting her. None the less there was a shock, not so much of surprise as +of deferred anticipation. There she stood like something amazingly +forgotten that was now amazingly recalled. She struck me in that brief +crowded instant of recognition as being exactly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> the person she had been +when we had made love in Burnmore Park; there were her eyes, at once +frank and sidelong, the old familiar sweep of her hair, the old familiar +tilt of the chin, the faint humor of her lip, and at the same time she +seemed to be something altogether different from the memories I had +cherished, she was something graver, something inherently more splendid +than they had recorded. Her face lit now with recognition.</p> + +<p>I went across to her at once, with some dull obviousness upon my lips.</p> + +<p>"And so you are back from Africa at last," she said, still unsmiling. "I +saw about you in the papers.... You had a good time."</p> + +<p>"I had great good luck," I replied.</p> + +<p>"I never dreamt when we were boy and girl together that you would make a soldier."</p> + +<p>I think I said that luck made soldiers.</p> + +<p>Then I think we found a difficulty in going on with our talk, and began +a dull little argument that would have been stupidly egotistical on my +part if it hadn't been so obviously merely clumsy, about luck making +soldiers or only finding them out. I saw that she had not intended to +convey any doubt of my military capacity but only of that natural +insensitiveness which is supposed to be needed in a soldier. But our +minds were remote from the words upon our lips. We were like aphasiacs +who say one thing while they intend something altogether different. The +impulse that had brought me across to her had brought me up to a wall of +impossible utterances. It was with a real quality of rescue that our +hostess came between us to tell us our partners at the dinner-table, +and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> to introduce me to mine. "You shall have him again on your other +side," she said to Lady Mary with a charming smile for me, treating me +as if I was a lion in request instead of the mere outsider I was.</p> + +<p>We talked very little at dinner. Both of us I think were quite unequal +to the occasion. Whatever meetings we had imagined, certainly neither of +us had thought of this very possible encounter, a long disconcerting +hour side by side. I began to remember old happenings with an +astonishing vividness; there within six inches of me was the hand I had +kissed; her voice was the same to its lightest shade, her hair flowed +off her forehead with the same amazingly familiar wave. Was she too +remembering? But I perhaps had changed altogether....</p> + +<p>"Why did you go away as you did?" she asked abruptly, when for a moment +we were isolated conversationally. "Why did you never write?"</p> + +<p>She had still that phantom lisp.</p> + +<p>"What else could I do?"</p> + +<p>She turned away from me and answered the man on her left, who had just +addressed her....</p> + +<p>When the mid-dinner change came we talked a little about indifferent +things, making a stiff conversation like a bridge over a torrent of +unspoken intimacies. We discussed something; I think Lady Tarvrille's +flowers and the Cape Flora and gardens. She told me she had a Japanese +garden with three Japanese gardeners. They were wonderful little men to +watch. "Humming-bird gardeners," she called them. "They wear their +native costume."</p> + +<p>"We are your neighbors in Surrey," she said, going off abruptly from +that. "We are quite near to your father."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p><p>She paused with that characteristic effect of deliberation in her +closed lips. Then she added: "I can see the trees behind your father's +house from the window of my room."</p> + +<p>"Yes," I said. "You take all our southward skyline."</p> + +<p>She turned her face to me with the manner of a great lady adding a new +acquaintance to her collection. But her eyes met mine very steadily and +intimately. "Mr. Stratton," she said—it was the first time in her life +she had called me that—"when we come back to Surrey I want you to come +and see me and tell me of all the things you are going to do. Will you?"</p> + +<h3>§ 3</h3> + +<p>That meeting, that revival, must have been late in November or early in +December. Already by that time I had met your mother. I write to you, +little son, not to you as you are now, but to the man you are someday to +be. I write to understand myself, and, so far as I can understand, to +make you understand. So that I want you to go back with me for a time +into the days before your birth, to think not of that dear spirit of +love who broods over you three children, that wise, sure mother who +rules your life, but of a young and slender girl, Rachel More, younger +then than you will be when at last this story comes into your hands. For +unless you think of her as being a girl, if you let your present +knowledge of her fill out this part in our story, you will fail to +understand the proportions of these two in my life. So I shall write of +her here as Rachel More, as if she were someone as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> completely +dissociated from yourself as Lady Mary; as if she were someone in the +story of my life who had as little to do with yours.</p> + +<p>I had met her in September. The house my father lived in is about twelve +miles away from your mother's home at Ridinghanger, and I was taken over +by Percy Restall in his motor-car. Restall had just become a convert to +this new mode of locomotion, and he was very active with a huge, +malignant-looking French car that opened behind, and had a kind of poke +bonnet and all sorts of features that have since disappeared from the +automobile world. He took everyone that he could lay hands upon for +rides,—he called it extending their range, and he called upon everyone +else to show off the car; he was responsible for more introduction and +social admixture in that part of Surrey than had occurred during the +previous century. We punctured in the Ridinghanger drive, Restall did +his own repairs, and so it was we stayed for nearly four hours and +instead of a mere caller I became a familiar friend of the family.</p> + +<p>Your mother then was still not eighteen, a soft white slip of being, +tall, slender, brown-haired and silent, with very still deep dark eyes. +She and your three aunts formed a very gracious group of young women +indeed; Alice then as now the most assertive, with a gay initiative and +a fluent tongue; Molly already a sun-brown gipsy, and Norah still a +pig-tailed thing of lank legs and wild embraces and the pinkest of swift +pink blushes; your uncle Sidney, with his shy lank moodiness, acted the +brotherly part of a foil. There were several stray visitors, young men +and maidens, there were always stray visitors in those days at +Ridinghanger, and your grandmother,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> rosy and bright-eyed, maintained a +gentle flow of creature comforts and kindly but humorous observations. I +do not remember your grandfather on this occasion; probably he wasn't there.</p> + +<p>There was tea, and we played tennis and walked about and occasionally +visited Restall, who was getting dirtier and dirtier, and crosser and +crosser at his repairs, and spreading a continually more remarkable +assemblage of parts and instruments over the grass about him. He looked +at last more like a pitch in the Caledonian market than a decent country +gentleman paying an afternoon call. And then back to more tennis and +more talk. We fell into a discussion of Tariff Reform as we sat taking +tea. Two of the visitor youths were strongly infected by the new +teachings which were overshadowing the outlook of British Imperialism. +Some mean phrase about not conquering Africa for the German bagman, some +ugly turn of thought that at a touch brought down Empire to the level of +a tradesman's advantage, fell from one of them, and stirred me to sudden +indignation. I began to talk of things that had been gathering in my +mind for some time.</p> + +<p>I do not know what I said. It was in the vein of my father's talk no +doubt. But I think that for once I may have been eloquent. And in the +midst of my demand for ideals in politics that were wider and deeper +than artful buying and selling, that looked beyond a vulgar aggression +and a churl's dread and hatred of foreign things, while I struggled to +say how great and noble a thing empire might be, I saw Rachel's face. +This, it was manifest, was a new kind of talk to her. Her dark eyes were +alight with a beautiful enthusiasm for what I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> was trying to say, and +for what in the light of that glowing reception I seemed to be.</p> + +<p>I felt that queer shame one feels when one is taken suddenly at the full +value of one's utmost expressions. I felt as though I had cheated her, +was passing myself off for something as great and splendid as the Empire +of my dreams. It is hard to dissociate oneself from the fine things to +which one aspires. I stopped almost abruptly. Dumbly her eyes bade me go +on, but when I spoke again it was at a lower level....</p> + +<p>That look in Rachel's eyes remained with me. My mind had flashed very +rapidly from the realization of its significance to the thought that if +one could be sure of that, then indeed one could pitch oneself high. +Rachel, I felt, had something for me that I needed profoundly, without +ever having known before that I needed it. She had the supreme gifts of +belief and devotion; in that instant's gleam it seemed she held them out to me.</p> + +<p>Never before in my life had it seemed credible to me that anyone could +give me that, or that I could hope for such a gift of support and +sacrifice. Love as I had known it had been a community and an alliance, +a frank abundant meeting; but this was another kind of love that shone +for an instant and promised, and vanished shyly out of sight as I and +Rachel looked at one another.</p> + +<p>Some interruption occurred. Restall came, I think, blackened by +progress, to drink a cup of tea and negotiate the loan of a kitchen +skewer. A kitchen skewer it appeared was all that was needed to complete +his reconstruction in the avenue. Norah darted off for a kitchen skewer, +while Restall drank. And then there was a drift to tennis, and Rachel +and I were partners. All this time I was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> in a state of startled +attention towards her, full of this astounding impression that something +wonderful and unprecedented had flowed out from her towards my life, +full too of doubts now whether that shining response had ever occurred, +whether some trick of light and my brain had not deceived me. I wanted +tremendously to talk to her, and did not know how to begin in any +serious fashion. Beyond everything I wanted to see again that deep onset of belief....</p> + +<p>"Come again," said your grandmother to me, "come again!" after she had +tried in vain to make Restall stay for an informal supper. I was all for +staying, but Restall said darkly, "There are the Lamps."</p> + +<p>"But they will be all right," said Mrs. More.</p> + +<p>"I can't trust 'em," said Restall, with a deepening gloom. "Not after +<i>that</i>." The motor-car looked self-conscious and uncomfortable, but said +nothing by way of excuse, and Restall took me off in it like one whose +sun has set for ever. "I wouldn't be surprised," said Restall as we went +down the drive, "if the damned thing turned a somersault. It might +do—anything." Those were the brighter days of motoring.</p> + +<p>The next time I went over released from Restall's limitations, and +stayed to a jolly family supper. I found remarkably few obstacles in my +way to a better acquaintance with Rachel. You see I was an entirely +eligible and desirable young man in Mrs. More's eyes....</p> + +<h3>§ 4</h3> + +<p>When I recall these long past emotions again, I am struck by the +profound essential difference between my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> feelings for your mother and +for Mary. They were so different that it seems scarcely rational to me +that they should be called by the same name. Yet each was love, +profoundly deep and sincere. The contrast lies, I think, in our relative +ages, and our relative maturity; that altered the quality of all our +emotions. The one was the love of a man of six-and-twenty, exceptionally +seasoned and experienced and responsible for his years, for a girl still +at school, a girl attractively beautiful, mysterious and unknown to him; +the other was the love of coevals, who had been playmates and intimate +companions, and of whom the woman was certainly as capable and wilful as the man.</p> + +<p>Now it is exceptional for men to love women of their own age, it is the +commoner thing that they should love maidens younger and often much +younger than themselves. This is true more particularly of our own +class; the masculine thirties and forties marry the feminine twenties, +all the prevailing sentiment and usage between the sexes rises naturally +out of that. We treat this seniority as though it were a virile +characteristic; we treat the man as though he were a natural senior, we +expect a weakness, a timid deference, in the girl. I and Mary had loved +one another as two rivers run together on the way to the sea, we had +grown up side by side to the moment when we kissed; but I sought your +mother, I watched her and desired her and chose her, very tenderly and +worshipfully indeed, to be mine. I do not remember that there was any +corresponding intention in my mind to be hers. I do not think that that +idea came in at all. She was something to be won, something playing an +inferior and retreating part. And I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> was artificial in all my attitudes +to her, I thought of what would interest her, what would please her, I +knew from the outset that what she saw in me to rouse that deep, shy +glow of exaltation in her face was illusion, illusion it was my business +to sustain. And so I won her, and long years had to pass, years of +secret loneliness and hidden feelings, of preposterous pretences and +covert perplexities, before we escaped from that crippling tradition of +inequality and looked into one another's eyes with understanding and +forgiveness, a woman and a man.</p> + +<p>I made no great secret of the interest and attraction I found in Rachel, +and the Mores made none of their entire approval of me. I walked over on +the second occasion, and Ridinghanger opened out, a great flower of +genial appreciation that I came alone, hiding nothing of its dawning +perception that it was Rachel in particular I came to see.</p> + +<p>Your grandmother's match-making was as honest as the day. There was the +same salad of family and visitors as on the former afternoon, and this +time I met Freshman, who was destined to marry Alice; there was tea, +tennis, and, by your grandmother's suggestion, a walk to see the sunset +from the crest of the hill. Rachel and I walked across the breezy +moorland together, while I talked and tempted her to talk.</p> + +<p>What, I wonder, did we talk about? English scenery, I think, and African +scenery and the Weald about us, and the long history of the Weald and +its present and future, and at last even a little of politics. I had +never explored the mind of a girl of seventeen before; there was a +surprise in all she knew and a delight in all she didn't know, and about +herself a candor, a fresh simplicity of outlook<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> that was sweeter than +the clear air about us, sweeter than sunshine or the rising song of a +lark. She believed so gallantly and beautifully, she was so perfectly, +unaffectedly and certainly prepared to be a brave and noble person—if +only life would let her. And she hadn't as yet any suspicion that life +might make that difficult....</p> + +<p>I went to Ridinghanger a number of times in the spring and early summer. +I talked a great deal with Rachel, and still I did not make love to her. +It was always in my mind that I would make love to her, the heavens and +earth and all her family were propitious, glowing golden with consent +and approval, I thought she was the most wonderful and beautiful thing +in life, and her eyes, the intonation of her voice, her hurrying color +and a hundred little involuntary signs told me how she quickened at my +coming. But there was a shyness. I loved her as one loves and admires a +white flower or a beautiful child—some stranger's child. I felt that I +might make her afraid of me. I had never before thought that to make +love is a coarse thing. But still at high summer when I met Mary again +no definite thing had been said between myself and Rachel. But we knew, +each of us knew, that somewhere in a world less palpable, in fairyland, +in dreamland, we had met and made our vows.</p> + +<h3>§ 5</h3> + +<p>You see how far my imagination had gone towards readjustment when Mary +returned into my life. You see how strange and distant it was to meet +her again, changed completely into the great lady she had intended<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> to +be, speaking to me with the restrained and practised charm of a woman +who is young and beautiful and prominent and powerful and secure. There +was no immediate sense of shock in that resumption of our broken +intercourse, it seemed to me that night simply that something odd and +curious had occurred. I do not remember how we parted that evening or +whether we even saw each other after dinner was over, but from that hour +forth Mary by insensible degrees resumed her old predominance in my +mind. I woke up in the night and thought about her, and next day I found +myself thinking of her, remembering things out of the past and recalling +and examining every detail of the overnight encounter. How cold and +ineffective we had been, both of us! We had been like people resuming a +disused and partially forgotten language. Had she changed towards me? +Did she indeed want to see me again or was that invitation a mere +demonstration of how entirely unimportant seeing me or not seeing me had become?</p> + +<p>Then I would find myself thinking with the utmost particularity of her +face. Had it changed at all? Was it altogether changed? I seemed to have +forgotten everything and remembered everything; that peculiar slight +thickness of her eyelids that gave her eyes their tenderness, that light +firmness of her lips. Of course she would want to talk to me, as now I +perceived I wanted to talk to her.</p> + +<p>Was I in love with her still? It seemed to me then that I was not. It +had not been that hesitating fierceness, that pride and demand and +doubt, which is passionate love, that had made all my sensations strange +to me as I sat beside her. It had been something larger and finer,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> +something great and embracing, a return to fellowship. Here beside me, +veiled from me only by our transient embarrassment and the tarnish of +separation and silences, was the one person who had ever broken down the +crust of shy insincerity which is so incurably my characteristic and +talked intimately of the inmost things of life to me. I discovered now +for the first time how intense had been my loneliness for the past five +years. I discovered now that through all those years I had been hungry +for such talk as Mary alone could give me. My mind was filled with talk, +filled with things I desired to say to her; that chaos began to take on +a multitudinous expression at the touch of her spirit. I began to +imagine conversations with her, to prepare reports for her of those new +worlds of sensation and activity I had discovered since that boyish parting.</p> + +<p>But when at last that talk came it was altogether different from any of +those I had invented.</p> + +<p>She wrote to me when she came down into Surrey and I walked over to +Martens the next afternoon. I found her in her own sitting-room, a +beautiful characteristic apartment with tall French windows hung with +blue curtains, a large writing-desk and a great litter of books. The +room gave upon a broad sunlit terrace with a balustrading of yellowish +stone, on which there stood great oleanders. Beyond was a flower garden +and then the dark shadows of cypresses. She was standing as I came in to +her, as though she had seen me coming across the lawns and had been +awaiting my entrance. "I thought you might come to-day," she said, and +told the manservant to deny her to other callers. Again she produced +that queer effect of being at once altogether the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> same and altogether +different from the Mary I had known. "Justin," she said, "is in Paris. +He comes back on Friday." I saw then that the change lay in her bearing, +that for the easy confidence of the girl she had now the deliberate +dignity and control of a married woman—a very splendidly and spaciously +married woman. Her manner had been purged of impulse. Since we had met +she had stood, the mistress of great houses, and had dealt with +thousands of people.</p> + +<p>"You walked over to me?"</p> + +<p>"I walked," I said. "It is nearly a straight path. You know it?"</p> + +<p>"You came over the heather beyond our pine wood," she confirmed. And +then I think we talked some polite unrealities about Surrey scenery and +the weather. It was so formal that by a common impulse we let the topic +suddenly die. We stood through a pause, a hesitation. Were we indeed to +go on at that altitude of cold civility? She turned to the window as if +the view was to serve again.</p> + +<p>"Sit down," she said and dropped into a chair against the light, looking +away from me across the wide green space of afternoon sunshine. I sat +down on a little sofa, at a loss also.</p> + +<p>"And so," she said, turning her face to me suddenly, "you come back into +my life." And I was amazed to see that the brightness of her eyes was +tears. "We've lived—five years."</p> + +<p>"You," I said clumsily, "have done all sorts of things. I hear of +you—patronizing young artists—organizing experiments in village education."</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, "I've done all sorts of things. One<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> has to. Forced, +unreal things for the most part. You I expect have done—all sorts of +things also.... But yours have been real things...."</p> + +<p>"All things," I remarked sententiously, "are real. And all of them a +little unreal. South Africa has been wonderful. And now it is all over +one doubts if it really happened. Like that incredulous mood after a +storm of passion."</p> + +<p>"You've come back for good?"</p> + +<p>"For good. I want to do things in England."</p> + +<p>"Politics?"</p> + +<p>"If I can get into that."</p> + +<p>Again a pause. There came the characteristic moment of deliberation that +I remembered so well.</p> + +<p>"I never meant you," she said, "to go away.... You could have written. +You never answered the notes I sent."</p> + +<p>"I was frantic," I said, "with loss and jealousy. I wanted to forget."</p> + +<p>"And you forgot?"</p> + +<p>"I did my best."</p> + +<p>"I did my best," said Mary. "And now—— Have you forgotten?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing."</p> + +<p>"Nor I. I thought I had. Until I saw you again. I've thought of you +endlessly. I've wanted to talk to you. We had a way of talking together. +But you went away. You turned your back as though all that was +nothing—not worth having. You—you drove home my marriage, Stephen. You +made me know what a thing of sex a woman is to a man—and how little else...."</p> + +<p>She paused.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p><p>"You see," I said slowly. "You had made me, as people say, in love with +you.... I don't know—if you remember everything...."</p> + +<p>She looked me in the eyes for a moment.</p> + +<p>"I hadn't been fair," she said with an abrupt abandonment of accusation. +"But you know, Stephen, that night—— I meant to explain. And +afterwards.... Things sometimes go as one hasn't expected them to go, +even the things one has planned to say. I suppose—I treated +you—disgustingly."</p> + +<p>I protested.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said. "I treated you as I did—and I thought you would stand +it. I <i>knew</i>, I knew then as well as you do now that male to my female +you wouldn't stand it, but somehow—I thought there were other things. +Things that could override that...."</p> + +<p>"Not," I said, "for a boy of one-and-twenty."</p> + +<p>"But in a man of twenty-six?"</p> + +<p>I weighed the question. "Things are different," I said, and then, "Yes. +Anyhow now—if I may come back penitent,—to a friendship."</p> + +<p>We looked at one another gravely. Faintly in our ears sounded the music +of past and distant things. We pretended to hear nothing of that, tried +honestly to hear nothing of it. I had not remembered how steadfast and +quiet her face could be. "Yes," she said, "a friendship."</p> + +<p>"I've always had you in my mind, Stephen," she said. "When I saw I +couldn't marry you, it seemed to me I had better marry and be free of +any further hope. I thought we could get over that. 'Let's get it over,' +I thought. Now—at any rate—we have got over that." Her eyes verified +her words a little doubtfully. "And we can talk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> and you can tell me of +your life, and the things you want to do that make life worth living. +Oh! life has been <i>stupid</i> without you, Stephen, large and expensive and +aimless....Tell me of your politics. They say—Justin told me—you think +of parliament?"</p> + +<p>"I want to do that. I have been thinking—— In fact I am going to +stand." I found myself hesitating on the verge of phrases in the quality +of a review article. It was too unreal for her presence. And yet it was +this she seemed to want from me. "This," I said, "is a phase of great +opportunities. The war has stirred the Empire to a sense of itself, to a +sense of what it might be. Of course this Tariff Reform row is a squalid +nuisance; it may kill out all the fine spirit again before anything is +done. Everything will become a haggle, a chaffering of figures.... All +the more reason why we should try and save things from the commercial +traveller. If the Empire is anything at all, it is something infinitely +more than a combination in restraint of trade...."</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said. "And you want to take that line. The high line."</p> + +<p>"If one does not take the high line," I said, "what does one go into +politics for?"</p> + +<p>"Stephen," she smiled, "you haven't lost a sort of simplicity—— People +go into politics because it looks important, because other people go +into politics, because they can get titles and a sense of influence +and—other things. And then there are quarrels, old grudges to serve."</p> + +<p>"These are roughnesses of the surface."</p> + +<p>"Old Stephen!" she cried with the note of a mother. "They will worry you +in politics."</p> + +<p>I laughed. "Perhaps I'm not altogether so simple."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p><p>"Oh! you'll get through. You have a way of going on. But I shall have +to watch over you. I see I shall have to watch over you. Tell me of the +things you mean to do. Where are you standing?"</p> + +<p>I began to tell her a little disjointedly of the probabilities of my +Yorkshire constituency....</p> + +<h3>§ 6</h3> + +<p>I have a vivid vignette in my memory of my return to my father's house, +down through the pine woods and by the winding path across the deep +valley that separated our two ridges. I was thinking of Mary and nothing +but Mary in all the world and of the friendly sweetness of her eyes and +the clean strong sharpness of her voice. That sweet white figure of +Rachel that had been creeping to an ascendancy in my imagination was +moonlight to her sunrise. I knew it was Mary I loved and had always +loved. I wanted passionately to be as she desired, the friend she +demanded, that intimate brother and confederate, but all my heart cried +out for her, cried out for her altogether.</p> + +<p>I would be her friend, I repeated to myself, I would be her friend. I +would talk to her often, plan with her, work with her. I could put my +meanings into her life and she should throw her beauty over mine. I +began already to dream of the talk of to-morrow's meeting....</p> + +<h3>§ 7</h3> + +<p>And now let me go on to tell at once the thing that changed life for +both of us altogether, that turned us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> out of the courses that seemed +set for us, our spacious, successful and divergent ways, she to the +tragedy of her death and I from all the prospects of the public career +that lay before me to the work that now, toilsomely, inadequately and +blunderingly enough, I do. It was to pierce and slash away the +appearances of life for me, it was to open my way to infinite +disillusionment, and unsuspected truths. Within a few weeks of our +second meeting Mary and I were passionately in love with one another; we +had indeed become lovers. The arrested attractions of our former love +released again, drew us inevitably to that. We tried to seem outwardly +only friends, with this hot glow between us. Our tormented secret was +half discovered and half betrayed itself. There followed a tragi-comedy +of hesitations and disunited struggle. Within four months the crisis of +our two lives was past....</p> + +<p>It is not within my purpose to tell you, my son, of the particular +events, the particular comings and goings, the chance words, the chance +meetings, the fatal momentary misunderstandings that occurred between +us. I want to tell of something more general than that. This +misadventure is in our strain. It is our inheritance. It is a +possibility in the inheritance of all honest and emotional men and +women. There are no doubt people altogether cynical and adventurous to +whom these passions and desires are at once controllable and permissible +indulgences without any radiation of consequences, a secret and +detachable part of life, and there may be people of convictions so +strong and simple that these disturbances are eliminated, but we +Strattons are of a quality neither so low nor so high, we stoop and +rise, we are not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> convinced about our standards, and for many +generations to come, with us and with such people as the Christians, and +indeed with most of our sort of people, we shall be equally desirous of +free and intimate friendship and prone to blaze into passion and +disaster at that proximity.</p> + +<p>This is one of the essential riddles in the adaptation of such human +beings as ourselves to that greater civilized state of which I dream. It +is the gist of my story. It is one of the two essential riddles that +confront our kind. The servitude of sex and the servitude of labor are +the twin conditions upon which human society rests to-day, the two +limitations upon its progress towards a greater social order, to that +greater community, those uplands of light and happy freedom, towards +which that Being who was my father yesterday, who thinks in myself +to-day, and who will be you to-morrow and your sons after you, by his +very nature urges and must continue to urge the life of mankind. The +story of myself and Mary is a mere incident in that gigantic, scarce +conscious effort to get clear of toils and confusions and encumbrances, +and have our way with life. We are like little figures, dots ascendant +upon a vast hillside; I take up our intimacy for an instant and hold it +under a lens for you. I become more than myself then, and Mary stands +for innumerable women. It happened yesterday, and it is just a part of +that same history that made Edmond Stratton of the Hays elope with +Charlotte Anstruther and get himself run through the body at Haddington +two hundred years ago, which drove the Laidlaw-Christians to Virginia in +'45, gave Stratton Street to the moneylenders when George IV. was +Regent, and broke the heart of Margaret Stratton in the days when +Charles the First was king. With<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> our individual variations and under +changed conditions the old desires and impulses stirred us, the old +antagonisms confronted us, the old difficulties and sloughs and +impassable places baffled us. There are times when I think of my history +among all those widespread repeated histories, until it seems to me that +the human Lover is like a creature who struggles for ever through a +thicket without an end....</p> + +<p>There are no universal laws of affection and desire, but it is +manifestly true that for the most of us free talk, intimate association, +and any real fellowship between men and women turns with an extreme +readiness to love. And that being so it follows that under existing +conditions the unrestricted meeting and companionship of men and women +in society is a monstrous sham, a merely dangerous pretence of +encounters. The safe reality beneath those liberal appearances is that a +woman must be content with the easy friendship of other women and of one +man only, letting a superficial friendship towards all other men veil +impassable abysses of separation, and a man must in the same way have +one sole woman intimate. To all other women he must be a little blind, a +little deaf, politely inattentive. He must respect the transparent, +intangible, tacit purdah about them, respect it but never allude to it. +To me that is an intolerable state of affairs, but it is reality. If you +live in the spirit of any other understanding you will court social +disaster. I suppose it is a particularly intolerable state of affairs to +us Strattons because it is in our nature to want things to seem what +they are. That translucent yet impassible purdah outrages our veracity. +And it is plain to me that our social order cannot stand and is not +standing the tensions it creates.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> The convention that passions and +emotions are absent when they are palpably present broke down between +Mary and myself, as it breaks down in a thousand other cases, as it +breaks down everywhere. Our social life is honeycombed and rotten with +secret hidden relationships. The rigid, the obtuse and the +unscrupulously cunning escape; the honest passion sooner or later flares +out and destroys.... Here is a difficulty that no bullying imposition of +arbitrary rules on the one hand nor any reckless abandonment of law on +the other, can solve. Humanity has yet to find its method in sexual +things; it has to discover the use and the limitation of jealousy. And +before it can even begin to attempt to find, it has to cease its present +timid secret groping in shame and darkness and turn on the light of +knowledge. None of us knows much and most of us do not even know what is known.</p> + +<h3>§ 8</h3> + +<p>The house is very quiet to-day. It is your mother's birthday, and you +three children have gone with her and Mademoiselle Potin into the forest +to celebrate the occasion. Presently I shall join you. The sunlit +garden, with its tall dreaming lilies against the trellised vines upon +the wall, the cedars and the grassy space about the sundial, have that +distinguished stillness, that definite, palpable and almost outlined +emptiness which is so to speak your negative presence. It is like a +sheet of sunlit colored paper out of which your figures have been cut. +There is a commotion of birds in the jasmine, and your Barker reclines +with an infinite tranquillity, a masterless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> dog, upon the lawn. I take +up this writing again after an interval of some weeks. I have been in +Paris, attending the Sabotage Conference, and dealing with those +intricate puzzles of justice and discipline and the secret sources of +contentment that have to be solved if sabotage is ever to vanish from +labor struggles again. I think a few points have been made clearer in +that curious riddle of reconciliations....</p> + +<p>Now I resume this story. I turn over the sheets that were written and +finished before my departure, and come to the notes for what is to follow.</p> + +<p>Perhaps my days of work in Paris have carried my mind on beyond the +point at which I left the narrative. I sit as it were among a pile of +memories that are now all disordered and mixed up together, their proper +sequences and connexions lost. I cannot trace the phases through which +our mutual passion rode up through the restrained and dignified +intentions of our friendship. But I know that presently we were in a +white heat of desire. There must have been passages that I now +altogether forget, moments of tense transition. I am more and more +convinced that our swiftest, intensest, mental changes leave far less +vivid memories than impressions one receives when one is comparatively +passive. And of this phase in my life of which I am now telling I have +clear memories of a time when we talked like brother and sister, or like +angels if you will, and hard upon that came a time when we were planning +in all our moments together how and when and where we might meet in +secret and meet again.</p> + +<p>Things drift with a phantom-like uncertainty into my mind and pass +again; those fierce motives of our <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>transition have lost now all stable +form and feature, but I believe there was a curious tormenting urgency +in our jealousy of those others, of Justin on my part and of Rachel on +hers. At first we had talked quite freely about Rachel, had discussed my +conceivable marriage with her. We had indeed a little forced that topic, +as if to reassure ourselves of the honesty of our new footing. But the +force that urged us nearer pervaded all our being. It was hard enough to +be barred apart, to snatch back our hands from touching, to avoid each +other's eyes, to hurry a little out of the dusk towards the lit house +and its protecting servants, but the constant presence and suggestion of +those others from whom there were no bars, or towards whom bars could be +abolished at a look, at an impulse, exacerbated that hardship, roused a +fierce insatiable spirit of revolt within us. At times we grew angry +with each other's formalism, came near to quarrelling....</p> + +<p>I associate these moods with the golden stillnesses of a prolonged and +sultry autumn, and with slowly falling leaves....</p> + +<p>I will not tell you how that step was taken, it matters very little to +my story, nor will I tell which one of us it was first broke the +barriers down.</p> + +<h3>§ 9</h3> + +<p>But I do want to tell you certain things. I want to tell you them +because they are things that affect you closely. There was almost from +the first a difference between Mary and myself in this, that I wanted to +be public about our love, I wanted to be open and defiant,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> and +she—hesitated. She wanted to be secret. She wanted to keep me; I +sometimes think that she was moved to become my mistress because she +wanted to keep me. But she also wanted to keep everything else in her +life,—her position, her ample freedoms and wealth and dignity. Our love +was to be a secret cavern, Endymion's cave. I was ready enough to do +what I could to please her, and for a time I served that secrecy, lied, +pretended, agreed to false addresses, assumed names, and tangled myself +in a net-work of furtive proceedings. These are things that poison and +consume honest love.</p> + +<p>You will learn soon enough as you grow to be a man that beneath the +respectable assumptions of our social life there is an endless intricate +world of subterfuge and hidden and perverted passion,—for all passion +that wears a mask is perversion—and that thousands of people of our +sort are hiding and shamming about their desires, their gratifications, +their true relationships. I do not mean the open offenders, for they are +mostly honest and gallant people, but the men and women who sin in the +shadows, the people who are not clean and scandalous, but immoral and +respectable. This underworld is not for us. I wish that I who have +looked into it could in some way inoculate you now against the +repetition of my misadventure. We Strattons are daylight men, and if I +work now for widened facilities of divorce, for an organized freedom and +independence of women, and greater breadth of toleration, it is because +I know in my own person the degradations, the falsity, the bitterness, +that can lurk beneath the inflexible pretentions of the established code to-day.</p> + +<p>And I want to tell you too of something altogether<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> unforeseen that +happened to us, and that was this, that from the day that passion +carried us and we became in the narrower sense of the word lovers, all +the wider interests we had in common, our political intentions, our +impersonal schemes, began to pass out of our intercourse. Our situation +closed upon us like a trap and hid the sky. Something more intense had +our attention by the feet, and we used our wings no more. I do not think +that we even had the real happiness and beauty and delight of one +another. Because, I tell you, there is no light upon kiss or embrace +that is not done with pride. I do not know why it should be so, but +people of our race and quality are a little ashamed of mere +gratification in love. Always we seem in my memory to have been +whispering with flushed cheeks, and discussing +interminably—<i>situation</i>. Had something betrayed us, might something +betray, was this or that sufficiently cunning? Had we perhaps left a +footmark or failed to burn a note, was the second footman who was +detailed as my valet even now pausing astonished in the brushing of my +clothes with our crumpled secret in his hand? Between myself and the +clear vision of this world about me this infernal net-work of +precautions spread like a veil.</p> + +<p>And it was not only a matter of concealments but of positive deceptions. +The figure of Justin comes back to me. It is a curious thing that in +spite of our bitter antagonism and the savage jealousy we were to feel +for one another, there has always been, and there remains now in my +thought of him, a certain liking, a regret at our opposition, a quality +of friendliness. His broad face, which the common impression and the +caricaturist make so powerful and eagle-like, is really not a brutal or +heavy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> face at all. It is no doubt aquiline, after the fashion of an +eagle-owl, the mouth and chin broad and the eyes very far apart, but +there is a minute puckering of the brows which combines with that queer +streak of brown discoloration that runs across his cheek and into the +white of his eyes, to give something faintly plaintive and pitiful to +his expression, an effect enhanced by the dark softness of his eyes. +They are gentle eyes; it is absurd to suppose them the eyes of a +violently forceful man. And indeed they do not belie Justin. It is not +by vehemence or pressure that his wealth and power have been attained; +it is by the sheer detailed abundance of his mind. In that queer big +brain of his there is something of the calculating boy and not a little +of the chess champion; he has a kind of financial gift, he must be rich, +and grows richer. What else is there for him to do? How many times have +I not tried to glance carelessly at his face and scrutinize that look in +his eyes, and ask myself was that his usual look, or was it lit by an +instinctive jealousy? Did he perhaps begin to suspect? I had become a +persistent visitor in the house, he might well be jealous of such minor +favors as she showed me, for with him she talked but little and shared +no thoughts. His manner with her was tinctured by an habituated despair. +They were extraordinarily polite and friendly with one another....</p> + +<p>I tried a hundred sophistications of my treachery to him. I assured +myself that a modern woman is mistress and owner of herself; no chattel, +and so forth. But he did not think so, and neither she nor I were +behaving as though we thought so. In innumerable little things we were +doing our best tacitly to reassure him. And so you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> see me shaking hands +with this man, affecting an interest in his topics and affairs, staying +in his house, eating his food and drinking his wine, that I might be the +nearer to his wife. It is not the first time that has been done in the +world, there are esoteric codes to justify all I did; I perceive there +are types of men to whom such relationships are attractive by the very +reason of their illicit excitement. But we Strattons are honest people, +there is no secretive passion in our blood; this is no game for us; +never you risk the playing of it, little son, big son as you will be +when you read this story. Perhaps, but I hope indeed not, this may reach +you too late to be a warning, come to you in mid-situation. Go through +with it then, inheritor of mine, and keep as clean as you can, follow +the warped honor that is still left to you—and if you can, come out of the tangle....</p> + +<p>It is not only Justin haunts the memories of that furtive time, but +Rachel More. I see her still as she was then, a straight, white-dressed +girl with big brown eyes that regarded me now with perplexity, now with +a faint dismay. I still went over to see her, and my manner had changed. +I had nothing to say to her now and everything to hide. Everything +between us hung arrested, and nothing could occur to make an end.</p> + +<p>I told Mary I must cease my visits to the Mores. I tried to make her +feel my own sense of an accumulating cruelty to Rachel. "But it explains +away so much," she said. "If you stop going there—everyone will talk. +Everything will swing round—and point here."</p> + +<p>"Rachel!" I protested.</p> + +<p>"No," she said, overbearing me, "you must keep on going to Ridinghanger. +You must. You must."...</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p><p>For a long time I had said nothing to Mary of the burthen these +pretences were to me; it had seemed a monstrous ingratitude to find the +slightest flaw in the passionate love and intimacy she had given me. But +at last the divergence of our purposes became manifest to us both. A +time came when we perceived it clearly and discussed it openly. I have +still a vivid recollection of a golden October day when we had met at +the edge of the plantation that overlooks Bearshill. She had come +through the gardens into the pine-wood, and I had jumped the rusty +banked stream that runs down the Bearshill valley, and clambered the +barbed wire fence. I came up the steep bank and through a fringe of +furze to where she stood in the shade; I kissed her hand, and discovered +mine had been torn open by one of the thorns of the wire and was +dripping blood. "Mind my dress," she said, and we laughed as we kissed +with my arm held aloof.</p> + +<p>We sat down side by side upon the warm pine needles that carpeted the +sand, and she made a mothering fuss about my petty wound, and bound it +in my handkerchief. We looked together across the steep gorge at the +blue ridge of trees beyond. "Anyone," she said, "might have seen us this minute."</p> + +<p>"I never thought," I said, and moved a foot away from her.</p> + +<p>"It's too late if they have," said she, pulling me back to her. "Over +beyond there, that must be Hindhead. Someone with a telescope——!"</p> + +<p>"That's less credible," I said. And it occurred to me that the grey +stretch of downland beyond must be the ridge to the west of Ridinghanger.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p><p>"I wish," I said, "it didn't matter. I wish I could come and go and +fear nobody—and spend long hours with you—oh! at our ease."</p> + +<p>"Now," she said, "we spend short hours. I wonder if I would like—— +It's no good, Stephen, letting ourselves think of things that can't be. +Here we are. Kiss that hand, my lover, there, just between wrist and +thumb—the little hollow. Yes, exactly there."</p> + +<p>But thoughts had been set going in my mind. "Why," I said presently, +"should you always speak of things that can't be? Why should we take all +this as if it were all that there could be? I want long hours. I want +you to shine all the day through on my life. Now, dear, it's as if the +sun was shown ever and again, and then put back behind an eclipse. I +come to you half-blinded, I go away unsatisfied. All the world is dark +in between, and little phantom <i>yous</i> float over it."</p> + +<p>She rested her cheek on her hand and looked at me gravely.</p> + +<p>"You are hard to satisfy, brother heart," she said.</p> + +<p>"I live in snatches of brightness and all the rest of life is waiting +and thinking and waiting."</p> + +<p>"What else is there? Haven't we the brightness?"</p> + +<p>"I want you," I said. "I want <i>you</i> altogether."</p> + +<p>"After so much?"</p> + +<p>"I want the more. Mary, I want you to come away with me. No, listen! +this life—don't think I'm not full of the beauty, the happiness, the +wonder—— But it's a suspense. It doesn't go on. It's just a dawn, +dear, a splendid dawn, a glory of color and brightness and freshness and +hope, and—no sun rises. I want the day. Everything else has stopped +with me and stopped with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> you. I do nothing with my politics now,—I +pretend. I have no plans in life except plans for meeting you and again +meeting you. I want to go on, I want to go on with you and take up work +and the world again—you beside me. I want you to come out of all this +life—out of all this immense wealthy emptiness of yours——"</p> + +<p>"Stop," she said, "and listen to me, Stephen."</p> + +<p>She paused with her lips pressed together, her brows a little knit.</p> + +<p>"I won't," she said slowly. "I am going on like this. I and you are +going to be lovers—just as we are lovers now—secret lovers. And I am +going to help you in all your projects, hold your party together—for +you will have a party—my house shall be its centre——"</p> + +<p>"But Justin——"</p> + +<p>"He takes no interest in politics. He will do what pleases me."</p> + +<p>I took some time before I answered. "You don't understand how men feel," I said.</p> + +<p>She waited for what else I had to say. I lay prone, and gathered +together and shaped and reshaped a little heap of pine needles. "You +see—— I can't do it. I want you."</p> + +<p>She gripped a handful of my hair, and tugged hard between each word. +"Haven't you got me?" she asked between her teeth. "What more <i>could</i> you have?"</p> + +<p>"I want you openly."</p> + +<p>She folded her arms beneath her. "<i>No</i>," she said.</p> + +<p>For a little while neither of us spoke.</p> + +<p>"It's the trouble of the deceit?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"It's—the deceit."</p> + +<p>"We can stop all that," she said.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p><p>I looked up at her face enquiringly.</p> + +<p>"By having no more to hide," she said, with her eyes full of tears. "If +it's nothing to you——"</p> + +<p>"It's everything to me," I said. "It's overwhelming me. Oh Mary, heart +of my life, my dear, come out of this! Come with me, come and be my +wife, make a clean thing of it! Let me take you away, and then let me +marry you. I know it's asking you—to come to a sort of poverty——"</p> + +<p>But Mary's blue eyes were alight with anger. "Isn't it a clean thing +<i>now</i>, Stephen?" she was crying. "Do you mean that you and I aren't +clean now? Will you never understand?"</p> + +<p>"Oh clean," I answered, "clean as Eve in the garden. But can we keep +clean? Won't the shadow of our falsehoods darken at all? Come out of it +while we are still clean. Come with me. Justin will divorce you. We can +stay abroad and marry and come back."</p> + +<p>Mary was kneeling up now with her hands upon her knees.</p> + +<p>"Come back to what?" she cried. "Parliament?—after that? You <i>boy!</i> you +sentimentalist! you—you duffer! Do you think I'd let you do it for your +own sake even? Do you think I want you—spoilt? We should come back to +mope outside of things, we should come back to fret our lives out. I +won't do it, Stephen, I won't do it. End <i>this</i> if you like, break our +hearts and throw them away and go on without them, but to turn all our +lives into a scandal, to give ourselves over to the mean and the +malicious, a prey to old women—and <i>you</i> damned out of everything! A +man partly forgiven! A man who went wrong for a woman! <i>No!</i>"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p><p>She sprang lightly to her feet and stood over me as I knelt before her. +"And I came here to be made love to, Stephen! I came here to be loved! +And you talk that nonsense! You remind me of everything—wretched!"</p> + +<p>She lifted up her hands and then struck down with them, a gesture of +infinite impatience. Her face as she bent to me was alive with a +friendly anger, her eyes suddenly dark. "You <i>duffer</i>!" she repeated....</p> + +<h3>§ 10</h3> + +<p>Discovery followed hard upon that meeting. I had come over to Martens +with some book as a pretext; the man had told me that Lady Mary awaited +me in her blue parlor, and I went unannounced through the long gallery +to find her. The door stood a little ajar, I opened it softly so that +she did not hear me, and saw her seated at her writing-desk with her +back to me, and her cheek and eyebrow just touched by the sunlight from +the open terrace window. She was writing a note. I put my hand about her +shoulder, and bent to kiss her as she turned. Then as she came round to +me she started, was for a moment rigid, then thrust me from her and rose +very slowly to her feet.</p> + +<p>I turned to the window and became as rigid, facing Justin. He was +standing on the terrace, staring at us, with a face that looked stupid +and inexpressive and—very white. The sky behind him, appropriately +enough, was full of the tattered inky onset of a thunderstorm. So we +remained for a lengthy second perhaps, a trite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> <i>tableau vivant</i>. We two +seemed to hang helplessly upon Justin, and he was the first of us to move.</p> + +<p>He made a queer, incomplete gesture with one hand, as if he wanted to +undo the top button of his waistcoat and then thought better of it. He +came very slowly into the room. When he spoke his voice had neither rage +nor denunciation in it. It was simply conversational. "I felt this was +going on," he said. And then to his wife with the note of one who +remarks dispassionately on a peculiar situation. "Yet somehow it seemed +wrong and unnatural to think such a thing of you."</p> + +<p>His face took on something of the vexed look of a child who struggles +with a difficult task. "Do you mind," he said to me, "will you go?"</p> + +<p>I took a moment for my reply. "No," I said. "Since you know at last—— +There are things to be said."</p> + +<p>"No," said Mary, suddenly. "Go! Let me talk to him."</p> + +<p>"No," I said, "my place is here beside you."</p> + +<p>He seemed not to hear me. His eyes were fixed on Mary. He seemed to +think he had dismissed me, and that I was no longer there. His mind was +not concerned about me, but about her. He spoke as though what he said +had been in his mind, and no doubt it had been in his mind, for many +days. "I didn't deserve this," he said to her. "I've tried to make your +life as you wanted your life. It's astonishing to find—I haven't. You +gave no sign. I suppose I ought to have felt all this happening, but it +comes upon me surprisingly. I don't know what I'm to do." He became +aware of me again. "And <i>you</i>!" he said. "What am I to do? To think that +you—while I have been treating her like some sacred thing...."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p><p>The color was creeping back into his face. Indignation had come into +his voice, the first yellow lights of rising jealousy showed in his eyes.</p> + +<p>"Stephen," I heard Mary say, "will you leave me to talk to my husband?"</p> + +<p>"There is only one thing to do," I said. "What is the need of talking? +We two are lovers, Justin." I spoke to both of them. "We two must go out +into the world, go out now together. This marriage of yours—it's no +marriage, no real marriage...."</p> + +<p>I think I said that. I seem to remember saying that; perhaps with other +phrases that I have forgotten. But my memory of what we said and did, +which is so photographically clear of these earlier passages that I +believe I can answer for every gesture and nearly every word that I have +set down, becomes suddenly turbid. The high tension of our first +confrontation was giving place to a flood of emotional impulse. We all +became eager to talk, to impose interpretations and justifications upon +our situation. We all three became divided between our partial attention +to one another and our urgent necessity to keep hold of our points of +view. That I think is the common tragedy of almost all human conflicts, +that rapid breakdown from the first cool apprehension of an issue to +heat, confusion, and insistence. I do not know if indeed we raised our +voices, but my memory has an effect of raised voices, and when at last I +went out of the house it seemed to me that the men-servants in the hall +were as hushed as beasts before a thunderstorm, and all of them quite +fully aware of the tremendous catastrophe that had come to Martens. And +moreover, as I recalled afterwards with astonishment, I went past them +and out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> into the driving rain unprotected, and not one of them stirred +a serviceable hand....</p> + +<p>What was it we said? I have a vivid sense of declaring not once only but +several times that Mary and I were husband and wife "in the sight of +God." I was full of the idea that now she must inevitably be mine. I +must have spoken to Justin at times as if he had come merely to confirm +my view of the long dispute there had been between us. For a while my +mind resisted his extraordinary attitude that the matter lay between him +and Mary, that I was in some way an interloper. It seemed to me there +was nothing for it now but that Mary should stand by my side and face +Justin with the world behind him. I remember my confused sense that +presently she and I would have to go straight out of Martens. And she +was wearing a tea-gown, easy and open, and the flimsiest of slippers. +Any packing, any change of clothing, struck me as an incredible +anti-climax. I had visions of our going forth, hand in hand. Outside was +the soughing of a coming storm, a chill wind drove a tumult of leaves +along the terrace, the door slammed and yawned open again, and then came +the rain. Justin, I remember, still talking, closed the door. I tried to +think how I could get to the station five miles away, and then what we +could do in London. We should seem rather odd visitors to an +hotel—without luggage. All this was behind my valiant demand that she +should come with me, and come now.</p> + +<p>And then my mind was lanced by the thin edge of realization that she did +not intend to come now, and that Justin was resolved she should not do +so. After the first shock of finding herself discovered she had stood +pale but uncowed before her bureau, with her eyes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> rather on him than on +me. Her hands, I think, were behind her upon the edge of the writing +flap, and she was a little leaning upon them. She had the watchful alert +expression of one who faces an unanticipated but by no means +overwhelming situation. She cast a remark to me. "But I do not want to +come with you," she said. "I have told you I do not want to come with +you." All her mind seemed concentrated upon what she should do with +Justin. "You must send him away," he was saying. "It's an abominable +thing. It must stop. How can you dream it should go on?"</p> + +<p>"But you said when you married me I should be free, I should own myself! +You gave me this house——"</p> + +<p>"What! To disgrace myself!"</p> + +<p>I was moved to intervene.</p> + +<p>"You must choose between us, Mary," I cried. "It is impossible you +should stay here! You cannot stay here."</p> + +<p>She turned upon me, a creature at bay. "Why shouldn't I stay here? Why +must I choose between two men? I want neither of you. I want myself. I'm +not a thing. I'm a human being. I'm not your thing, Justin—nor yours, +Stephen. Yet you want to quarrel over me—like two dogs over a bone. I +am going to stay here—in my house! It's my house. I made it. Every room +of it is full of me. Here I am!"</p> + +<p>She stood there making this magnificently extravagant claim; her eyes +blazing blue, her hair a little dishevelled with a strand across her cheek.</p> + +<p>Both I and Justin spoke together, and then turned in helpless anger upon +one another. I remember that with the clumsiest of weak gestures he bade +me begone from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> the house, and that I with a now rather deflated +rhetoric answered I would go only with Mary at my side. And there she +stood, less like a desperate rebel against the most fundamental social +relations than an indignant princess, and demanded of us and high +heaven, "Why should I be fought for? Why should I be fought for?"</p> + +<p>And then abruptly she gathered her skirts in her hand and advanced. +"Open that door, Stephen," she said, and was gone with a silken whirl +and rustle from our presence.</p> + +<p>We were left regarding one another with blank expressions.</p> + +<p>Her departure had torn the substance out of our dispute. For the moment +we found ourselves left with a new situation for which there is as yet +no tradition of behavior. We had become actors in that new human comedy +that is just beginning in the world, that comedy in which men still +dispute the possession and the manner of the possession of woman +according to the ancient rules, while they on their side are determining +ever more definitely that they will not be possessed....</p> + +<p>We had little to say to one another,—mere echoes and endorsements of +our recent declarations. "She must come to me," said I. And he, "I will +save her from that at any cost."</p> + +<p>That was the gist of our confrontation, and then I turned about and +walked along the gallery towards the entrance, with Justin following me +slowly. I was full of the wrath of baffled heroics; I turned towards him +with something of a gesture. Down the perspective of the white and empty +gallery he appeared small and perplexed. The panes of the tall French +windows were slashed with rain....</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p> + +<h3>§ 11</h3> + +<p>I forget now absolutely what I may have expected to happen next. I +cannot remember my return to my father's house that day. But I know that +what did happen was the most unanticipated and incredible experience of +my life. It was as if the whole world of mankind were suddenly to turn +upside down and people go about calmly in positions of complete +inversion. I had a note from Mary on the morning after this discovery +that indeed dealt with that but was otherwise not very different from +endless notes I had received before our crisis. It was destroyed, so +that I do not know its exact text now, but it did not add anything +material to the situation, or give me the faintest shadow to intimate +what crept close upon us both. She repeated her strangely thwarting +refusal to come away and live with me. She seemed indignant that we had +been discovered—as though Justin had indulged in an excess of existence +by discovering us. I completed and despatched to her a long letter I had +already been writing overnight in which I made clear the hopeless +impossibility of her attitude, vowed all my life and strength to her, +tried to make some picture of the happiness that was possible for us +together, sketched as definitely as I could when and where we might meet +and whither we might go. It must have made an extraordinary jumble of +protest, persuasion and practicality. It never reached her; it was +intercepted by Justin.</p> + +<p>I have gathered since that after I left Martens he sent telegrams to Guy +and Philip and her cousin Lord Tarvrille. He was I think amazed beyond +measure at this revelation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> of the possibilities of his cold and distant +wife, with a vast passion of jealousy awaking in him, and absolutely +incapable of forming any plan to meet the demands of his extraordinary +situation. Guy and Philip got to him that night, Tarvrille came down +next morning, and Martens became a debate. Justin did not so much +express views and intentions as have them extracted from him; it was +manifest he was prepared for the amplest forgiveness of his wife if only +I could be obliterated from their world. Confronted with her brothers, +the two men in the world who could be frankly brutal to her, Mary's +dignity suffered; she persisted she meant to go on seeing me, but she +was reduced to passionate tears.</p> + +<p>Into some such state of affairs I came that morning on the heels of my +letter, demanding Lady Mary of a scared evasive butler.</p> + +<p>Maxton and Tarvrille appeared: "Hullo, Stratton!" said Tarvrille, with a +fine flavor of an agreeable chance meeting. Philip had doubts about his +greeting me, and then extended his reluctant hand with a nervous grin to +excuse the delay.</p> + +<p>"I want to see Lady Mary," said I, stiffly.</p> + +<p>"She's not up yet," said Tarvrille, with a hand on my shoulder. "Come +and have a talk in the garden."</p> + +<p>We went out with Tarvrille expanding the topic of the seasons. "It's a +damned good month, November, say what you like about it." Philip walked +grimly silent on my other hand.</p> + +<p>"And it's a damned awkward situation you've got us into, Stratton," said +Tarvrille, "say what you like about it."</p> + +<p>"It isn't as though old Justin was any sort of beast,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> he reflected, +"or anything like that, you know. He's a most astonishing decent chap, +clean as they make them."</p> + +<p>"This isn't a beastly intrigue," I said.</p> + +<p>"It never is," said Tarvrille genially.</p> + +<p>"We've loved each other a long time. It's just flared out here."</p> + +<p>"No doubt of that," said Tarvrille. "It's been like a beacon to all Surrey."</p> + +<p>"It's one of those cases where things have to be readjusted. The best +thing to do is for Mary and me to go abroad——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, but does Mary think so?"</p> + +<p>"Look here!" said Philip in a voice thick with rage. "I won't have Mary +divorced. I won't. See? I won't."</p> + +<p>"What the devil's it got to do with <i>you</i>?" I asked with an answering +flash of fury.</p> + +<p>Tarvrille's arm ran through mine. "Nobody's going to divorce Mary," he +said reassuringly. "Not even Justin. He doesn't want to, and nobody else +can, and there you are!"</p> + +<p>"But we two——"</p> + +<p>"You two have had a tremendously good time. You've got found out—and +there you are!"</p> + +<p>"This thing has got to stop absolutely now," said Philip and echoed with +a note of satisfaction in his own phrasing, "absolutely <i>now</i>."</p> + +<p>"You see, Stratton," said Tarvrille as if he were expanding Philip's +assertion, "there's been too many divorces in society. It's demoralizing +people. It's discrediting us. It's setting class against class. +Everybody is saying why don't these big people either set about +respecting the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> law or altering it. Common people are getting too +infernally clear-headed. Hitherto it's mattered so little.... But we +can't stand any more of it, Stratton, now. It's something more than a +private issue; it's a question of public policy. We can't stand any more divorces."</p> + +<p>He reflected. "We have to consider something more than our own personal +inclinations. We've got no business to be here at all if we're not a +responsible class. We owe something—to ourselves."</p> + +<p>It was as if Tarvrille was as concerned as I was for this particular +divorce, as if he struggled with a lively desire to see me and Mary +happily married after the shortest possible interval. And indeed he +manifestly wasn't unsympathetic; he had the strongest proclivity for the +romantic and picturesque, and it was largely the romantic +picturesqueness of renunciation that he urged upon me. Philip for the +most part maintained a resentful silence; he was a clenched anger +against me, against Mary, against the flaming possibilities that +threatened the sister of Lord Maxton, that most promising and +distinguished young man.</p> + +<p>Of course their plans must have been definitely made before this talk, +probably they had made them overnight, and probably it was Tarvrille had +given them a practicable shape, but he threw over the whole of our talk +so satisfying a suggestion of arrest and prolonged discussion that it +never occurred to me that I should not be able to come again on the +morrow and renew my demand to see Mary. Even when next day I turned my +face to Martens and saw the flag had vanished from the flagstaff, it +seemed merely a token of that household's perturbation. I thought the +house looked oddly blank<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> and sleepy as I drew near, but I did not +perceive that this was because all the blinds were drawn. The door upon +the lawn was closed, and presently the butler came to open it. He was in +an old white jacket, and collarless. "Lady Mary!" he said. "Lady Mary +has gone, sir. She and Mr. Justin went yesterday after you called."</p> + +<p>"Gone!" said I. "But where?"</p> + +<p>"I <i>think</i> abroad, sir."</p> + +<p>"Abroad!"</p> + +<p>"I <i>think</i> abroad."</p> + +<p>"But—— They've left an address?"</p> + +<p>"Only to Mr. Justin's office," said the man. "Any letters will be +forwarded from there."</p> + +<p>I paused upon the step. He remained stiffly deferential, but with an air +of having disposed of me. He reproved me tacitly for forgetting that I +ought to conceal my astonishment at this disappearance. He was indeed an +admirable man-servant. "Thank you," said I, and dropped away defeated +from the door.</p> + +<p>I went down the broad steps, walked out up the lawn, and surveyed house +and trees and garden and sky. To the heights and the depths and the +uttermost, I knew now what it was to be amazed....</p> + +<h3>§ 12</h3> + +<p>I had felt myself an actor in a drama, and now I had very much the +feeling an actor would have who answers to a cue and finds himself in +mid-stage with the scenery and the rest of the cast suddenly vanished +behind him. By that mixture of force and persuasion which avails<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> itself +of a woman's instinctive and cultivated dread of disputes and raised +voices and the betrayal of contention to strangers, by the sheer tiring +down of nerves and of sleepless body and by threats of an immediate +divorce and a campaign of ruin against me, these three men had obliged +Mary to leave Martens and go with them to Southampton, and thence they +took her in Justin's yacht, the <i>Water-Witch</i>, to Waterford, and thence +by train to a hired house, an adapted old castle at Mirk near Crogham in +Mayo. There for all practical purposes she was a prisoner. They took +away her purse, and she was four miles from a pillar-box and ten from a +telegraph office. This house they had taken furnished without seeing it +on the recommendation of a London agent, and in the name of Justin's +solicitor. Thither presently went Lady Ladislaw, and an announcement +appeared in the <i>Times</i> that Justin and Lady Mary had gone abroad for a +time and that no letters would be forwarded.</p> + +<p>I have never learnt the particulars of that abduction, but I imagine +Mary astonished, her pride outraged, humiliated, helpless, perplexed and +maintaining a certain outward dignity. Moreover, as I was presently to +be told, she was ill. Guy and Philip were, I believe, the moving spirits +in the affair; Tarvrille was their apologetic accomplice, Justin took +the responsibility for what they did and bore the cost, he was bitterly +ashamed to have these compulsions applied to his wife, but full now of a +gusty fury against myself. He loved Mary still with a love that was +shamed and torn and bleeding, but his ruling passion was that infinitely +stronger passion than love in our poor human hearts, jealousy. He was +prepared to fight for her now as men fight for a flag,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> tearing it to +pieces in the struggle. He meant now to keep Mary. That settled, he was +prepared to consider whether he still loved her or she him....</p> + +<p>Now here it may seem to you that we are on the very verge of romance. +Here is a beautiful lady carried off and held prisoner in a wild old +place, standing out half cut off from the mainland among the wintry +breakers of the west coast of Ireland. Here is the lover, baffled but +insistent. Here are the fierce brothers and the stern dragon husband, +and you have but to make out that the marriage was compulsory, irregular +and, on the ground of that irregularity, finally dissoluble, to furnish +forth a theme for Marriott Watson in his most admirable and adventurous +vein. You can imagine the happy chances that would have guided me to the +hiding-place, the trusty friend who would have come with me and told the +story, the grim siege of the place—all as it were <i>sotto voce</i> for fear +of scandal—the fight with Guy in the little cave, my attempted +assassination, the secret passage. Would to heaven life had those rich +simplicities, and one could meet one's man at the end of a sword! My +siege of Mirk makes a very different story from that.</p> + +<p>In the first place I had no trusted friend of so extravagant a +friendship as such aid would demand. I had no one whom it seemed +permissible to tell of our relations. I was not one man against three or +four men in a romantic struggle for a woman. I was one man against +something infinitely greater than that, I was one man against nearly all +men, one man against laws, traditions, instincts, institutions, social +order. Whatever my position had been before, my continuing pursuit of +Mary was open social rebellion. And I was in a state of extreme +uncertainty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> how far Mary was a willing agent in this abrupt +disappearance. I was disposed to think she had consented far more than +she had done to this astonishing step. Carrying off an unwilling woman +was outside my imaginative range. It was luminously clear in my mind +that so far she had never countenanced the idea of flight with me, and +until she did I was absolutely bound to silence about her. I felt that +until I saw her face to face again, and was sure she wanted me to +release her, that prohibition held. Yet how was I to get at her and hear +what she had to say? Clearly it was possible that she was under +restraint, but I did not know; I was not certain, I could not prove it. +At Guildford station I gathered, after ignominious enquiries, that the +Justins had booked to London. I had two days of nearly frantic +inactivity at home, and then pretended business that took me to London, +for fear that I should break out to my father. I came up revolving a +dozen impossible projects of action in my mind. I had to get into touch +with Mary, at that my mind hung and stopped. All through the twenty-four +hours my nerves jumped at every knock upon my door; this might be the +letter, this might be the telegram, this might be herself escaped and +come to me. The days passed like days upon a painful sick-bed, grey or +foggy London days of an appalling length and emptiness. If I sat at home +my imagination tortured me; if I went out I wanted to be back and see if +any communication had come. I tried repeatedly to see Tarvrille. I had +an idea of obtaining a complete outfit for an elopement, but I was +restrained by my entire ignorance of what a woman may need. I tried to +equip myself for a sudden crisis by the completest preparation of every +possible aspect. I did some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> absurd and ill-advised things. I astonished +a respectable solicitor in a grimy little office behind a queer little +court with trees near Cornhill, by asking him to give advice to an +anonymous client and then putting my anonymous case before him. +"Suppose," said I, "it was for the plot of a play." He nodded gravely.</p> + +<p>My case as I stated it struck me as an unattractive one.</p> + +<p>"Application for a Writ of Habeas Corpus," he considered with eyes that +tried to remain severely impartial, "by a Wife's Lover, who wants to +find out where she is.... It's unusual. You will be requiring the +husband to produce her Corpus.... I don't think—speaking in the same +general terms as those in which you put the circumstances, it would be +likely to succeed.... No."</p> + +<p>Then I overcame a profound repugnance and went to a firm of private +detectives. It had occurred to me that if I could have Justin, +Tarvrille, Guy or Philip traced I might get a clue to Mary's +hiding-place. I remember a queer little office, a blusterous, +frock-coated creature with a pock-marked face, iron-grey hair, an +eyeglass and a strained tenor voice, who told me twice that he was a +gentleman and several times that he would prefer not to do business than +to do it in an ungentlemanly manner, and who was quite obviously ready +and eager to blackmail either side in any scandal into which spite or +weakness admitted his gesticulating fingers. He alluded vaguely to his +staff, to his woman helpers, "some personally attached to me," to his +remarkable underground knowledge of social life—"the illicit side." +What could he do for me? There was nothing, I said, illicit about me. +His interest waned a little. I told him that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> I was interested in +certain financial matters, no matter what they were, and that I wanted +to have a report of the movements of Justin and his brothers-in-law for +the past few weeks and for a little time to come. "You want them +watched?" said my private enquiry agent, leaning over the desk towards +me and betraying a slight squint. "Exactly," said I. "I want to know +what sort of things they are looking at just at present."</p> + +<p>"Have you any inkling——?"</p> + +<p>"None."</p> + +<p>"If our agents have to travel——"</p> + +<p>I expressed a reasonable generosity in the matter of expenses, and left +him at last with a vague discomfort in my mind. How far mightn't this +undesirable unearth the whole business in the course of his +investigations? And then what could he do? Suppose I went back forthwith +and stopped his enquiries before they began! I had a disagreeable +feeling of meanness that I couldn't shake off; I felt I was taking up a +weapon that Justin didn't deserve. Yet I argued with myself that the +abduction of Mary justified any such course.</p> + +<p>As I was still debating this I saw Philip. He was perhaps twenty yards +ahead of me, he was paying off a hansom which had just put him down +outside Blake's. "Philip," I cried, following him up the steps and +overtaking him and seizing his arm as the commissionaire opened the door +for him. "Philip! What have you people done with Mary? Where is Mary?"</p> + +<p>He turned a white face to me. "How dare you," he said with a catch of +the breath, "mention my sister?"</p> + +<p>I spoke in an undertone, and stepped a little between him and the man at +the door in order that the latter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> might not hear what I said. "I want +to see her," I expostulated. "I <i>must</i> see her. What you are doing is +not playing the game. I've <i>got</i> to see her."</p> + +<p>"Let go of my arm, sir!" cried he, and suddenly I felt a whirlwind of +rage answering the rage in his eyes. The pent-up exasperation of three +weeks rushed to its violent release. He struck me in the face with the +hand that was gripped about his umbrella. He meant to strike me in the +face and then escape into his club, but before he could get away from me +after his blow I had flung out at him, and had hit him under the +jawbone. My blow followed his before guard or counter was possible. I +hit with all my being. It was an amazing flare up of animal passion; +from the moment that I perceived he was striking at me to the moment +when both of us came staggering across the door-mat into the dignified +and spacious hall-way of Blake's, we were back at the ancestral ape, and +we did exactly what the ancestral ape would have done. The arms of the +commissionaire about my waist, the rush of the astonished porter from +his little glass box, two incredibly startled and delighted pages, and +an intervening member bawling out "Sir! Sir!" converged to remind us +that we were a million years or so beyond those purely arboreal days....</p> + +<p>We seemed for a time to be confronted before an audience that hesitated +to interfere. "How dare you name my sister to me?" he shouted at me, and +brought to my mind the amazing folly of which he was capable. I +perceived Mary's name flung to the four winds of heaven.</p> + +<p>"You idiot, Philip!" I cried. "I don't <i>know</i> your sister. I've not seen +her—scarcely seen her for years.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> I ask you—I ask you for a match-box +or something and you hit me."</p> + +<p>"If you dare to speak to her——!"</p> + +<p>"You fool!" I cried, going nearer to him and trying to make him +understand. But he winced and recoiled defensively. "I'm sorry," I said +to the commissionaire who was intervening. "Lord Maxton has made a mistake."</p> + +<p>"Is he a member?" said someone in the background, and somebody else +suggested calling a policeman. I perceived that only a prompt retreat +would save the whole story of our quarrel from the newspapers. So far as +I could see nobody knew me there except Philip. I had to take the risks +of his behavior; manifestly I couldn't control it. I made no further +attempt to explain anything to anybody. Everyone was a little too +perplexed for prompt action, and so the advantage in that matter lay +with me. I walked through the door, and with what I imagined to be an +appearance of the utmost serenity down the steps. I noted an ascending +member glance at me with an expression of exceptional interest, but it +was only after I had traversed the length of Pall Mall that I realized +that my lip and the corner of my nostril were both bleeding profusely. I +called a cab when I discovered my handkerchief scarlet, and retreated to +my flat and cold ablutions. Then I sat down to write a letter to +Tarvrille, with a clamorous "Urgent, Please forward if away" above the +address, and tell him at least to suppress Philip. But within the club +that blockhead, thinking of nothing but the appearances of our fight and +his own credit, was varying his assertion that he had thrashed me, with +denunciations of me as a "blackguard," and giving half a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> dozen men a +highly colored, improvised, and altogether improbable account of my +relentless pursuit and persecution of Lady Mary Justin, and how she had +left London to avoid me. They listened, no doubt, with extreme avidity. +The matrimonial relations of the Justins had long been a matter for +speculative minds.</p> + +<p>And while Philip was doing this, Guy, away in Mayo still, was writing a +tender, trusting, and all too explicit letter to a well-known and +extremely impatient lady in London to account for his continued absence +from her house. "So that is it!" said the lady, reading, and was at +least in the enviable position of one who had confirmatory facts to impart....</p> + +<p>And so quite suddenly the masks were off our situation and we were open +to an impertinent world. For some days I did not realize what had +happened, and lived in hope that Philip had been willing and able to +cover his lapse. I went about with my preoccupation still, as I +imagined, concealed, and with an increasing number of typed letters from +my private enquiry agent in my pocket containing inaccurate and +worthless information about the movements of Justin, which appeared to +have been culled for the most part from a communicative young policeman +stationed at the corner nearest to the Justins' house, or expanded from +<i>Who's Who</i> and other kindred works of reference. The second letter, I +remember, gave some particulars about the financial position of the +younger men, and added that Justin's credit with the west-end tradesmen +was "limitless," points upon which I had no sort of curiosity whatever....</p> + +<p>I suppose a couple of hundred people in London knew before I did that +Lady Mary Justin had been carried off<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> to Ireland and practically +imprisoned there by her husband because I was her lover. The thing +reached me at last through little Fred Riddling, who came to my rooms in +the morning while I was sitting over my breakfast. "Stratton!" said he, +"what is all this story of your shaking Justin by the collar, and +threatening to kill him if he didn't give up his wife to you? And why do +you want to fight a duel with Maxton? What's it all about? Fire-eater +you must be! I stood up for you as well as I could, but I heard you +abused for a solid hour last night, and there was a chap there simply +squirting out facts and dates and names. Got it all.... What have you been up to?"</p> + +<p>He stood on my hearthrug with an air of having called for an explanation +to which he was entitled, and he very nearly got one. But I just had +some scraps of reserve left, and they saved me. "Tell me first," I said, +delaying myself with the lighting of a cigarette, "the particulars ... +as you heard them."</p> + +<p>Riddling embarked upon a descriptive sketch, and I got a minute or so to think.</p> + +<p>"Go on," I said with a note of irony, when he paused. "Go on. Tell me +some more. Where did you say they have taken her; let us have it right."</p> + +<p>By the time his little store had run out I knew exactly what to do with +him. "Riddling," said I, and stood up beside him suddenly and dropped my +hand with a little added weight upon his shoulder, "Riddling, do you +know the only right and proper thing to do when you hear scandal about a friend?"</p> + +<p>"Come straight to him," said Riddling virtuously, "as I have done."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p><p>"No. Say you don't believe it. Ask the scandal-monger how he knows and +insist on his telling you—insist. And if he won't—be very, very rude +to him. Insist up to the quarrelling point. Now who were those people?"</p> + +<p>"Well—that's a bit stiff.... One chap I didn't know at all."</p> + +<p>"You should have pulled him up and insisted upon knowing who he was, and +what right he had to lie about me. For it's lying, Riddling. Listen! It +isn't true that I'm besieging Lady Mary Justin. So far from besieging +her I didn't even know where she was until you told me. Justin is a +neighbor of my father's and a friend of mine. I had tea with him and his +wife not a month ago. I had tea with them together. I knew they were +going away, but it was a matter of such slight importance to me, such +slight importance"—I impressed this on his collarbone—"that I was left +with the idea that they were going to the south of France. I believe +they are in the south of France. And there you are. I'm sorry to spoil +sport, but that's the bleak unromantic truth of the matter."</p> + +<p>"You mean to say that there is nothing in it all?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing."</p> + +<p>He was atrociously disappointed. "But everybody," he said, "everybody +has got something."</p> + +<p>"Somebody will get a slander case if this goes on. I don't care what +they've got."</p> + +<p>"Good Lord!" he said, and stared at the rug. "You'll take your oath——" +He glanced up and met my eye. "Oh, of course it's all right what you +say." He was profoundly perplexed. He reflected. "But then, I say +Stratton, why did you go for Maxton at Blake's? <i>That</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> I had from an +eye-witness. You can't deny a scrap like that—in broad daylight. Why +did you do that?"</p> + +<p>"Oh <i>that's</i> it," said I. "I begin to have glimmerings. There's a little +matter between myself and Maxton...." I found it a little difficult to +improvise a plausible story.</p> + +<p>"But he said it was his sister," persisted Riddling. "He said so +afterwards, in the club."</p> + +<p>"Maxton," said I, losing my temper, "is a fool and a knave and a liar. +His sister indeed! Lady Mary! If he can't leave his sister out of this +business I'll break every bone of his body." ... I perceived my temper +was undoing me. I invented rapidly but thinly. "As a matter of fact, +Riddling, it's quite another sort of lady has set us by the ears."</p> + +<p>Riddling stuck his chin out, tucked in the corners of his mouth, made +round eyes at the breakfast things and, hands in pockets, rocked from +heels to toes and from toes to heels. "I see Stratton, yes, I see. Yes, +all this makes it very plain, of course. Very plain.... Stupid thing, +scandal is.... Thanks! no, I won't have a cigarette."</p> + +<p>And he left me presently with an uncomfortable sense that he did see, +and didn't for one moment intend to restrain his considerable histrionic +skill in handing on his vision to others. For some moments I stood +savoring this all too manifest possibility, and then my thoughts went +swirling into another channel. At last the curtain was pierced. I was no +longer helplessly in the dark. I got out my Bradshaw, and sat with the +map spread out over the breakfast things studying the routes to Mayo. +Then I rang for Williams, the man I shared with the two adjacent +flat-holders, and told him to pack my kit-bag because I was suddenly +called away.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p> + +<h3>§ 13</h3> + +<p>Many of the particulars of my journey to Ireland have faded out of my +mind altogether. I remember most distinctly my mood of grim elation that +at last I had to deal with accessible persons again....</p> + +<p>The weather was windy and violent, and I was sea-sick for most of the +crossing, and very tired and exhausted when I landed. Williams had +thought of my thick over-coat and loaded me with wraps and rugs, and I +sat in the corner of a compartment in that state of mental and bodily +fatigue that presses on the brows like a painless headache. I got to +some little junction at last where I had to wait an hour for a +branch-line train. I tasted all the bitterness of Irish hospitality, and +such coffee as Ireland alone can produce. Then I went on to a station +called Clumber or Clumboye, or some such name, and thence after some +difficulty I got a car for my destination. It was a wretched car in +which hens had been roosting, and it was drawn by a steaming horse that +had sores under its mended harness.</p> + +<p>An immense wet wind was blowing as we came over the big hill that lies +to the south of Mirk. Everything was wet, the hillside above me was +either intensely green sodden turf or great streaming slabs of +limestone, seaward was a rocky headland, a ruin of a beehive shape, and +beyond a vast waste of tumbling waters unlit by any sun. Not a tree +broke that melancholy wilderness, nor any living thing but ourselves. +The horse went stumblingly under the incessant stimulation of the +driver's lash and tongue....</p> + +<p>"Yonder it is," said my man, pointing with his whip,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> and I twisted +round to see over his shoulder, not the Rhine-like castle I had +expected, but a long low house of stone upon a headland, backed by a +distant mountain that vanished in a wild driven storm of rain as I +looked. But at the sight of Mirk my lassitude passed, my nerves +tightened, and my will began to march again. Now, thought I, we bring +things to an issue. Now we come to something personal and definite. The +vagueness is at an end. I kept my eyes upon the place, and thought it +more and more like a prison as we drew nearer. Perhaps from that window +Mary was looking for me now. Had she wondered why I did not come to her +before? Now at any rate I had found her. I sprang off the car, found a +bell-handle, and set the house jangling.</p> + +<p>The door opened, and a little old man appeared with his fingers thrust +inside his collar as though he were struggling against strangulation. He +regarded me for a second, and spoke before I could speak.</p> + +<p>"What might you be wanting?" said he, as if he had an answer ready.</p> + +<p>"I want to see Lady Mary Justin," I said.</p> + +<p>"You can't," he said. "She's gone."</p> + +<p>"Gone!"</p> + +<p>"The day before yesterday she went to London. You'll have to be getting +back there."</p> + +<p>"She's gone to London."</p> + +<p>"No less."</p> + +<p>"Willingly?"</p> + +<p>The little old man struggled with his collar. "Anyone would go +willingly," he said, and seemed to await my further commands. He eyed me +obliquely with a shadow of malice in his eyes.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p><p>It was then my heart failed, and I knew that we lovers were beaten. I +turned from the door without another word to the janitor. "Back," said I +to my driver, and got up behind him.</p> + +<p>But it is one thing to decide to go back, and another to do it. At the +little station I studied time-tables, and I could not get to England +again without a delay of half a day. Somewhere I must wait. I did not +want to wait where there was any concourse of people. I decided to stay +in the inn by the station for the intervening six hours, and get some +sleep before I started upon my return, but when I saw the bedroom I +changed my plan and went down out of the village by a steep road towards +the shore. I wandered down through the rain and spindrift to the very +edge of the sea, and there found a corner among the rocks a little +sheltered from the wind, and sat, inert and wretched; my lips salt, my +hair stiff with salt, and my body wet and cold; a miserable defeated +man. For I had now an irrational and entirely overwhelming conviction of +defeat. I saw as if I ought always to have seen that I had been pursuing +a phantom of hopeless happiness, that my dream of ever possessing Mary +again was fantastic and foolish, and that I had expended all my strength +in vain. Over me triumphed a law and tradition more towering than those +cliffs and stronger than those waves. I was overwhelmed by a sense of +human weakness, of the infinite feebleness of the individual man against +wind and wave and the stress of tradition and the ancient usages of +mankind. "We must submit," I whispered, crouching close, "we must submit." ...</p> + +<p>Far as the eye could reach the waves followed one another in long +unhurrying lines, an inexhaustible succession,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> rolling, hissing, +breaking, and tossing white manes of foam, to gather at last for a +crowning effort and break thunderously, squirting foam two hundred feet +up the streaming faces of the cliffs. The wind tore and tugged at me, +and wind and water made together a clamor as though all the evil voices +in the world, all the violent passions and all the hasty judgments were +seeking a hearing above the more elemental uproar....</p> + +<h3>§ 14</h3> + +<p>And while I was in this phase of fatigue and despair in Mayo, the scene +was laid and all the other actors were waiting for the last act of my +defeat in London. I came back to find two letters from Mary and a little +accumulation of telegrams and notes, one written in my flat, from Tarvrille.</p> + +<p>Mary's letters were neither of them very long, and full of a new-born +despair. She had not realized how great were the forces against her and +against us both. She let fall a phrase that suggested she was ill. She +had given in, she said, to save herself and myself and others from the +shame and ruin of a divorce, and I must give in too. We had to agree not +to meet or communicate for three years, and I was to go out of England. +She prayed me to accept this. She knew, she said, she seemed to desert +me, but I did not know everything,—I did not know everything,—I must +agree; she could not come with me; it was impossible. <i>Now</i> certainly it +was impossible. She had been weak, but I did not know all. If I knew all +I should be the readier to understand and forgive her,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> but it was part +of the conditions that I could not know all. Justin had been generous, +in his way.... Justin had everything in his hands, the whole world was +behind him against us, and I must give in. Those letters had a quality I +had never before met in her, they were broken-spirited. I could not +understand them fully, and they left me perplexed, with a strong desire +to see her, to question her, to learn more fully what this change in her might mean.</p> + +<p>Tarvrille's notes recorded his repeated attempts to see me, I felt that +he alone was capable of clearing up things for me, and I went out again +at once and telegraphed to him for an appointment.</p> + +<p>He wired to me from that same house in Mayfair in which I had first met +Mary after my return. He asked me to come to him in the afternoon, and +thither I went through a November fog, and found him in the drawing-room +that had the plate glass above the fireplace. But now he was vacating +the house, and everything was already covered up, the pictures and their +frames were under holland, the fine furniture all in covers of faded +stuff, the chandeliers and statues wrapped up, the carpets rolled out of +the way. Even the window-curtains were tucked into wrappers, and the +blinds, except one he had raised, drawn down. He greeted me and +apologized for the cold inhospitality of the house. "It was convenient +here," he said. "I came here to clear out my papers and boxes. And +there's no chance of interruptions."</p> + +<p>He went and stood before the empty fireplace, and plunged into the +middle of the matter.</p> + +<p>"You know, my dear Stratton, in this confounded business my heart's with +you. It has been all along. If<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> I could have seen a clear chance before +you—for you and Mary to get away—and make any kind of life of +it—though she's my cousin—I'd have helped you. Indeed I would. But +there's no sort of chance—not the ghost of a chance...."</p> + +<p>He began to explain very fully, quite incontrovertibly, that entire +absence of any chance for Mary and myself together. He argued to the +converted. "You know as well as I do what that romantic flight abroad, +that Ouidaesque casa in some secluded valley, comes to in reality. All +round Florence there's no end of such scandalous people, I've been among +them, the nine circles of the repenting scandalous, all cutting one another."</p> + +<p>"I agree," I said. "And yet——"</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>"We could have come back."</p> + +<p>Tarvrille paused, and then leant forward. "No."</p> + +<p>"But people have done so. It would have been a clean sort of divorce."</p> + +<p>"You don't understand Justin. Justin would ruin you. If you were to take +Mary away.... He's a queer little man. Everything is in his hands. +Everything always is in the husband's hands in these affairs. If he +chooses. And keeps himself in the right. For an injured husband the law +sanctifies revenge....</p> + +<p>"And you see, you've got to take Justin's terms. He's changed. He didn't +at first fully realize. He feels—cheated. We've had to persuade him. +There's a case for Justin, you know. He's had to stand—a lot. I don't +wonder at his going stiff at last. No doubt it's hard for you to see +that. But you have to see it. You've got to go away as he +requires—three years out of England,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> you've got to promise not to +correspond, not to meet afterwards——"</p> + +<p>"It's so extravagant a separation."</p> + +<p>"The alternative is—not for you to have Mary, but for you two to be +flung into the ditch together—that's what it comes to, Stratton. +Justin's got his case. He's set like—steel. You're up against the law, +up against social tradition, up against money—any one of those a man +may fight, but not all three. And she's ill, Stratton. You owe her +consideration. You of all people. That's no got-up story; she's truly +ill and broken. She can no longer fly with you and fight with you, +travel in uncomfortable trains, stay in horrible little inns. You don't +understand. The edge is off her pluck, Stratton."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" I asked, and questioned his face.</p> + +<p>"Just exactly what I say."</p> + +<p>A gleam of understanding came to me....</p> + +<p>"Why can't I see her?" I broke in, with my voice full of misery and +anger. "Why can't I see her? As if seeing her once more could matter so +very greatly now!"</p> + +<p>He appeared to weigh something in his mind. "You can't," he said.</p> + +<p>"How do I know that she's not being told some story of my abandonment of +her? How do I know she isn't being led to believe I no longer want her +to come to me?"</p> + +<p>"She isn't," said Tarvrille, still with that arrested judicial note in +his voice. "You had her letters?" he said.</p> + +<p>"Two."</p> + +<p>"Yes. Didn't they speak?"</p> + +<p>"I want to see her. Damn it, Tarvrille!" I cried with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> sudden tears in +my smarting eyes. "Let <i>her</i> send me away. This isn't—— Not treating +us like human beings."</p> + +<p>"Women," said Tarvrille and looked at his boot toes, "are different from +men. You see, Stratton——"</p> + +<p>He paused. "You always strike me, Stratton, as not realizing that women +are weak things. We've got to take <i>care</i> of them. You don't seem to +feel that as I do. Their moods—fluctuate—more than ours do. If you +hold 'em to what they say in the same way you hold a man—it isn't fair...."</p> + +<p>He halted as though he awaited my assent to that proposition.</p> + +<p>"If you were to meet Mary now, you see, and if you were to say to her, +come—come and we'll jump down Etna together, and you said it in the +proper voice and with the proper force, she'd do it, Stratton. You know +that. Any man knows a thing like that. And she wouldn't <i>want</i> to do it...."</p> + +<p>"You mean that's why I can't see her."</p> + +<p>"That's why you can't see her."</p> + +<p>"Because we'd become—dramatic."</p> + +<p>"Because you'd become—romantic and uncivilized."</p> + +<p>"Well," I said sullenly, realizing the bargain we were making, "I won't."</p> + +<p>"You won't make any appeal?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>He made no answer, and I looked up to discover him glancing over his +shoulder through the great glass window into the other room. I stood up +very quickly, and there in the further apartment were Guy and Mary, +standing side by side. Our eyes met, and she came forward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> towards the +window impulsively, and paused, with that unpitying pane between us....</p> + +<p>Then Guy was opening the door for her and she stood in the doorway. She +was in dark furs wrapped about her, but in the instant I could see how +ill she was and how broken. She came a step or so towards me and then +stopped short, and so we stood, shyly and awkwardly under Guy and +Tarvrille's eyes, two yards apart. "You see," she said, and stopped lamely.</p> + +<p>"You and I," I said, "have to part, Mary. We—— We are beaten. Is that +so?"</p> + +<p>"Stephen, there is nothing for us to do. We've offended. We broke the +rules. We have to pay."</p> + +<p>"By parting?"</p> + +<p>"What else is there to do?"</p> + +<p>"No," I said. "There's nothing else." ...</p> + +<p>"I tried," she said, "that you shouldn't be sent from England."</p> + +<p>"That's a detail," I answered.</p> + +<p>"But your politics—your work?"</p> + +<p>"That does not matter. The great thing is that you are ill and +unhappy—that I can't help you. I can't do anything.... I'd go anywhere +... to save you.... All I can do, I suppose, is to part like this and go."</p> + +<p>"I shan't be—altogether unhappy. And I shall think of you——"</p> + +<p>She paused, and we stood facing one another, tongue-tied. There was only +one word more to say, and neither of us would say it for a moment.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye," she whispered at last, and then, "Don't think I deserted +you, Stephen my dear. Don't think ill of me. I couldn't come—I couldn't +come to you,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> and suddenly her face changed slowly and she began to +weep, my fearless playmate whom I had never seen weeping before; she +began to weep as an unhappy child might weep.</p> + +<p>"Oh my Mary!" I cried, weeping also, and held out my arms, and we clung +together and kissed with tear-wet faces.</p> + +<p>"No," cried Guy belatedly, "we promised Justin!"</p> + +<p>But Tarvrille restrained his forbidding arm, and then after a second's +interval put a hand on my shoulder. "Come," he said....</p> + +<p>And so it was Mary and I parted from one another.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p> + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_THE_SEVENTH" id="CHAPTER_THE_SEVENTH"></a>CHAPTER THE SEVENTH</h2> + +<h3><span class="smcap">Beginning Again</span></h3> + +<h3>§ 1</h3> + +<p>In operas and romances one goes from such a parting in a splendid +dignity of gloom. But I am no hero, and I went down the big staircase of +Tarvrille's house the empty shuck of an abandoned desire. I was acutely +ashamed of my recent tears. In the centre of the hall was a marble +figure swathed about with yellow muslin. "On account of the flies," I +said, breaking our silence.</p> + +<p>My words were far too unexpected for Tarvrille to understand. "The +flies," I repeated with an air of explanation.</p> + +<p>"You're sure she'll be all right?" I said abruptly.</p> + +<p>"You've done the best thing you can for her."</p> + +<p>"I suppose I have. I have to go." And then I saw ahead of me a world +full of the tiresome need of decisions and arrangements and empty of all +interest. "Where the <i>devil</i> am I to go, Tarvrille? I can't even get out +of things altogether...."</p> + +<p>And then with a fresh realization of painful difficulties ahead: "I have +to tell this to my father. I've got to explain—— And he thought—he +expected——"</p> + +<p>Tarvrille opened the half of the heavy front door<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> for me, hesitated, +and came down the broad steps into the chilly grey street and a few +yards along the pavement with me. He wanted to say something that he +found difficult to say. When at last he did find words they were quite +ridiculous in substance, and yet at the time I took them as gravely as +he intended them. "It's no good quoting Marcus Aurelius," said +Tarvrille, "to a chap with his finger in the crack of a door."</p> + +<p>"I suppose it isn't," I said.</p> + +<p>"One doesn't want to be a flatulent ass of course," said Tarvrille, +"still——"</p> + +<p>He resumed with an air of plunging. "It will sound just rot to you now, +Stratton, but after all it comes to this. Behind us is +a—situation—with half-a-dozen particular persons. Out here—I mean +here round the world—before you've done with them—there's a thousand +million people—men and women."</p> + +<p>"Oh! what does that matter to me?" said I.</p> + +<p>"Everything," said Tarvrille. "At least—it ought to."</p> + +<p>He stopped and held out his hand. "Good-bye, Stratton—good luck to you! Good-bye."</p> + +<p>"Yes," I said. "Good-bye."</p> + +<p>I turned away from him. The image of Mary crying as a child cries +suddenly blinded me and blotted out the world.</p> + +<h3>§ 2</h3> + +<p>I want to give you as clearly as I can some impression of the mental +states that followed this passion and this collapse. It seems to me one +of the most extraordinary aspects of all that literature of speculative +attack<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> which is called psychology, that there is no name and no +description at all of most of the mental states that make up life. +Psychology, like sociology, is still largely in the scholastic stage, it +is ignorant and intellectual, a happy refuge for the lazy industry of +pedants; instead of experience and accurate description and analysis it +begins with the rash assumption of elements and starts out upon +ridiculous syntheses. Who with a sick soul would dream of going to a psychologist?...</p> + +<p>Now here was I with a mind sore and inflamed. I did not clearly +understand what had happened to me. I had blundered, offended, entangled +myself; and I had no more conception than a beast in a bog what it was +had got me, or the method or even the need of escape. The desires and +passionate excitements, the anger and stress and strain and suspicion of +the last few months had worn deep grooves in my brain, channels without +end or issue, out of which it seemed impossible to keep my thoughts. I +had done dishonorable things, told lies, abused the confidence of a +friend. I kept wrestling with these intolerable facts. If some momentary +distraction released me for a time, back I would fall presently before I +knew what was happening, and find myself scheming once more to reverse +the accomplished, or eloquently restating things already intolerably +overdiscussed in my mind, justifying the unjustifiable or avenging +defeat. I would dream again and again of some tremendous appeal to Mary, +some violent return and attack upon the situation....</p> + +<p>One very great factor in my mental and moral distress was the uncertain +values of nearly every aspect of the case. There is an invincible sense +of wild rightness about passionate love that no reasoning and no +training will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> ever altogether repudiate; I had a persuasion that out of +that I would presently extract a magic to excuse my deceits and +treacheries and assuage my smarting shame. And round these deep central +preoccupations were others of acute exasperation and hatred towards +secondary people. There had been interventions, judgments upon +insufficient evidence, comments, and often quite justifiable comments, +that had filled me with an extraordinary savagery of resentment.</p> + +<p>I had a persuasion, illogical but invincible, that I was still entitled +to all the respect due to a man of unblemished honor. I clung fiercely +to the idea that to do dishonorable things isn't necessarily to be +dishonorable.... This state of mind I am describing is, I am convinced, +the state of every man who has involved himself in any affair at once +questionable and passionate. He seems free, but he is not free; he is +the slave of the relentless paradox of his position.</p> + +<p>And we were all of us more or less in deep grooves we had made for +ourselves, Philip, Guy, Justin, the friends involved, and all in the +measure of our grooves incapable of tolerance or sympathetic +realization. Even when we slept, the clenched fist of the attitudes we +had assumed gave a direction to our dreams.</p> + +<p>You see the same string of events that had produced all this system of +intense preoccupations had also severed me from the possible resumption +of those wider interests out of which our intrigue had taken me. I had +had to leave England and all the political beginnings I had been +planning, and to return to those projects now, those now impossible +projects, was to fall back promptly into hopeless exasperation....</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p><p>And then the longing, the longing that is like a physical pain, that +hunger of the heart for some one intolerably dear! The desire for a +voice! The arrested habit of phrasing one's thoughts for a hearer who +will listen in peace no more! From that lonely distress even rage, even +the concoction of insult and conflict, was a refuge. From that pitiless +travail of emptiness I was ready to turn desperately to any offer of +excitement and distraction.</p> + +<p>From all those things I was to escape at last unhelped, but I want you +to understand particularly these phases through which I passed; it falls +to many and it may fall to you to pass through such a period of darkness +and malign obsession. Make the groove only a little deeper, a little +more unclimbable, make the temperament a little less sanguine, and +suicide stares you in the face. And things worse than suicide, that +suicide of self-respect which turns men to drugs and inflammatory vices +and the utmost outrageous defiance of the dreaming noble self that has +been so despitefully used. Into these same inky pools I have dipped my +feet, where other men have drowned. I understand why they drown. And my +taste of misdeed and resentment has given me just an inkling of what men +must feel who go to prison. I know what it is to quarrel with a world.</p> + +<h3>§ 3</h3> + +<p>My first plan when I went abroad was to change my Harbury French, which +was poor stuff and pedantic, into a more colloquial article, and then go +into Germany<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> to do the same thing with my German, and then perhaps to +remain in Germany studying German social conditions—and the quality of +the German army. It seemed to me that when the term of my exile was over +I might return to England and re-enter the army. But all these were very +anæmic plans conceived by a tired mind, and I set about carrying them +out in a mood of slack lassitude. I got to Paris, and in Paris I threw +them all overboard and went to Switzerland.</p> + +<p>I remember very clearly how I reached Paris. I arrived about sunset—I +suppose at St. Lazare or the Gare du Nord—sent my luggage to the little +hotel in the Rue d'Antin where I had taken rooms, and dreading their +loneliness decided to go direct to a restaurant and dine. I remember +walking out into the streets just as shops and windows and street lamps +were beginning to light up, and strolling circuitously through the clear +bright stir of the Parisian streets to find a dinner at the Café de la +Paix. Some day you will know that peculiar sharp definite excitement of +Paris. All cities are exciting, and each I think in a different way. And +as I walked down along some boulevard towards the centre of things I saw +a woman coming along a side street towards me, a woman with something in +her body and something in her carriage that reminded me acutely of Mary. +Her face was downcast, and then as we converged she looked up at me, not +with the meretricious smile of her class but with a steadfast, friendly +look. Her face seemed to me sane and strong. I passed and hesitated. An +extraordinary impulse took me. I turned back. I followed this woman +across the road and a little way along the opposite pavement. I remember +I did that, but I do not remember clearly what was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> in my mind at the +time; I think it was a vague rush towards the flash of companionship in +her eyes. There I had seemed to see the glimmer of a refuge from my +desolation. Then came amazement and reaction. I turned about and went on +my way, and saw her no more.</p> + +<p>But afterwards, later, I went out into the streets of Paris bent upon +finding that woman. She had become a hope, a desire.</p> + +<p>I looked for her for what seemed a long time, half an hour perhaps or +two hours. I went along, peering at the women's faces, through the +blazing various lights, the pools of shadowy darkness, the flickering +reflections and transient glitter, one of a vast stream of slow-moving +adventurous human beings. I crossed streams of traffic, paused at +luminous kiosks, became aware of dim rows of faces looking down upon me +from above the shining enamel of the omnibuses.... My first intentness +upon one person, so that I disregarded any distracting intervention, +gave place by insensible degrees to a more general apprehension of the +things about me. That original woman became as it were diffused. I began +to look at the men and women sitting at the little tables behind the +panes of the cafés, and even on the terraces—for the weather was still +dry and open. I scrutinized the faces I passed, faces for the most part +animated by a sort of shallow eagerness. Many were ugly, many vile with +an intense vulgarity, but some in that throng were pretty, some almost +gracious. There was something pathetic and appealing for me in this +great sweeping together of people into a little light, into a weak +community of desire for joy and eventfulness. There came to me a sense +of tolerance, of fellowship, of participation. From an outer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> darkness +of unhappiness or at least of joylessness, they had all come hither—as I had come.</p> + +<p>I was like a creature that slips back again towards some deep waters out +of which long since it came, into the light and air. It was as if old +forgotten things, prenatal experiences, some magic of ancestral +memories, urged me to mingle again with this unsatisfied passion for +life about me....</p> + +<p>Then suddenly a wave of feeling between self-disgust and fear poured +over me. This vortex was drawing me into deep and unknown things.... I +hailed a passing <i>fiacre</i>, went straight to my little hotel, settled my +account with the proprietor, and caught a night train for Switzerland.</p> + +<p>All night long my head ached, and I lay awake swaying and jolting and +listening to the rhythms of the wheels, Paris clean forgotten so soon as +it was left, and my thoughts circling continually about Justin and +Philip and Mary and the things I might have said and done.</p> + +<h3>§ 4</h3> + +<p>One day late in February I found myself in Vevey. I had come down with +the break-up of the weather from Montana, where I had met some Oxford +men I knew and had learned to ski. I had made a few of those vague +acquaintances one makes in a winter-sport hotel, but now all these +people were going back to England and I was thrown back upon myself once +more. I was dull and angry and unhappy still, full of self-reproaches +and dreary indignations, and then very much as the sky will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> sometimes +break surprisingly through storm clouds there began in me a new series +of moods. They came to me by surprise. One clear bright afternoon I sat +upon the wall that runs along under the limes by the lake shore, envying +all these people who were going back to England and work and usefulness. +I thought of myself, of my career spoilt, my honor tarnished, my +character tested and found wanting. So far as English politics went my +prospects had closed for ever. Even after three years it was improbable +that I should be considered by the party managers again. And besides, it +seemed to me I was a man crippled. My other self, the mate and +confirmation of my mind, had gone from me. I was no more than a +mutilated man. My life was a thing condemned; I had joined the ranks of +loafing, morally-limping, English exiles.</p> + +<p>I looked up. The sun was setting, a warm glow fell upon the dissolving +mountains of Savoy and upon the shining mirror of the lake. The +luminous, tranquil breadth of it caught me and held me. "I am done for." +The light upon the lake and upon the mountains, the downward swoop of a +bird over the water and something in my heart, gave me the lie.</p> + +<p>"What nonsense!" I said, and felt as if some dark cloud that had +overshadowed me had been thrust back.</p> + +<p>I stared across at Savoy as though that land had spoken. Why should I +let all my life be ruled by the blunders and adventures of one short +year of adventure? Why should I become the votary of a train of +consequences? What had I been dreaming of all this time? Over there were +gigantic uplands I had never seen and trodden; and beyond were great +plains and cities, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> beyond that the sea, and so on, great spaces and +multitudinous things all round about the world. What did the things I +had done, the things I had failed to do, the hopes crushed out of me, +the tears and the anger, matter to <i>that</i>? And in some amazing way this +thought so took possession of me that the question seemed also to carry +with it the still more startling collateral, what then did they matter +to me? "Come out of yourself," said the mountains and all the beauty of +the world. "Whatever you have done or suffered is nothing to the +inexhaustible offer life makes you. We are you, just as much as the past is you."</p> + +<p>It was as though I had forgotten and now remembered how infinitely +multitudinous life can be. It was as if Tarvrille's neglected words to +me had sprouted in the obscurity of my mind and borne fruit....</p> + +<p>I cannot explain how that mood came, I am doing my best to describe it, +and it is not easy even to describe. And I fear that to you who will +have had I hope no experience of such shadows as I had passed through, +it is impossible to convey its immense elation.... I remember once I +came in a boat out of the caves of Han after two hours in the darkness, +and there was the common daylight that is nothing wonderful at all, and +its brightness ahead there seemed like trumpets and cheering, like +waving flags and like the sunrise. And so it was with this mood of my release.</p> + +<p>There is a phrase of Peter E. Noyes', that queer echo of Emerson whom +people are always rediscovering and forgetting again, a phrase that +sticks in my mind,—"Every living soul is heir to an empire and has +fallen into a pit." It's an image wonderfully apt to describe my change +of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> mental attitude, and render the contrast between those intensely +passionate personal entanglements that had held me tight and that wide +estate of life that spreads about us all, open to all of us in just the +measure that we can scramble out of our individual selves—to a more +general self. I seemed to be hanging there at the brim of my stale and +painful den, staring at the unthought-of greatness of the world, with an +unhoped-for wind out of heaven blowing upon my face.</p> + +<p>I suppose the intention of the phrase "finding salvation," as religious +people use it, is very much this experience. If it is not the same thing +it is something very closely akin. It is as if someone were scrambling +out of a pit into a largeness—a largeness that is attainable by every +man just in the measure that he realizes it is there.</p> + +<p>I leave these fine discriminations to the theologian. I know that I went +back to my hotel in Vevey with my mind healed, with my will restored to +me, and my ideas running together into plans. And I know that I had come +out that day a broken and apathetic man.</p> + +<h3>§ 5</h3> + +<p>The next day my mood declined again; it was as if that light, that sense +of release that had shone so clear and strong in my mind, had escaped +me. I sought earnestly to recover it. But I could not do so, and I found +my old narrow preoccupations calling urgently to me again.</p> + +<p>I thought that perhaps I might get back those intimations of outlook and +relief if I clambered alone into some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> high solitude and thought. I had +a crude attractive vision of myself far above the heat and noise, +communing with the sky. It was the worst season for climbing, and on the +spur of the moment I could do nothing but get up the Rochers de Naye on +the wrong side, and try and find some eyrie that was neither slippery +nor wet. I did not succeed. In one place I slipped down a wet bank for +some yards and held at last by a root; if I had slipped much further I +should not be writing here now; and I came back a very weary and bruised +climber, without any meditation....</p> + +<p>Three nights after when I was in bed I became very lucidly awake—it +must have been about two or three in the morning—and the vision of life +returned to me, with that same effect of enlargement and illumination. +It was as if the great stillness that is behind and above and around the +world of sense did in some way communicate with me. It bade me rouse my +spirit and go on with the thoughts and purposes that had been stirring +and proliferating in my mind when I had returned to England from the +Cape. "Dismiss your passion." But I urged that that I could not do; +there was the thought of Mary subjugated and weeping, the smarting +memory of injury and defeat, the stains of subterfuge and discovery, the +aching separation. No matter, the stillness answered, in the end all +that is just to temper you for your greater uses.... I cannot forget, I +insisted. Do not forget, but for the present this leads you no whither; +this chapter has ended; dismiss it and turn to those other things. You +are not only Stephen Stratton who fell into adultery; in these silences +he is a little thing and far away; here and with me you are +Man—Everyman—in this round world in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> which your lot has fallen. But +Mary, I urged, to forget Mary is a treason, an ingratitude, seeing that +she loved me. But the stillness did not command me to forget her, but +only to turn my face now to the great work that lies before mankind. And +that work? That work, so far as your share goes, is first to understand, +to solve, and then to achieve, to work out in the measure of yourself +that torment of pity and that desire for order and justice which +together saturate your soul. Go about the world, embrue yourself with +life, make use of that confusedly striving brain that I have lifted so +painfully out of the deadness of matter....</p> + +<p>"But who are you?" I cried out suddenly to the night. "Who are you?"</p> + +<p>I sat up on the side of my bed. The dawn was just beginning to break up +the featureless blackness of the small hours. "This is just some odd +corner of my brain," I said....</p> + +<p>Yet—— How did I come to have this odd corner in my brain? What <i>is</i> +this lucid stillness?...</p> + +<h3>§ 6</h3> + +<p>Let me tell you rather of my thoughts than of my moods, for there at +least one comes to something with a form that may be drawn and a +substance that is measurable; one ceases to struggle with things +indefinable and the effort to convey by metaphors and imaginary voices +things that are at once bodiless and soundless and lightless and yet +infinitely close and real. And moreover with that mysterious and subtle +change of heart in me there came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> also a change in the quality and range +of my ideas. I seemed to rise out of a tangle of immediacies and +misconceptions, to see more largely and more freely than I had ever done before.</p> + +<p>I have told how in my muddled and wounded phase I had snatched at the +dull project of improving my languages, and under the cloak of that +spying a little upon German military arrangements. Now my mind set such +petty romanticism on one side. It had recovered the strength to look on +the whole of life and on my place in it. It could resume the ideas that +our storm of passion had for a time thrust into the background of my +thoughts. I took up again all those broad generalizations that had +arisen out of my experiences in South Africa, and which I had been not +so much fitting into as forcing into the formulæ of English politics; I +recalled my disillusionment with British Imperialism, my vague but +elaborating apprehension of a profound conflict between enterprise and +labor, a profound conflict between the life of the farm and the life of +trade and finance and wholesale production, as being something far truer +to realities than any of the issues of party and patriotism upon which +men were spending their lives. So far as this rivalry between England +and Germany, which so obsessed the imagination of Europe, went, I found +that any faith I may have had in its importance had simply fallen out of +my mind. As a danger to civilization, as a conceivable source of +destruction and delay, it was a monstrous business enough, but that in +the long run it mattered how or when they fought and which won I did not +believe. In the development of mankind the thing was of far less +importance than the struggle for Flanders or the wars of France and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> +Burgundy. I was already coming to see Europe as no more than the +dog's-eared corner of the page of history,—like most Europeans I had +thought it the page—and my recovering mind was eager and open to see +the world beyond and form some conception of the greater forces that lay +outside our insularities. What is humanity as a whole doing? What is the +nature of the world process of which I am a part? Why should I drift +from cradle to grave wearing the blinkers of my time and nationality, a +mere denizen of Christendom, accepting its beliefs, its stale +antagonisms, its unreal purposes? That perhaps had been tolerable while +I was still an accepted member of the little world into which my lot had +fallen, but now that I was thrust out its absurdity glared. For me the +alternative was to be a world-man or no man. I had seemed sinking +towards the latter: now I faced about and began to make myself what I +still seek to make myself to-day, a son of mankind, a conscious part of +that web of effort and perplexity which wraps about our globe....</p> + +<p>All this I say came into my mind as if it were a part of that recovery +of my mind from its first passionate abjection. And it seemed a simple +and obvious part of the same conversion to realize that I was ignorant +and narrow, and that, too, in a world which is suffering like a beast in +a slime pit by reason of ignorance and narrowness of outlook, and that +it was my manifest work and purpose to make myself less ignorant and to +see and learn with all my being. It came to me as a clear duty that I +should get out of the land of hotels and leisure and go seeking the +facts and clues to human inter-relationship nearer the earthy roots of +things, and I turned my thoughts to India and China, those vast enigmas +of human <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>accumulation, in a spirit extraordinarily like that of some +mystic who receives a call. I felt I must go to Asia and from Asia +perhaps round the world. But it was the greatness of Asia commanded me. +I wanted to see the East not as a spectacle but as the simmering vat in +which the greater destiny of man brews and brews....</p> + +<h3>§ 7</h3> + +<p>It was necessary to tell my father of my intentions. I made numerous +beginnings. I tore up several letters and quarrelled bitterly with the +hotel pens. At first I tried to describe the change that had happened to +my mind, to give him some impression of the new light, the release that +had come to me. But how difficult this present world is with its tainted +and poisoned phrases and its tangled misunderstandings! Here was I +writing for the first time in my life of something essentially religious +and writing it to him whose profession was religion, and I could find no +words to convey my meaning to him that did not seem to me fraught with +the possibilities of misinterpretation. One evening I made a desperate +resolve to let myself go, and scrawled my heart out to him as it seemed +that night, a strange, long letter. It was one of the profoundest +regrets that came to me when I saw him dead last winter that I did not +risk his misunderstanding and post that letter. But when I re-read it in +the next morning's daylight it seemed to me so rhetorical, so full +of—what shall I call it?—spiritual bombast, it so caricatured and +reflected upon the deep feelings sustaining me, that I could not post it +for shamefacedness,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> and I tore it up into little pieces and sent +instead the briefest of notes.</p> + +<p>"I am doing no good here in Switzerland," I wrote. "Would you mind if I +went east? I want to see something of the world outside Europe. I have a +fancy I may find something to do beyond there. Of course, it will cost +rather more than my present allowance. I will do my best to economize. +Don't bother if it bothers you—I've been bother enough to you...."</p> + +<p>He replied still more compactly. "By all means. I will send you some +circular notes, Poste Restante, Rome. That will be on your way. Good +wishes to you, Stephen. I'm glad you want to go east instead of just +staying in Switzerland."</p> + +<p>I sit here now and wonder, little son, what he thought, what he +supposed, what he understood.</p> + +<p>I loved my father, and I began to perceive he loved me wonderfully. I +can imagine no man I would have sooner had for a priest than him; all +priestcraft lays hands if it can, and with an excellent wisdom, upon the +titles and dignity of fatherhood; and yet here am I left to guessing—I +do not know whether my father ever worshipped, whether he ever prayed +with his heart bared to God. There are times when the inexpressiveness +of life comes near to overwhelming me, when it seems to me we are all +asleep or entranced, and but a little way above the still cows who stand +munching slowly in a field. Why couldn't we and why didn't we talk +together?... We fear bathos too much, are shyly decent to the pitch of +mania. We have neither the courage of our bodies nor of our souls....</p> + +<p>I went almost immediately to Rome. I stayed in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> Rome some days, getting +together an outfit, and incidentally seeing that greater city of the +dead in whose embrace the modern city lies. I was now becoming +interested in things outside my grooves, though my grooves were still +there, deep and receptive, and I went about the place at last almost +eagerly, tracing the outlines of that great departed city on whose +colossal bones the churches and palaces of the middle ages cluster like +weeds in the spaces and ruins of a magnificent garden. I found myself +one day in the Forum, thinking of that imperialism that had built the +Basilica of Julius Cæsar, and comparing its cramped vestiges with that +vaster second administrative effort which has left the world the +monstrous arches of Constantine. I sat down over against these last +among the ruins of the Vestals' House, and mused on that later +reconstruction when the Empire, with its science aborted and its +literature and philosophy shrivelled to nothing, its social fabric +ruined by the extravagances of financial adventure and its honor and +patriotism altogether dead, united itself, in a desperate effort to +continue, with all that was most bickeringly intolerant and destructive +in Christianity—only to achieve one common vast decay. All Europe to +this day is little more than the sequel to that failure. It is the Roman +Empire in disintegration. The very churches whose domes rise to the +northward of the ancient remains are built of looted stones and look +like parasitic and fungoid growths, and the tourists stream through +those spaces day by day, stare at the marble fragments, the arches, the +fallen carvings and rich capitals, with nothing greater in their minds +and nothing clearer....</p> + +<p>I discovered I was putting all this into the form of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> letter to Mary. +I was writing to her in my mind, as many people talk to themselves. And +I remember that I wandered upon the Palatine Hill musing over the idea +of writing a long letter to her, a long continuous letter to her, a sort +of diary of impressions and ideas, that somewhen, years ahead, I might +be able to put into her hands.</p> + +<p>One does not carry out such an idea into reality; it is so much easier +to leave the letter imagined and unwritten if there lives but little +hope of its delivery; yet for many years I kept up an impalpable +correspondence in my thoughts, a stream of expression to which no answer +came—until at last the habits of public writing and the gathering +interests of a new rôle in life diverted it to other ends.</p> + +<h3>§ 8</h3> + +<p>One morning on the way from Brindisi to Egypt I came up on deck at dawn +because my mind was restless and I could not sleep. Another solitary +passenger was already up, so intently watching a pink-lit rocky +coast-line away to the north of us that for a time he did not observe me.</p> + +<p>"That's Crete," he said, when at last he became aware of me close at hand.</p> + +<p>"Crete!" said I.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, "Crete."</p> + +<p>He came nearer to me. "That, sir," he said with a challenging emphasis, +"is the most wonderful island I've ever yet set eyes on,—quite the most wonderful."</p> + +<p>"Five thousand years ago," he remarked after a pause that seemed to me +to be calculated, "they were building palaces there, better than the +best we can build to-day.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> And things—like modern things. They had +bathrooms there, beautifully fitted bathrooms—and admirable +sanitation—admirable. Practically—American. They had better artists to +serve them than your King Edward has, why! Minos would have laughed or +screamed at all that Windsor furniture. And the things they made of +gold, sir—you couldn't get them done anywhere to-day. Not for any +money. There was a Go about them.... They had a kind of writing, +too—before the Phœnicians. No man can read it now, and there it is. +Fifty centuries ago it was; and to-day—They grow oranges and lemons. +And they riot.... Everything else gone.... It's as if men struggled up +to a certain pitch and then—grew tired.... All this Mediterranean; it's a tired sea...."</p> + +<p>That was the beginning of a curious conversation. He was an American, a +year or so younger than myself, going, he said, "to look at Egypt."</p> + +<p>"In our country," he explained, "we're apt to forget all these +worked-out regions. Too apt. We don't get our perspectives. We think the +whole blessed world is one everlasting boom. It hit me first down in +Yucatan that that wasn't so. Why! the world's littered with the remains +of booms and swaggering beginnings. Americanism!—there's always been +Americanism. This Mediterranean is just a Museum of old Americas. I +guess Tyre and Sidon thought they were licking creation all the time. +It's set me thinking. What's <i>really</i> going on? Why—anywhere,—you're +running about among ruins—anywhere. And ruins of something just as good +as anything we're doing to-day. Better—in some ways. It takes the heart +out of you...."</p> + +<p>It was Gidding, who is now my close friend and ally.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> I remember very +vividly the flavor of morning freshness as we watched Crete pass away +northward and I listened to his talk.</p> + +<p>"I was coming out of New York Harbor a month ago and looking back at the +skyscrapers," he said, "and suddenly it hit me in the mind;—'That's +just the next ruin,' I thought."</p> + +<p>I remember that much of our first talk, but the rest of it now is indistinct.</p> + +<p>We had however struck up an acquaintance, we were both alone, and until +he left me on his way to Abydos we seem now to have been conversing all +the time. And almost all the time we were discussing human destiny and +the causes of effort and decay, and whether the last few ascendant +centuries the world has seen have in them anything more persistent than +the countless beginnings that have gone before.</p> + +<p>"There's Science," said I a little doubtfully.</p> + +<p>"At Cnossus there they had Dædalus, sir, fifty centuries ago. Dædalus! +He was an F.R.S. all right. I haven't a doubt he flew. If they hadn't +steel they had brass. We're too conceited about our little modern things."</p> + +<h3>§ 9</h3> + +<p>I found something very striking and dramatic in the passage from Europe +to Asia. One steams slowly through a desert that comes up close to the +ship; the sand stretches away, hillock and mound beyond hillock and +mound; one sees camels in the offing stringing out to some ancient +destination; one is manifestly passing across a barrier,—the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> canal has +changed nothing of that. Suez is a first dab of tumultuous Orientalism, +noisy and vivid. And then, after that gleam of turmoil, one opens out +into the lonely dark blue waters of the Red Sea. Right and left the +shore is a bitter, sun-scorched desolation; eastward frowns a great +rampart of lowering purple mountains towering up to Sinai. It is like no +European landscape. The boat goes slowly as if uncharted dangers lurked +ahead. It is a new world with a new atmosphere. Then comes wave upon +wave of ever more sultry air, and the punkahs begin to swing and the +white clothes appear. Everyone casts off Europe, assumes an Asiatic +livery. The very sun, rushing up angrily and abruptly after a heated +night, is unfamiliar, an Asiatic sun.</p> + +<p>And so one goes down that reef-fringed waterway to Aden; it is studded +with lonely-looking lighthouses that burn, it seems, untended, and +sometimes in their melancholy isolation swing great rhythmic arms of +light. And then, land and the last lateen sails of Aden vanishing +together, one stands out into the hot thundery monotonies of the Indian +Ocean; into imprisonment in a blue horizon across whose Titan ring the +engines seem to throb in vain. How one paces the ship day by day, and +eats and dozes and eats again, and gossips inanely and thanks Heaven +even for a flight of flying fish or a trail of smoke from over the +horizon to take one's mind a little out of one's oily quivering +prison!... A hot portentous delay; a sinister significant pause; that is +the voyage from Europe to India still.</p> + +<p>I suppose by the time that you will go to India all this prelude will +have vanished, you will rattle through in a train-de-luxe from Calais, +by way of Baku or <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>Constantinople; you will have none of this effect of +a deliberate sullen approach across limitless miles of sea. But that is +how I went to India. Everything seemed to expand; I was coming out of +the frequent landfalls, the neighborly intimacies and neighborly +conflicts of the Mediterranean into something remoter; into larger seas +and greater lands, rarer communications and a vaster future....</p> + +<p>To go from Europe to Asia is like going from Norway to Russia, from +something slight and "advanced" to something massive and portentous. I +felt that nearly nine years ago; to-day all Asia seems moving forward to +justify my feelings....</p> + +<p>And I remember too that as I went down the Red Sea and again in the +Indian Ocean I had a nearly intolerable passion of loneliness. A wound +may heal and still leave pain. I was coming out of Europe as one comes +out of a familiar house into something larger and stranger, I seemed but +a little speck of life, and behind me, far away and silent and receding, +was the one other being to whom my thoughts were open. It seemed very +cruel to me that I could not write to her.</p> + +<p>Such moods were to come to me again and again, and particularly during +the inactivities of voyages and in large empty spaces and at night when +I was weary. At other times I could banish and overcome them by forcing +myself to be busy and by going to see novel and moving things.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p> + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_THE_EIGHTH" id="CHAPTER_THE_EIGHTH"></a>CHAPTER THE EIGHTH</h2> + +<h3><span class="smcap">This Swarming Business of Mankind</span></h3> + +<h3>§ 1</h3> + +<p>I do not think I could now arrange into a consecutive history my +travellings, my goings and returnings in my wandering effort to see and +comprehend the world. And certainly even if I could arrange my facts I +should still be at a loss to tell of the growth of ideas that is so much +more important than any facts, to trace the increasing light to its +innumerable sources, to a chink here, to a glowing reflection there, to +a leap of burning light from some long inert darkness close at hand. But +steadily the light grew, and this vast world of man, in which our world, +little son, is the world of a limited class in a small island, began to +take on definite forms, to betray broad universal movements; what seemed +at first chaotic, a drift and tangle of passions, traditions, foolish +ideas, blundering hostilities, careless tolerances, became confusedly +systematic, showed something persistent and generalized at work among +its multitudinous perplexity.</p> + +<p>I wonder now if I can put before you very briefly the main +generalizations that were growing up in my mind during my exile, the +simplified picture into which I translated the billions of sights and +sounds and—smells, for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> every part of the world has its distinctive +olfactory palette as much as its palette of colors—that rained daily +and nightly upon my mind.</p> + +<p>Before, my eyes again as I sit here in this quiet walled French garden, +the great space before the Jumna Musjid at Delhi reappears, as I saw it +in the evening stillness against a glowing sky of gold, and the memory +of countless worshippers within, praying with a devotion no European +displays. And then comes a memory of that long reef of staircases and +temples and buildings, the ghats of Benares, in the blazing morning sun, +swarming with a vast multitude of multicolored people and the water also +swarming with brown bodies. It has the colors of a bed of extravagantly +splendid flowers and the light that is Indian alone. Even as I sit here +these places are alive with happening. It is just past midday here; at +this moment the sun sinks in the skies of India, the Jumna Musjid +flushes again with the glow of sunset, the smoke of evening fires +streams heavenward against its subtle lines, and upon those steps at +Benares that come down the hillside between the conquering mosque of +Aurangzeb and the shining mirror of the Ganges a thousand silent seated +figures fall into meditation. And other memories recur and struggle with +one another; the crowded river-streets of Canton, the rafts and +houseboats and junks innumerable, riding over inky water, begin now to +twinkle with a thousand lights. They are ablaze in Osaka and Yokohama +and Tokio, and the swarming staircase streets of Hong Kong glitter with +a wicked activity now that night has come. I flash a glimpse of Burmese +temples, of villages in Java, of the sombre purple masses of the walls +of the Tartar city at Pekin with squat <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>pagoda-guarded gates. How those +great outlines lowered at me in the twilight, full of fresh memories and +grim anticipations of baseness and violence and bloodshed! I sit here +recalling it—feeling it all out beyond the trellised vine-clad wall +that bounds my physical vision.... Vast crowded world that I have seen! +going from point to point seeking for clues, for generalities, until at +last it seems to me that there emerges—something understandable.</p> + +<p>I think I have got something understandable out of it all.</p> + +<p>What a fantastically courageous thing is this mind of ours! My thoughts +seem to me at once presumptuous and inevitable. I do not know why it is +that I should dare, that any of us should dream of this attempt to +comprehend. But we who think are everyone impelled to this amazing +effort to get it all together into some simple generality. It is not +reason but a deep-seated instinct that draws our intelligence towards +explanations, that sets us perpetually seeking laws, seeking statements +that will fit into infinite, incessantly interweaving complexities, and +be true of them all! There is I perceive a valiant and magnificent +stupidity about the human mind, a disregard of disproportion and +insufficiency—like the ferret which will turn from the leveret it has +seized to attack even man if he should interfere. By these desperate +feats of thinking it is that our species has achieved its victories. By +them it survives. By them it must stand the test of ultimate survival. +Some forgotten man in our ancestry—for every begetting man alive was in +my individual ancestry and yours three thousand years ago—first dared +to think of the world as round,—an astounding temerity. He rolled up +the rivers and mountains, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> forests and plains and broad horizons +that stretched beyond his ken, that seemed to commonsense to go on +certainly for ever, into a ball, into a little ball "like an orange." +Magnificent feat of the imagination, outdoing Thor's deep draught of the +sea! And once he had done it, all do it and no one falters at the deed. +You are not yet seven as I write and already you are serenely aware that +you live upon a sphere. And in much the same manner it is that we, who +are sociologists and economists, publicists and philosophers and what +not, are attempting now to roll up the vast world of facts which concern +human intercourse, the whole indeed of history and archæology, into some +similar imaginable and manageable shape, that presently everyone will be +able to grasp.</p> + +<p>I suppose there was a time when nobody bothered at all about the shape +of the earth, when nobody had even had the idea that the earth could be +conceived as having a shape, and similarly it is true that it is only in +recent centuries that people have been able to suppose that there was a +shape to human history. It is indeed not much more than a century since +there was any real emergence from theological assumptions and pure +romanticism and accidentalism in these matters. Old Adam Smith it was, +probing away at the roots of economics, who set going the construction +of ampler propositions. From him spring all those new interpretations +which have changed the writing of history from a record of dramatic +reigns and wars and crises to an analysis of economic forces. How +impossible it would be for anyone now to write that great chapter of +Gibbon's in which he sweeps together into one contempt the history of +sixty Emperors and six hundred years of time. His note of weariness and +futility<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> vanishes directly one's vision penetrates the immediate +surface. Those Heraclians and Isaurians and Comneni were not history, a +schoolboy nowadays knows that their record is not history, knows them +for the mere scum upon the stream.</p> + +<p>And still to-day we have our great interpretations to make. Ours is a +time of guesses, theories and provisional generalizations. Our phase +corresponds to the cosmography that was still a little divided between +discs and domes and spheres and cosmic eggs; that was still a thousand +years from measuring and weighing a planet. For a long time my mind +hovered about the stimulating theories of Socialism and particularly +about those more systematic forms of Socialist teaching that centre +about Karl Marx. He rose quite naturally out of those early economists +who saw all the world in terms of production and saving. He was a +necessary step for me at least, on the way to understanding. For a time +I did so shape the world in my mind that it seemed to me no more than a +vast enterprise for the organization and exploitation of labor. For a +time I thought human life was essentially a labor problem, that working +and controlling work and lending and selling and "speculating" made the +essential substance of human life, over which the forms of politics ran +as the stripes of a tiger's skin run and bend over its living muscles. I +followed my period in thinking that. You will find in Ferrero's "Roman +Decline," which was published early in this century, and which waits for +you in the library, almost exactly the method of interpretation that was +recommending itself to me in 1904 and 1905.</p> + +<p>Well, the labor problem concerns a great—<i>substantial</i>, shall I +say?—in human society. It is only I think the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> basis and matter of +society, not its shape and life and reality, but it had to be +apprehended before I could get on to more actual things. Insensibly the +idea that contemporary political forms mattered very fundamentally to +men, was fading out of my mind. The British Empire and the German +Empire, the Unity of Italy, and Anglo-Saxon ascendency, the Yellow Peril +and all the other vast phantoms of the World-politician's mythology were +fading out of my mind in those years, as the Olympic cosmogony must have +faded from the mind of some inquiring Greek philosopher in the days of +Heraclitus. And I revised my history altogether in the new light. The +world had ceased to be chaotic in my mind; it had become a vast if as +yet a quite inconclusive drama between employer and employed.</p> + +<p>It makes a wonderful history, this history of mankind as a history of +Labor, as a history of the perpetual attempts of an intelligent minority +to get things done by other people. It does not explain how that +aggression of the minority arose nor does it give any conception of a +primordial society which corresponds with our knowledge of the realities +of primitive communities. One begins rather in the air with a human +society that sells and barters and sustains contracts and permits land +to be privately owned, and having as hastily as possible got away from +that difficulty of beginnings, having ignored the large areas of the +world which remain under a pacific and unprogressive agriculture to this +day, the rest of the story becomes extremely convincing and +illuminating. It does indeed give a sustaining explanation to a large +part of recorded history, this generalization about the proclivity of +able and energetic people to make other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> people do things. One ignores +what is being done as if that mattered nothing, and concentrates upon +the use and enslavement of men.</p> + +<p>One sees that enslavement to labor progressing from crude directness to +the most subtly indirect methods. The first expedient of enterprise was +the sword and then the whip, and still there are remote and ugly corners +of the world, in the Mexican Valle Nazionale or in Portuguese South +Africa, where the whip whistles still and the threat of great suffering +and death follows hard upon the reluctant toiler. But the larger part of +our modern slavery is past the stage of brand and whip. We have fallen +into methods at once more subtle and more effective. We stand +benevolently in front of our fellow man, offering, almost as if it were +food and drink and shelter and love, the work we want him to do; and +behind him, we are acutely aware, is necessity, sometimes quite of our +making, as when we drive him to work by a hut-tax or a poll tax or a +rent, that obliges him to earn money, and sometimes not so obviously of +our making, sometimes so little of our making that it is easy to believe +we have no power to remove it. Instead of flicking the whip, we groan at +last with Harriet Martineau at the inexorable laws of political economy +that condemn us to comfort and direction, and those others to toil and +hardship and indignity....</p> + +<p>And through the consideration of these latter later aspects it was that +I came at last to those subtler problems of tacit self-deception, of +imperfect and unwilling apprehension, of innocently assumed advantages, +of wilfully disregarded unfairness; and also to all those other problems +of motive, those forgotten questions of why we make<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> others work for us +long after our personal needs are satisfied, why men aggrandize and +undertake, which gradually have become in my mind the essential problems +of human relationship, replacing the crude problems of labor altogether +in that position, making <i>them</i> at last only questions of contrivance +and management on the way to greater ends.</p> + +<p>I have come to believe now that labor problems are problems merely by +the way. They have played their part in a greater scheme. This phase of +expropriation and enslavement, this half designed and half unconscious +driving of the duller by the clever, of the pacific by the bolder, of +those with weak appetites and imaginations by those with stronger +appetites and imaginations, has been a necessary phase in human +development. With my innate passionate desire to find the whole world +purposeful, I cannot but believe that. But however necessary it has +been, it is necessary no longer. Strangest of saviors, there rises over +the conflicts of mankind the glittering angular promise of the machine. +There is no longer any need for slavery, open or disguised. We do not +need slaves nor toilers nor mere laborers any more; they are no longer +essential to a civilization. Man has ridden on his brother man out of +the need of servitude. He struggles through to a new phase, a phase of +release, a phase when leisure and an unexampled freedom is possible to +every human being. Is possible. And it is there one halts seeing that +splendid possibility of aspiration and creation before mankind—and +seeing mankind for the most part still downcast, quite unaware or +incredulous, following the old rounds, the grooves of ancient and +superseded assumptions and subjections....</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p><p>But here I will not trace in any detail the growth of my conviction +that the ancient and heavy obligation to work hard and continually +throughout life has already slipped from man's shoulders. Suffice it +that now I conceive of the task before mankind as a task essentially of +rearrangement, as a problem in relationships, extremely complex and +difficult indeed, but credibly solvable. During my Indian and Chinese +journey I was still at the Marxist stage. I went about the east looking +at labor, watching its organization and direction, seeing great +interests and enterprises replace the diffused life of an earlier phase; +the disputes and discussions in the Transvaal which had first opened my +mind to these questions came back to me, and steadily I lost my interest +in those mere political and national issues with their paraphernalia of +kings and flags and governments and parties that had hitherto blinded me +to these more fundamental interactions.</p> + +<h3>§ 2</h3> + +<p>It happened that in Bombay circumstances conspired to bring the crude +facts of labor enslavement vividly before me. I found a vigorous +agitation raging in the English press against the horrible sweating that +was going on in the cotton mills, I met the journalist most intimately +concerned in the business on my second day in India, and before a week +was out I was hard at work getting up the question and preparing a +memorandum with him on the possibility of immediate legislative +intervention. The very name of Bombay, which for most people recalls a +spacious and dignified landfall, lateen sails, green islands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> and +jutting precipices, a long city of trees and buildings like a bright and +various breakwater between the great harbor and the sea, and then +exquisite little temples, painted bullock carriages, Towers of Silence, +Parsis, and an amazingly kaleidoscopic population,—is for me a reminder +of narrow, fœtid, plague-stricken streets and tall insanitary +tenement-houses packed and dripping with humanity, and of terrible +throbbing factories working far into the night, blazing with electric +light against the velvet-black night-sky of India, damp with the +steam-clouds that are maintained to moisten the thread, and swarming +with emaciated overworked brown children—for even the adults, spare and +small, in those mills seem children to a western eye.</p> + +<p>I plunged into this heated dreadful business with a passionate interest +and went back to the Yacht Club only when the craving for air and a good +bath and clean clothes and space and respect became unendurable. I waded +deep in labor, in this process of consuming humanity for gain, chasing +my facts through throbbing quivering sheds reeking of sweat and +excrement under the tall black-smoking chimneys,—chasing them in very +truth, because when we came prying into the mills after the hour when +child-labor should cease, there would be a shrill whistle, a patter of +feet and a cuffing and hiding of the naked little creatures we were +trying to rescue. They would be hidden under rugs, in boxes, in the most +impossible places, and we dragged them out scared and lying. Many of +them were perhaps seven years old at most; and the adults—men and women +of fourteen that is to say—we could not touch at all, and they worked +in that Indian heat, in a noisome air drenched with steam for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> fourteen +and fifteen hours a day. And essential to that general impression is a +memory of a slim Parsi mill-manager luminously explaining the inherited +passion for toil in the Indian weaver, and a certain bulky Hindu with a +lemon-yellow turban and a strip of plump brown stomach showing between +his clothes, who was doing very well, he said, with two wives and five +children in the mills.</p> + +<p>That is my Bombay, that and the columns of crossed circles marking +plague cases upon the corners of houses and a peculiar acrid smell, and +the polychromatic stir of crowded narrow streets between cliffs of +architecture with carved timbers and heavy ornamentations, into which +the sun strikes obliquely and lights a thousand vivid hues....</p> + +<p>Bombay, the gateway of what silly people were still calling in those +days "the immemorial East," Bombay, which is newer than Boston or New +York, Bombay which has grown beneath the Englishman's shadow out of a +Portuguese fort in the last two hundred years....</p> + +<h3>§ 3</h3> + +<p>I came out of these dark corners presently into the sunblaze of India. I +was now intensely interested in the whole question of employment and +engaged in preparing matter for my first book, "Enterprise and India," +and therein you may read how I went first to Assam and then down to +Ceylon following up this perplexing and complicated business of human +enslavement to toil, exercised by this great spectacle of human labor, +and at once attracted by and stimulated by and dissatisfied with those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> +socialist generalizations that would make all this vast harsh spectacle +of productive enterprise a kind of wickedness and outrage upon humanity. +And behind and about the things I was looking for were other things for +which I was not looking, that slowly came into and qualified the +problem. It dawned upon me by degrees that India is not so much one +country as a vast spectacle of human development at every stage, in +infinite variety. One ranges between naked savages and the most +sophisticated of human beings. I pursued my enquiries about great modern +enterprises, about railway labor, canal labor, tea-planting, across vast +stretches of country where men still lived, illiterate, agricultural, +unprogressive and simple, as men lived before the first stirrings of +recorded history. One sees by the tanks of those mud-built villages +groups of women with brass vessels who are identical in pose and figure +and quality with the women modelled in Tanagra figures, and the droning +wall-wheel is the same that irrigated the fields of ancient Greece, and +the crops and beasts and all the life is as it was in Greece and Italy, +Phœnicia and Judea before the very dawn of history.</p> + +<p>By imperceptible degrees I came to realize that this matter of +expropriation and enslavement and control, which bulks so vastly upon +the modern consciousness, which the Socialists treat as though it was +the comprehensive present process of mankind, is no more than one aspect +of an overlife that struggles out of a massive ancient and traditional +common way of living, struggles out again and again—blindly and always +so far with a disorderly insuccess....</p> + +<p>I began to see in their proper proportion the vast enduring normal human +existence, the peasant's agricultural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> life, unlettered, laborious and +essentially unchanging on the one hand, and on the other those +excrescences of multitudinous city aggregation, those stormy excesses of +productive energy that flare up out of that life, establish for a time +great unstable strangenesses of human living, palaces, cities, roads, +empires, literatures, and then totter and fall back again into ruin. In +India even more than about the Mediterranean all this is spectacular. +There the peasant goes about his work according to the usage of fifty +thousand years. He has a primitive version of religion, a moral +tradition, a social usage, closely adapted by countless years of trial +and survival to his needs, and the whole land is littered with the +vestiges and abandoned material of those newer, bolder, more +experimental beginnings, beginnings that merely began.</p> + +<p>It was when I was going through the panther-haunted palaces of Akbar at +Fatehpur Sikri that I first felt how tremendously the ruins of the past +may face towards the future; the thing there is like a frozen wave that +rose and never broke; and once I had caught that light upon things, I +found the same quality in all the ruins I saw, in Amber and Vijayanagar +and Chitor, and in all that I have seen or heard of, in ancient Rome and +ancient Verona, in Pæstum and Cnossus and ancient Athens. None of these +places was ever really finished and done with; the Basilicas of Cæsar +and Constantine just as much as the baths and galleries and halls of +audience at Fatehpur Sikri express not ends achieved but thwarted +intentions of permanence. They embody repulse and rejection. They are +trials, abandoned trials, towards ends vaguely apprehended, ends felt +rather than known. Even so was I moved by the Bruges-like emptinesses of +Pekin, in the vast pretensions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> of its Forbidden City, which are like a +cry, long sustained, that at last dies away in a wail. I saw the place +in 1905 in that slack interval after the European looting and before the +great awakening that followed the Russo-Japanese war. Pekin in a century +or so may be added in its turn to the list of abandoned endeavors. +Insensibly the sceptre passes.... Nearer home than any of these places +have I imagined the same thing; in Paris it seemed to me I felt the +first chill shadow of that same arrest, that impalpable ebb and +cessation at the very crest of things, that voice which opposes to all +the hasty ambitions and gathering eagerness of men: "It is not here, it +is not yet."</p> + +<p>Only the other day as I came back from Paris to this quiet place and +walked across the fields from the railway station to this house, I saw +an old woman, a grandmother, a bent old crone with two children playing +about her as she cut grass by the wayside, and she cut it, except that +her sickle was steel, exactly as old women were cutting grass before +there was writing, before the dawn of history, before men laid the first +stones one upon the other of the first city that ever became a ruin....</p> + +<p>You see Civilization has never yet existed, it has only continually and +obstinately attempted to be. Our Civilization is but the indistinct +twilight before the dawn. It is still only a confused attempt, a +flourish out of barbarism, and the normal life of men, the toiling +earthy life of the field and the byre, goes on still like a stream that +at once supports and carries to destruction the experimental ships of +some still imperfect inventor. India gives it all from first to last, +and now the modern movement, the latest half-conscious struggle of the +New Thing in mankind, throws up Bombay and Calcutta, vast feverish +pustules<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> upon the face of the peninsula, bridges the sacred rivers with +hideous iron lattice-work and smears the sky of the dusty ruin-girdled +city of Delhi,—each ruin is the vestige of an empire,—with the black +smoke of factory chimneys.</p> + +<p>Altogether scattered over that sun-burnt plain there are the remains of +five or six extinguished Delhis, that played their dramas of frustration +before the Delhi of the Great Mogul. This present phase of human +living—its symbol at Delhi is now, I suppose, a scaffold-bristling pile +of neo-Georgian building—is the latest of the constructive synthetic +efforts to make a newer and fuller life for mankind. Who dares call it +the last? I question myself constantly whether this life we live to-day, +whether that too, is more than a trial of these blind constructive +forces, more universal perhaps, more powerful perhaps than any +predecessor but still a trial, to litter the world with rusting material +when the phase of recession recurs.</p> + +<p>But yet I can never quite think that is so. This time, surely, it is +different. This time may indeed be the beginning of a permanent change; +this time there are new elements, new methods and a new spirit at work +upon construction that the world has never known before. Mankind may be +now in the dawn of a fresh phase of living altogether. It is possible. +The forces of construction are proportionally gigantic. There was never +so much clear and critical thought in the world as there is now, never +so large a body of generally accessible knowledge and suggestion, never +anything like the same breadth of outlook, the same universality of +imaginative freedom. That is so in spite of infinite turmoil and +confusion. Moreover the effort now is less concentrated, less dramatic. +There is no one vital center to the modern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> movement which disaster can +strike or decay undermine. If Paris or New York slacken and grow dull +and materialist, if Berlin and London conspire for a mutual destruction, +Tokio or Baku or Valparaiso or Christiania or Smyrna or Delhi will +shelter and continue the onward impetus.</p> + +<p>And this time too it is not any one person, any one dynasty, any one +cult or race which carries our destiny. Human thought has begun to free +itself from individual entanglements and dramatic necessities and +accidental standards. It becomes a collective mind, a collective will +towards achievement, greater than individuals or cities or kingdoms or +peoples, a mind and will to which we all contribute and which none of us +may command nor compromise by our private errors. It ceases to be +aristocratic; it detaches itself from persons and takes possession of us +all. We are involved as it grows free and dominant, we find ourselves, +in spite of ourselves, in spite of quarrels and jealousies and +conflicts, helping and serving in the making of a new world-city, a new +greater State above our legal States, in which all human life becomes a +splendid enterprise, free and beautiful, whose aptest symbol in all our +world is a huge Gothic Cathedral lit to flame by the sun, whose scheme +is the towering conquest of the universe, whose every little detail is +the wrought-out effort of a human soul....</p> + +<p>Such were the ideas that grew together in my mind as I went about India +and the East, across those vast sunlit plains, where men and women still +toil in their dusty fields for a harsh living and live in doorless +hovels on floors of trampled cow-dung, persecuted by a hundred hostile +beasts and parasites, caught and eaten by tigers and panthers as cats +eat mice, and grievously afflicted by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> periodic famine and pestilence, +even as men and women lived before the dawn of history, for untold +centuries, for hundreds of thousands of years.</p> + +<h3>§ 4</h3> + +<p>How strange we English seem in India, a little scattered garrison. Are +we anything more than accidental, anything more than the messenger-boy +who has brought the impetus of the new effort towards civilization +through the gates of the East? Are we makers or just a means, casually +taken up and used by the great forces of God?</p> + +<p>I do not know, I have never been able to tell. I have never been able to +decide whether we are the greatest or the dullest of peoples.</p> + +<p>I think we are an imaginative people with an imagination at once +gigantic, heroic and shy, and also we are a strangely restrained and +disciplined people who are yet neither subdued nor subordinated.... +These are flat contradictions to state, and yet how else can one render +the paradox of the English character and this spectacle of a handful of +mute, snobbish, not obviously clever and quite obviously ill-educated +men, holding together kingdoms, tongues and races, three hundred +millions of them, in a restless fermenting peace? Again and again in +India I would find myself in little circles of the official +English,-supercilious, pretentious, conventional, carefully "turned out" +people, living gawkily, thinking gawkily, talking nothing but sport and +gossip, relaxing at rare intervals into sentimentality and levity as +mean as a banjo tune, and a kind of despairful disgust would engulf me. +And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> then in some man's work, in some huge irrigation scheme, some feat +of strategic foresight, some simple, penetrating realization of +deep-lying things, I would find an effect, as if out of a thickly rusted +sheath one had pulled a sword and found it—flame....</p> + +<p>I recall one evening I spent at a little station in Bengal, between +Lucknow and Delhi, an evening given over to private theatricals. The +theatre was a huge tent, and the little roughly improvised stage was lit +by a row of oil footlights and so small as barely to give a foothold for +the actors and actresses in the more crowded scenes. About me were the +great people, the colonel's wife, a touring young man of family, +officers and the wife of the manager of the big sugar refinery close at +hand. Behind were English of a more dubious social position, also +connected with the sugar refinery, a Eurasian family or so, very dressy +and aggressive and terribly snubbed, and then I think various Portuguese +and other nondescripts and groups of non-commissioned officers and men, +some with their wives. The play, admirably chosen, was that +crystallization of liberal Victorian snobbery, <i>Caste</i>, and I remember +there was a sub-current of amusement because the young officer who +played—what <i>is</i> the name of the hero's friend? I forget—had in the +haste of his superficiality adopted a moustache that would not keep on +and an eyeglass that would not keep in.</p> + +<p>Everybody was acting very badly, nobody was word-perfect and a rasping +prompter would not keep ahead as he ought to have done; the scenery and +the make-ups were daubs, and I was filled with amazement that having +quite wantonly undertaken to do this thing these people could then do it +so slackly. Then a certain sudden<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> warmth in the applause about me +quickened my attention, and I realized the satirical purport of drunken +old father Eccles, and the moral intention of his son-in-law, the +plumber. Between them they expressed the whole duty of the workingman as +the prosperous Victorians conceived it. He was to work hard always at +any job he could find for any wages he could get, and if he didn't he +was a "drunken shirker" and the dupe of "paid agitators." A comforting +but misleading doctrine. And here were these people a decade on in the +twentieth century, with Time, Death, and Judgment close upon them, still +eagerly applauding, eager to excuse their minds with this one-sided, +ungracious, old-fashioned nonsense, that has done so much to intensify +the deepening class antagonisms that strain us now at home almost to the +breaking point!</p> + +<p>How amazingly, it seemed, those people didn't understand and wouldn't +understand any class but their own, any race but their own, any usage +other than their use! Covertly I surveyed the colonel's profile. It +expressed nothing but entire satisfaction with these disastrous +interpretations. What a weather-worn thought-free face that grizzled +veteran showed the world!</p> + +<p>I was seized with a sudden curiosity to see how the private soldiers +behind me were taking old Eccles. I turned round to discover cropped +heads and faces as expressionless as masks, and behind them dusky faces +watching very alertly, and then other dusky faces, Eurasians, inferiors, +servants, natives.</p> + +<p>Then at a sharp edge the glare of our lighting ceased and the canvas +walls of our narrow world of illusion opened into a vast blue twilight. +At the opening stood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> two white-clad Sikhs, very, very still and +attentive, watching the performance, and beyond them was a great space +of sky over a dim profile of trees and roofs and a minaret, a sky +darkling down to the flushed red memory—such a short memory it is in +India—of a day that had gone for ever.</p> + +<p>I remained staring at that for some time.</p> + +<p>"Isn't old Eccles <i>good</i>?" whispered the colonel's wife beside me, and +recalled me to the play....</p> + +<p>Somehow that picture of a narrow canvas tent in the midst of immensities +has become my symbol for the whole life of the governing English, the +English of India and Switzerland and the Riviera and the West End and +the public services....</p> + +<p>But they are not England, they are not the English reality, which is a +thing at once bright and illuminating and fitful, a thing humorous and +wise and adventurous—Shakespeare, Dickens, Newton, Darwin, Nelson, +Bacon, Shelley—English names every one—like the piercing light of +lanterns swinging and swaying among the branches of dark trees at night.</p> + +<h3>§ 5</h3> + +<p>I went again to Ceylon to look into the conditions of Coolie +importation, and then I was going back into Assam once more, still in +the wake of indentured labor, when I chanced upon a misadventure. I had +my first and only experience of big game shooting in the Garo Hills, I +was clawed out of a tree by a wounded panther, he missed his hold and I +got back to my branch, but my shoulder was put out, my thigh was badly +torn, and my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> blood was poisoned by the wound. I had an evil +uncomfortable time. My injury hampered me greatly, and for a while it +seemed likely I should be permanently lamed. I had to keep to vehicles +and reasonably good roads. I wound up my convalescence with a voyage to +Singapore, and from thence I went on rather disconnectedly to a number +of exploratory journeys—excursions rather than journeys—into China. I +got to Pekin and then suddenly faced back to Europe, returning overland through Russia.</p> + +<p>I wanted now to study the conditions of modern industrialism at its +sources, and my disablement did but a little accelerate a return already +decided upon. I had got my conception of the East as a whole and of the +shape of the historical process. I no longer felt adrift in a formless +chaos of forces. I perceived now very clearly that human life is +essentially a creative struggle out of the usage of immemorial years, +that the synthesis of our contemporary civilization is this creative +impulse rising again in its latest and greatest effort, the creative +impulse rising again, as a wave rises from the trough of its +predecessors, out of the ruins of our parent system, imperial Rome. But +this time, and for the first time, the effort is world-wide, and China +and Iceland, Patagonia and Central Africa all swing together with us to +make—or into another catastrophic failure to make—the Great State of +mankind. All this I had now distinctly in my mind. The new process I +perceive had gone further in the west; was most developed in the west. +The lighter end lifts first. So back I came away from the great body of +mankind, which is Asia, to its head. And since I was still held by my +promise from returning to England I betook myself first to the Pas de +Calais and then to Belgium and thence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> into industrial Germany, to study +the socialistic movement at its sources.</p> + +<p>And I was beginning to see too very clearly by the time of my return +that what is confusedly called the labor problem is really not one +problem at all, but two. There is the old problem, the problem as old as +Zimbabwe and the pyramids, the declining problem, the problem of +organizing masses of unskilled labor to the constructive ends of a Great +State, and there is the new modification due to machinery, which has +rendered unskilled labor and labor of a low grade of skill almost +unnecessary to mankind, added coal, oil, wind and water, the elementary +school and the printing-press to our sources of power, and superseded +the ancient shepherding and driving of men by the possibility of their +intelligent and willing co-operation. The two are still mixed in every +discussion, even as they are mixed in the practice of life, but +inevitably they will be disentangled. We break free from slavery, open +or disguised, just as we illuminate and develop this disentanglement....</p> + +<p>I have long since ceased to trouble about the economics of human +society. Ours are not economic but psychological difficulties. There is +enough for everyone, and only a fool can be found to deny it. But our +methods of getting and making are still ruled by legal and social +traditions from the time before we had tapped these new sources of +power, before there was more than enough for everyone, and when a bare +supply was only secured by jealous possession and unremitting toil. We +have no longer to secure enough by a stern insistence. We have come to a +plenty. The problem now is to make that plenty go round, and <i>keep it +enough</i> while we do.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p><p>Our real perplexities are altogether psychological. There are no valid +arguments against a great-spirited Socialism but this, that people will +not. Indolence, greed, meanness of spirit, the aggressiveness of +authority, and above all jealousy, jealousy for our pride and vanity, +jealousy for what we esteem our possessions, jealousy for those upon +whom we have set the heavy fetters of our love, a jealousy of criticism +and association, these are the real obstacles to those brave large +reconstructions, those profitable abnegations and brotherly feats of +generosity that will yet turn human life—of which our individual lives +are but the momentary parts—into a glad, beautiful and triumphant +co-operation all round this sunlit world.</p> + +<p>If but humanity could have its imagination touched——</p> + +<p>I was already beginning to see the great problem of mankind as indeed +nothing other than a magnification of the little problem of myself, as a +problem in escape from grooves, from preoccupations and suspicions, +precautions and ancient angers, a problem of escape from these spiritual +beasts that prowl and claw, to a new generosity and a new breadth of view.</p> + +<p>For all of us, little son, as for each of us, salvation is that. We have +to get away from ourselves to a greater thing, to a giant's desire and +an unending life, ours and yet not our own.</p> + +<h3>§ 6</h3> + +<p>It is a queer experience to be even for a moment in the grip of a great +beast. I had been put into the fork of a tree, so that I could shoot +with the big stem behind my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> back. The fork wasn't, I suppose, more than +a score of feet from the ground. It was a safe enough place from a +tiger, and that is what we expected. We had been misled by our tracker, +who had mistaken the pugs of a big leopard for a tiger's,—they were +over rocky ground for the most part and he had only the spoor of a +chance patch of half-dried mud to go upon. The beast had killed a goat +and was beaten out of a thicket near by me in which he had been lying +up. The probability had seemed that he would go away along a tempting +ravine to where Captain Crosby, who was my host, awaited him; I, as the +amateur, was intended to be little more than a spectator. But he broke +back towards the wing of the line of beaters and came across the sunlit +rocks within thirty yards of my post.</p> + +<p>Seen going along in that way, flattened almost to the ground, he wasn't +a particularly impressive beast, and I shot at his shoulder as one might +blaze away at a rabbit,—perhaps just a little more carefully, feeling +as a Lord of Creation should who dispenses a merited death. I expected +him either to roll over or bolt.</p> + +<p>Then instantly he was coming in huge bounds towards me....</p> + +<p>He came so rapidly that he was covered by the big limb of the tree on +which I was standing until he was quite beneath me, and my second shot, +which I thought in the instant must have missed him, was taken rapidly +as he crouched to spring up the trunk.</p> + +<p>Then you know came a sort of astonishment, and I think,—because +afterwards Crosby picked up a dropped cartridge at the foot of the +tree—that I tried to reload. I believe I was completely incredulous +that the beast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> was going to have me until he actually got me. The thing +was too completely out of my imaginative picture. I don't believe I +thought at all while he was coming up the tree. I merely noted how +astonishingly he resembled an angry cat. Then he'd got my leg, he was +hanging on to it first by two claws and then by one claw, and the whole +weight of him was pulling me down. It didn't seem to be my leg. I wasn't +frightened, I felt absolutely nothing, I was amazed. I slipped, tried to +get a hold on the tree trunk, felt myself being hauled down, and then +got my arm about the branch. I still clung to my unloaded gun as an +impoverished aristocrat might cling to his patent of nobility. That was, +I felt, my answer for him yet.</p> + +<p>I suppose the situation lasted a fraction of a second, though it seemed +to me to last an interminable time. Then I could feel my leggings rip +and his claw go scoring deeply down my calf. That hurt in a kind of +painless, impersonal interesting way. Was my leg coming off? Boot? The +weight had gone, that enormous weight!</p> + +<p>He'd missed his hold altogether! I heard his claws tear down the bark of +the tree and then his heavy, soft fall upon the ground.</p> + +<p>I achieved a cat-like celerity. In another second I was back in my fork +reloading, my legs tucked up as tightly as possible.</p> + +<p>I peered down through the branches ready for him. He wasn't there. Not +up the tree again?... Then I saw him making off, with a halting gait, +across the scorching rocks some thirty yards away, but I could not get +my gun into a comfortable position before he was out of sight behind a +ridge.... I wondered why the sunlight seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> to be flickering like an +electric light that fails, was somehow aware of blood streaming from my +leg down the tree-stem; it seemed a torrent of blood, and there was a +long, loose ribbon of flesh very sickening to see; and then I fainted +and fell out of the tree, bruising my arm and cheek badly and +dislocating my shoulder in the fall.... Some of the beaters saw me fall, +and brought Crosby in sufficient time to improvise a <i>torniquet</i> and save my life.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p> + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_THE_NINTH" id="CHAPTER_THE_NINTH"></a>CHAPTER THE NINTH</h2> + +<h3><span class="smcap">The Spirit of the New World</span></h3> + +<h3>§ 1</h3> + +<p>I met Rachel again in Germany through the devices of my cousin the +Fürstin Letzlingen. I had finished seeing what I wanted to see in +Westphalia and I was preparing to go to the United States. There I +thought I should be able to complete and round off that large view of +the human process I had been developing in my mind. But my departure was +delayed by an attack of influenza that I picked up at a Socialist +Congress in Munich, and the dear Durchlaucht, hearing of this and having +her own views of my destiny, descended upon me while I was still in bed +there, made me get up and carried me off in her car, to take care of me +herself at her villa at Boppard, telling me nothing of any fellow-guests +I might encounter.</p> + +<p>She had a villa upon the Rhine under a hill of vineyards, where she +devoted herself—she was a widow—to matchmaking and belated regrets for +the childlessness that necessitated a perpetual borrowing of material +for her pursuit. She had a motor-car, a steam-launch, several rowing +boats and canoes, a tennis-lawn, a rambling garden, a devious house and +a rapid mind, and in fact<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> everything that was necessary for throwing +young people together. She made her surprise seem easy and natural, and +with returning health I found myself already back upon my old footing of +friendly intimacy with Rachel.</p> + +<p>I found her a new and yet a familiar Rachel. She had grown up, she was +no longer a schoolgirl, crystalline clear with gleams of emotion and +understanding, and what she had lost in transparency she had gained in +depth. And she had become well-informed, she had been reading very +widely and well, I could see, and not simply reading but talking and +listening and thinking. She showed a vivid interest in the current of +home politics,—at that time the last government of Mr. Balfour was +ebbing to its end and my old Transvaal friends, the Chinese coolies, +were to avenge themselves on their importers. The Tariff Reformers my +father detested were still struggling to unseat the Premier from his +leadership of Conservatism....</p> + +<p>It was queer to hear once more, after my Asiatic wanderings and +dreamings, those West-End dinner-table politics, those speculations +about "Winston's" future and the possibility of Lloyd George or Ramsay +Macdonald or Macnamara taking office with the Liberals and whether there +might not ultimately be a middle party in which Haldane and Balfour, +Grey and the Cecils could meet upon common ground. It seemed now not +only very small but very far off. She told me too of the huge popularity +of King Edward. He had proved to be interested, curious, understanding +and clever, an unexpectedly successful King. She described how he was +breaking out of the narrow official limits that had kept his mother in a +kind of social bandbox, extending his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> solvent informality of +friendliness to all sorts of men. He had won the heart of Will Crooks, +the labor member for Poplar, for example, made John Burns a social +success and warmed all France for England.</p> + +<p>I surveyed this novel picture of the English throne diffusing amiability.</p> + +<p>"I suppose it's what the throne ought to do," said Rachel. "If it can't +be inspiration, at any rate it can tolerate and reconcile and take the +ill-bred bitterness out of politics."</p> + +<p>"My father might have said that."</p> + +<p>"I got that from your father," she said; and added after a momentary +pause, "I go over and talk to him."</p> + +<p>"You talk to my father!"</p> + +<p>"I like to. Or rather I listen and take it in. I go over in the +afternoon. I go sometimes twice or three times a week."</p> + +<p>"That's kind of you."</p> + +<p>"Not at all. You see—— It sounds impudent, I know, for a girl to say +so, but we've so many interests in common."</p> + +<h3>§ 2</h3> + +<p>I was more and more interested by Rachel as the days went on. A man must +be stupid who does not know that a woman is happy in his presence, and +for two years now and more I had met no one with a very strong personal +feeling for me. And quite apart from that, her mind was extraordinarily +interesting to me because it was at once so active and so clear and so +limited by her entirely English circumstances. She had the prosperous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> +English outlook. She didn't so much see the wide world as get glimpses +of it through the tangle of Westminster and of West End and week-end +limitations. She wasn't even aware of that greater unprosperous England, +already sulking and darkling outside her political world, that greater +England which was presently to make its first audible intimations of +discontent in that remarkable anti-climax to King George's Coronation, +the Railway Strike. India for her was the land of people's cousins, +Germany and the German Dreadnoughts bulked far larger, and all the +tremendous gathering forces of the East were beyond the range of her +imagination. I set myself to widen her horizons.</p> + +<p>I told her something of the intention and range of my travels, and +something of the views that were growing out of their experiences.</p> + +<p>I have a clear little picture in my mind of an excursion we made to that +huge national Denkmal which rears its head out of the amiable vineyards +of Assmannshausen and Rudesheim over against Bingen. We landed at the +former place, went up its little funicular to eat our lunch and drink +its red wine at the pleasant inn above, and then strolled along through +the woods to the monument.</p> + +<p>The Fürstin fell behind with her unwilling escort, a newly arrived +medical student from England, a very pleasant youngster named Berwick, +who was all too obviously anxious to change places with me. She devised +delays, and meanwhile I, as yet unaware of the state of affairs, went on +with Rachel to that towering florid monument with its vast gesticulating +Germania, which triumphs over the conquered provinces.</p> + +<p>We fell talking of war and the passions and delusions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> that lead to war. +Rachel's thoughts were strongly colored by those ideas of a natural +rivalry between Germany and England and of a necessary revenge for +France which have for nearly forty years diverted the bulk of European +thought and energy to the mere waste of military preparations. I jarred +with an edifice of preconceptions when I scoffed and scolded at these assumptions.</p> + +<p>"Our two great peoples are disputing for the leadership of the world," I +said, "and meanwhile the whole world sweeps past us. We're drifting into +a quarrelsome backwater."</p> + +<p>I began to tell of the fermentation and new beginnings that were +everywhere perceptible throughout the East, of the vast masses of human +ability and energy that were coming into action in China and India, of +the unlimited future of both North and South America, of the mere +accidentalness of the European advantage. "History," I said, "is already +shifting the significance out of Western Europe altogether, and we +English cannot see it; we can see no further than Berlin, and these +Germans can think of nothing better than to taunt the French with such +tawdry effigies as <i>this</i>! Europe goes on to-day as India went on in the +eighteenth century, making aimless history. And the sands of opportunity +run and run...."</p> + +<p>I shrugged my shoulders and we stood for a little while looking down on +the shining crescent of the Rhine.</p> + +<p>"Suppose," said Rachel, "that someone were to say that—in the House."</p> + +<p>"The House," I said, "doesn't hear things at my pitch. Bat outcries. Too +shrill altogether."</p> + +<p>"It might. If <i>you</i>——"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p><p>She halted, hesitated for a moment on the question and asked abruptly:</p> + +<p>"When are you coming back to England, Mr. Stratton?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly not for six months," I said.</p> + +<p>A movement of her eyes made me aware of the Fürstin and Berwick emerging +from the trees. "And then?" asked Rachel.</p> + +<p>I didn't want to answer that question, in which the personal note +sounded so clearly. "I am going to America to see America," I said, "and +America may be rather a big thing to see."</p> + +<p>"You must see it?"</p> + +<p>"I want to be sure of it—as something comprehensive. I want to get a +general effect of it...."</p> + +<p>Rachel hesitated, looked back to measure the distance of the Fürstin and +her companion and put her question again, but this time with a +significance that did not seem even to want to hide itself. "<i>Then</i> will +you come back?" she said.</p> + +<p>Her face flamed scarlet, but her eyes met mine boldly. Between us there +was a flash of complete understanding.</p> + +<p>My answer, if it was lame and ungallant to such a challenge, was at +least perfectly honest. "I can't make up my mind," I said. "I've been +near making plans—taking steps.... Something holds me back...."</p> + +<p>I had no time for an explanation.</p> + +<p>"I can't make up my mind," I repeated.</p> + +<p>She stood for a moment rather stiffly, staring away towards the blue +hills of Alsace.</p> + +<p>Then she turned with a smiling and undisturbed countenance to the +Fürstin. Her crimson had given place to white. "The triumph of it," she +said with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> slight gesture to the flamboyant Teutonism that towered +over us, and boldly repeating words I had used scarcely five minutes +before, "makes me angry. They conquered—ungraciously...."</p> + +<p>She had overlooked something in her effort to seem entirely +self-possessed. She collapsed. "My dear!" she cried,—"I forgot!"</p> + +<p>"Oh! I'm only a German by marriage!" cried the Fürstin. "And I can +assure you I quite understand—about the triumph of it...." She surveyed +the achievement of her countrymen. "It is—ungracious. But indeed it's +only a sort of artlessness if you see the thing properly.... It's not +vulgarity—it's childishness.... They've hardly got over it yet—their +intense astonishment at being any good at war.... That large throaty +Victory! She's not so militant as she seems. She's too plump.... Of +course what a German really appreciates is nutrition. But I quite agree +with you both.... I'm beginning to want my tea, Mr. Stratton.... Rachel!"</p> + +<p>Her eyes had been on Rachel as she chattered. The girl had turned to the +distant hills again, and had forgotten even to pretend to listen to the +answer she had evoked. Now she came back sharply to the sound of her name.</p> + +<p>"Tea?" said the Fürstin.</p> + +<p>"Oh!" cried Rachel. "Yes. Yes, certainly. Rather. Tea."</p> + +<h3>§ 3</h3> + +<p>It was clear to me that after that I must as people say "have things +out" with Rachel. But before I could do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> anything of the sort the +Fürstin pounced upon me. She made me sit up that night after her other +guests had gone to their rooms, in the cosy little turret apartment she +called her study and devoted to the reading of whatever was most +notorious in contemporary British fiction. "Sit down," said she, "by the +fire in that chair there and tell me all about it. It's no good your +pretending you don't know what I mean. What are you up to with her, and +why don't you go straight to your manifest destiny as a decent man should?"</p> + +<p>"Because manifestly it isn't my destiny," I said.</p> + +<p>"Stuff," said the Fürstin.</p> + +<p>"You know perfectly well why I am out of England."</p> + +<p>"Everybody knows—except of course quite young persons who are being +carefully brought up."</p> + +<p>"Does <i>she</i> know?"</p> + +<p>"She doesn't seem to."</p> + +<p>"Well, that's what I want to know."</p> + +<p>"Need she know?"</p> + +<p>"Well, it does seem rather essential——"</p> + +<p>"I suppose if you think so——"</p> + +<p>"Will you tell her?"</p> + +<p>"Tell her yourself, if she must be told. Down there in Surrey, she +<i>must</i> have seen things and heard things. But I don't see that she wants +a lot of ancient history."</p> + +<p>"If it is ancient history!"</p> + +<p>"Oh! two years and a half,—it's an Era."</p> + +<p>I made no answer to that, but sat staring into the fire while my cousin +watched my face. At length I made my confession. "I don't think it is +ancient history at all," I said. "I think if I met Mary again now——"</p> + +<p>"You mean Lady Mary Justin?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span></p><p>"Of course."</p> + +<p>"It would be good for your mind if you remembered to call her by her +proper name.... You think if you met her again you two would begin to +carry on. But you see,—you aren't going to meet her. Everybody will see +that doesn't happen."</p> + +<p>"I mean that I—— Well——"</p> + +<p>"You'd better not say it. Besides, it's nonsense. I doubt if you've +given her a thought for weeks and weeks."</p> + +<p>"Until I came here perhaps that was almost nearly true. But you've +stirred me up, sweet cousin, and old things, old memories and habits +have come to the surface again. Mary wrote herself over my life—in all +sorts of places.... I can't tell you. I've never talked of her to +anyone. I'm not able, very well, to talk about my feelings.... Perhaps a +man of my sort—doesn't love twice over."</p> + +<p>I disregarded a note of dissent from my cousin. "That was all so magic, +all my youth, all my hope, all the splendid adventure of it. Why should +one pretend?... I'm giving none of that to Rachel. It isn't there any +more to give...."</p> + +<p>"One would think," remarked the Fürstin, "there was no gift of healing."</p> + +<p>She waited for me to speak, and then irritated by my silence struck at +me sharply with that wicked little tongue of hers.</p> + +<p>"Do you think that Lady Mary Justin thinks of you—as you think of her? +Do you think she hasn't settled down?"</p> + +<p>I looked up at her quickly.</p> + +<p>"She's just going to have a second child," the Fürstin flung out.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p><p>Yes, that did astonish me. I suppose my face showed it.</p> + +<p>"That girl," said the Fürstin, "that clean girl would have sooner +died—ten thousand deaths.... And she's never—never been anything to +you."</p> + +<p>I think that for an instant she had been frightened at her own words. +She was now quite angry and short of breath. She had contrived a rapid +indignation against Mary and myself.</p> + +<p>"I didn't know Mary had had any child at all," I said.</p> + +<p>"This makes two," said the Fürstin, and held up a brace of fingers, +"with scarcely a year and a half between them. Not much more anyhow.... +It was natural, I suppose. A natural female indecency. I don't blame +her. When a woman gives in she ought to do it thoroughly. But I don't +see that it leaves <i>you</i> much scope for philandering, Stephen, does +it?... And there you are, and here is Rachel. And why don't you make a +clean job of your life?..."</p> + +<p>"I didn't understand."</p> + +<p>"I wonder what you imagined."</p> + +<p>I reflected. "I wonder what I did. I suppose I thought of Mary—just as +I had left her—always."</p> + +<p>I remained with my mind filled with confused images of Mary, memories, +astonishment....</p> + +<p>I perceived the Fürstin was talking.</p> + +<p>"Maundering about," she was saying, "like a huntsman without a horse.... +You've got work to do—blood in your veins. I'm not one of your ignorant +women, Stephen. You ought to have a wife...."</p> + +<p>"Rachel's too good," I said, at the end of a pause and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> perceiving I had +to say something, "to be that sort of wife."</p> + +<p>"No woman's too good for a man," said the Fürstin von Letzlingen with +conviction. "It's what God made her for."</p> + +<h3>§ 4</h3> + +<p>My visit to Boppard was drawing to an end before I had a clear +opportunity to have things out with Rachel. It was in a little garden, +under the very shadow of that gracious cathedral at Worms, the sort of +little garden to which one is admitted by ringing a bell and tipping a +custodian. I think Worms is in many respects one of the most beautiful +cathedrals I have ever seen, so perfectly proportioned, so delicately +faded, so aloof, so free from pride or presumption, and it rises over +this green and flowery peace, a towering, lithe, light brown, sunlit, +easy thing, as unconsciously and irrelevantly splendid as a tall ship in +the evening glow under a press of canvas. We looked up at it for a time +and then went on with the talk to which we had been coming slowly since +the Fürstin had packed us off for it, while she went into the town with +Berwick to buy toys for her gatekeeper's children. I had talked about +myself, and the gradual replacement of my ambition to play a part in +imperial politics by wider intentions. "You know," I asked abruptly, +"why I left England?"</p> + +<p>She thought through the briefest of pauses. "No," she decided at last.</p> + +<p>"I made love," I said, "to Lady Mary Justin, and we were found out. We +couldn't go away together——"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p><p>"Why not?" she interjected.</p> + +<p>"It was impossible."</p> + +<p>For some moments neither of us spoke. "Something," she said, and then, +"Some vague report," and left these fragments to be her reply.</p> + +<p>"We were old playmates; we were children together. We +have—something—that draws us to each other. She—she made a mistake in +marrying. We were both very young and the situation was difficult. And +then afterwards we were thrown together.... But you see that has made a +great difference to my life; it's turned me off the rails on which men +of my sort usually run. I've had to look to these other things.... +They've become more to me than to most people if only because of that...."</p> + +<p>"You mean these ideas of yours—learning as much as you can about the +world, and then doing what you can to help other people to a better understanding."</p> + +<p>"Yes," I said.</p> + +<p>"And that—will fill your life."</p> + +<p>"It ought to."</p> + +<p>"I suppose it ought. I suppose—you find—it does."</p> + +<p>"Don't you think it ought to fill my life?"</p> + +<p>"I wondered if it did."</p> + +<p>"But why shouldn't it?"</p> + +<p>"It's so—so cold."</p> + +<p>My questioning silence made her attempt to explain.</p> + +<p>"One wants life more beautiful than that," she said. "One wants—— +There are things one needs, things nearer one."</p> + +<p>We became aware of a jangling at the janitor's bell. Our opportunity for +talk was slipping away. And we were both still undecided, both +blunderingly nervous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> and insecure. We were hurried into clumsy phrases +that afterwards we would have given much to recall.</p> + +<p>"But how could life be more beautiful," I said, "than when it serves big +human ends?"</p> + +<p>Her brows were knit. She seemed to be listening for the sound of the +unlocking gate.</p> + +<p>"But," she said, and plunged, "one wants to be loved. Surely one needs that."</p> + +<p>"You see, for me—that's gone."</p> + +<p>"Why should it be gone?"</p> + +<p>"It is. One doesn't begin again. I mean—myself. <i>You</i>—can. You've +never begun. Not when you've loved—loved really." I forced that on her. +I over emphasized. "It was real love, you know; the real thing.... I +don't mean the mere imaginative love, blindfold love, but love that +sees.... I want you to understand that. I loved—altogether...."</p> + +<p>Across the lawn under its trim flowering-trees appeared Berwick loaded +with little parcels, and manifestly eager to separate us, and the +Fürstin as manifestly putting on the drag.</p> + +<p>"There's a sort of love," I hurried, "that doesn't renew itself ever. +Don't let yourself believe it does. Something else may come in its +place, but that is different. It's youth,—a wonderful newness.... Look +at that youngster. <i>He</i> can love you like that. I've watched him. He +does. You know he does...."</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, as hurriedly; "but then, you see, I don't love him."</p> + +<p>"You don't?"</p> + +<p>"I can't."</p> + +<p>"But he's such a fresh clean human being——"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p><p>"That's not all," said Rachel. "That's not all.... You don't +understand."</p> + +<p>The two drew near. "It is so hard to explain," she said. "Things that +one hardly sees for oneself. Sometimes it seems one cannot help oneself. +You can't choose. You are taken...." She seemed about to say something +more, and stopped and bit her lip.</p> + +<p>In another moment I was standing up, and the Fürstin was calling to us +across ten feet of space. "Such amoosin' little toyshops. We've got a +heap of things. Just look at him!"</p> + +<p>He smiled over his load with anxious eyes upon our faces.</p> + +<p>"Ten separate parcels," he said, appealing for Rachel's sympathy. "I'm +doing my best not to complain."</p> + +<p>And rather adroitly he contrived to let two of them slip, and captured +Rachel to assist him.</p> + +<p>He didn't relinquish her again.</p> + +<h3>§ 5</h3> + +<p>The Fürstin and I followed them along the broad, pleasant, tree-lined +street towards the railway station.</p> + +<p>"A boy of that age ought not to marry a girl of that age," said the +Fürstin, breaking a silence.</p> + +<p>I didn't answer.</p> + +<p>"Well?" she said, domineering.</p> + +<p>"My dear cousin," I said, "I know all that you have in your mind. I +admit—I covet her. You can't make me more jealous than I am. She's +clean and sweet—it is marvellous how the God of the rest of the world +can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> have made a thing so brave and honest and wonderful. She's better +than flowers. But I think I'm going away to-night, nevertheless."</p> + +<p>"You don't mean you're going to carry chivalry to the point of giving +that boy a chance—for he hasn't one while you're about."</p> + +<p>"No. You see—I want to give Rachel a chance. You know as well as I +do—the things in my mind."</p> + +<p>"That you've got to forget."</p> + +<p>"That I don't forget."</p> + +<p>"That you're bound in honor to forget. And who could help you better?"</p> + +<p>"I'm going," I said and then, wrathfully, "If you think I want to use +Rachel as a sort of dressing—for my old sores——"</p> + +<p>I left the sentence unfinished.</p> + +<p>"Oh <i>nonsense</i>!" cried the Fürstin, and wouldn't speak to me again until +we got to that entirely Teutonic "art" station that is not the least +among the sights of Worms.</p> + +<p>"Sores, indeed!" said the Fürstin presently, as we walked up the end of +the platform.</p> + +<p>"There's nothing," said the Fürstin, with an unusual note of petulance, +"she'd like better."</p> + +<p>"I can't think what men are coming to," she went on. "You're in love +with her, or you wouldn't be so generous. And she's head over heels with +you. And here you are! I'll give you one more chance——"</p> + +<p>"I won't take it," I interrupted. "It isn't fair. I tell you I won't +take it. I'll go two days earlier to prevent you. Unless you promise +me—— Of course I see how things are with her. She's not a sphinx. But +it isn't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> fair. It isn't. Not to her, or to him—or myself. <i>He's</i> got +some claims. He's got more right to her than I...."</p> + +<p>"A boy like that! No man has any rights about women—until he's thirty. +And as for me and all the pains <i>I've</i> taken—— Oh! I <i>hate</i> Worms. +Dust and ashes! Well here thank heaven! comes the train. If nothing else +could stir you, Stephen, at least I could have imagined some decent +impulse of gratitude to me. Stephen, you're disgusting. You've +absolutely spoilt this trip for me—absolutely. When only a little +reasonableness on your part—— Oh!"</p> + +<p>She left her sentence unfinished.</p> + +<p>Berwick and I had to make any conversation that was needed on the way +back to Boppard. Rachel did not talk and the Fürstin did not want to.</p> + +<h3>§ 6</h3> + +<p>Directly I had parted from Rachel's questioning eyes I wanted to go back +to them. It seems to me now that all the way across to America, in that +magnificent German liner I joined at Hamburg, I was thinking in confused +alternations of her and of Mary. There are turns of thought that still +bring back inseparably with them the faint echo of the airs of the +excellent but industrious band that glorified our crossing.</p> + +<p>I had been extraordinarily shocked and concerned at the thought of Mary +bearing children. It is a grotesque thing to confess but I had never let +myself imagine the possibility of such a thing for her who had been so +immensely mine....</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p><p>We are the oddest creatures, little son, beasts and barbarians and +brains, neither one nor the other but all confusedly, and here was I who +had given up Mary and resigned her and freed myself from her as I +thought altogether, cast back again into my old pit by the most obvious +and necessary consequence of her surrender and mine. And it's just there +and in that relation that we men and women are so elaborately insecure. +We try to love as equals and behave as equals and concede a level +freedom, and then comes a crisis,—our laboriously contrived edifice of +liberty collapses and we perceive that so far as sex goes the woman +remains to the man no more than a possession—capable of loyalty or treachery.</p> + +<p>There, still at that barbaric stage, the situation stands. You see I had +always wanted to own Mary, and always she had disputed that. That is our +whole story, the story of an instinctive subjugation struggling against +a passionate desire for fellowship. She had denied herself to me, taken +herself away; that much I could endure; but now came this blazing fact +that showed her as it seemed in the most material and conclusive +way—overcome. I had storms of retrospective passion at the thoroughness +of her surrender.... Yes, and that's in everyone of us,—in everyone. I +wonder if in all decent law-abiding London there lives a single healthy +adult man who has not at times longed to trample and kill....</p> + +<p>For once I think the Fürstin miscalculated consequences. I think I +should have engaged myself to Rachel before I went to America if it had +not been for the Fürstin's revelation, but this so tore me that I could +no longer go on falling in love again, naturally and sweetly. No man +falls in love if he has just been flayed.... I could no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> longer think of +Rachel except as a foil to Mary. I was moved to marry her by a new set +of motives; to fling her so to speak in Mary's face, and from the fierce +vulgarity of that at least I recoiled—and let her go as I have told you.</p> + +<h3>§ 7</h3> + +<p>I had thought all that was over.</p> + +<p>I remember my struggles to recover my peace.</p> + +<p>I remember how very late one night I went up to the promenade deck to +smoke a cigar before turning in. It was a warm moonlight night. The +broad low waves of ebony water that went seething past below, foamed +luminous and were streaked and starred with phosphorescence. The +recumbent moon, past its full and sinking westward, seemed bigger than I +had ever seen it before, and the roundness of the watery globe was +manifest about the edge of the sky. One had that sense so rare on land, +so common in the night at sea, of the world as a conceivable sphere, and +of interstellar space as of something clear and close at hand.</p> + +<p>There came back to me again that feeling I had lost for a time in +Germany of being not myself but Man consciously on his little planet +communing with God.</p> + +<p>But my spirit was saying all the time, "I am still in my pit, in my pit. +After all I am still in my pit."</p> + +<p>And then there broke the answer on my mind, that all our lives we must +struggle out of our pits, that to struggle out of our pit is this life, +there is no individual life but that, and that there comes no escape +here, no end to that effort, until the release of death. Continually or +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>frequently we may taste salvation, but never may we achieve it while we +are things of substance. Each moment in our lives we come to the test +and are lost again or saved again. To be assured of one's security is to +forget and fall away.</p> + +<p>And standing at the rail with these thoughts in my mind, suddenly I prayed....</p> + +<p>I remember how the engine-throbs beat through me like the beating of a +heart, and that far below, among the dim lights that came up from the +emigrants in the steerage, there was a tinkling music as I prayed and a +man's voice singing a plaintive air in some strange Slavonic tongue.</p> + +<p>That voice of the invisible singer and the spirit of the unknown +song-maker and the serenity of the sky, they were all, I perceived, no +more and no less than things in myself that I did not understand. They +were out beyond the range of understanding. And yet they fell into the +completest harmony that night with all that I seemed to understand....</p> + +<h3>§ 8</h3> + +<p>The onset of New York was extraordinarily stimulating to me. I write +onset. It is indeed that. New York rides up out of the waters, a cliff +of man's making; its great buildings at a distance seem like long +Chinese banners held up against the sky. From Sandy Hook to the great +landing stages and the swirling hooting traffic of the Hudson River +there fails nothing in that magnificent crescendo of approach.</p> + +<p>And New York keeps the promise of its first <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>appearance. There is no +such fulness of life elsewhere in all the world. The common man in the +streets is a bigger common man than any Old World city can show, +physically bigger; there is hope in his eyes and a braced defiance. New +York may be harsh and blusterous and violent, but there is a breeze from +the sea and a breeze of fraternity in the streets, and the Americans of +all peoples in the world are a nation of still unbroken men.</p> + +<p>I went to America curious, balancing between hope and scepticism. The +European world is full of the criticism of America, and for the matter +of that America too is full of it; hostility and depreciation +prevail,—overmuch, for in spite of rawness and vehemence and a scum of +blatant, oh! quite asinine folly, the United States of America remains +the greatest country in the world and the living hope of mankind. It is +the supreme break with the old tradition; it is the freshest and most +valiant beginning that has ever been made in human life.</p> + +<p>Here was the antithesis of India; here were no peasants whatever, no +traditional culture, no castes, no established differences (except for +the one schism of color); this amazing place had never had a famine, +never a plague; here were no temples and no priesthoods dominating the +lives of the people,—old Trinity church embedded amidst towering +sky-scrapers was a symbol for as much as they had of all that; and here +too there was no crown, no affectations of an ancient loyalty, no +visible army, no traditions of hostility, for the old defiance of +Britain is a thing now ridiculous and dead; and everyone I met had an +air as if he knew that to-morrow must be different from to-day and +different and novel and remarkable by virtue of himself and such as himself.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p><p>I went about New York, with the incredulous satisfaction of a man who +has long doubted, to find that after all America was coming true. The +very clatter pleased me, the crowds, the camp-like slovenliness, a +disorder so entirely different from the established and accepted +untidiness of China or India. Here was something the old world had never +shown me, a new enterprise, a fresh vigor. In the old world there is +Change, a mighty wave now of Change, but it drives men before it as if +it were a power outside them and not in them; they do not know, they do +not believe; but here the change is in the very blood and spirit of +mankind. They breathe it in even before the launch has brought their +feet to Ellis Island soil. In six months they are Americanized. Does it +matter that a thing so gigantic should be a little coarse and blundering +in detail, if this stumbling giant of the new time breaks a gracious +relic or so in his eager clutch and treads a little on the flowers?</p> + +<h3>§ 9</h3> + +<p>And in this setting of energy and activity, towering city life and +bracing sea breezes, I met Gidding again, whom I had last seen departing +into Egypt to look more particularly at the prehistoric remains and the +temples of the first and second dynasty at Abydos. It was at a +dinner-party, one of those large gatherings that welcome interesting +visitors. It wasn't, of course, I who was the centre of interest, but a +distinguished French portrait painter; I was there as just any guest. I +hadn't even perceived Gidding until he came round to me in that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> +precious gap of masculine intercourse that ensues upon the departure of +the ladies. That gap is one of the rare opportunities for conversation +men get in America.</p> + +<p>"I don't know whether you will remember me," he said, "but perhaps you +remember Crete—in the sunrise."</p> + +<p>"And no end of talk afterwards," I said, grasping his hand, "no end—for +we didn't half finish. Did you have a good time in Egypt?"</p> + +<p>"I'm not going to talk to you about Egypt," said Gidding. "I'm through +with ruins. I'm going to ask you—you know what I'm going to ask you."</p> + +<p>"What I think of America. It's the same inevitable question. I think +everything of it. It's the stepping-off place. I've come here at last, +because it matters most."</p> + +<p>"That's what we all want to believe," said Gidding. "That's what we want +you to tell us."</p> + +<p>He reflected. "It's immense, isn't it, perfectly immense? But—— I am +afraid at times we're too disposed to forget just what it's all about. +We've got to be reminded. That, you know, is why we keep on asking."</p> + +<p>He went on to question me where I had been, what I had done, what I made +of things. He'd never, he said, forgotten our two days' gossip in the +Levant, and all the wide questions about the world and ourselves that we +had broached then and left so open. I soon found myself talking very +freely to him. I am not a ready or abundant talker, but Gidding has the +knack of precipitating my ideas. He is America to my Europe, and at his +touch all that has been hanging in concentrated solution in my mind +comes crystallizing out. He has to a peculiar <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>degree that directness +and simplicity which is the distinctive American quality. I tried to +explain to his solemnly nodding head and entirely intelligent eyes just +exactly what I was making of things, of the world, of humanity, of myself....</p> + +<p>It was an odd theme for two men to attempt after dinner, servants +hovering about them, their two faces a little flushed by wine and good +eating, their keen interest masked from the others around them by a +gossiping affectation, their hands going out as they talked for matches +or cigarette, and before we had gone further than to fling out a few +intimations to each other our colloquy was interrupted by our host +standing up and by the general stir that preluded our return to feminine +society. "We've got more to say than this," said Gidding. "We've got to +<i>talk</i>." He brought out a little engagement book that at once drew out +mine in response. And a couple of days after, we spent a morning and +afternoon together and got down to some very intimate conversation. We +motored out to lunch at a place called Nyack, above the Palisades, we +crossed on a ferry to reach it, and we visited the house of Washington +Irving near Yonkers on our way.</p> + +<p>I've still a vivid picture in my mind of the little lawn at Irvington +that looks out upon the rushing steel of Hudson River, where Gidding +opened his heart to me. I can see him now as he leant a little forward +over the table, with his wrists resting upon it, his long clean-shaven +face very solemn and earnest and grey against the hard American sunlight +in the greenery about us, while he told me in that deliberate American +voice of his and with the deliberate American solemnity, of his desire +to "do some decent thing with life."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></p><p>He was very anxious to set himself completely before me, I remember, on +that occasion. There was a peculiar mental kinship between us that even +the profound differences of our English and American trainings could not +mask. And now he told me almost everything material about his life. For +the first time I learnt how enormously rich he was, not only by reason +of his father's acquisitions, but also because of his own almost +instinctive aptitude for business. "I've got," he said, "to begin with, +what almost all men spend their whole lives in trying to get. And it +amounts to nothing. It leaves me with life like a blank sheet of paper, +and nothing in particular to write on it."</p> + +<p>"You know," he said, "it's—exasperating. I'm already half-way to +three-score and ten, and I'm still wandering about wondering what to do +with this piece of life God has given me...."</p> + +<p>He had "lived" as people say, he had been in scrapes and scandals, +tasted to the full the bitter intensities of the personal life; he had +come by a different route to the same conclusions as myself, was as +anxious as I to escape from memories and associations and feuds and that +excessive vividness of individual feeling which blinds us to the common +humanity, the common interest, the gentler, larger reality, which lies +behind each tawdrily emphatic self....</p> + +<p>"It's a sort of inverted homœopathy I want," he said. "The big thing +to cure the little thing...."</p> + +<p>But I will say no more of that side of our friendship, because the ideas +of it are spread all through this book from the first page to the +last.... What concerns me now is not our sympathy and agreement, but +that other aspect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> of our relations in which Gidding becomes impulse and +urgency. "Seeing we have these ideas," said he,—"and mind you there +must be others who have them or are getting to them, for nobody thinks +all alone in this world,—seeing we have these ideas what are we going to <i>do</i>?"</p> + +<h3>§ 10</h3> + +<p>That meeting was followed by another before I left New York, and +presently Gidding joined me at Denver, where I was trying to measure the +true significance of a labor paper called <i>The Appeal to Reason</i> that, +in spite of a rigid boycott by the ordinary agencies for news +distribution went out in the middle west to nearly half a million +subscribers, and was filled with such a fierceness of insurrection +against labor conditions, such a hatred, blind and impassioned, as I had +never known before. Gidding remained with me there and came back with me +to Chicago, where I wanted to see something of the Americanization of +the immigrant, and my survey of America, the social and economic problem +of America, resolved itself more and more into a conference with him.</p> + +<p>There is no more fruitless thing in the world than to speculate how life +would have gone if this thing or that had not happened. Yet I cannot +help but wonder how far I might have travelled along the lines of my +present work if I had gone to America and not met Gidding, or if I had +met him without visiting America. The man and his country are +inextricably interwoven in my mind. Yet I do think that his simplicity +and directness, his force of initiative that turned me from a mere +enquirer into an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> active writer and organizer, are qualities less his in +particular than America's in general. There is in America a splendid +crudity, a directness that cleared my spirit as a bracing wind will +sweep the clouds from mountain scenery. Compared with our older +continents America is mankind stripped for achievement. So many things +are not there at all, need not be considered; no institutional +aristocracy, no Kaisers, Czars, nor King-Emperors to maintain a +litigious sequel to the Empire of Rome; it has no uneducated immovable +peasantry rooted to the soil, indeed it has no rooting to the soil at +all; it is, from the Forty-ninth Parallel to the tip of Cape Horn, one +triumphant embodiment of freedom and deliberate agreement. For I mean +all America, Spanish-speaking as well as English-speaking; they have +this detachment from tradition in common. See how the United States, for +example, stands flatly on that bare piece of eighteenth-century +intellectualism the Constitution, and is by virtue of that a structure +either wilful and intellectual or absurd. That sense of incurable +servitude to fate and past traditions, that encumbrance with ruins, +pledges, laws and ancient institutions, that perpetual complication of +considerations and those haunting memories of preceding human failures +which dwarf the courage of destiny in Europe and Asia, vanish from the +mind within a week of one's arrival in the New World. Naturally one +begins to do things. One is inspired to do things. One feels that one +has escaped, one feels that the time is <i>now</i>. All America, North and +South alike, is one tremendous escape from ancient obsessions into +activity and making.</p> + +<p>And by the time I had reached America I had already come to see that +just as the issues of party politics at home<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> and international politics +abroad are mere superficialities above the greater struggle of an +energetic minority to organize and exploit the labor of the masses of +mankind, so that struggle also is only a huge incident in the still more +than half unconscious impulse to replace the ancient way of human living +by a more highly organized world-wide social order, by a world +civilization embodying itself in a World State. And I saw now how that +impulse could neither cease nor could it on the other hand realize +itself until it became conscious and deliberate and merciful, free from +haste and tyranny, persuasive and sustained by a nearly universal +sympathy and understanding. For until that arrives the creative forces +must inevitably spend themselves very largely in blind alleys, futile +rushes and destructive conflicts. Upon that our two minds were agreed.</p> + +<p>"We have," said Gidding, "to understand and make understanding. That is +the real work for us to do, Stratton, that is our job. The world, as you +say, has been floundering about, half making civilization and never +achieving it. Now <i>we</i>, I don't mean just you and me, Stratton, +particularly, but every intelligent man among us, have got to set to and +make it thorough. There is no other sane policy for a man outside his +private passions but that. So let's get at it——"</p> + +<p>I find it now impossible to trace the phases by which I reached these +broad ideas upon which I rest all my work, but certainly they were +present very early in my discussions with Gidding. We two men had been +thinking independently but very similarly, and it is hard to say just +what completing touches either of us gave to the other's propositions. +We found ourselves rather than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> arrived at the conception of ourselves +as the citizens neither of the United States nor of England but of a +state that had still to come into being, a World State, a great unity +behind and embracing the ostensible political fabrics of to-day—a unity +to be reached by weakening antagonisms, by developing understandings and +toleration, by fostering the sense of brotherhood across the ancient bounds.</p> + +<p>We believed and we believe that such a creative conception of a human +commonweal can be fostered in exactly the same way that the idea of +German unity was fostered behind the dukedoms, the free cities and +kingdoms of Germany, a conception so creative that it can dissolve +traditional hatreds, incorporate narrower loyalties and replace a +thousand suspicions and hostilities by a common passion for collective +achievement, so creative that at last the national boundaries of to-day +may become obstacles as trivial to the amplifying good-will of men as +the imaginary line that severs Normandy from Brittany, or Berwick from Northumberland.</p> + +<p>And it is not only a great peace about the earth that this idea of a +World State means for us, but social justice also. We are both convinced +altogether that there survives no reason for lives of toil, for +hardship, poverty, famine, infectious disease, for the continuing +cruelties of wild beasts and the greater multitude of crimes, but +mismanagement and waste, and that mismanagement and waste spring from no +other source than ignorance and from stupid divisions and jealousies, +base patriotisms, fanaticisms, prejudices and suspicions that are all no +more than ignorance a little mingled with viciousness. We have looked +closely into this servitude of modern labor, we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> have seen its injustice +fester towards syndicalism and revolutionary socialism, and we know +these things for the mere aimless, ignorant resentments they are; +punishments, not remedies. We have looked into the portentous threat of +modern war, and it is ignorant vanity and ignorant suspicion, the +bargaining aggression of the British prosperous and the swaggering +vulgarity of the German junker that make and sustain that monstrous +European devotion to arms. And we are convinced there is nothing in +these evils and conflicts that light may not dispel. We believe that +these things can be dispelled, that the great universals, Science which +has limitations neither of race nor class, Art which speaks to its own +in every rank and nation, Philosophy and Literature which broaden +sympathy and banish prejudice, can flood and submerge and will yet flow +over and submerge every one of these separations between man and man.</p> + +<p>I will not say that this Great State, this World Republic of civilized +men, is our dream, because it is not a dream, it is a manifestly +reasonable possibility. It is our intention. It is what we are +deliberately making and what in a little while very many men and women +will be making. We are secessionists from all contemporary nationalities +and loyalties. We have set ourselves with all the capacity and energy at +our disposal to create a world-wide common fund of ideas and knowledge, +and to evoke a world-wide sense of human solidarity in which the +existing limitations of political structure must inevitably melt away.</p> + +<p>It was Gidding and his Americanism, his inborn predisposition to +innovation and the large freedom of his wealth that turned these ideas +into immediate concrete undertakings. I see more and more that it is +here that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> we of the old European stocks, who still grow upon the old +wood, differ most from those vigorous grafts of our race in America and +Africa and Australia on the one hand and from the renascent peoples of +the East on the other: that we have lost the courage of youth and have +not yet gained the courage of desperate humiliations, in taking hold of +things. To Gidding it was neither preposterous nor insufferably +magnificent that we should set about a propaganda of all science, all +knowledge, all philosophical and political ideas, round about the +habitable globe. His mind began producing concrete projects as a +fire-work being lit produces sparks, and soon he was "figuring out" the +most colossal of printing and publishing projects, as a man might work +out the particulars for an alteration to his bathroom. It was so +entirely natural to him, it was so entirely novel to me, to go on from +the proposition that understanding was the primary need of humanity to +the systematic organization of free publishing, exhaustive discussion, +intellectual stimulation. He set about it as a company of pharmacists +might organize the distribution of some beneficial cure.</p> + +<p>"Say, Stratton," he said, after a conversation that had seemed to me +half fantasy; "Let's <i>do</i> it."</p> + +<p>There are moments still when it seems to me that this life of mine has +become the most preposterous of adventures. We two absurd human beings +are spending our days and nights in a sustained and growing attempt to +do what? To destroy certain obsessions and to give the universal human +mind a form and a desire for expression. We have put into the shape of +one comprehensive project that force of released wealth that has already +dotted America with universities, libraries, institutions for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>research +and enquiry. Already there are others at work with us, and presently +there will be a great number. We have started an avalanche above the old +politics and it gathers mass and pace....</p> + +<p>And there never was an impulse towards endeavor in a human heart that +wasn't preposterous. Man is a preposterous animal. Thereby he ceases to +be a creature and becomes a creator, he turns upon the powers that made +him and subdues them to his service; by his sheer impudence he +establishes his claim to possess a soul....</p> + +<p>But I need not write at all fully of my work here. This book is not +about that but about my coming to that. Long before this manuscript +reaches your hands—if ultimately I decide that it shall reach your +hands—you will be taking your share, I hope, in this open conspiracy +against potentates and prejudices and all the separating powers of darkness.</p> + +<h3>§ 11</h3> + +<p>I would if I could omit one thing that I must tell you here, because it +goes so close to the very core of all this book has to convey. I wish I +could leave it out altogether. I wish I could simplify my story by +smoothing out this wrinkle at least and obliterating a thing that was at +once very real and very ugly. You see I had at last struggled up to a +sustaining idea, to a conception of work and duty to which I could +surely give my life. I had escaped from my pit so far. And it was +natural that now with something to give I should turn not merely for +consolation and service but for help and fellowship to that dear human +being across the seas who had offered them to me so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> straightly and +sweetly. All that is brave and good and as you would have me, is it not? +Only, dear son, that is not all the truth.</p> + +<p>There was still in my mind, for long it remained in my mind, a +bitterness against Mary. I had left her, I had lost her, we had parted; +but from Germany to America and all through America and home again to my +marriage and with me after my marriage, it rankled that she could still +go on living a life independent of mine. I had not yet lost my desire to +possess her, to pervade and dominate her existence; my resentment that +though she loved me she had first not married me and afterwards not +consented to come away with me was smouldering under the closed hatches +of my mind. And so while the better part of me was laying hold of this +work because it gave me the hope of a complete distraction and escape +from my narrow and jealous self, that lower being of the pit was also +rejoicing in the great enterprises before me and in the marriage upon +which I had now determined, because it was a last trampling upon my +devotion to Mary, because it defied and denied some lurking claims to +empire I could suspect in her. I want to tell you that particularly +because so I am made, so you are made, so most of us are made. There is +scarcely a high purpose in all the world that has no dwarfish footman at +its stirrup, no base intention over which there does not ride at least +the phantom of an angel.</p> + +<p>Constantly in those days, it seems to me now, I was haunted by my own +imagination of Mary amiably reconciled to Justin, bearing him children, +forgetful of or repudiating all the sweetness, all the wonder and beauty +we had shared.... It was an unjust and ungenerous <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>conception, I knew it +for a caricature even as I entertained it, and yet it tormented me. It +stung me like a spur. It kept me at work, and if I strayed into +indolence brought me back to work with a mind galled and bleeding....</p> + +<h3>§ 12</h3> + +<p>And I suppose it is mixed up with all this that I could not make love +easily and naturally to Rachel. I could not write love-letters to her. +There is a burlesque quality in these scruples, I know, seeing that I +was now resolved to marry her, but that is the quality, that is the +mixed texture of life. We overcome the greater things and are +conscience-stricken by the details.</p> + +<p>I wouldn't, even at the price of losing her—and I was now passionately +anxious not to lose her—use a single phrase of endearment that did not +come out of me almost in spite of myself. At any rate I would not cheat +her. And my offer of marriage when at last I sent it to her from Chicago +was, as I remember it, almost business-like. I atoned soon enough for +that arid letter in ten thousand sweet words that came of themselves to +my lips. And she paid me at any rate in my own coin when she sent me her +answer by cable, the one word "Yes."</p> + +<p>And indeed I was already in love with her long before I wrote. It was +only a dread of giving her a single undeserved cheapness that had held +me back so long. It was that and the perplexity that Mary still gripped +my feelings; my old love for her was there in my heart in spite of my +new passion for Rachel, it was blackened perhaps and ruined and changed +but it was there. It was as if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> a new crater burnt now in the ampler +circumference of an old volcano, which showed all the more desolate and +sorrowful and obsolete for the warm light of the new flames....</p> + +<p>How impatiently I came home! Thoughts of England I had not dared to +think for three long years might now do what they would in me. I dreamt +of the Surrey Hills and the great woods of Burnmore Park, of the +changing skies and stirring soft winds of our grey green Motherland. +There was fog in the Irish Sea, and we lost the better part of a day +hooting our way towards Liverpool while I fretted about the ship with +all my luggage packed, staring at the grey waters that weltered under +the mist. It was the longest day in my life. My heart was full of +desire, my eyes ached for the little fields and golden October skies of +England, England that was waiting to welcome me back from my exile with +such open arms. I was coming home,—home.</p> + +<p>I hurried through London into Surrey and in my father's study, warned by +a telegram, I found a bright-eyed, resolute young woman awaiting me, +with the quality about her of one who embarks upon a long premeditated +adventure. And I found too a family her sisters and her brother all +gladly ready for me, my father too was a happy man, and on the eighth of +November in 1906 Rachel and I were married in the little church at +Shere. We stayed for a week or so in Hampshire near Ringwood, the season +was late that year and the trees still very beautiful; and then we went +to Portofino on the Ligurian coast.</p> + +<p>There presently Gidding joined us and we began to work out the schemes +we had made in America, the schemes that now fill my life.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p> + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_THE_TENTH" id="CHAPTER_THE_TENTH"></a>CHAPTER THE TENTH</h2> + +<h3><span class="smcap">Mary Writes</span></h3> + +<h3>§ 1</h3> + +<p>It was in the early spring of 1909 that I had a letter from Mary.</p> + +<p>By that time my life was set fully upon its present courses, Gidding and +I had passed from the stage of talking and scheming to definite +undertakings. Indeed by 1909 things were already organized upon their +present lines. We had developed a huge publishing establishment with one +big printing plant in Barcelona and another in Manchester, and we were +studying the peculiar difficulties that might attend the establishment +of a third plant in America. Our company was an English company under +the name of Alphabet and Mollentrave, and we were rapidly making it the +broadest and steadiest flow of publication the world had ever seen. Its +streams already reached further and carried more than any single firm +had ever managed to do before. We were reprinting, in as carefully +edited and revised editions as we could, the whole of the English, +Spanish and French literature, and we were only waiting for the release +of machinery to attack German, Russian and Italian, and were giving each +language not only its own but a very complete series<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> of good +translations of the classical writers in every other tongue. We had a +little band of editors and translators permanently in our service at +each important literary centre. We had, for example, more than a score +of men at work translating Bengali fiction and verse into English,—a +lot of that new literature is wonderfully illuminating to an intelligent +Englishman—and we had a couple of men hunting about for new work in +Arabic. We meant to give so good and cheap a book, and to be so +comprehensive in our choice of books, excluding nothing if only it was +real and living, on account of any inferiority of quality, obscurity of +subject or narrowness of demand, that in the long run anybody, anywhere, +desiring to read anything would turn naturally and inevitably to our lists.</p> + +<p>Ours was to be in the first place a world literature. Then afterwards +upon its broad currents of distribution and in the same forms we meant +to publish new work and new thought. We were also planning an +encyclopædia. Behind our enterprise of translations and reprints we were +getting together and putting out a series of guide-books, gazetteers, +dictionaries, text-books and books of reference, and we were organizing +a revising staff for these, a staff that should be constantly keeping +them up to date. It was our intention to make every copy we printed bear +the date of its last revision in a conspicuous place, and we hoped to +get the whole line of these books ultimately upon an annual basis, and +to sell them upon repurchasing terms that would enable us to issue a new +copy and take back and send the old one to the pulping mill at a narrow +margin of profit. Then we meant to spread our arms wider, and +consolidate and offer our whole line of text-books, guide-books and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>gazetteers, bibliographies, atlases, dictionaries and directories as a +new World Encyclopædia, that should also annually or at longest +biennially renew its youth.</p> + +<p>So far we had gone in the creation of a huge international organ of +information, and of a kind of gigantic modern Bible of world literature, +and in the process of its distribution we were rapidly acquiring an +immense detailed knowledge of the book and publishing trade, finding +congestions here, neglected opportunities there, and devising and +drawing up a hundred schemes for relief, assistance, amalgamation and +rearrangement. We had branches in China, Japan, Peru, Iceland and a +thousand remote places that would have sounded as far off as the moon to +an English or American bookseller in the seventies. China in particular +was a growing market. We had a subsidiary company running a flourishing +line of book shops in the east-end of London, and others in New Jersey, +Chicago, Buenos Ayres, the South of France, and Ireland. Incidentally we +had bought up some thousands of miles of Labrador forest to ensure our +paper supply, and we could believe that before we died there would not +be a corner of the world in which any book of interest or value whatever +would not be easily attainable by any intelligent person who wanted to +read it. And already we were taking up the more difficult and ambitious +phase of our self-appointed task, and considering the problem of using +these channels we were mastering and deepening and supplementing for the +stimulation and wide diffusion of contemporary thought.</p> + +<p>There we went outside the province of Alphabet and Mollentrave and into +an infinitely subtler system of interests. We wanted to give sincere and +clear-thinking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> writers encouragement and opportunity, to improve the +critical tribunal and make it independent of advertising interests, so +that there would be a readier welcome for luminous thinking and writing +and a quicker explosion of intellectual imposture. We sought to provide +guides and intelligencers to contemporary thought. We had already set up +or subsidized or otherwise aided a certain number of magazines and +periodicals that seemed to us independent-spirited, out-spoken and well +handled, but we had still to devise our present scheme of financing +groups of men to create magazines and newspapers, which became their own +separate but inalienable property after so many years of success.</p> + +<p>But all this I hope you will already have become more or less familiar +with when this story reaches your hands, and I hope by the time it does +so we shall be far beyond our present stage of experiment and that you +will have come naturally to play your part in this most fascinating +business of maintaining an onward intellectual movement in the world, a +movement not simply independent of but often running counter to all +sorts of political and financial interests. I tell you this much here +for you to understand that already in 1909 and considering the business +side of my activities alone, I was a hard worker and very strenuously +employed. And in addition to all this huge network of enterprises I had +developed with Gidding, I was still pretty actively a student. I +wasn't—I never shall be—absolutely satisfied with my general ideas. I +was enquiring keenly and closely into those problems of group and crowd +psychology from which all this big publishing work has arisen, and +giving particular attention to the war-panics and outbreaks of +international<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> hostility that were then passing in deepening waves +across Europe. I had already accumulated a mass of notes for the book +upon "Group Jealousy in Religious Persecution, Racial Conflicts and War" +which I hope to publish the year after next, and which therefore I hope +you will have read long before this present book can possibly come to +you. And moreover Rachel and I had established our home in London—in +the house we now occupy during the winter and spring—and both you and +your little sister had begun your careers as inhabitants of this earth. +Your little sister had indeed but just begun.</p> + +<p>And then one morning at the breakfast-table I picked a square envelope +out of a heap of letters, and saw the half-forgotten and infinitely +familiar handwriting of Lady Mary Justin.... The sight of it gave me an +odd mixture of sensations. I was startled, I was disturbed, I was a +little afraid. I hadn't forgiven her yet; it needed but this touch to +tell me how little I had forgotten....</p> + +<h3>§ 2</h3> + +<p>I sat with it in my hand for a moment or so before I opened it, +hesitating as one hesitates before a door that may reveal a dramatic +situation. Then I pushed my chair a little back from the table and +ripped the envelope.</p> + +<p>It was a far longer letter than Mary had ever written me in the old +days, and in a handwriting as fine as ever but now rather smaller. I +have it still, and here I open its worn folds and, except for a few +trifling omissions, copy it out for you.... A few trifling omissions, I +say,—just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> one there is that is not trifling, but that I must needs +make....</p> + +<p>You will never see any of these letters because I shall destroy them so +soon as this copy is made. It has been difficult—or I should have +destroyed them before. But some things can be too hard for us....</p> + +<p>This first letter is on the Martens note-paper; its very heading was +familiar to me. The handwriting of the earlier sentences is a little +stiff and disjointed, and there are one or two scribbled obliterations; +it is like someone embarrassed in speaking; and then it passes into her +usual and characteristic ease....</p> + +<p>And as I read, slowly my long-cherished anger evaporated, and the real +Mary, outspoken and simple, whom I had obscured by a cloud of fancied +infidelities, returned to me....</p> + +<p>"My dear Stephen," she begins, "About six weeks ago I saw in the <i>Times</i> +that you have a little daughter. It set me thinking, picturing you with +a mite of a baby in your arms—what <i>little</i> things they are, +Stephen!—and your old face bent over it, so that presently I went to my +room and cried. It set me thinking about you so that I have at last +written you this letter.... I love to think of you with wife and +children about you Stephen,—I heard of your son for the first time +about a year ago, but—don't mistake me,—something wrings me too....</p> + +<p>"Well, I too have children. Have you ever thought of me as a mother? I +am. I wonder how much you know about me now. I have two children and the +youngest is just two years old. And somehow it seems to me that now that +you and I have both given such earnests of our good behavior, such +evidence that <i>that</i> side of life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> anyhow is effectually settled for us, +there is no reason remaining why we shouldn't correspond. You are my +brother, Stephen, and my friend and my twin and the core of my +imagination, fifty babies cannot alter that, we can live but once and +then die, and, promise or no promise, I will not be dead any longer in +your world when I'm not dead, nor will I have you, if I can help it, a +cold unanswering corpse in mine....</p> + +<p>"Too much of my life and being, Stephen, has been buried, and I am in +rebellion. This is a breach of the tomb if you like, an irregular +private premature resurrection from an interment in error. Out of my +alleged grave I poke my head and say Hello! to you. Stephen, old friend! +dear friend! how are you getting on? What is it like to you? How do you +feel? I want to know about you.... I'm not doing this at all furtively, +and you can write back to me, Stephen, as openly as your heart desires. +I have told Justin I should do this. I rise, you see, blowing my own +Trump. Let the other graves do as they please....</p> + +<p>"Your letters will be respected, Stephen.... If you choose to rise also +and write me a letter.</p> + +<p>"Stephen, I've been wanting to do this for—for all the time. If there +was thought-reading you would have had a thousand letters. But formerly +I was content to submit, and latterly I've chafed more. I think that as +what they call passion has faded, the immense friendliness has become +more evident, and made the bar less and less justifiable. You and I have +had so much between us beyond what somebody the other day—it was in a +report in the <i>Times</i>, I think—was calling <i>Materia Matrimoniala</i>. And +of course I hear about you from all sorts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> of people, and in all sorts +of ways—whatever you have done about me I've had a woman's sense of +honor about you and I've managed to learn a great deal without asking +forbidden questions. I've pricked up my ears at the faintest echo of your name.</p> + +<p>"They say you have become a publisher with an American partner, a sort +of Harmsworth and Nelson and Times Book Club and Hooper and Jackson all +rolled into one. That seems so extraordinary to me that for that alone I +should have had to write to you. I want to know the truth of that. I +never see any advertisement of Stratton & Co. or get any inkling of what +it is you publish. Are you the power behind the respectable Murgatroyd +and the honest Milvain? I know them both and neither has the slightest +appearance of being animated by you. And equally perplexing is your +being mixed up with an American like that man Gidding in Peace +Conferences and Social Reform Congresses and so forth. It's +so—Carnegieish. There I'm surer because I've seen your name in reports +of meetings and I've read your last two papers in the <i>Fortnightly</i>. I +can't imagine you of all people, with your touch of reserve, launching +into movements and rubbing shoulders with faddists. What does it mean, +Stephen? I had expected to find you coming back into English +politics—speaking and writing on the lines of your old beginning, +taking up that work you dropped—it's six years now ago. I've been +accumulating disappointment for two years. Mr. Arthur, you see, on our +side,"—this you will remember was in 1909—"still steers our devious +party courses, and the Tariff Reformers have still to capture us. Weston +Massinghay was comparing them the other night, at a dinner at the +Clynes',<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> to a crowded piratical galley trying to get alongside a good +seaman in rough weather. He was very funny about Leo Maxse in the poop, +white and shrieking with passion and the motion, and all the capitalists +armed to the teeth and hiding snug in the hold until the grappling-irons +were fixed.... Why haven't you come into the game? I'd hoped it if only +for the sake of meeting you again. What are you doing out beyond there?</p> + +<p>"We are in it so far as I can contrive. But I contrive very little. We +are pillars of the Conservative party—on that Justin's mind is firmly +settled—and every now and then I clamor urgently that we must do more +for it. But Justin's ideas go no further than writing cheques—doing +more for the party means writing a bigger cheque—and there are moments +when I feel we shall simply bring down a peerage upon our heads and bury +my ancient courtesy title under the ignominy of a new creation. He would +certainly accept it. He writes his cheque and turns back at the earliest +opportunity to his miniature gardens and the odd little freaks of +collecting that attract him. Have you ever heard of chintz oil jars? +'No,' you will say. Nor has anyone else yet except our immediate circle +of friends and a few dealers who are no doubt industriously increasing +the present scanty supply. We possess three. They are matronly shaped +jars about two feet or a yard high, of a kind of terra-cotta with wooden +tops surmounted by gilt acorns, and they have been covered with white +paint and on this flowers and birds and figures from some very rich old +chintz have been stuck very cunningly, and then everything has been +varnished—and there you are. Our first and best was bought for +seven-and-sixpence, brought home in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> car, put upon a console table +on the second landing and worshipped. It's really a very pleasant mellow +thing to see. Nobody had ever seen the like. Guests, sycophantic people +of all sorts were taken to consider it. It was looked at with heads at +every angle, one man even kept his head erect and one went a little +upstairs and looked at it under his arm. Also the most powerful lenses +have been used for a minute examination, and one expert licked the +varnish and looked extremely thoughtful and wise at me as he turned the +booty over his gifted tongue. And now, God being with us, we mean to +possess every specimen in existence—before the Americans get hold of +the idea. Yesterday Justin got up and motored sixty miles to look at an +alleged fourth....</p> + +<p>"Oh my dear! I am writing chatter. You perceive I've reached the +chattering stage. It is the fated end of the clever woman in a good +social position nowadays, her mind beats against her conditions for the +last time and breaks up into this carping talk, this spume of +observation and comment, this anecdotal natural history of the +restraining husband, as waves burst out their hearts in a foam upon a +reef. But it isn't chatter I want to write to you.</p> + +<p>"Stephen, I'm intolerably wretched. No creature has ever been gladder to +have been born than I was for the first five and twenty years of my +life. I was full of hope and I was full, I suppose, of vanity and rash +confidence. I thought I was walking on solid earth with my head reaching +up to the clouds, and that sea and sky and all mankind were mine for the +smiling. And I am nothing and worse than nothing, I am the ineffectual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> +mother of two children, a daughter whom I adore—but of her I may not +tell you—and a son,—a son who is too like his father for any fury of +worship, a stolid little creature.... That is all I have done in the +world, a mere blink of maternity, and my blue Persian who is scarcely +two years old, has already had nine kittens. My husband and I have never +forgiven each other the indefinable wrong of not pleasing each other; +that embitters more and more; to take it out of each other is our rôle; +I have done my duty to the great new line of Justin by giving it the +heir it needed, and now a polite and silent separation has fallen +between us. We hardly speak except in company. I have not been so much +married, Stephen, I find, as collected, and since our tragic +misadventure—but there were beautiful moments, Stephen, unforgettable +glimpses of beauty in that—thank God, I say impenitently for that—the +door of the expensively splendid cabinet that contains me, when it is +not locked, is very discreetly—watched. I have no men friends, no +social force, no freedom to take my line. My husband is my official +obstacle. We barb the limitations of life for one another. A little +while ago he sought to chasten me—to rouse me rather—through jealousy, +and made me aware indirectly but a little defiantly of a young person of +artistic gifts in whose dramatic career he was pretending a conspicuous +interest. I was jealous and roused, but scarcely in the way he desired. +'This,' I said quite cheerfully, 'means freedom for <i>me</i>, Justin,'—and +the young woman vanished from the visible universe with an incredible +celerity. I hope she was properly paid off and not simply made away with +by a minion, but I become more and more aware of my ignorance of a +great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> financier's methods as I become more and more aware of them....</p> + +<p>"Stephen, my dear, my brother, I am intolerably unhappy. I do not know +what to do with myself, or what there is to hope for in life. I am like +a prisoner in a magic cage and I do not know the word that will release +me. How is it with you? Are you unhappy beyond measure or are you not; +and if you are not, what are you doing with life? Have you found any +secret that makes living tolerable and understandable? Write to me, +write to me at least and tell me that.... Please write to me.</p> + +<p>"Do you remember how long ago you and I sat in the old Park at Burnmore, +and how I kept pestering you and asking you what is all this <i>for</i>? And +you looked at the question as an obstinate mule looks at a narrow bridge +he could cross but doesn't want to. Well, Stephen, you've had +nearly—how many years is it now?—to get an answer ready. What <i>is</i> it +all for? What do you make of it? Never mind my particular case, or the +case of Women with a capital <i>W</i>, tell me <i>your</i> solution. You are +active, you keep doing things, you find life worth living. Is publishing +a way of peace for the heart? I am prepared to believe even that. But +justify yourself. Tell me what you have got there to keep your soul alive."</p> + +<h3>§ 3</h3> + +<p>I read this letter to the end and looked up, and there was my home about +me, a room ruddy-brown and familiar, with the row of old pewter things +upon the dresser, the steel engravings of former Strattons that came to +me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> from my father, a convex mirror exaggerating my upturned face. And +Rachel just risen again sat at the other end of the table, a young +mother, fragile and tender-eyed. The clash of these two systems of +reality was amazing. It was as though I had not been parted from Mary +for a day, as though all that separation and all that cloud of bitter +jealousy had been a mere silence between two people in the same room. +Indeed it was extraordinarily like that, as if I had been sitting at a +desk, imagining myself alone, reading my present life as one reads in a +book at a shaded lamp, and then suddenly that silent other had spoken.</p> + +<p>And then I looked at the page of my life before me and became again a +character in the story.</p> + +<p>I met the enquiry in Rachel's eyes. "It's a letter from Mary Justin," I said.</p> + +<p>She did not answer for a few moments. She became interested in the flame +of the little spirit lamp that kept her coffee hot. She finished what +she had to do with that and then remarked, "I thought you two were not +to correspond."</p> + +<p>"Yes," I said, putting the letter down; "that was the understanding."</p> + +<p>There was a little interval of silence, and then I got up and went to +the fireplace where the bacon and sausages stood upon a trivet.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," said Rachel, "she wants to hear from you again."</p> + +<p>"She thinks that now we have children, and that she has two, we can +consider what was past, past and closed and done with, and she wants to +hear—about me.... Apart from everything else—we were very great friends."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p><p>"Of course," said Rachel with lips a little awry, "of course. You must +have been great friends. And it's natural for her to write."</p> + +<p>"I suppose," she added, "her husband knows."</p> + +<p>"She's told him, she says...."</p> + +<p>Her eye fell on the letter in my hand for the smallest fraction of a +second, and it was as if hastily she snatched away a thought from my +observation. I had a moment of illuminating embarrassment. So far we had +contrived to do as most young people do when they marry, we had sought +to make our lives unreservedly open to one another, we had affected an +entire absence of concealments about our movements, our thoughts. If +perhaps I had been largely silent to her about Mary it was not so much +that I sought to hide things from her as that I myself sought to forget. +It is one of the things that we learn too late, the impossibility of any +such rapid and wilful coalescences of souls. But we had maintained a +convention of infinite communism since our marriage; we had shown each +other our letters as a matter of course, shared the secrets of our +friends, gone everywhere together as far as we possibly could.</p> + +<p>I wanted now to give her the letter in my hand to read—and to do so was +manifestly impossible. Something had arisen between us that made out of +our unity two abruptly separated figures masked and veiled. Here were +things I knew and understood completely and that I could not even +describe to Rachel. What would she make of Mary's "Write to me. Write to +me"? A mere wish to resume.... I would not risk the exposure of Mary's +mind and heart and unhappiness, to her possible misinterpretation....</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p><p>That letter fell indeed like a pitiless searchlight into all that +region of differences ignored, over which we had built the vaulted +convention of our complete mutual understanding. In my memory it seems +to me now as though we hung silent for quite a long time over the +evasions that were there so abruptly revealed.</p> + +<p>Then I put the letter into my pocket with a clumsy assumption of +carelessness, and knelt down to the fender and sausages.</p> + +<p>"It will be curious," I said, "to write to her again.... To tell her +about things...."</p> + +<p>And then with immense interest, "Are these Chichester sausages you've +got here, Rachel, or some new kind?"</p> + +<p>Rachel roused herself to respond with an equal affectation, and we made +an eager conversation about bacon and sausages—for after that startling +gleam of divergence we were both anxious to get back to the +superficialities of life again.</p> + +<h3>§ 4</h3> + +<p>I did not answer Mary's letter for seven or eight days.</p> + +<p>During that period my mind was full of her to the exclusion of every +other interest. I re-read all that she had to say many times, and with +each reading the effect of her personality deepened. It was all so +intensely familiar, the flashes of insight, the blazing frankness, the +quick turns of thought, and her absurd confidence in a sort of sane +stupidity that she had always insisted upon my possessing. And her +unembarrassed affectionateness. Her quick irregular writing seemed to +bring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> back with it the changing light in her eyes, the intonations of +her voice, something of her gesture....</p> + +<p>I didn't go on discussing with myself whether we two ought to +correspond; that problem disappeared from my thoughts. Her challenge to +me to justify myself took possession of my mind. That thrust towards +self-examination was the very essence of her ancient influence. How did +I justify myself? I was under a peculiar compulsion to answer that to +her satisfaction. She had picked me up out of my work and accumulating +routines with that demand, made me look at myself and my world again as +a whole.... I had a case. I have a case. It is a case of passionate +faith triumphing over every doubt and impossibility, a case real enough +to understand for those who understand, but very difficult to state. I +tried to convey it to her.</p> + +<p>I do not remember at all clearly what I wrote to her. It has disappeared +from existence. But it was certainly a long letter. Throughout this book +I have been trying to tell you the growth of my views of life and its +purpose, from my childish dreams and Harbury attitudes to those ideas of +human development that have made me undertake the work I do. It is not +glorious work I know, as the work of great artists and poets and leaders +is glorious, but it is what I find best suits my gifts and my want of +gifts. Greater men will come at last to build within my scaffoldings. In +some summary phrasing I must have set out the gist of this. I must have +explained my sense of the supreme importance of mental clarification in +human life. All this is manifest in her reply. And I think too I did my +best to tell her plainly the faith that was in me, and why life seemed +worth while to me....</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span></p><p>Her second letter came after an interval of only a few days from the +despatch of mine. She began abruptly.</p> + +<p>"I won't praise your letter or your beliefs. They are fine and +large—and generous—like you. Just a little artificial (but you will +admit that), as though you had felt them <i>give</i> here and there and had +made up your mind they shouldn't. At times it's oddly like looking at +the Alps, the real Alps, and finding that every now and then the +mountains have been eked out with a plank and canvas Earl's Court +background.... Yes, I like what you say about Faith. I believe you are +right. I wish I could—perhaps some day I shall—light up and <i>feel</i> you +are right. But—but—— That large, <i>respectable</i> project, the increase +of wisdom and freedom and self-knowledge in the world, the calming of +wars, the ending of economic injustice and so on and so on——</p> + +<p>"When I read it first it was like looking at a man in profile and +finding him solid and satisfactory, and then afterwards when I thought +it all over and looked for the particular things that really matter to +me and tried to translate it into myself—nothing is of the slightest +importance in the world that one cannot translate into oneself—then I +began to realize just how amazingly deficient you are. It was like +walking round that person in profile and finding his left side wasn't +there—with everything perfect on the right, down to the buttons. A kind +of intellectual Lorelei—sideways. You've planned out your +understandings and tolerances and enquiries and clearings-up as if the +world were all just men—or citizens—and nothing doing but racial and +national and class prejudices and the exacting and shirking of labor, +and you seem to ignore altogether that man is a sexual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> animal +first—first, Stephen, first—that he has that in common with all the +animals, that it made him indeed because he has it more than they +have—and after that, a long way after that, he is the +labor-economizing, war-and feud-making creature you make him out to be. +A long way after that....</p> + +<p>"Man is the most sexual of all the beasts, Stephen. Half of him, +womankind, rather more than half, isn't simply human at all, it's +specialized, specialized for the young, not only naturally and +physically as animals are, but mentally and artificially. Womankind +isn't human, it's reduced human. It's 'the sex' as the Victorians used +to say, and from the point of view of the Lex Julia and the point of +view of Mr. Malthus, and the point of view of biologists and saints and +artists and everyone who deals in feeling and emotion—and from the +point of view of all us poor specialists, smothered up in our clothes +and restrictions—the future of the sex is the centre of the whole +problem of the human future, about which you are concerned. All this +great world-state of your man's imagination is going to be wrecked by us +if you ignore us, we women are going to be the Goths and Huns of another +Decline and Fall. We are going to sit in the conspicuous places of the +world and <i>loot</i> all your patient accumulations. We are going to abolish +your offspring and turn the princes among you into undignified slaves. +Because, you see, specialized as we are, we are not quite specialized, +we are specialized under duress, and at the first glimpse of a chance we +abandon our cradles and drop our pots and pans and go for the vast and +elegant side possibilities—of our specialization. Out we come, looking +for the fun the men are having. Dress us, feed us, play with us!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> We'll +pay you in excitement,—tremendous excitement. The State indeed! All +your little triumphs of science and economy, all your little +accumulations of wealth that you think will presently make the struggle +for life an old story and the millennium possible—<i>we spend</i>. And all +your dreams of brotherhood!—we will set you by the ears. We hold +ourselves up as my little Christian nephews—Philip's boys—do some +coveted object, and say <i>Quis?</i> and the whole brotherhood shouts +'<i>Ego!</i>' to the challenge.... Back you go into Individualism at the word +and all your Brotherhood crumbles to dust again.</p> + +<p>"How are you going to remedy it, how are you going to protect that Great +State of your dreams from this anti-citizenship of sex? You give no hint.</p> + +<p>"You are planning nothing, Stephen, nothing to meet this. You are +fighting with an army all looting and undisciplined, frantic with the +private jealousies that centre about <i>us</i>, feuds, cuts, expulsions, +revenges, and you are giving out orders for an army of saints. You treat +us as a negligible quantity, and we are about as negligible as a fire in +the woodwork of a house that is being built....</p> + +<p>"I read what I have written, Stephen, and I perceive I have the makings +of a fine scold in me. Perhaps under happier conditions——... I should +certainly have scolded you, constantly, continually.... Never did a man +so need scolding.... And like any self-respecting woman I see that I use +half my words in the wrong meanings in order to emphasize my point. Of +course when I write woman in all that has gone before I don't mean +woman. It is a woman's privilege to talk or write<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> incomprehensibly and +insist upon being understood. So that I expect you already to understand +that what I mean isn't that men are creative and unselfish and brotherly +and so forth and that women are spoiling and going to spoil the +game—although and notwithstanding that is exactly what I have +written—but that humans are creative and unselfish et cetera and so +forth, and that it is their sexual, egotistical, passionate side (which +is ever so much bigger relatively in a woman than in a man, and that is +why I wrote as I did) which is going to upset your noble and beautiful +apple-cart. But it is not only that by nature we are more largely and +gravely and importantly sexual than men but that men have shifted the +responsibility for attraction and passion upon us and made us pay in +servitude and restriction and blame for the common defect of the +species. So that you see really I was right all along in writing of this +as though it was women when it wasn't, and I hope now it is unnecessary +for me to make my meaning clearer than it is now and always has been in +this matter. And so, resuming our discourse, Stephen, which only my +sense of your invincible literalness would ever have interrupted, what +are you going to do with us?</p> + +<p>"I gather from a hint rather than accept as a statement that you propose +to give us votes.</p> + +<p>"Stephen!—do you really think that we are going to bring anything to +bear upon public affairs worth having? I know something of the +contemporary feminine intelligence. Justin makes no serious objection to +a large and various circle of women friends, and over my little +sitting-room fire in the winter and in my corners of our various gardens +in the summer and in walks over the heather at Martens and in Scotland +there are great talks and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>confessions of love, of mental freedom, of +ambitions, and belief and unbelief—more particularly of unbelief. I +have sometimes thought of compiling a dictionary of unbelief, a great +list of the things that a number of sweet, submissive, +value-above-rubies wives have told me they did not believe in. It would +amaze their husbands beyond measure. The state of mind of women about +these things, Stephen, is dreadful—I mean about all these +questions—you know what I mean. The bold striving spirits do air their +views a little, and always in a way that makes one realize how badly +they need airing—but most of the nicer women are very chary of talk, +they have to be drawn out, a hint of opposition makes them start back or +prevaricate, and I see them afterwards with their husbands, pretty +silken furry feathery jewelled <i>silences</i>. All their suppression doesn't +keep them orthodox, it only makes them furtive and crumpled and creased +in their minds—in just the way that things get crumpled and creased if +they are always being shoved back into a drawer. You have only to rout +about in their minds for a bit. They pretend at first to be quite +correct, and then out comes the nasty little courage of the darkness. +Sometimes there is even an apologetic titter. They are quite +emancipated, they say; I have misunderstood them. Their emancipation is +like those horrid white lizards that grow in the Kentucky caves out of +the sunlight. They tell you they don't see why they shouldn't do this or +that—mean things, underhand things, cheap, vicious, sensual things.... +Are there, I wonder, the same dreadful little caverns in men? I doubt +it. And then comes a situation that really tries their quality.... Think +of the quandary I got into with you, Stephen. And for my sex I'm rather +a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> daring person. The way in which I went so far—and then ran away. I +had a kind of excuse—in my illness. That illness! Such a queer untimely +feminine illness....</p> + +<p>"We're all to pieces, Stephen. That's what brought down Rome. The women +went to pieces then, and the women are going to pieces to-day. What's +the good of having your legions in the Grampians and marching up to +Philae, while the wives are talking treason in your houses? It's no good +telling us to go back to the Ancient Virtues. The Ancient Virtues +haven't <i>kept</i>. The Ancient Virtues in an advanced state of decay is +what was the matter with Rome and what is the matter with us. You can't +tell a woman to go back to the spinning-wheel and the kitchen and the +cradle, when you have power-looms, French cooks, hotels, restaurants and +modern nurseries. We've overflowed. We've got to go on to a lot of New +Virtues. And in all the prospect before me—I can't descry one clear +simple thing to do....</p> + +<p>"But I'm running on. I want to know, Stephen, why you've got nothing to +say about all this. It must have been staring you in the face ever since +I spent my very considerable superfluous energies in wrecking your +career. Because you know I wrecked it, Stephen. I <i>knew</i> I was wrecking +it and I wrecked it. I knew exactly what I was doing all the time. I had +meant to be so fine a thing for you, a mothering friend, to have that +dear consecutive kindly mind of yours steadying mine, to have seen you +grow to power over men, me helping, me admiring. It was to have been so +fine. So fine! Didn't I urge you to marry Rachel, make you talk of her. +Don't you remember that? And one day when I saw you thinking of Rachel, +saw a kind of pride in your eyes!—suddenly I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> couldn't stand it. I went +to my room after you had gone and thought of you and her until I wanted +to scream. I couldn't bear it. It was intolerable. I was violent to my +toilet things. I broke a hand-glass. Your dignified, selfish, +self-controlled Mary <i>smashed</i> a silver hand-mirror. I never told you +that. You know what followed. I pounced on you and took you. Wasn't I—a +soft and scented hawk? Was either of us better than some creature of +instinct that does what it does because it must? It was like a gust of +madness—and I cared, I found, no more for your career than I cared for +any other little thing, for honor, for Rachel, for Justin, that stood between us....</p> + +<p>"My dear, wasn't all that time, all that heat and hunger of desire, all +that secret futility of passion, the very essence of the situation +between men and women now? We are all trying most desperately to be +human beings, to walk erect, to work together—what was your +phrase?—'in a multitudinous unity,' to share what you call a common +collective thought that shall rule mankind, and this tremendous force +which seizes us and says to us: 'Make that other being yours, bodily +yours, mentally yours, wholly yours—at any price, no matter the price,' +bars all our unifications. It splits the whole world into couples +watching each other. Until all our laws, all our customs seem the +servants of that. It is the passion of the body swamping the brain; it's +an ape that has seized a gun, a beautiful modern gun. Here am I, +Justin's captive, and he mine, he mine because at the first escapade of +his I get my liberty. Here are we two, I and you, barred for ever from +the sight of one another, and I and you writing—I at any rate—in spite +of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>ill-concealed resentment of my partner. We're just two, peeping +through our bars, of a universal multitude. Everywhere this prison of +sex. Have you ever thought just all that it means when every woman in +the world goes dressed in a costume to indicate her sex, her cardinal +fact, so that she dare not even mount a bicycle in knickerbockers, she +has her hair grown long to its longest because yours is short, and +everything conceivable is done to emphasize and remind us (and you) of +the fundamental trouble between us? As if there was need of reminding! +Stephen, is there no way out of this? Is there no way at all? Because if +there is not, then I had rather go back to the hareem than live as I do +now imprisoned in glass—with all of life in sight of me and none in +reach. I had rather Justin beat me into submission and mental +tranquillity and that I bore him an annual—probably deciduous—child. I +can understand so well now that feminine attitude that implies, 'Well, +if I must have a master, then the more master the better.' Perhaps that +is the way; that Nature will not let us poor humans get away from sex, +and I am merely—what is it?—an abnormality—with whiskers of enquiry +sprouting from my mind. Yet I don't feel like that....</p> + +<p>"I'm pouring into these letters, Stephen, the concentrated venom of +years of brooding. My heart is black with rebellion against my lot and +against the lot of woman. I have been given life and a fine position in +the world, I made one fatal blunder in marrying to make these things +secure, and now I can do nothing with it all and I have nothing to do +with it. It astounds me to think of the size of our establishments, +Stephen, of the extravagant way in which whole counties and great +countries pay<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> tribute to pile up the gigantic heap of wealth upon which +we two lead our lives of futile entanglement. In this place alone there +are fourteen gardeners and garden helps, and this is not one of our +garden places. Three weeks ago I spent a thousand pounds on clothes in +one great week of shopping, and our yearly expenditure upon personal +effect, upon our magnificence and our margins cannot be greatly less +than forty-five thousand pounds. I walk about our house and gardens, I +take one of the carriages or one of the automobiles and go to some large +pointless gathering of hundreds and thousands and thousands of pounds, +and we walk about and say empty little things, and the servants don't +laugh at us, the butlers don't laugh at us, the people in the street +tolerate us.... It has an effect of collective insanity.... You know the +story of one of those dear Barons of the Cinque Ports—a decent +plumber-body from Rye or Winchelsea—one of the six—or eight—who +claimed the privilege of carrying the canopy over the King"—she is +speaking of King Edward's coronation of course—"how that he was +discovered suddenly to be speaking quite audibly to the sacred presence +so near to him: 'It is very remarkable—we should be here, your +majesty—very remarkable.' And then he subsided—happily unheard—into +hopeless embarrassment. That is exactly how I feel, Stephen. I feel I +can't stand it much longer, that presently I shall splutter and spoil the procession....</p> + +<p>"Perhaps I don't properly estimate our position in the fabric, but I +can't get away from the feeling that everything in social life leads up +to this—to us,—the ridiculous canopy. If so, then the universe +means—<i>nothing</i>; it's blowing great forms and shapes as a swamp<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> blows +bubbles; a little while ago it was megatheriums and plesiosauriums—if +that's the name for them—and now it is country-houses and motor-cars +and coronation festivals. And in the end—it is all nonsense, Stephen. +It is utter nonsense.</p> + +<p>"If it isn't nonsense, tell me what it is. For me at any rate it's +nonsense, and for every intelligent woman about me—for I talk to some +of them, we indulge in seditious whisperings and wit—and there isn't +one who seems to have been able to get to anything solider than I have +done. Each of us has had her little fling at maternity—about as much as +a washerwoman does in her odd time every two or three years—and that is +our uttermost reality. All the rest,—trimmings! We go about the world, +Stephen, dressing and meeting each other with immense ceremony, we have +our seasonal movements in relation to the ritual of politics and sport, +we travel south for the Budget and north for the grouse, we play games +to amuse the men who keep us—not a woman would play a game for its own +sake—we dabble with social reform and politics, for which few of us +care a rap except as an occupation, we 'discover' artists or musicians +or lecturers (as though we cared), we try to believe in lovers or, still +harder, try to believe in old or new religions, and most of us—I +don't—do our best to give the gratifications and exercise the +fascinations that are expected of us....</p> + +<p>"Something has to be done for women, Stephen. We are the heart of life, +birth and begetting, the home where the future grows, and your schemes +ignore us and slide about over the superficialities of things. We are +spoiling the whole process of progress, we are turning all the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>achievements of mankind to nothingness. Men invent, create, do miracles +with the world, and we translate it all into shopping, into a glitter of +dresses and households, into an immense parade of pride and excitement. +We excite men, we stir them to get us and keep us. Men turn from their +ideas of brotherhood to elaborate our separate cages....</p> + +<p>"I am Justin's wife; not a thing in my heavens or my earth that is not +subordinated to that.</p> + +<p>"Something has to be done for women, Stephen, something—urgently—and +nothing is done until that is done, some release from their intolerable +subjection to sex, so that for us everything else in life, respect, +freedom, social standing, is entirely secondary to that. But what has to +be done? We women do not know. Our efforts to know are among the most +desolating of spectacles. I read the papers of those suffrage women; the +effect is more like agitated geese upon a common than anything human has +a right to be.... That's why I turn to you. Years ago I felt, and now I +know, there is about you a simplicity of mind, a foolishness of faith, +that is stronger and greater than the cleverness of any woman alive. You +are one of those strange men who take high and sweeping views—as larks +soar. It isn't that you yourself are high and sweeping.... No, but still +I turn to you. In the old days I used to turn to you and shake your mind +and make you think about things you seemed too sluggish to think about +without my clamor. Once do you remember at Martens I shook you by the +ears.... And when I made you think, you thought, as I could never do. +Think now—about women.</p> + +<p>"Stephen, there are moments when it seems to me that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> this futility of +women, this futility of men's effort <i>through</i> women, is a fated +futility in the very nature of things. We may be saddled with it as we +are with all the animal infirmities we have, with appendixes and +suchlike things inside of us, and the passions and rages of apes and a +tail—I believe we have a tail curled away somewhere, haven't we? +Perhaps mankind is so constituted that badly as they get along now they +couldn't get along at all if they let women go free and have their own +way with life. Perhaps you can't have <i>two</i> sexes loose together. You +must shut up one. I've a horrible suspicion that all these anti-suffrage +men like Lord Cromer and Sir Ray Lankester must know a lot about life +that I do not know. And that other man Sir Something-or-other Wright, +who said plainly that men cannot work side by side with women because +they get excited.... And yet, you know, women have had glimpses of a +freedom that was not mischievous. I could have been happy as a Lady +Abbess—I must have space and dignity, Stephen—and those women had +things in their hands as no women have things in their hands to-day. +They came to the House of Lords. But they lost all that. Was there some +sort of natural selection?...</p> + +<p>"Stephen, you were made to answer my mind, and if you cannot do it +nobody can. What is your outlook for women? Are we to go back to +seclusion or will it be possible to minimize sex? If you are going to +minimize sex how are you going to do it? Suppression? There is plenty of +suppression now. Increase or diminish the pains and penalties? My +nephew, Philip's boy, Philip Christian, was explaining to me the other +day that if you boil water in an open bowl it just boils away, and that +if you boil it in a corked bottle it bangs everything to pieces, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> +you have, he says, 'to look out.' But I feel that's a bad image. +Boiling-water isn't frantically jealous, and men and women are. But +still suppose, suppose you trained people not to make such an awful fuss +about things. <i>Now</i> you train them to make as much fuss as possible....</p> + +<p>"Oh bother it all, Stephen! Where's your mind in these matters? Why +haven't you tackled these things? Why do you leave it to <i>me</i> to dig +these questions into you—like opening a reluctant oyster? Aren't they +patent? You up and answer them, Stephen—or this correspondence will become abusive...."</p> + +<h3>§ 5</h3> + +<p>It was true that I did ignore or minimize sexual questions as much as I +could. I was forced now to think why I did this. That carried me back to +those old days of passion, memories I had never stirred for many years. +And I wrote to Mary that there was indeed no reason but a reasonable +fear, that in fact I had dismissed them because they had been beyond my +patience and self-control, because I could not think very much about +them without an egotistical reversion to the bitterness of my own case. +And in avoiding them I was only doing what the great bulk of men in +business and men in affairs find themselves obliged to do. They train +themselves not to think of the rights and wrongs of sexual life, not to +tolerate liberties even in their private imaginations. They know it is +like carrying a torch into a powder magazine. They feel they cannot +trust their own minds beyond the experience, tested usages, and +conventions of the ages,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> because they know how many of those who have +ventured further have been blinded by mists and clouds of rhetoric, lost +in inexplicable puzzles and wrecked disastrously. There in those half +explored and altogether unsettled hinterlands, lurk desires that sting +like adders and hatreds cruel as hell....</p> + +<p>And then I went on—I do not clearly remember now the exact line of +argument I adopted—to urge upon her that our insoluble puzzles were not +necessarily insoluble puzzles for the world at large, that no one +soldier fights anything but a partial battle, and that it wasn't an +absolute condemnation of me to declare that I went on living and working +for social construction with the cardinal riddles of social order, so +far as they affected her, unsolved. Wasn't I at any rate preparing +apparatus for that huge effort at solution that mankind must ultimately +make? Wasn't this dredging out and deepening of the channels of thought +about the best that we could hope to do at the present time, seeing that +to launch a keel of speculation prematurely was only to strand oneself +among hopeless reefs and confusions? Better prepare for a voyage +to-morrow than sail to destruction to-day.</p> + +<p>Whatever I put in that forgotten part of my letter was put less +strikingly than my first admissions, and anyhow it was upon these that +Mary pounced to the disregard of any other point. "There you are," she +wrote, with something like elation, "there is a tiger in the garden and +you won't talk or think about it for fear of growing excited. That is my +grievance against so much historical and political and social +discussion; its hopeless futility because of its hopeless omissions. You +plan the world's future, taking the women and children for granted, with +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>Egotistical Sex, as you call it, a prowling monster upsetting +everything you do...."</p> + +<p>But I will not give you that particular letter in its order, nor its +successors. Altogether she wrote me twenty-two letters, and I one or two +more than that number to her, and—a thing almost inevitable in a +discussion by correspondence—there is a lot of overlapping and +recapitulation. Those letters spread over a space of nearly two and a +half years. Again and again she insists upon the monstrous exaggeration +of the importance of sex in human life and of the need of some reduction +of its importance, and she makes the boldest experimental suggestions +for the achievement of that end. But she comes slowly to recognize that +there is a justification for an indirect attack, that sex and the +position of women do not constitute the primary problem in that +bristling system of riddles that lies like a hostile army across the +path of mankind. And she realized too that through art, through science +and literature and the whole enquiring and creative side of man's +nature, lies the path by which those positions are to be outflanked, and +those eternal-looking impossibles and inconceivables overcome. Here is a +fragment—saturated with the essence of her thought. Three-quarters of +her earlier letters are variations on this theme....</p> + +<p>"What you call 'social order,' Stephen, all the arrangements seem to me +to be <i>built</i> on subjection to sex even more than they are built (as you +say) on labor subjection. And this is an age of release, you say it is +an age of release for the workers and they know it. And so do the women. +Just as much. 'Wild hopes' indeed! The workers' hopes are nothing to the +women's! It is not only the workers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> who are saying let us go free, +manage things differently so that we may have our lives relieved from +this intolerable burthen of constant toil, but the women also are saying +let us go free. They are demanding release just as much from their +intolerable endless specialization as females. The tramp on the roads +who won't work, the swindler and the exploiter who contrive not to work, +the strikers who throw down their tools, no longer for twopences and +sixpences as you say but because their way of living is no longer +tolerable to them, and we women, who don't bear children or work or +help; we are all in one movement together. We are part of the General +Strike. I have been a striker all my life. We are doing nothing—by the +hundred thousand. Your old social machine is working without us and in +spite of us, it carries us along with it and we are sand in the +bearings. I'm not a wheel, Stephen, I'm grit. What you say about the +reactionaries and suppressionists who would stifle the complaints of +labor and crush out its struggles to be free, is exactly true about the +reactionaries and suppressionists who would stifle the discussion of the +woman's position and crush out her hopes of emancipation...."</p> + +<p>And here is a page of the peculiar doubt that was as characteristic of +her as the quick changes of her eyes. It gives just that pessimistic +touch that tempered her valiant adventurousness, that gave a color at +last to the tragedy of her death....</p> + +<p>"Have you ever thought, Stephen, that perhaps these (repressionist) +people are righter than you are—that if the worker gets free he <i>won't</i> +work and that if the woman gets free she won't furl her sex and stop +disturbing things? Suppose she <i>is</i> wicked as a sex, suppose she <i>will</i> +trade on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> her power of exciting imaginative men. A lot of these new +women run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, beguile some poor +innocent of a man to ruin them and then call in fathers, brother, +husbands, friends, chivalry, all the rest of it, and make the best of +both sides of a sex. Suppose we go on behaving like that. After we've +got all our emancipations. Suppose that the liberation of common people +simply means loafing, no discipline, nothing being done, an end to labor +and the beginning of nothing to replace it, and that the liberation of +women simply means the elaboration of mischief. Suppose that it is so. +Suppose you are just tumbling the contents of the grate into the middle +of the room. Then all this emancipation <i>is</i> a decay, even as +conservative-minded people say,—it's none the less a decay because we +want it,—and the only thing to stop it is to stop it, and to have more +discipline and more suppression and say to women and the common people: +'Back to the Sterner Virtues; Back to Servitude!' I wish I hadn't these +reactionary streaks in my thoughts, but I have and there you are...."</p> + +<p>And then towards the second year her letters began to break away from +her preoccupation with her position as a woman and to take up new +aspects of life, more general aspects of life altogether. It had an +effect not of her having exhausted the subject but as if, despairing of +a direct solution, she turned deliberately to the relief of other +considerations. She ceased to question her own life, and taking that for +granted, wrote more largely of less tangible things. She remembered that +she had said that life, if it was no more than its present appearances, +was "utter nonsense." She went back to that. "One says things like +that," she wrote "and not for a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> moment does one believe it. I grumble +at my life, I seem to be always weakly and fruitlessly fighting my life, +and I love it. I would not be willingly dead—for anything. I'd rather +be an old match-woman selling matches on a freezing night in the streets +than be dead. Nothing nonsensical ever held me so tightly or kept me so +interested. I suppose really I am full of that very same formless faith +on which you rely. But with me it's not only shapeless but +intangible.... I nibble at religion. I am immensely attracted. I stand +in the doorway. Only when they come out to persuade me to come in I am +like a shy child and I go away. The temples beguile me and the music, +but not the men. I feel I want to join <i>it</i> and they say 'join <i>us</i>.' +They are—like vergers. Such small things! Such dreadful little +<i>arguing</i> men! They don't let you come in, they want you to say they are +right. All the really religious people seem to be outside nowadays and +all the pretending, cheating, atheistical, vain and limited people within....</p> + +<p>"But the beautiful things religion gives! The beauty! Do you know Saint +Paul's, Stephen? Latterly I have been there time after time. It is the +most beautiful interior in all the world, so great, so sombrely +dignified, so perfectly balanced—and filled with such wonderful music, +brimming with music just as crystal water brims in a bowl of crystal. +The other day I went there, up into a little gallery high up under the +dome, to hear Bach's Passion Music, the St. Matthew Passion. One hangs +high and far above the little multitudes below, the white-robed singers, +the white-robed musicians, ranks and ranks, the great organ, the rows +and rows and rows of congregation, receding this way, that way, into the +haze of the aisle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> and the transepts, and out of it all streams the +sound and the singing, it pours up past you like a river, a river that +rushes upward to some great sea, some unknown sea. The whole place is +music and singing.... I hang on to the railings, Stephen, and weep—I +have to weep—and I wonder and wonder....</p> + +<p>"One prays then as naturally as one drinks when one is thirsty and cold +water comes to hand. I don't know whom I pray to, but I pray;—of course +I pray. Latterly, Stephen, I have been reading devotional works and +trying to catch that music again. I never do—definitely. Never. But at +times I put down the book and it seems to me that surely a moment ago I +heard it, that if I sit very still in a moment I shall hear it again. +And I can feel it is there, I know it is there, like a bat's cry, +pitched too high for my ears. I know it is there, just as I should still +know there was poetry somewhere if some poor toothless idiot with no +roof to his mouth and no knowledge of any but the commonest words tried +to read Shelley to me....</p> + +<p>"I wish I could pray with you, Stephen; I wish I could kneel down +somewhere with you of all people and pray."</p> + +<h3>§ 6</h3> + +<p>Presently our correspondence fell away. The gaps between our letters +lengthened out. We never wrote regularly because for that there must be +a free exchange upon daily happenings, and neither of us cared to dwell +too closely on our immediate lives. We had a regard for one another that +left our backgrounds vague and shadowy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> She had made her appeal across +the sundering silences to me and I had answered, and we had poured out +certain things from our minds. We could not go on discussing. I was a +very busy man now, and she did not write except on my replies.</p> + +<p>For a gap of nearly four months neither of us had anything to say in a +letter at all. I think that in time our correspondence might have +altogether died away. Then she wrote again in a more familiar strain to +tell me of certain definite changes of relationship and outlook. She +said that the estrangement between herself and Justin had increased +during the past year; that they were going to live practically apart; +she for the most part in the Surrey house where her two children lived +with their governesses and maids. But also she meant to snatch weeks and +seasons for travel. Upon that they had been disputing for some time. "I +know it is well with the children," she wrote; "why should I be in +perpetual attendance? I do nothing for them except an occasional kiss, +or half-an-hour's romping. Why should one pretend? Justin and I have +wrangled over this question of going away, for weeks, but at last +feminine persistence has won. I am going to travel in my own fashion and +see the world. With periodic appearances at his side in London and +Scotland. We have agreed at least on one thing, and that is upon a +companion; she is to be my secretary in title, my moral guarantor in +fact, and her name which is her crowning glory is Stella Summersley +Satchel. She is blonde, erect, huffy-mannered and thoroughly up to both +sides of her work. I partly envy her independence and rectitude—partly +only. It's odd and quite inconsistent of me that I don't envy her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> +altogether. In theory I insist that a woman should not have charm,—it +is our undoing. But when I meet one without it——!</p> + +<p>"I shall also trail a maid, but I guess that young woman will learn what +it is to be left behind in half the cities of Europe before I have done +with her. I always lose my maids. They are so much more passive and +forgettable than luggage—abroad that is. And Justin usually in the old +days used to remember about them. And his valet used to see after +them,—a most attentive man. Justin cannot, he says, have his wife +abroad with merely a companion; people would talk; maid it must be as +well. And so in a week or less I shall start, unusually tailor-made, for +South Germany and all that jolly country, companioned and maided. I +shall tramp—on the feet God has given me—in stout boots. Miss +Summersley Satchel marches, I understand, like the British infantry but +on a vegetarian 'basis,'—fancy calling your nourishment a 'basis'!—the +maid and so forth by <i>Èilgut</i>...."</p> + +<h3>§ 7</h3> + +<p>After the letter containing that announcement she wrote to me twice +again, once from Oban and then after a long interval from Siena. The +former was a scornfully minute description of the English at their +holidays and how the conversation went among the women after dinner. +"They are like a row of Japanese lanterns, all blown out long ago and +swinging about in a wind," she wrote—an extravagant image that yet +conveys something of the large, empty, unilluminating effect of a sort +of social<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> intercourse very vividly. In the second letter she was +concerned chiefly with the natural beauty of Italy and how latterly she +had thrice wept at beautiful things, and what this mystery of beauty +could be that had such power over her emotions.</p> + +<p>"All up the hillside before the window as I write the herbage is thick +with anemones. They aren't scattered evenly and anyhow amongst the other +things but in little clusters and groups that die away and begin again, +like the repetitions of an air in some musical composition. I have been +sitting and looking at them for the better part of an hour, loving them +more and then more, and the sweet sunlight that is on them and in among +them.... How marvellous are these things, Stephen! All these little +exquisite things that are so abundant in the world, the gleaming lights +and blossoms, the drifting scents! At times these things bring me to +weeping.... I can't help it. It is as if God who is so stern and high, +so terrible to all our appeals, took pity for a moment and saw fit to +speak very softly and tenderly...."</p> + +<p>That was the last letter I was ever to have from her.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p> + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_THE_ELEVENTH" id="CHAPTER_THE_ELEVENTH"></a>CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH</h2> + +<h3><span class="smcap">The Last Meeting</span></h3> + +<h3>§ 1</h3> + +<p>In the summer of 1911 immediately after the coronation of King George +there came one of those storms of international suspicion that ever and +again threaten Europe with war. It seems to have been brewed by some +German adepts at Welt-Politik, those privileged makers of giant bombs +who sit at the ears of foreign ministers suggesting idiotic wickedness, +and it was brewed with a sublime ignorance of nearly every reality in +the case. A German warship without a word of notice seized Agadir on the +Atlantic coast of Morocco, within the regions reserved to French +influence; an English demand for explanations was uncivilly disregarded +and England and France and presently Germany began vigorous preparations +for war. All over the world it was supposed that Germany had at last +flung down the gauntlet. In England the war party was only too eager to +grasp what it considered to be a magnificent opportunity. Heaven knows +what the Germans had hoped or intended by their remarkable coup; the +amazing thing to note is that they were not prepared to fight, they had +not even the necessary money ready and they could not get it; they had +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>perhaps never intended to fight, and the autumn saw the danger disperse +again into diplomatic bickerings and insincerely pacific professions. +But in the high summer the danger had not dispersed, and in common with +every reasonable man I found myself under the shadow of an impending +catastrophe that would have been none the less gigantic and tragic +because it was an imbecility. It was an occasion when everyone needs +must act, however trivially disproportionate his action may be to the +danger. I cabled Gidding who was in America to get together whatever +influences were available there upon the side of pacific intervention, +and I set such British organs as I could control or approach in the same +direction. It seemed probable that Italy would be drawn into any +conflict that might ensue; it happened that there was to be a Conference +of Peace Societies in Milan early in September, and thither I decided to +go in the not very certain hope that out of that assemblage some form of +European protest might be evolved.</p> + +<p>That August I was very much run down. I had been staying in London +through almost intolerably hot weather to attend a Races Congress that +had greatly disappointed me. I don't know particularly now why I had +been disappointed nor how far the feeling was due to my being generally +run down by the pressure of detailed work and the stress of thinking +about large subjects in little scraps of time. But I know that a kind of +despair came over me as I sat and looked at that multicolored assembly +and heard in succession the heavy platitudes of white men, the slick, +thin cleverness of Hindoos, the rich-toned florid rhetoric of negroes. I +lost sight of any germ of splendid possibility in all those people, and +saw all too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> plainly the vanity, the jealousy, the self-interests that +show up so harshly against the professions of every altruistic movement. +It seemed all such a windy business against the firm prejudices, the +vast accumulated interests that grind race against race. We had no +common purpose at all at that conference, no proposal to hold us +together. So much of it was like bleating on a hillside....</p> + +<p>I wanted a holiday badly, and then came this war crisis and I felt +unable to go away for any length of time. Even bleating it seemed to me +was better than acquiescence in a crime against humanity. So to get +heart to bleat at Milan I snatched at ten days in the Swiss mountains en +route. A tour with some taciturn guide involving a few middling climbs +and glacier excursions seemed the best way of recuperating. I had never +had any time for Switzerland since my first exile there years ago. I +took the advice of a man in the club whose name I now forget—if ever I +knew it, a dark man with a scar—and went up to the Schwarzegg Hut above +Grindelwald, and over the Strahlegg to the Grimsel. I had never been up +into the central mass of the Bernese Oberland before, and I was amazed +and extraordinarily delighted by the vast lonely beauty of those +interminable uplands of ice. I wished I could have lingered up there. +But that is the tragedy of those sunlit desolations; one may not stay; +one sees and exclaims and then looks at a watch. I wonder no one has +ever taken an arctic equipment up into that wilderness, and had a good +healing spell of lonely exaltation. I found the descent from the +Strahlegg as much of a climb as I was disposed to undertake; for an hour +we were coming down frozen snow that wasn't so much a slope as a +slightly inclined precipice....</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p><p>From the Grimsel I went over the Rhone glacier to the inn on the Furka +Pass, and then, paying off my guide and becoming frankly a pedestrian, I +made my way round by the Schöllenen gorge to Goeschenen, and over the +Susten Joch to the Susten Pass and Stein, meaning to descend to Meiringen.</p> + +<p>But I still had four days before I went on to Italy, and so I decided to +take one more mountain. I slept at the Stein inn, and started in the +morning to do that agreeable first mountain of all, the Titlis, whose +shining genial head attracted me. I did not think a guide necessary, but +a boy took me up by a track near Gadmen, and left me to my Siegfried map +some way up the great ridge of rocks that overlooks the Engstlen Alp. I +a little overestimated my mountaineering, and it came about that I was +benighted while I was still high above the Joch Pass on my descent. Some +of this was steep and needed caution. I had to come down slowly with my +folding lantern, in which a reluctant candle went out at regular +intervals, and I did not reach the little inn at Engstlen Alp until long +after eleven at night. By that time I was very tired and hungry.</p> + +<p>They told me I was lucky to get a room, only one stood vacant; I should +certainly not have enjoyed sleeping on a billiard table after my day's +work, and I ate a hearty supper, smoked for a time, meditated emptily, +and went wearily to bed.</p> + +<p>But I could not sleep. Usually, I am a good sleeper, but ever and again +when I have been working too closely or over-exerting myself I have +spells of wakefulness, and that night after perhaps an hour's heavy +slumber I became thinly alert and very weary in body and spirit, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> I +do not think I slept again. The pain in my leg that the panther had torn +had been revived by the day's exertion. For the greater part of my life +insomnia has not been disagreeable to me. In the night, in the +stillness, one has a kind of detachment from reality, one floats there +without light, without weight, feeling very little of one's body. One +has a certain disembodiment and one can achieve a magnanimity of +thought, forgiveness and self-forgetfulness that are impossible while +the body clamors upon one's senses. But that night, because, I suppose, +I was so profoundly fatigued, I was melancholy and despondent. I could +feel again the weight of the great beast upon me as he clawed me down +and I clung—desperately, in that interminable instant before he lost his hold....</p> + +<p>Yes, I was extraordinarily wretched that night. I was filled with +self-contempt and self-disgust. I felt that I was utterly weak and vain, +and all the pretensions and effort of my life mere florid, fruitless +pretensions and nothing more. I had lost all control over my mind. +Things that had seemed secondary before became primary, difficult things +became impossible things. I had been greatly impeded and irritated in +London by the manœuvres of a number of people who were anxious to +make capital out of the crisis, self-advertising people who wanted at +any cost to be lifted into a position of unique protest.... You see, +that unfortunate Nobel prize has turned the advocacy of peace into a +highly speculative profession; the qualification for the winner is so +vaguely defined that a vast multitude of voluntary idealists has been +created and a still greater number diverted from the unendowed pursuit +of human welfare in other directions. Such a man as myself who is known +to command a considerable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> publicity is necessarily a prey to those +moral <i>entrepreneurs</i>. All sorts of ridiculous and petty incidents had +forced this side of public effort upon me, but hitherto I had been able +to say, with a laugh or sigh as the case warranted, "So much is dear old +humanity and all of us"; and to remember the great residuum of nobility +that remained. Now that last saving consideration refused to be +credible. I lay with my body and my mind in pain thinking these people +over, thinking myself over too with the rest of my associates, thinking +drearily and weakly, recalling spites, dishonesties and vanities, feuds +and absurdities, until I was near persuaded that all my dreams of wider +human understandings, of great ends beyond the immediate aims and +passions of common everyday lives, could be at best no more than the +refuge of shy and weak and ineffective people from the failure of their +personal lives....</p> + +<p>We idealists are not jolly people, not honest simple people; the strain +tells upon us; even to ourselves we are unappetizing. Aren't the burly, +bellowing fellows after all righter, with their simple natural hostility +to everything foreign, their valiant hatred of everything unlike +themselves, their contempt for aspiring weakness, their beer and lush +sentiment, their here-to-day-and-gone-tomorrow conviviality and +fellowship? Good fellows! While we others, lost in filmy speculations, +in moon-and-star snaring and the chase of dreams, stumble where even +they walk upright....</p> + +<p>You know I have never quite believed in myself, never quite believed in +my work or my religion. So it has always been with me and always, I +suppose, will be. I know I am purblind, I know I do not see my way +clearly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> nor very far; I have to do with things imperfectly apprehended. +I cannot cheat my mind away from these convictions. I have a sort of +hesitation of the soul as other men have a limp in their gait. God, I +suppose, has a need for lame men. God, I suppose, has a need for blind +men and fearful and doubting men, and does not intend life to be +altogether swallowed up in staring sight. Some things are to be reached +best by a hearing that is not distracted by any clearer senses. But so +it is with me, and this is the innermost secret I have to tell you.</p> + +<p>I go valiantly for the most part I know, but despair is always near to +me. In the common hours of my life it is as near as a shark may be near +a sleeper in a ship; the thin effectual plank of my deliberate faith +keeps me secure, but in these rare distresses of the darkness the plank +seems to become transparent, to be on the verge of dissolution, a sense +of life as of an abyssmal flood, full of cruelty, densely futile, +blackly aimless, penetrates my defences....</p> + +<p>I don't think I can call these stumblings from conviction unbelief; the +limping man walks for all his limping, and I go on in spite of my falls. +"Though he slay me yet will I trust in him...."</p> + +<p>I fell into an inconsecutive review of my life under this light that +touched every endeavor with the pale tints of failure. And as that flow +of melancholy reflection went on, it was shot more and more frequently +with thoughts of Mary. It was not a discursive thinking about Mary but a +definite fixed direction of thought towards her. I had not so thought of +her for many years. I wanted her, I felt, to come to me and help me out +of this distressful pit into which my spirit had fallen. I believed she +could. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> perceived our separation as an irreparable loss. She had a +harder, clearer quality than I, a more assured courage, a readier, surer +movement of the mind. Always she had "lift" for me. And then I had a +curious impression that I had heard her voice calling my name, as one +might call out in one's sleep. I dismissed it as an illusion, and then I +heard it again. So clearly that I sat up and listened—breathless....</p> + +<p>Mixed up with all this was the intolerable uproar and talking of a +little cascade not fifty yards from the hotel. It is curious how +distressing that clamor of running water, which is so characteristic of +the Alpine night, can become. At last those sounds can take the likeness +of any voice whatever. The water, I decided, had called to me, and now +it mocked and laughed at me....</p> + +<p>The next morning I descended at some late hour by Swiss reckoning, and +discovered two ladies in the morning sunlight awaiting breakfast at a +little green table. One rose slowly at the sight of me, and stood and +surveyed me with a glad amazement.</p> + +<h3>§ 2</h3> + +<p>There she stood real and solid, a little unfamiliar in her tweeds and +with her shining eyes intimate and unforgettable, as though I had never +ceased to see them for all those intervening years. And bracing us both +and holding back our emotion was, quite unmistakably, Miss Summersley +Satchel, a blonde business-like young woman with a stumpy nose very +cruelly corrugated and inflamed by a pince-nez that savagely did much +more than its duty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> by its name. She remained seated, tilting her chair +a little, pushing herself back from the table and regarding +me—intelligently.</p> + +<p>It was one of those moments in life when one is taken unawares. I think +our common realization of the need of masking the reality of our +encounter, the hasty search in our minds for some plausible face upon +this meeting, must have been very obvious to the lady who observed us. +Mary's first thought was for a pseudonym. Mine was to make it plain we met by accident.</p> + +<p>"It's Mr.—Stephen!" said Mary.</p> + +<p>"It's you!"</p> + +<p>"Dropped out of the sky!"</p> + +<p>"From over there. I was benighted and go there late."</p> + +<p>"Very late?"</p> + +<p>"One gleam of light—and a yawning waiter. Or I should have had to break +windows.... And then I meet you!"</p> + +<p>Then for a moment or so we were silent, with our sense of the immense +gravity of this position growing upon us. A little tow-headed waiter-boy +appeared with their coffee and rolls on a tray poised high on his hand.</p> + +<p>"You'll have your coffee out here with us?" said Mary.</p> + +<p>"Where else?" said I, as though there was no conceivable alternative, +and told the tow-headed waiter.</p> + +<p>Belatedly Mary turned to introduce me to her secretary: "My friend Miss +Summersley Satchel. Mr.—Stephen." Miss Satchel and I bowed to each +other and agreed that the lake was very beautiful in the morning light. +"Mr. Stephen," said Mary, in entirely unnecessary explanation, "is an +old friend of my mother's. And I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> haven't seen him for years. How is +Mrs. Stephen—and the children?"</p> + +<p>I answered briefly and began to tell of my climb down the Titlis. I +addressed myself with unnecessary explicitness to Miss Satchel. I did +perhaps over-accentuate the extreme fortuitousness of my appearance.... +From where I stood, the whole course of the previous day after I had +come over the shoulder was visible. It seemed a soft little shining +pathway to the top, but the dangers of the descent had a romantic +intensification in the morning light. "The rule of the game," said I, +"is that one stops and waits for daylight. I wonder if anyone keeps that rule."</p> + +<p>We talked for a time of mountains, I still standing a little aloof until +my coffee came. Miss Summersley Satchel produced that frequent and most +unpleasant bye-product of a British education, an intelligent interest +in etymology. "I wonder," she said, with a brow of ruffled omniscience +and eyeing me rather severely with a magnified eye, "why it is <i>called</i> +Titlis. There must be <i>some</i> reason...."</p> + +<p>Presently Miss Satchel was dismissed indoors on a transparent excuse and +Mary and I were alone together. We eyed one another gravely. Perhaps all +the more gravely because of the wild excitement that was quickening our +pulse and breathing, and thrilling through our nerves. She pushed back +the plate before her and put her dear elbows on the table and dropped +her chin between her hands in an attitude that seemed all made of little memories.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," she said, "something of this kind was bound to happen."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span></p><p>She turned her eyes to the mountains shining in the morning light. "I'm +glad it has happened in a beautiful place. It might have +been—anywhere."</p> + +<p>"Last night," I said, "I was thinking of you and wanting to hear your +voice again. I thought I did."</p> + +<p>"I too. I wonder—if we had some dim perception...."</p> + +<p>She scanned my face. "Stephen, you're not much changed. You're looking +well.... But your eyes—they're dog-tired eyes. Have you been working too hard?"</p> + +<p>"A conference—what did you call them once?—a Carnegieish conference in +London. Hot weather and fussing work and endless hours of weak grey +dusty speeches, and perhaps that clamber over there yesterday was too +much. It <i>was</i> too much. In India I damaged a leg.... I had meant to +rest here for a day."</p> + +<p>"Well,—rest here."</p> + +<p>"With you!"</p> + +<p>"Why not? Now you are here."</p> + +<p>"But—— After all, we've promised."</p> + +<p>"It's none of our planning, Stephen."</p> + +<p>"It seems to me I ought to go right on—so soon as breakfast is over."</p> + +<p>She weighed that with just the same still pause, the same quiet moment +of lips and eyes that I recalled so well. It was as things had always +been between us that she should make her decision first and bring me to it.</p> + +<p>"It isn't natural," she decided, "with the sun rising and the day still +freshly beginning that you should go or that I should go. I've wanted to +meet you like this and talk about things,—ten thousand times. And as +for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> me Stephen I <i>won't</i> go. And I won't let you go if I can help it. +Not this morning, anyhow. No. Go later in the day if you will, and let +us two take this one talk that God Himself has given us. We've not +planned it. It's His doing, not ours."</p> + +<p>I sat, yielding. "I am not so sure of God's participation," I said. "But +I know I am very tired, and glad to be with you. I can't tell you how +glad. So glad—— I think I should weep if I tried to say it...."</p> + +<p>"Three, four, five hours perhaps—even if people know. Is it so much +worse than thirty minutes? We've broken the rules already; we've been +flung together; it's not our doing, Stephen. A little while longer—adds +so little to the offence and means to us——"</p> + +<p>"Yes," I said, "but—if Justin knows?"</p> + +<p>"He won't."</p> + +<p>"Your companion?"</p> + +<p>There was the briefest moment of reflection. "She's discretion itself," she said.</p> + +<p>"Still——"</p> + +<p>"If he's going to know the harm is done. We may as well be hung for a +sheep as a lamb. And he won't know. No one will know."</p> + +<p>"The people here."</p> + +<p>"Nobody's here. Not a soul who matters. I doubt if they know my name.... +No one ever talks to me."</p> + +<p>I sat in the bright sunshine, profoundly enervated and quite convinced, +but still maintaining out of mere indolence a show of hesitation....</p> + +<p>"You take the good things God sends you, Stephen—as I do. You stay and +talk with me now, before the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span>curtain falls again. We've tired of +letters. You stay and talk to me.</p> + +<p>"Here we are, Stephen, and it's the one chance that is ever likely to +come to us in all our lives. We'll keep the point of honor; and you +shall go to-day. But don't let's drive the point of honor into the +quick. Go easy Stephen, old friend.... My dear, my dear! What has +happened to you? Have you forgotten? Of course! Is it possible for you +to go, mute, with so much that we can say.... And these mountains and this sunlight!..."</p> + +<p>I looked up to see her with her elbows on the table and her hands +clasped under her chin; that face close to mine, her dear blue eyes +watching me and her lips a little apart.</p> + +<p>No other human being has ever had that effect upon me, so that I seem to +feel the life and stir in that other body more than I feel my own.</p> + +<h3>§ 3</h3> + +<p>From the moment when I confessed my decision to stay we gave no further +thought to the rightfulness or wisdom of spending the next few hours +together. We thought only of those hours. Things lent themselves to us. +We stood up and walked out in front of the hotel and there moored to a +stake at the edge of the water was a little leaky punt, the one vessel +on the Engstlen See. We would take food with us as we decided and row +out there to where the vast cliffs came sheer from the water, out of +earshot or interference and talk for all the time we had. And I remember +now how Mary stood and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> called to Miss Satchel's window to tell her of +this intention, and how I discovered again that exquisite slender grace +I knew so well.</p> + +<p>You know the very rowing out from the shore had in it something sweet +and incredible. It was as if we were but dreaming together and might at +any moment awaken again, countless miles and a thousand things apart. I +rowed slowly with those clumsy Swiss oars that one must thrust forward, +breaking the smooth crystal of the lake, and she sat sideways looking +forward, saying very little and with much the same sense I think of +enchantment and unreality. And I saw now for the first time as I watched +her over my oars that her face was changed; she was graver and, I +thought, stronger than the Mary I had known.</p> + +<p>Even now I can still doubt if that boat and lake were real. And yet I +remember even minute and irrelevant details of the day's impressions +with an extraordinary and exquisite vividness. Perhaps it is that very +luminous distinctness which distinguishes these events from the common +experiences of life and puts them so above the quality of things that +are ordinarily real.</p> + +<p>We rowed slowly past a great headland and into the bay at the upper end +of the water. We had not realized at first that we could row beyond the +range of the hotel windows. The rock that comes out of the lake is a +clear dead white when it is dry, and very faintly tinted, but when it is +wetted it lights warmly with flashes and blotches of color, and is seen +to be full of the most exquisite and delicate veins. It splinters +vertically and goes up in cliffs, very high and sculptured, with a +quality almost of porcelain, that at a certain level suddenly become<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> +more rude and massive and begin to overhang. Under the cliffs the water +is very deep and blue-green, and runs here and there into narrow clefts. +This place where we landed was a kind of beach left by the recession of +the ice, all the rocks immediately about us were ice-worn, and the place +was paved with ice-worn boulders. Two huge bluffs put their foreheads +together above us and hid the glacier from us, but one could feel the +near presence of ice in the air. Out between them boiled a little +torrent, and spread into a hundred intercommunicating channels amidst +the great pebbles. And those pebbles were covered by a network of +marvellously gnarled and twisted stems bearing little leaves and +blossoms, a network at once very ancient and very fresh, giving a +peculiar gentleness and richness to the Alpine severity that had dwarfed +and tangled them. It was astounding that any plant could find +nourishment among those stones. The great headland, with patches of +yellowish old snow still lingering here and there upon its upper masses, +had crept insensibly between us and the remote hotel and now hid it +altogether. There was nothing to remind us of the world that had +separated us, except that old and leaky boat we had drawn up upon the +stones at the limpid water's edge.</p> + +<p>"It is as if we had come out of life together," she whispered, giving a +voice to my thought.</p> + +<p>She sat down upon a boulder and I sat on a lower slab a yard or so away, +and we looked at one another. "It's still unreal," she said.</p> + +<p>I felt awkward and at a loss as I sat there before her, as a man unused +to drawing-rooms might feel in the presence of a strange hostess.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span></p><p>"You are so <i>you</i>," I said; "so altogether my nearest thing—and so +strange too, so far off, that I feel—shy....</p> + +<p>"I'm shy," I repeated. "I feel that if I speak loudly all this will vanish...."</p> + +<p>I looked about me. "But surely this is the most beautiful place in the +whole world! Is it indeed in the world?"</p> + +<p>"Stephen, my dear," she began presently, "what a strange thing life is! +Strange! The disproportions! The things that will not fit together. The +little things that eat us up, and the beautiful things that might save +us and don't save us, don't seem indeed to have any meaning in regard to +ordinary sensible affairs.... This <i>beauty</i>....</p> + +<p>"Do you remember, Stephen, how long ago in the old park you and I talked +about immortality and you said then you did not want to know anything of +what comes after life. Even now do you want to know? You are too busy +and I am not busy enough. I want to be sure, not only to know, but to +know that it is so, that this life—no, not <i>this</i> life, but that life, +is only the bleak twilight of the morning. I think death—just dead +death—after the life I have had is the most impossible of ends.... You +don't want—particularly? I want to passionately. I <i>want</i> to live +again—out of this body, Stephen, and all that it carves with it, to be +free—as beautiful things are free. To be free as this is free—an +exquisite clean freedom....</p> + +<p>"I can't believe that the life of this earth is all that there is for +us—or why should we ever think it strange? Why should we still find the +ordinary matter-of-fact things of everyday strange? We do—because they +aren't—<i>us</i>.... Eating.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> Stuffing into ourselves thin slices of what +were queer little hot and eager beasts.... The perpetual need to do such +things. And all the mad fury of sex, Stephen!... We don't live, we +suffocate in our living bodies. They storm and rage and snatch; it isn't +<i>us</i>, Stephen, really. It can't be us. It's all so excessive—if it is +anything more than the first furious rush into existence of beings that +will go on—go on at last to quite beautiful real things. Like this +perhaps. To-day the world is beautiful indeed with the sun shining and +love shining and you, my dear, so near to me.... It's so incredible that +you and I must part to-day. It's as if—someone told me the sun was a +little mad. It's so perfectly natural to be with you again...."</p> + +<p>Her voice sank. She leant a little forward towards me. "Stephen, suppose +that you and I were dead to-day. Suppose that when you imagined you were +climbing yesterday, you died. Suppose that yesterday you died and that +you just thought you were still climbing as you made your way to me. +Perhaps you are dead up there on the mountain and I am lying dead in my +room in this hotel, and this is the Great Beginning....</p> + +<p>"Stephen, I am talking nonsense because I am so happy to be with you here...."</p> + +<h3>§ 4</h3> + +<p>For a time we said very little. Then irregularly, disconnectedly, we +began to tell each other things about ourselves.</p> + +<p>The substance of our lives seemed strangely objective<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> that day; we had +as it were come to one another clean out of our common conditions. She +told me of her troubles and her secret weaknesses; we bared our spirits +and confessed. Both of us had the same tale of mean and angry and hasty +impulses, both of us could find kindred inconsistencies, both had an +exalted assurance that the other would understand completely and forgive +and love. She talked for the most part, she talked much more than I, +with a sort of wonder at the things that had happened to her, and for +long spaces we did not talk at all nor feel the need of talking, and +what seems very strange to me now, seeing that we had been impassioned +lovers, we never kissed; we never kissed at all; I do not even remember +that I thought of kissing her. We had a shyness between us that kept us +a little apart, and I cannot remember that we ever touched one another +except that for a time she took me and led me by the hand towards a +little place of starry flowers that had drawn her eyes and which she +wished me to see. Already for us two our bodies were dead and gone. We +were shy, shy of any contact, we were a little afraid of one another, +there was a kind of awe between us that we had met again.</p> + +<p>And in that strange and beautiful place her fancy that we were dead +together had a fitness that I cannot possibly convey to you. I cannot +give you by any writing the light and the sweet freshness of that high +desolation. You would need to go there. What was lovely in our talk, +being said in that setting, would seem but a rambling discourse were I +to write it down,—as I believe that even now I could write it +down—word for word almost, every thought of it, so fresh does it remain +with me....</p> + +<p>My dear, some moments are eternal. It seems to me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> that as I write to +tell you of this I am telling you not of something that happened two +years ago but of a thing immortal. It is as if I and Mary were together +there holding the realities of our lives before us as though they were +little sorry tales written in books upon our knees....</p> + +<h3>§ 5</h3> + +<p>It was still in the early afternoon that we came down again across the +meandering ice-water streams to our old boat, and pushed off and rowed +slowly out of that magic corner back to every-day again....</p> + +<p>Little we knew to what it was we rowed.</p> + +<p>As we glided across the water and rounded the headland and came slowly +into view of the hotel again, Mary was reminded of our parting and for a +little while she was disposed to make me remain. "If you could stay a +little longer," she said,—"Another day? If any harm is done, it's done."</p> + +<p>"It has been beautiful," I said, "this meeting. It's just as if—when I +was so jaded and discouraged that I could have put my work aside and +despaired altogether,—some power had said, 'Have you forgotten the +friendship I gave you?' ... But we shall have had our time. We've +met,—we've seen one another, we've heard one another. We've hurt no one...."</p> + +<p>"You will go?"</p> + +<p>"To-day. Before sunset. Isn't it right that I should go?"</p> + +<p>"Stay," she whispered, with a light in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"No. I dare not."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span></p><p>She did not speak for a long time.</p> + +<p>"Of course," she said at last, "you're right. You only said—I would +have said it for you if you had not. You're so right, Stephen.... I +suppose, poor silly little things, that if you stayed we should +certainly begin making love to each other. It would be—necessary. We +should fence about a little and then there it would be. No barrier—to +stop us. And neither of us wants it to happen. It isn't what we want. +You would become urgent, I suppose, and I should be—coquettish. In +spite of ourselves that power would make us puppets. As if already we +hadn't made love.... I could find it in my heart now.... Stephen I could +<i>make</i> you stay....</p> + +<p>"Oh! Why are we so tormented, Stephen? In the next world we shall meet, +and this will trouble us no longer. The love will be there—oh, the love +will be there, like something that has at last got itself fully born, +got itself free from some queer clinging seed-case....</p> + +<p>"We shall be rid of jealousy, Stephen, that inflammation of the mind, +that bitterness, that pitiless sore, so that I shan't be tormented by +the thought of Rachel and she will be able to tolerate me. She was so +sweet and wonderful a girl—with those dark eyes. And I've never done +her justice—never. Nor she me. I snatched you from her. I snatched you....</p> + +<p>"Someday we shall be different.... All this putting oneself round +another person like a fence, against everyone else, almost against +everything else; it's so wicked, so fierce.</p> + +<p>"It's so possible to be different. Sometimes now, sometimes for long +parts of a day I have no base passions at all—even in this life. To be +like that always! But I can't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> see clearly how these things can be; one +dreams of them in a kind of luminous mist, and if one looks directly at +them, they vanish again...."</p> + +<h3>§ 6</h3> + +<p>And at last we came to the landing, and moored the little boat and +walked up the winding path to the hotel. The dull pain of separation was +already upon us.</p> + +<p>I think we had forgotten Miss Summersley Satchel altogether. But she +appeared as we sat down to tea at that same table at which we had +breakfasted, and joined us as a matter of course. Conceivably she found +the two animated friends of the morning had become rather taciturn. +Indeed there came a lapse of silence so portentous that I roused myself +to effort and told her, all over again, as I realized afterwards, the +difficulties that had benighted me upon Titlis. Then Miss Satchel +regaled Mary with some particulars of the various comings and goings of +the hotel. I became anxious to end this tension and went into the inn to +pay my bill and get my knapsack. When I came out Mary stood up.</p> + +<p>"I'll come just a little way with you, Stephen," she said, and I could +have fancied the glasses of the companion flashed to hear the surname of +the morning reappear a Christian name in the afternoon....</p> + +<p>"Is that woman behind us safe?" I asked, breaking the silence as we went +up the mountain-side.</p> + +<p>Mary looked over her shoulder for a contemplative second.</p> + +<p>"She's always been—discretion itself."</p> + +<p>We thought no more of Miss Satchel.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span></p><p>"This parting," said Mary, "is the worst of the price we have to +pay.... Now it comes to the end there seem a thousand things one hasn't said...."</p> + +<p>And presently she came back to that. "We shan't remember this so much +perhaps. It was there we met, over there in the sunlight—among those +rocks. I suppose—perhaps—we managed to say something...."</p> + +<p>As the ascent grew steeper it became clear that if I was to reach the +Melch See Inn by nightfall, our moment for parting had come. And with a +"Well," and a white-lipped smile and a glance at the Argus-eyed hotel, +she held out her hand to me. "I shall live on this, brother Stephen," +she said, "for years."</p> + +<p>"I too," I answered....</p> + +<p>It was wonderful to stand and face her there, and see her real and +living with the warm sunlight on her, and her face one glowing +tenderness. We clasped hands; all the warm life of our hands met and +clung and parted.</p> + +<p>I went on alone up the winding path,—it zigzags up the mountain-side in +full sight of the hotel for the better part of an hour—climbing +steadily higher and looking back and looking back until she was just a +little strip of white—that halted and seemed to wave to me. I waved +back and found myself weeping. "You fool!" I said to myself, "Go on"; +and it was by an effort that I kept on my way instead of running back to +her again. Presently the curvature of the slope came up between us and +hid her altogether, hid the hotel, hid the lakes and the cliffs....</p> + +<p>It seemed to me that I could not possibly see her any more. It was as if +I knew that sun had set for ever.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span></p> + +<h3>§ 7</h3> + +<p>I lay at the Melch See Inn that night, and rose betimes and started down +that wild grey gorge in the early morning light. I walked to Sachseln, +caught an early train to Lucerne and went on in the afternoon to Como. +And there I stayed in the sunshine taking a boat and rowing alone far up +the lake and lying in it, thinking of love and friendship and the +accidents and significance of my life, and for the most part not +thinking at all but feeling, feeling the glow of our meeting and the +finality of our separation, as one feels the clear glow of a sunset when +the wind rises and the cold night draws near. Everything was pervaded by +the sense of her. Just over those mountains, I thought, is Mary. I was +alone in my boat, but her presence filled the sky. It seemed to me that +at any moment I could go to her. And the last vestige of any cloud +between us for anything we had done or failed to do in these crises of +distress and separation, had vanished and gone altogether.</p> + +<p>In the afternoon I wrote to Rachel. I had not written to her for three +days, and even now I told her nothing of my meeting with Mary. I had not +written partly because I could not decide whether I should tell her of +that or not; in the end I tried to hide it from her. It seemed a little +thing in regard to her, a thing that could not hurt her, a thing as +detached from her life and as inconsecutive as a dream in my head.</p> + +<p>Three days later I reached Milan, a day before the formal opening of the +Peace Congress. But I found a telegram had come that morning to the +Poste Restante to banish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> all thought of my pacific mission from my +mind. It came from Paris and its blue ribbon of text ran:</p> + +<blockquote><p><i>"Come back at once to London. Justin has been told of our meeting +and is resolved upon divorce. Will do all in my power to explain +and avert but feel you should know at once."</i></p></blockquote> + +<p>There are some things so monstrously destructive to all we hold dear +that for a time it is impossible to believe them. I remember now that as +I read that amazing communication through—at the first reading it was a +little difficult to understand because the Italian operator had guessed +at one or two of the words, no real sense of its meaning came to me. +That followed sluggishly. I felt as one might feel when one opens some +offensive anonymous letter or hears some preposterous threat.</p> + +<p>"What <i>nonsense</i>!" I said, faint-heartedly. I stood for a time at my +bedroom window trying to shake this fact altogether off my mind. But it +stayed, and became more and more real. Suddenly with a start I perceived +it was real. I had to do things forthwith.</p> + +<p>I rang the bell and asked for an <i>Orario</i>. "I shan't want these rooms. I +have to go back to England," I said. "Yes,—I have had bad news." ...</p> + +<h3>§ 8</h3> + +<p>"We've only got to explain," I told myself a hundred times during that +long sleepless journey. The thundering wheels so close beneath my head +echoed: "Explain. Oh yes! Explain! Explain! Explain!"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span></p><p>And something, a voice to which I would not listen, urged: "Suppose +they do not choose to believe what you explain."</p> + +<p>When I sat face to face with Maxwell Hartington, my solicitor, in his +ink-splashed, dirty, yellow-grained room with its rows of black tin +boxes, I could no longer ignore that possibility. Maxwell Hartington sat +back in his chair after his fashion, listening to my story, breathing +noisily through his open mouth, perspiring little beads and looking more +out of condition than ever. I never knew a man so wine-sodden and so sharp-witted.</p> + +<p>"That's all very well, Stratton," he said, "between ourselves. Very +unfortunate and all that sort of thing. But it doesn't satisfy Justin +evidently; and we've got to put a different look on it if we can, before +we go before a jury: You see——" He seemed to be considering and +rejecting unpalatable phrases "They won't understand."</p> + +<p>"But," I said, "after all—, a mere chance of the same hotel. There must +be more evidence than that."</p> + +<p>"You spent the night in adjacent rooms," he said dryly.</p> + +<p>"Adjacent rooms!" I cried.</p> + +<p>He regarded me for a moment with something bordering on admiration. +"Didn't you know?" he said.</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"They've routed that out. You were sleeping with your two heads within a +yard of one another anyhow. Thirty-six you had, and she had thirty-seven."</p> + +<p>"But," I said and stopped.</p> + +<p>Maxwell Hartington's admiration gave place I think to a slight +resentment at my sustained innocence. "And Lady Mary changed rooms with +her secretary two nights<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> before—to be near the vacant room. The +secretary went into number 12 on the floor below,—a larger room, at +thirteen francs a day, and one not exposed to the early daylight...."</p> + +<p>He turned over a paper on his desk. "You didn't know, of course," he +said. "But what I want to have"—and his voice grew wrathful—"is sure +evidence that you didn't know. No jury on earth is going to believe you +didn't know. No jury!—-- Why,"—his mask dropped—"no man on earth is +going to believe a yarn like that! If that's all you have, Stratton——"</p> + +<h3>§ 9</h3> + +<p>Our London house was not shut up—two servants were there on board-wages +against the possibility of such a temporary return as I was now +making—Rachel was away with you three children at Cromingham. I had not +told her I was returning to London, and I had put up at one of my clubs. +Until I had had a second interview with Maxwell Hartington I still would +not let myself think that it was possible that Mary and I would fail +with our explanations. We had the common confidence of habitually +unchallenged people that our word would be accepted. I had hoped indeed +to get the whole affair settled and abolished without anything of it +coming to Rachel's ears. Then at my leisure I should be able to tell her +exactly how things had come about. But each day made it clearer that +things were not going to be settled, that the monstrous and the +incredible was going to happen and that Justin had set<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> his mind +implacably upon a divorce. My sense of complete innocence had already +been shaken by Maxwell Hartington; I had come to perceive that we had +been amazingly indiscreet, I was beginning to think we had been criminally indiscreet.</p> + +<p>I saw Maxwell Hartington for a second time, and it became clear to me I +must abandon any hope of keeping things further from Rachel. I took my +luggage round to my house, to the great astonishment of the two +servants,—they had supposed of course that I was in Italy—and then +went down on the heels of a telegram to Rachel. I forget the wording of +that telegram, but it was as little alarming as possible; I think I said +something about "back in London for documents; shall try to get down to +you." I did not specify any particular train or indeed state definitely +that I was coming that day.</p> + +<p>I had never been to Cromingham before. I went to the house you occupied +on the Esplanade and learnt that you were all upon the beach. I walked +along the sea-wall scrutinizing the various bright groups of children +and nursemaids and holiday people that were scattered over the sands. It +was a day of blazing sunshine, and, between the bright sky and the +silver drabs of the sand stretched the low levels of a sea that had its +customary green-grey touched for once with something of the sapphire +glow of the Mediterranean. Here and there were gay little umbrella tents +or canvas shelters, and a bather or so and pink and white wading +children broke the dazzling edge of foam. And I sought you with a kind +of reluctance as though finding you would bring nearer the black +irrational disaster that hung over us all.</p> + +<p>And when I found you at last you were all radiantly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> happy and healthy, +the prettiest of families, and only your mother was touched with any +gravity deeper than the joy of sunshine and sea. You and Mademoiselle +Potin—in those days her ministrations were just beginning—were busy +constructing a great sea-wall that should really and truly stop the +advancing tide. Rachel Two was a little apart, making with infinite +contentment an endless multitude of conical sand pies with her little +tin pail. Margaret, a pink inarticulate lump, scrabbled in the warm sand +under Jessica's care. Your mother sat and watched you—thoughtfully. And +before any of you knew that I was there my shadow fell across you all.</p> + +<p>You accepted my appearance when I ought to have been in Italy with the +unquestioning confidence with which you still take all my comings and +goings. For you, Italy, America, any place is just round the corner. I +was kissed with affection but haste, and you got back to your sand-works +as speedily as possible. I inspected Rachel Two's mounds,—she was +giving them the names of her various aunts and uncles—and patted the +crowing Margaret, who ignored me. Rachel had sprung to her feet and +kissed me and now hovered radiant over me as I caressed you youngsters. +It was all so warm, so real, that for an instant the dark threat that +hung over us all vanished from my skies, to return with the force of a blow.</p> + +<p>"And what has brought you back?" said Rachel. "I had expected a month of +widowhood. What can have brought you back?"</p> + +<p>The dancing gladness in her eyes vanished swiftly as she waited for an +answer to her question. She caught the note of tragedy from my face. +"Why have you come back from Italy?" she asked in an altered voice.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span></p><p>"Rachel," I said taking her arm, with a desolating sense of the +futility in my gesture of protection; "let us walk along the beach. I +want to tell you something—— Something rather complicated."</p> + +<p>"Is there going to be war, Stephen?" she asked abruptly.</p> + +<p>It seemed then that this question which merely concerned the welfare of +a hundred million people or so and pain, destruction and disaster beyond +measure, was the most trivial of digressions.</p> + +<p>"No," I said. "I haven't thought about the war."</p> + +<p>"But I thought—you were thinking of nothing else."</p> + +<p>"This has put it out of my head. It's something—— Something disastrous +to us."</p> + +<p>"Something has happened to our money?"</p> + +<p>"I wish that was all."</p> + +<p>"Then what is it?" Her mind flashed out. "It has something to do with Mary Justin."</p> + +<p>"How did you know that?"</p> + +<p>"I guessed."</p> + +<p>"Well. It is. You see—in Switzerland we met."</p> + +<p>"You <i>met</i>!"</p> + +<p>"By accident. She had been staying at the hotel on Engstlen Alp."</p> + +<p>"You slept there!" cried Rachel.</p> + +<p>"I didn't know she was in the hotel until the next day."</p> + +<p>"And then you came away!"</p> + +<p>"That day."</p> + +<p>"But you talked together?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"And for some reason—— You never told me, Stephen! You never told me. +And you met. But—— Why is this, disaster?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span></p><p>"Because Justin knows and he means to divorce her—and it may be he +will succeed...."</p> + +<p>Rachel's face had become white, for some time she said nothing. Then +slowly, "And if he had not known and done that—I should never have known."</p> + +<p>I had no answer to make to that. It was true. Rachel's face was very +still, and her eyes stared at the situation laid bare to her.</p> + +<p>"When you began," she choked presently, "when she wrote—I knew—I +felt——"</p> + +<p>She ceased for fear she might weep, and for a time we walked in silence.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," she said desperately at last, "he will get his divorce."</p> + +<p>"I am afraid he will."</p> + +<p>"There's no evidence—you didn't...."</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"And I never dreamt——!"</p> + +<p>Then her passion tore at her. "Stephen my dear," she wept, "you didn't? +you didn't? Stephen, indeed you didn't, did you? You kept faith with me +as a husband should. It was an accident—a real accident—and there was +no planning for you to meet together. It was as you say? I've never +doubted your word ever—I've never doubted you."</p> + +<p>Well, at any rate I could answer that plainly, and I did.</p> + +<p>"And you know, Stephen," she said, "I believe you. And I <i>can't</i> believe +you. My heart is tormented. Why did you write to her? Why did you two +write and go on writing? And why did you tell me nothing of that +meeting? I believe you because I can't do anything but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> believe you. It +would kill me not to believe you in a thing that came so near to us. And +yet, there it is, like a knife being twisted in my heart—that you met. +Should I have known of your meeting, Stephen—ever? I know I'm talking +badly for you.... But this thing strikes me suddenly. Out of this clear +beautiful sky! And the children there—so happy in the sunshine! I was +so happy. So happy. With you coming.... It will mean shames and +law-courts and newspapers, losses of friends, losses of money and +freedom.... My mother and my people!... And you and all the work you +do!... People will never forget it, never forgive it. They will say you +promised.... If she had never written, if she had kept to her +bargain——"</p> + +<p>"We should still have met."</p> + +<p>"Stephen!... Stephen, you must bear with me...."</p> + +<p>"This is a thing," I said, "that falls as you say out of the sky. It +seemed so natural—for her to write.... And the meeting ... it is like +some tremendous disaster of nature. I do not feel I have deserved it. It +is—irrational. But there it is, little Rachel of my heart, and we have +to face it. Whatever happens we have to go on. It doesn't alter the work +we have to do. If it clips our wings—we have to hop along with clipped +wings.... For you—I wish it could spare you. And she—she too is a +victim, Rachel."</p> + +<p>"She need not have written," said Rachel. "She need not have written. +And then if you had met——"</p> + +<p>She could not go on with that.</p> + +<p>"It is so hard," I said, "to ask you to be just to her—and me. I wish I +could have come to you and married you—without all that legacy—of +things remembered.... I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> was what I was.... One can't shake off a thing +in one's blood. And besides—besides——"</p> + +<p>I stopped helplessly.</p> + +<h3>§ 10</h3> + +<p>And then Mary came herself to tell me there would be no divorce.</p> + +<p>She came to me unexpectedly. I had returned to town that evening, and +next morning as I was sitting down in my study to answer some +unimportant questions Maxwell Hartington had sent me, my parlormaid +appeared. "Can you speak," she asked, "to Lady Mary Justin?"</p> + +<p>I stood up to receive my visitor.</p> + +<p>She came in, a tall dark figure, and stood facing me in silence until +the door had closed behind her. Her face was white and drawn and very +grave. She stooped a little, I could see she had had no sleep, never +before had I seen her face marked by pain. And she hesitated.... "My +dear!" I said; "why have you come to me?"</p> + +<p>I put a chair for her and she sat down.</p> + +<p>For a moment she controlled herself with difficulty. She put her hand +over her eyes, she seemed on the verge of bitter weeping....</p> + +<p>"I came," she said at last.... "I came. I had to come ... to see you."</p> + +<p>I sat down in a chair beside her.</p> + +<p>"It wasn't wise," I said. "But—never mind. You look so tired, my dear!"</p> + +<p>She sat quite still for a little while.</p> + +<p>Then she moved her arm as though she felt for me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> blindly, and I put my +arms about her and drew her head to my shoulder and she wept....</p> + +<p>"I knew," she sobbed, "if I came to you...."</p> + +<p>Presently her weeping was over.</p> + +<p>"Get me a little cold water, Stephen," she said. "Let me have a little +cold water on my face. I've got my courage now again. Just then,—I was +down too low. Yes—cold water. Because I want to tell you—things you +will be glad to hear."</p> + +<p>"You see, Stephen," she said—and now all her self-possession had +returned; "there mustn't be a divorce. I've thought it all out. And +there needn't be a divorce."</p> + +<p>"Needn't be?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"I can stop it."</p> + +<p>"But how?"</p> + +<p>"I can stop it. I can manage—— I can make a bargain.... It's very +sweet, dear Stephen, to be here talking to you again."</p> + +<p>She stood up.</p> + +<p>"Sit at your desk, my dear," she said. "I'm all right now. That water +was good. How good cold things can be! Sit down at your desk and let me +sit here. And then I will talk to you. I've had such a time, my dear. Ah!"</p> + +<p>She paused and stuck her elbows on the desk and looked me in the eyes. +And suddenly that sweet, frank smile of hers swept like sunshine across +the wintry desolation of her face. "We've both been having a time," she +said. "This odd little world,—it's battered us with its fists. For such +a little. And we were both so ridiculously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> happy. Do you remember it, +the rocks and the sunshine and all those twisted and tangled little +plants? And how the boat leaked and you baled it out! And the parting, +and how you trudged up that winding path away from me! A grey figure +that stopped and waved—a little figure—such a virtuous figure! And +then, this storm! this <i>awful</i> hullabaloo! Lawyers, curses, threats——. +And Stella Summersley Satchel like a Fury of denunciation. What hatred +that woman has hidden from me! It must have accumulated.... It's +terrible to think, Stephen, how much I must have tried her.... Oh! how +far away those Alps are now, Stephen! Like something in another life.... +And here we are!—among the consequences."</p> + +<p>"But,—you were saying we could stop the divorce."</p> + +<p>"Yes. We can. I can. But I wanted to see you,—before I did. Somehow I +don't feel lonely with you. I had to see you.... It's good to see you."</p> + +<p>She looked me in the face. Her tired eyes lit with a gleam of her former humor.</p> + +<p>"Have you thought," she asked, "of all that will happen if there is a +divorce?"</p> + +<p>"I mean to fight every bit of it."</p> + +<p>"They'll beat you."</p> + +<p>"We'll see that."</p> + +<p>"But they will. And then?"</p> + +<p>"Why should one meet disaster half way?"</p> + +<p>"Stephen!" she said; "what will happen to you when I am not here to make +you look at things? Because I shan't be here. Not within reach of +you.... There are times when I feel like a mother to you. Never more than now...."</p> + +<p>And then with rapid touches she began to picture<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> the disaster before +me. She pictured the Court and our ineffectual denials, she made me +realize the storm of hostility that was bound to burst over us. "And +think of me," she said. "Stripped I shall be and outcast."</p> + +<p>"Not while I live!"</p> + +<p>"But what can you do for me? You will have Rachel. How can you stand by +me? You can't be cruel to Rachel. You know you can't be cruel to Rachel. +Look me in the face, Stephen; tell me. Yes.... Then how can you stand by me?"</p> + +<p>"Somehow!" I cried foolishly and stopped.</p> + +<p>"They'll use me to break your back with costs and damages. There'll be +those children of yours to think of...."</p> + +<p>"My God!" I cried aloud. "Why do you torment me? Haven't I thought +enough of those things?... Haven't I seen the ruin and the shame, the +hopeless trap, men's trust in me gone, my work scattered and ended +again, my children growing up to hear this and that exaggeration of our +story. And you——. All the bravery of your life scattered and wasted. +The thing will pursue us all, cling to us. It will be all the rest of +our lives for us...."</p> + +<p>I covered my face with my hands.</p> + +<p>When I looked up, her face was white and still, and full of a strange +tenderness. "I wouldn't have you, Stephen—I wouldn't have you be cruel +to Rachel.... I just wanted to know—something.... But we're wandering. +We're talking nonsense. Because as I said, there need be no divorce. +There will be no divorce at all. That's what I came to tell you. I shall +have to pay—in a way, Stephen.... Not impossibly. Don't think it is +anything impossible...."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span></p><p>Then she bit her lips and sat still....</p> + +<p>"My dear," I whispered, "if we had taken one another at the beginning...."</p> + +<p>But she went on with her own thoughts.</p> + +<p>"You love those little children of yours," she said. "And that trusting +girl-wife.... Of course you love them. They're yours. Oh! they're so +deeply—yours.... Yours...."</p> + +<p>"Oh my dear! don't torture me! I do love them. But I love you too."</p> + +<p>"No," she said, "not as you do them."</p> + +<p>I made a movement of protest.</p> + +<p>"No," she said, whitely radiant with a serenity I had never seen before +in her face. "You love me with your brain. With your soul if you like. I +<i>know</i>, my poor bleeding Stephen!—Aren't those tears there? Don't mind +my seeing them, Stephen.... Poor dear! Poor dear!.... You love <i>them</i> +with your inmost heart. Why should you mind that I see you do?... All my +life I've been wrong, Stephen, and now I know too late. It's the things +we own we love, the things we buy with our lives.... Always I have been +hard, I've been a little hard.... Stephen, my dear, I loved you, always +I have loved you, and always I have tried to keep myself.... It's too +late.... I don't know why I am talking like this.... But you see I can +make a bargain now—it's not an impossible bargain—and save you and +save your wife and save your children——"</p> + +<p>"But how?" I said, still doubting.</p> + +<p>"Never mind how, Stephen. Don't ask me how now. Nothing very difficult. +Easy. But I shall write you no more letters—see you—no more. Never. +And that's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> why I had to come, you see, why I was able to come to you, +just to see you and say good-bye to you, and take leave of you, dear +Love that I threw away and loved too late...."</p> + +<p>She bit her lip and faced me there, a sweet flushed living thing, with a +tear coursing down her cheek, and her mouth now firm and steady.</p> + +<p>"You can stop this divorce?" I said, "But how, Mary?"</p> + +<p>"No, don't ask me how. At a price. It's a bargain. No, no! Don't think +that,—a bargain with Justin, but not degrading. Don't, my dear, let the +thought of it distress you. I have to give earnests.... Never, dear, +never through all the dusty rest of life again will you and I speak +together. Never! Even if we come face to face once more—no word...."</p> + +<p>"Mary," I said, "what is it you have to do? You speak as if—— What is +it Justin demands?"</p> + +<p>"No! do not ask me that.... Tell me—you see we've so much to talk +about, Stephen—tell me of all you are going to do. Everything. Because +I've got to make a great vow of renunciation—of you. Not to think +again—not even to think of you again.... No, no. I'm not even to look +for you in the papers any more. There's to be no tricks this time. And +so you see I want to fill up my mind with you. To store myself with you. +Tell me your work is worth it—that it's not like the work of everyone. +Tell me, Stephen—<i>that</i>. I want to believe that—tremendously. Don't be +modest now. That will be cruel. I want to believe that I am at last to +do something that is worth doing, something not fruitless...."</p> + +<p>"Are you to go into seclusion," I asked suddenly, "to be a nun——?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span></p><p>"It is something like that," she said; "very like that. But I have +promised—practically—not to tell you that. Tell me your soul, Stephen, +now. Give me something I may keep in my mind through—through all those +years of waiting...."</p> + +<p>"But where?" I cried. "What years of waiting?"</p> + +<p>"In a lonely place, my dear—among mountains. High and away. Very +beautiful, but lonely. A lake. Great rocks.... Yes,—like that place. So +odd.... I shall have so much time to think, and I shall have no +papers—no news. I mustn't talk to you of that. Don't let me talk to you +of that. I want to hear about this world, this world I am going to +leave, and how you think you are going on fighting in the hot and dusty +struggle—to make the world cool and kind and reasonable, to train minds +better, to broaden ideas ... all those things you believe in. All those +things you believe in and stick to—even when they are dull. Now I am +leaving it, I begin to see how fine it is—to fight as you want to +fight. A tiresome inglorious lifelong fight.... You really believe, Stephen?"</p> + +<h3>§ 11</h3> + +<p>And then suddenly I read her purpose.</p> + +<p>"Mary," I cried, and stood up and laid my hand upon her arm, "Tell me +what is it you mean to do. What do you mean to do?"</p> + +<p>She looked up at me defensively and for a moment neither of us spoke.</p> + +<p>"Mary," I said, and could not say what was in my thoughts.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span></p><p>"You are wrong," she lied at last....</p> + +<p>She stood up too and faced me. I held her shoulder and looked into her eyes.</p> + +<p>The gong of my little clock broke the silence.</p> + +<p>"I must go, Stephen," she said. "I did not see how the time was slipping by."</p> + +<p>I began to entreat her and she to deny. "You don't understand," she +said, "you don't understand. Stephen!—I had hoped you would understand. +You see life,—not as I see it. I wanted—all sorts of splendid things +and you—begin to argue. You are shocked, you refuse to understand.... +No. No. Take your hands off me, Stephen dear, and let me go. Let me go!"</p> + +<p>"But," I said, stupid and persistent, "what are you going to do?"</p> + +<p>"I've told you. Stephen. I've told you. As much as I can tell you. And +you think—this foolish thing. As though I could do that! Stephen, if I +promise, will you let me go?..."</p> + +<h3>§ 12</h3> + +<p>My mind leaps from that to the moment in the afternoon, when torn by +intolerable distresses and anxiety I knocked and rang, and again knocked +at the door of the house she occupied in South Street, with the +intention of making one last appeal to her to live—if, indeed, it was +death she had in mind. I had let her go from me and instantly a hundred +neglected things had come into my head. I could go away with her, I +could threaten to die with her; it seemed to me that nothing in all the +world mattered if only I could thrust back the dark hand of death to +which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> she had so manifestly turned. I knew, I knew all along that her +extorted promise would not bind her. I knew and I let the faintest +shadow of uncertainty weaken and restrain me. And I went to her too +late. I saw instantly that I was too late when the door opened and +showed me the scared face of a young footman whose eyes were red with tears.</p> + +<p>"Are you Doctor——?" he asked of my silence.</p> + +<p>"I want——" I said. "I must speak to Lady Mary."</p> + +<p>He was wordless for a moment. "She—she died, sir," he said. "She's died +suddenly." His face quivered, he was blubbering. He couldn't say +anything more; he stood snivelling in the doorway.</p> + +<p>For some moments I remained confronting him as if I would dispute his +words. Some things the mind contests in the face of invincible +conviction. One wants to thrust back time....</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span></p> + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_THE_TWELFTH" id="CHAPTER_THE_TWELFTH"></a>CHAPTER THE TWELFTH</h2> + +<h3><span class="smcap">The Arraignment of Jealousy</span></h3> + +<h3>§ 1</h3> + +<p>I sit here in this graciously proportioned little room which I shall +leave for ever next week, for already your mother begins to pack for +England again. I look out upon the neat French garden that I have +watched the summer round, and before me is the pile of manuscript that +has grown here, the story of my friendship and love for Mary and of its +tragic end, and of all the changes of my beliefs and purposes that have +arisen out of that. I had meant it to be the story of my life, but how +little of my life is in it! It gives, at most, certain acute points, +certain salient aspects. I begin to realize for the first time how thin +and suggestive and sketchy a thing any novel or biography must be. How +we must simplify! How little can we convey the fullness of life, the +glittering interests, the interweaving secondary aspects, the dawns and +dreams and double refractions of experience! Even Mary, of whom I have +labored to tell you, seems not so much expressed as hidden beneath these +corrected sheets. She who was so abundantly living, who could love like +a burst of sunshine and give herself as God gives the world, is she here +at all in this pile of industrious inexpert writing?</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span></p><p>Life is so much fuller than any book can be. All this story can be +read, I suppose, in a couple of hours or so, but I have been living and +reflecting upon and reconsidering the substance of it for over forty +years. I do not see how this book can give you any impression but that +of a career all strained upon the frame of one tragic relationship, yet +no life unless it is a very short young life can have that simplicity. +Of all the many things I have found beautiful and wonderful, Mary was +the most wonderful to me, she is in my existence like a sunlit lake seen +among mountains, of all the edges by which life has wrought me she was +the keenest. Nevertheless she was not all my life, nor the form of all +my life. For a time after her death I could endure nothing of my home, I +could not bear the presence of your mother or you, I hated the +possibility of consolation, I went away into Italy, and it was only by +an enormous effort that I could resume my interest in that scheme of +work to which my life is given. But it is manifest I still live, I live +and work and feel and share beauty....</p> + +<p>It seems to me more and more as I live longer, that most poetry and most +literature and particularly the literature of the past is discordant +with the vastness and variety, the reserves and resources and +recuperations of life as we live it to-day. It is the expression of life +under cruder and more rigid conditions than ours, lived by people who +loved and hated more naïvely, aged sooner and died younger than we do. +Solitary persons and single events dominated them as they do not +dominate us. We range wider, last longer, and escape more and more from +intensity towards understanding. And already this astounding blow begins +to take its place among other events, as a thing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> strange and terrible +indeed, but related to all the strangeness and mystery of life, part of +the universal mysteries of despair and futility and death that have +troubled my consciousness since childhood. For a time the death of Mary +obscured her life for me, but now her living presence is more in my mind +again. I begin to see that it is the reality of her existence and not +the accidents of her end that matter most. It signifies less that she +should have flung out of life when it seemed that her living could only +have meant disaster to herself and to all she loved, than that all her +life should have been hampered and restricted. Through all her life this +brave and fine and beautiful being was for the most part of her +possibilities, wasted in a splendid setting, magnificently wasted if you will, but wasted.</p> + +<h3>§ 2</h3> + +<p>It was that idea of waste that dominated my mind in a strange interview +I had with Justin. For it became necessary for me to see Justin in order +that we should stamp out the whispers against her that followed her +death. He had made it seem an accidental death due to an overdose of the +narcotic she employed, but he had not been able to obliterate altogether +the beginnings of his divorce proceedings. There had been talk on the +part of clerks and possible witnesses. But of all that I need not tell +you here; what matters is that Justin and I could meet without hatred or +violence. I met a Justin grey-haired and it seemed to me physically +shrunken, more than ever slow-speaking, with his habit of attentive +silences more marked and that dark scar spread beyond his brows.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span></p><p>We had come to our parting, we had done our business with an +affectation of emotional aloofness, and then suddenly he gripped me by +the arm. "Stratton," he said, "we two—— We killed her. We tore her to +pieces between us...."</p> + +<p>I made no answer to this outbreak.</p> + +<p>"We tore her to pieces," he repeated. "It's so damned silly. One gets +angry—like an animal."</p> + +<p>I became grotesquely anxious to assure him that, indeed, she and I had +been, as they say, innocent throughout our last day together. "You were +wrong in all that," I said. "She kept her faith with you. We never +planned to meet and when we met——. If we had been brother and +sister——. Indeed there was nothing."</p> + +<p>"I suppose," he said, "I ought to be glad of that. But now it doesn't +seem to matter very much. We killed her.... What does that matter to me now?"</p> + +<h3>§ 3</h3> + +<p>And it is upon this effect of sweet and beautiful possibilities, caught +in the net of animal jealousies and thoughtless motives and ancient +rigid institutions, that I would end this writing. In Mary, it seems to +me, I found both womanhood and fellowship, I found what many have dreamt +of, love and friendship freely given, and I could do nothing but clutch +at her to make her my possession. I would not permit her to live except +as a part of my life. I see her now and understand her better than when +she was alive, I recall things that she said and wrote and it is clear +to me, clearer perhaps than it ever was to her, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> she, with her +resentment at being in any sense property, her self-reliant thought, her +independence of standard, was the very prototype of that sister-lover +who must replace the seductive and abject womanhood, owned, mastered and +deceiving, who waste the world to-day. And she was owned, she was +mastered, she was forced into concealment. What alternative was there +for her? What alternative is there for any woman? She might perhaps have +kept her freedom by some ill-paid work and at the price of every other +impulse in her swift and eager nature. She might have become one of +those poor neuters, an independent woman.... Life was made impossible +for her and she was forced to die, according to the fate of all untimely +things. She was destroyed, not merely by the unconsidered, undisciplined +passions of her husband and her lover, but by the vast tradition that +sustains and enforces the subjugation of her sex. What I had from her, +and what she was, is but a mere intimation of all that she and I might +have made of each other and the world.</p> + +<p>And perhaps in this story I have said enough for you to understand why +Mary has identified herself with something world-wide, has added to +herself a symbolical value, and why it is I find in the whole crowded +spectacle of mankind, a quality that is also hers, a sense of fine +things entangled and stifled and unable to free themselves from the +ancient limiting jealousies which law and custom embody. For I know that +a growing multitude of men and women outwear the ancient ways. The +blood-stained organized jealousies of religious intolerance, the +delusions of nationality and cult and race, that black hatred which +simple people and young people and common people cherish against all +that is not in the likeness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> of themselves, cease to be the undisputed +ruling forces of our collective life. We want to emancipate our lives +from this slavery and these stupidities, from dull hatreds and +suspicion. The ripening mind of our race tires of these boorish and +brutish and childish things. A spirit that is like hers, arises and +increases in human affairs, a spirit that demands freedom and gracious +living as our inheritance too long deferred, and I who loved her so +blindly and narrowly now love her spirit with a dawning understanding.</p> + +<p>I will not be content with that compromise of jealousies which is the +established life of humanity to-day. I give myself, and if I can I will +give you, to the destruction of jealousy and of the forms and shelters +and instruments of jealousy, both in my own self and in the thought and +laws and usage of the world.</p> + +<p class="tbrk"> </p> + +<h3>THE END</h3> + +<hr /> + +<h2><a name="ADVERTISEMENTS" id="ADVERTISEMENTS"></a>ADVERTISEMENTS</h2> + +<hr /> + +<h1>Popular Copyright Novels</h1> + +<h2>AT MODERATE PRICES</h2> + +<h3>Ask your dealer for a complete<br />list of A. L. Burt Company's Popular +Copyright Fiction</h3> + +<hr /> + +<table summary="Popular Copyright Novels"> + <tr> + <td>Abner Daniel</td> + <td class="right"><i>Will N. Harben</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Adventures of a Modest Man</td> + <td class="right"><i>Robert W. Chambers</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Adventures of Sherlock Holmes</td> + <td class="right"><i>A. 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Chambers</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Cordelia Blossom</td> + <td class="right"><i>George Randolph Chester</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Counsel for the Defense</td> + <td class="right"> <i>Leroy Scott</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Cry in the Wilderness, A</td> + <td class="right"><i>Mary E. Waller</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Dark Hollow, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Anna Katharine Green</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Day of Days, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Louis Joseph Vance</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Depot Master, The</td> + <td class="right"> <i>Joseph C. Lincoln</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Derelicts</td> + <td class="right"><i>William J. Locke</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Desired Woman, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Will N. Harben</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Destroying Angel, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Louis Joseph Vance</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Divine Fire, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>May Sinclair</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Dixie Hart</td> + <td class="right"><i>Will N. Harben</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Dominant Dollar, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Will Lillibridge</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Dr. David</td> + <td class="right"><i>Marjorie Benton Cooke</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Enchanted Hat, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Harold MacGrath</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Excuse Me</td> + <td class="right"><i>Rupert Hughes</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>54-40 or Fight</td> + <td class="right"><i>Emerson Hough</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Fighting Chance, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Robert W. Chambers</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Financier, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Theodore Dreiser</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Flamsted Quarries</td> + <td class="right"><i>Mary E. Waller</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>For a Maiden Brave</td> + <td class="right"><i>Chauncey C. Hotchkiss</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Four Million, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>O. Henry</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>From the Car Behind</td> + <td class="right"><i>Eleanor M. Ingraham</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Fruitful Vine, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Robert Hichens</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Gentleman of France, A</td> + <td class="right"><i>Stanley Weyman</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Get-Rich-Quick-Wallingford</td> + <td class="right"><i>George Randolph Chester</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Gilbert Neal</td> + <td class="right"><i>Will N. Harben</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Girl From His Town, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Marie Van Vorst</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Glory of Clementina, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>William J. Locke</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Glory of the Conquered, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Susan Glaspell</i></td> + </tr> +</table> + +<hr /> + +<h1>Popular Copyright Novels</h1> + +<h2>AT MODERATE PRICES</h2> + +<h3>Ask your dealer for a complete<br />list of A. L. Burt Company's Popular +Copyright Fiction</h3> + +<hr /> + +<table summary="Popular Copyright Novels"> + <tr> + <td>God's Good Man</td> + <td class="right"><i>Marie Corelli</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Going Some</td> + <td class="right"><i>Rex Beach</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Gordon Craig</td> + <td class="right"><i>Randall Parrish</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Greyfriars Bobby</td> + <td class="right"><i>Eleanor Atkinson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Guests of Hercules, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>C. N. and A. M. Williamson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Halcyone</td> + <td class="right"><i>Elinor Glyn</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Happy Island (Sequel to Uncle William)</td> + <td class="right"><i>Jennette Lee</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Havoc</td> + <td class="right"><i>E. Phillips Oppenheim</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Heart of the Hills, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>John Fox, Jr.</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Heart of the Desert, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Honore Willsie</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Heather-Moon, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>C. N. and A. M. Williamson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Her Weight in Gold</td> + <td class="right"><i>George Barr McCutcheon</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Herb of Grace</td> + <td class="right"><i>Rosa N. Carey</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Highway of Fate, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Rosa N. Carey</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Homesteaders, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Kate and Virgil D. Boyles</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Hopalong Cassidy</td> + <td class="right"><i>Clarence E. Mulford</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Honor of the Big Snows, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>James Oliver Curwood</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>House of Happiness, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Kate Langley Bosher</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>House of the Lost Court, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>C. N. Williamson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>House of the Whispering Pines, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Anna K. Green</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Household of Peter, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Rosa N. Carey</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker</td> + <td class="right"><i>S. Weir Mitchell, M.D.</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Husbands of Edith, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>George Barr McCutcheon</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Idols</td> + <td class="right"><i>William J. Locke</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Illustrious Prince, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>E. Phillips Oppenheim</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Imposter, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>John Reed Scott</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>In Defiance of the King</td> + <td class="right"><i>Chauncey C. Hotchkiss</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Indifference of Juliet, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Grace S. Richmond</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Inez (Illustrated Edition)</td> + <td class="right"><i>Augusta J. Evans</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Infelice</td> + <td class="right"><i>Augusta Evans Wilson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Initials Only</td> + <td class="right"><i>Anna Katharine Green</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Iron Trail, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Rex Beach</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Iron Woman, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Margaret Deland</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Ishmael (Illustrated)</td> + <td class="right"><i>Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Island of Regeneration, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Cyrus Townsend Brady</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Japonette</td> + <td class="right"><i>Robert W. Chambers</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Jane Cable</td> + <td class="right"><i>George Barr McCutcheon</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Jeanne of the Marshes</td> + <td class="right"><i>E. Phillips Oppenheim</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Jennie Gerhardt</td> + <td class="right"><i>Theodore Dreiser</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Joyful Heatherby</td> + <td class="right"><i>Payne Erskine</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Judgment House, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Sir Gilbert Parker</i></td> + </tr> +</table> + +<hr /> + +<h1>Popular Copyright Novels</h1> + +<h2>AT MODERATE PRICES</h2> + +<h3>Ask your dealer for a complete<br />list of A. L. Burt Company's Popular +Copyright Fiction</h3> + +<hr /> + +<table summary="Popular Copyright Novels"> + <tr> + <td>Keith of the Border</td> + <td class="right"><i>Randall Parrish</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Key to the Unknown, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Rosa N. Carey</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>King Spruce</td> + <td class="right"><i>Holman Day</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Knave of Diamonds, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Ethel M. Dell</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Lady and the Pirate, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Emerson Hough</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Lady Betty Across the Water</td> + <td class="right"><i>C. N. and A. M. Williamson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Land of Long Ago, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Eliza Calvert Hall</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Langford of the Three Bars</td> + <td class="right"><i>Kate and Virgil D. Boyles</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Last Trail, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Zane Grey</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Last Voyage of the Donna Isabel, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Randall Parrish</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Leavenworth Case, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Anna Katherine Green</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Life Mask, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Author of "To M. L. G."</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Lighted Way, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>E. Phillips Oppenheim</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Lin McLean</td> + <td class="right"><i>Owen Wister</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Little Brown Jug at Kildare, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Meredith Nicholson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Lonesome Land</td> + <td class="right"><i>B. M. Bower</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Lord Loveland Discovers America</td> + <td class="right"><i>C. N. and A. M. Williamson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Lorimer of the Northwest</td> + <td class="right"><i>Harold Bindloss</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Lorraine</td> + <td class="right"><i>Robert W. Chambers</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Lost Ambassador, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>E. Phillips Oppenheim</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Love Under Fire</td> + <td class="right"><i>Randall Parrish</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Macaria (Illustrated Edition)</td> + <td class="right"><i>Augusta J. Evans</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Maid at Arms, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Robert W. Chambers</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Maid of Old New York, A</td> + <td class="right"><i>Amelia E. Barr</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Maids of Paradise, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Robert W. Chambers</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Maid of the Whispering Hills, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Vingie E. Roe</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Maid of the Forest, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Randall Parrish</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Making of Bobby Burnit, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Geo. Randolph Chester</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Mam' Linda</td> + <td class="right"><i>Will N. Harben</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Marriage</td> + <td class="right"><i>H. G. Wells</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Marriage a la Mode</td> + <td class="right"><i>Mrs. Humphrey Ward</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Master Mummer, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>E. Phillips Oppenheim</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Masters of the Wheatlands</td> + <td class="right"><i>Harold Bindloss</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Max</td> + <td class="right"><i>Katherine Cecil Thurston</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Mediator, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Roy Norton</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes</td> + <td class="right"><i>A. Conan Doyle</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Missioner, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>E. Phillips Oppenheim</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Miss Gibbie Gault</td> + <td class="right"><i>Kale Langley Bosher</i></td> + </tr> +</table> + +<hr /> + +<h1>Popular Copyright Novels</h1> + +<h2>AT MODERATE PRICES</h2> + +<h3>Ask your dealer for a complete<br />list of A. L. Burt Company's Popular +Copyright Fiction</h3> + +<hr /> + +<table summary="Popular Copyright Novels"> + <tr> + <td>Miss Philura's Wedding Gown</td> + <td class="right"><i>Florence Morse Kingsley</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Miss Selina Lue</td> + <td class="right"><i>Maria Thompson Daviess</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Mollie's Prince</td> + <td class="right"><i>Rosa N. Carey</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Molly McDonald</td> + <td class="right"><i>Randall Parrishy</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Money Moon, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Jeffery Farnol</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Motor Maid, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>C. N. and A. M. Williamson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Moth, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>William Dana Orcutt</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Mountain Girl, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Payne Erskine</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Mr. Pratt</td> + <td class="right"><i>Joseph C. Lincoln</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Mr. Pratt's Patients</td> + <td class="right"><i>Joseph C. Lincoln</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Mrs. Red Pepper</td> + <td class="right"><i>Grace S. Richmond</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>My Friend the Chauffeur</td> + <td class="right"><i>C. N. and A. M. Williamson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>My Lady Caprice</td> + <td class="right"><i>Jeffery Farnol</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>My Lady of Doubt</td> + <td class="right"><i>Randall Parrish</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>My Lady of the North</td> + <td class="right"><i>Randall Parrish</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>My Lady of the South</td> + <td class="right"><i>Randall Parrish</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Mystery Tales</td> + <td class="right"><i>Edgar Allen Poe</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Mystery of the Boule Cabinet, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Burton E. Stevenson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Nancy Stair</td> + <td class="right"><i>Elinor Macartney Lane</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Ne'er-Do-Well, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Rex Beach</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Net, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Rex Beach</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Night Riders, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Ridgwell Cullum</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>No Friend Like a Sister</td> + <td class="right"><i>Rosa N. Carey</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Officer 666</td> + <td class="right"><i>Barton W. Currie and Augustin McHugh</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Once Upon a Time</td> + <td class="right"><i>Richard Harding Davis</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>One Braver Thing</td> + <td class="right"><i>Richard Dehan</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>One Way Trail, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Ridgwell Cullum</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Orphan, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Clarence E. Mulford</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Out of the Primitive</td> + <td class="right"><i>Robert Ames Bennet</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Pam</td> + <td class="right"><i>Bettina Von Hutten</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Pam Decides</td> + <td class="right"><i>Bettina Von Hutten</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Pardners</td> + <td class="right"><i>Rex Beach</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Parrot & Co</td> + <td class="right"><i>Harold McGrath</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Partners of the Tide</td> + <td class="right"><i>Joseph C. Lincoln</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Passage Perilous, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Rosa N. Carey</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Passionate Friends, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>H. G. Wells</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Paul Anthony, Christian</td> + <td class="right"><i>Hiram W. Hays</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Peter Ruff</td> + <td class="right"><i>E. Phillips Oppenheim</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Phillip Steele</td> + <td class="right"><i>James Oliver Curwood</i></td> + </tr> +</table> + +<hr /> + +<h1>Popular Copyright Novels</h1> + +<h2>AT MODERATE PRICES</h2> + +<h3>Ask your dealer for a complete<br />list of A. L. Burt Company's Popular +Copyright Fiction</h3> + +<hr /> + +<table summary="Popular Copyright Novels"> + <tr> + <td>Phra the Phoenician</td> + <td class="right"><i>Edwin Lester Arnold</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Pidgin Island</td> + <td class="right"><i>Harold MacGrath</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Place of Honeymoons, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Harold MacGrath</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Pleasures and Palaces</td> + <td class="right"><i>Juliet Wilbor Tompkins</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Plunderer, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Roy Norton</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Pole Baker</td> + <td class="right"><i>Will N. Harben</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Pool of Flame, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Louis Joseph Vance</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Polly of the Circus</td> + <td class="right"><i>Margaret Mayo</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Poppy</td> + <td class="right"><i>Cynthia Stockley</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Port of Adventure, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>C. N. and A. M. Williamson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Postmaster, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Joseph C. Lincoln</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Power and the Glory, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Grace McGowan Cooke</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Price of the Prairie, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Margaret Hill McCarter</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Prince of Sinners, A</td> + <td class="right"><i>E. Phillips Oppenheim</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Prince or Chauffeur</td> + <td class="right"><i>Lawrence Perry</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Princess Passes, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>C. N. and A. M. Williamson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Princess Virginia, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>C. N. and A. M. Williamson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Prisoners of Chance</td> + <td class="right"><i>Randall Parrish</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Prodigal Son, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Hall Caine</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Purple Parasol, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>George Barr McCutcheon</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>R. J.'s Mother</td> + <td class="right"><i>Margaret Deland</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Ranching for Sylvia</td> + <td class="right"><i>Harold Bindloss</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Reason Why, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Elinor Glyn</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Redemption of Kenneth Galt, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Will N. Harben</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Red Cross Girl, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Richard Harding Davis</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Red Lane, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Holman Day</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Red Pepper Burns</td> + <td class="right"><i>Grace S. Richmond</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Red Republic, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Robert W. Chambers</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Refugees, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>A. Conan Doyle</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Anne Warner</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Rise of Roscoe Paine, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Joseph C. Lincoln</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Road to Providence, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Maria Thompson Daviess</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Robinetta</td> + <td class="right"><i>Kate Douglas Wiggin</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Rose in the Ring, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>George Barr McCutcheon</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Rose of the World</td> + <td class="right"><i>Agnes and Egerton Castle</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Rose of Old Harpeth, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Maria Thompson Daviess</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Round the Corner in Gay Street</td> + <td class="right"><i>Grace S. Richmond</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Routledge Rides Alone</td> + <td class="right"><i>Will Levington Comfort</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Rue: With a Difference</td> + <td class="right"><i>Rosa N. Carey</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>St. Elmo (Illustrated Edition)</td> + <td class="right"><i>Augusta J. Evans</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Seats of the Mighty, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Gilbert Parker</i></td> + </tr> +</table> + +<hr /> + +<h1>Popular Copyright Novels</h1> + +<h2>AT MODERATE PRICES</h2> + +<h3>Ask your dealer for a complete<br />list of A. L. Burt Company's Popular +Copyright Fiction</h3> + +<hr /> + +<table summary="Popular Copyright Novels"> + <tr> + <td>Second Violin, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Grace S. Richmond</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Self-Raised (Illustrated)</td> + <td class="right"><i>Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Septimus</td> + <td class="right"><i>William J. Locke</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Set in Silver</td> + <td class="right"><i>C. N. and A. M. Williamson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Sharrow</td> + <td class="right"><i>Bettina Von Hutten</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Shepherd of the Hills, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Harold Bell Wright</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Sheriff of Dyke Hole, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Ridgwell Cullum</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Ship's Company</td> + <td class="right"><i>W. W. Jacobs</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Sidney Carteret, Rancher</td> + <td class="right"><i>Harold Bindloss</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Sign at Six, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Stewart Edward White</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Silver Horde, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Rex Beach</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Simon the Jester</td> + <td class="right"><i>William J. Locke</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Sir Nigel</td> + <td class="right"><i>A. Conan Doyle</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Sir Richard Calmady</td> + <td class="right"><i>Lucas Malet</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Sixty-First Second, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Owen Johnson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Slim Princess, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>George Ade</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Speckled Bird, A</td> + <td class="right"><i>Augusta Evans Wilson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Spirit in Prison, A</td> + <td class="right"><i>Robert Hichens</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Spirit of the Border, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Zane Grey</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Spoilers, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Rex Beach</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Strawberry Acres</td> + <td class="right"><i>Grace S. Richmond</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Strawberry Handkerchief, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Amelia E. Barr</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Streets of Ascalon, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Robert W. Chambers</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Sunnyside of the Hill, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Rosa N. Carey</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Sunset Trail, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Alfred Henry Lewis</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop</td> + <td class="right"><i>Anne Warner</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Sword of the Old Frontier, A</td> + <td class="right"><i>Randall Parrish</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Tales of Sherlock Holmes</td> + <td class="right"><i>A. Conan Doyle</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Tarzan of the Apes</td> + <td class="right"><i>Edgar Rice Burroughs</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Taste of Apples, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Jennette Lee</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Tennessee Shad, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Owen Johnson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Tess of the D'Urbervilles</td> + <td class="right"><i>Thomas Hardy</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Texican, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Dane Coolidge</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>That Affair Next Door</td> + <td class="right"><i>Anna Katharine Green</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>That Printer of Udell's</td> + <td class="right"><i>Harold Bell Wright</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Their Yesterdays</td> + <td class="right"><i>Harold Bell Wright</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Throwback, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Alfred Henry Lewis</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Thurston of Orchard Valley</td> + <td class="right"><i>Harold Blindloss</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>To M. L. G.; Or, He Who Passed</td> + <td class="right"><i>Anonymous</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>To Him That Hath</td> + <td class="right"><i>Leroy Scott</i></td> + </tr> +</table> + +<hr /> + +<h1>Popular Copyright Novels</h1> + +<h2>AT MODERATE PRICES</h2> + +<h3>Ask your dealer for a complete<br />list of A. L. Burt Company's Popular +Copyright Fiction</h3> + +<hr /> + +<table summary="Popular Copyright Novels"> + <tr> + <td>Torn Sails</td> + <td class="right"><i>Allen Raine</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Trail of the Axe, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Ridgwell Cullum</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Trail to Yesterday, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Charles Alden Seltzer</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Treasure of Heaven, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Marie Corelli</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Truth Dexter</td> + <td class="right"><i>Sidney McCall</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>T. Tembarom</td> + <td class="right"><i>Frances Hodgson Burnett</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Turnstile, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>A. E. W. Mason</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Two-Gun Man, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Charles Alden Seltzer</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Uncle William</td> + <td class="right"><i>Jeanette Lee</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Under the Red Robe</td> + <td class="right"><i>Stanley J. Weyman</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Up From Slavery</td> + <td class="right"><i>Booker T. Washington</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Valiants of Virginia, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Hallie Erminie Rives</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Vanity Box, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>C. N. Williamson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Vane of the Timberlands</td> + <td class="right"><i>Harold Blindloss</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Varmint, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Owen Johnson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Vashti</td> + <td class="right"><i>Augusta Evans Wilson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Wall of Men, A</td> + <td class="right"><i>Margaret Hill McCarter</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Watchers of the Plains, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Ridgwell Cullum</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Way Home, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Basil King</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Way of An Eagle, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>E. M. Dell</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Weavers, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Gilbert Parker</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>West Wind, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Cyrus Townsend Brady</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Wheel of Life, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Ellen Glasgow</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>When Wilderness Was King</td> + <td class="right"><i>Randall Parrish</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Where the Trail Divides</td> + <td class="right"><i>Will Lillibridge</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Where There's A Will</td> + <td class="right"><i>Mary Roberts Rinehart</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>White Sister, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Marion Crawford</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Wind Before the Dawn, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Dell H. Munger</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Window at the White Cat, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Mary Roberts Rinehart</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Winning of Barbara Worth, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Harold Bell Wright</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>With Juliet in England</td> + <td class="right"><i>Grace S. Richmond</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>With the Best Intentions</td> + <td class="right"><i>Bruno Lessing</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Woman in the Alcove, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Anna Katharine Green</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Woman Haters, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Joseph C. Lincoln</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Woodcarver of 'Lympus, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Mary E. Waller</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Woodfire in No. 3, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>F. Hopkinson Smith</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Wrecker, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Robert Louis Stevenson</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>Younger Set, The</td> + <td class="right"><i>Robert W. Chambers</i></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>You Never Know Your Luck</td> + <td class="right"><i>Gilbert Parker</i></td> + </tr> +</table> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Passionate Friends, by Herbert George Wells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS *** + +***** This file should be named 30340-h.htm or 30340-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/0/3/4/30340/ + +Produced by Carl Hudkins, Martin Pettit and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Passionate Friends + +Author: Herbert George Wells + +Release Date: October 26, 2009 [EBook #30340] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS *** + + + + +Produced by Carl Hudkins, Martin Pettit and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +The Passionate Friends + +By H. G. WELLS + +Author of "Marriage." + +[Illustration] + +WITH FRONTISPIECE + +A. L. BURT COMPANY, PUBLISHERS + +114-120 East Twenty-third Street - - New York + +PUBLISHED BY ARRANGEMENT WITH HARPER & BROTHERS + + +COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY HARPER & BROTHERS + + +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA +PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1913 + + +TO +L. E. N. S. + + +[Illustration: "OUR KISSES WERE KISSES OF MOONLIGHT" See p. 85] + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAP. PAGE + + I. MR. STRATTON TO HIS SON 1 + + II. BOYHOOD 14 + + III. INTENTIONS AND THE LADY MARY CHRISTIAN 40 + + IV. THE MARRIAGE OF THE LADY MARY CHRISTIAN 73 + + V. THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA 102 + + VI. LADY MARY JUSTIN 132 + + VII. BEGINNING AGAIN 197 + +VIII. THIS SWARMING BUSINESS OF MANKIND 220 + + IX. THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW WORLD 246 + + X. MARY WRITES 280 + + XI. THE LAST MEETING 318 + + XII. THE ARRAIGNMENT OF JEALOUSY 358 + + + + +THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST + +MR. STRATTON TO HIS SON + + +Sec. 1 + +I want very much to set down my thoughts and my experiences of life. I +want to do so now that I have come to middle age and now that my +attitudes are all defined and my personal drama worked out I feel that +the toil of writing and reconsideration may help to clear and fix many +things that remain a little uncertain in my thoughts because they have +never been fully stated, and I want to discover any lurking +inconsistencies and unsuspected gaps. And I have a story. I have lived +through things that have searched me. I want to tell that story as well +as I can while I am still a clear-headed and active man, and while many +details that may presently become blurred and altered are still rawly +fresh in my mind. And to one person in particular do I wish to think I +am writing, and that is to you, my only son. I want to write my story +not indeed to the child you are now, but to the man you are going to be. +You are half my blood and temperamentally altogether mine. A day will +come when you will realize this, and want to know how life has gone with +me, and then it may be altogether too late for me to answer your +enquiries. I may have become inaccessible as old people are sometimes +inaccessible. And so I think of leaving this book for you--at any rate, +I shall write it as if I meant to leave it for you. Afterwards I can +consider whether I will indeed leave it.... + +The idea of writing such a book as this came to me first as I sat by the +dead body of your grandfather--my father. It was because I wanted so +greatly such a book from him that I am now writing this. He died, you +must know, only a few months ago, and I went to his house to bury him +and settle all his affairs. + +At one time he had been my greatest friend. He had never indeed talked +to me about himself or his youth, but he had always showed an +extraordinary sympathy and helpfulness for me in all the confusion and +perplexities into which I fell. This did not last to the end of his +life. I was the child of his middle years, and suddenly, in a year or +less, the curtains of age and infirmity fell between us. There came an +illness, an operation, and he rose from it ailing, suffering, dwarfed +and altogether changed. Of all the dark shadows upon life I think that +change through illness and organic decay in the thoughts and spirits of +those who are dear and close to us is the most evil and distressing and +inexplicable. Suddenly he was a changeling, a being querulous and +pitiful, needing indulgence and sacrifices. + +In a little while a new state of affairs was established. I ceased to +consider him as a man to whom one told things, of whom one could expect +help or advice. We all ceased to consider him at all in that way. We +humored him, put pleasant things before him, concealed whatever was +disagreeable. A poor old man he was indeed in those concluding years, +weakly rebellious against the firm kindliness of my cousin, his +housekeeper and nurse. He who had once been so alert was now at times +astonishingly apathetic. At times an impish malice I had never known in +him before gleamed in little acts and speeches. His talk rambled, and +for the most part was concerned with small, long-forgotten contentions. +It was indistinct and difficult to follow because of a recent loss of +teeth, and he craved for brandy, to restore even for a moment the sense +of strength and well-being that ebbed and ebbed away from him. So that +when I came to look at his dead face at last, it was with something like +amazement I perceived him grave and beautiful--more grave and beautiful +than he had been even in the fullness of life. + +All the estrangement of the final years was wiped in an instant from my +mind as I looked upon his face. There came back a rush of memories, of +kind, strong, patient, human aspects of his fatherhood. And I remembered +as every son must remember--even you, my dear, will some day remember +because it is in the very nature of sonship--insubordinations, +struggles, ingratitudes, great benefits taken unthankfully, slights and +disregards. It was not remorse I felt, nor repentance, but a tremendous +regret that so things had happened and that life should be so. Why is +it, I thought, that when a son has come to manhood he cannot take his +father for a friend? I had a curious sense of unprecedented communion +as I stood beside him now. I felt that he understood my thoughts; his +face seemed to answer with an expression of still and sympathetic +patience. + +I was sensible of amazing gaps. We had never talked together of love, +never of religion. + +All sorts of things that a man of twenty-eight would not dream of hiding +from a coeval he had hidden from me. For some days I had to remain in +his house, I had to go through his papers, handle all those intimate +personal things that accumulate around a human being year by +year--letters, yellowing scraps of newspaper, tokens, relics kept, +accidental vestiges, significant litter. I learnt many things I had +never dreamt of. At times I doubted whether I was not prying, whether I +ought not to risk the loss of those necessary legal facts I sought, and +burn these papers unread. There were love letters, and many such +touching things. + +My memories of him did not change because of these new lights, but they +became wonderfully illuminated. I realized him as a young man, I began +to see him as a boy. I found a little half-bound botanical book with +stencil-tinted illustrations, a good-conduct prize my father had won at +his preparatory school; a rolled-up sheet of paper, carbonized and dry +and brittle, revealed itself as a piece of specimen writing, stiff with +boyish effort, decorated in ambitious and faltering flourishes and still +betraying the pencil rulings his rubber should have erased. Already your +writing is better than that. And I found a daguerreotype portrait of him +in knickerbockers against a photographer's stile. His face then was not +unlike yours. I stood with that in my hand at the little bureau in his +bedroom, and looked at his dead face. + +The flatly painted portrait of his father, my grandfather, hanging +there in the stillness above the coffin, looking out on the world he had +left with steady, humorous blue eyes that followed one about the +room,--that, too, was revivified, touched into reality and participation +by this and that, became a living presence at a conference of lives. +Things of his were there also in that life's accumulation.... + +There we were, three Strattons together, and down in the dining-room +were steel engravings to take us back two generations further, and we +had all lived full lives, suffered, attempted, signified. I had a +glimpse of the long successions of mankind. What a huge inaccessible +lumber-room of thought and experience we amounted to, I thought; how +much we are, how little we transmit. Each one of us was but a variation, +an experiment upon the Stratton theme. All that I had now under my hands +was but the merest hints and vestiges, moving and surprising indeed, but +casual and fragmentary, of those obliterated repetitions. Man is a +creature becoming articulate, and why should those men have left so much +of the tale untold--to be lost and forgotten? Why must we all repeat +things done, and come again very bitterly to wisdom our fathers have +achieved before us? My grandfather there should have left me something +better than the still enigma of his watching face. All my life so far +has gone in learning very painfully what many men have learnt before me; +I have spent the greater part of forty years in finding a sort of +purpose for the uncertain and declining decades that remain. Is it not +time the generations drew together and helped one another? Cannot we +begin now to make a better use of the experiences of life so that our +sons may not waste themselves so much, cannot we gather into books that +men may read in an hour or so the gist of these confused and +multitudinous realities of the individual career? Surely the time is +coming for that, when a new private literature will exist, and fathers +and mothers behind their roles of rulers, protectors, and supporters, +will prepare frank and intimate records of their thought and their +feeling, told as one tells things to equals, without authority or +reserves or discretions, so that, they being dead, their children may +rediscover them as contemporaries and friends. + +That desire for self-expression is indeed already almost an instinct +with many of us. Man is disposed to create a traditional wisdom. For me +this book I contemplate is a need. I am just a year and a half from a +bitter tragedy and the loss of a friend as dear as life to me. It is +very constantly in my mind. She opened her mind to me as few people open +their minds to anyone. In a way, little Stephen, she died for you. And I +am so placed that I have no one to talk to quite freely about her. The +one other person to whom I talk, I cannot talk to about her; it is +strange, seeing how we love and trust one another, but so it is; you +will understand that the better as this story unfolds. For eight long +years before the crisis that culminated in her tragic death I never saw +her; yet, quite apart from the shock and distresses of that time, it has +left me extraordinarily lonely and desolate. + +And there was a kind of dreadful splendor in that last act of hers, +which has taken a great hold upon my imagination; it has interwoven with +everything else in my mind, it bears now upon every question. I cannot +get away from it, while it is thus pent from utterance.... Perhaps +having written this to you I may never show it you or leave it for you +to see. But yet I must write it. Of all conceivable persons you, when +you have grown to manhood, are the most likely to understand. + + +Sec. 2 + +You did not come to see your dead grandfather, nor did you know very +much about the funeral. Nowadays we do not bring the sweet egotisms, the +vivid beautiful personal intensities of childhood, into the cold, vast +presence of death. I would as soon, my dear, have sent your busy little +limbs toiling up the Matterhorn. I have put by a photograph of my father +for you as he lay in that last stillness of his, that you will see at a +properer time. + +Your mother and I wore black only at his funeral and came back colored +again into your colored world, and in a very little while your interest +in this event that had taken us away for a time turned to other, more +assimilable things. But there happened a little incident that laid hold +upon me; you forgot it, perhaps, in a week or less, but I shall never +forget it; and this incident it was that gathered up the fruits of those +moments beside my father's body and set me to write this book. It had +the effect of a little bright light held up against the vague dark +immensities of thought and feeling that filled my mind because of my +father's death. + +Now that I come to set it down I see that it is altogether trivial, and +I cannot explain how it is that it is to me so piercingly significant. I +had to whip you. Your respect for the admirable and patient +Mademoiselle Potin, the protectress and companion of your public +expeditions, did in some slight crisis suddenly fail you. In the extreme +publicity of Kensington Gardens, in the presence of your two little +sisters, before a startled world, you expressed an opinion of her, in +two languages and a loud voice, that was not only very unjust, but +extremely offensive and improper. It reflected upon her intelligence and +goodness; it impeached her personal appearance; it was the kind of +outcry no little gentleman should ever permit himself, however deeply he +may be aggrieved. You then, so far as I was able to disentangle the +evidence, assaulted her violently, hurled a stone at her, and fled her +company. You came home alone by a route chosen by yourself, flushed and +wrathful, braving the dangers of Kensington High Street. This, after my +stern and deliberate edict that, upon pain of corporal punishment, +respect and obedience must be paid to Mademoiselle Potin. The logic of +the position was relentless. + +But where your behavior was remarkable, where the affair begins to touch +my imagination, was that you yourself presently put the whole business +before me. Alone in the schoolroom, you seem to have come to some +realization of the extraordinary dreadfulness of your behavior. Such +moments happen in the lives of all small boys; they happened to me times +enough, to my dead father, to that grandfather of the portrait which is +now in my study, to his father and his, and so on through long series of +Strattons, back to inarticulate, shock-haired little sinners slinking +fearfully away from the awful wrath, the bellowings and limitless +violence of the hairy Old Man of the herd. The bottom goes out of your +heart then, you are full of a conviction of sin. So far you did but +carry on the experience of the race. But to ask audience of me, to come +and look me in the eye, to say you wanted my advice on a pressing +matter, that I think marks almost a new phase in the long developing +history of father and son. And your account of the fracas struck me as +quite reasonably frank and honest. "I didn't seem able," you observed, +"not to go on being badder and badder." + +We discussed the difficulties of our situation, and you passed sentence +upon yourself. I saw to it that the outraged dignity of Mademoiselle +Potin was mocked by no mere formality of infliction. You did your best +to be stoical, I remember, but at last you yelped and wept. Then, +justice being done, you rearranged your costume. The situation was a +little difficult until you, still sobbing and buttoning--you are really +a shocking bad hand at buttons--and looking a very small, tender, +ruffled, rueful thing indeed, strolled towards my study window. "The +pear tree is out next door," you remarked, without a trace of animosity, +and sobbing as one might hiccough. + +I suppose there are moments in the lives of all grown men when they come +near to weeping aloud. In some secret place within myself I must have +been a wild river of tears. I answered, however, with the same admirable +detachment from the smarting past that you had achieved, that my study +window was particularly adapted to the appreciation of our neighbor's +pear tree, because of its height from the ground. We fell into a +conversation about blossom and the setting of fruit, kneeling together +upon my window-seat and looking up into the pear tree against the sky, +and then down through its black branches into the gardens all +quickening with spring. We were on so friendly a footing when presently +Mademoiselle Potin returned and placed her dignity or her resignation in +my hands, that I doubt if she believed a word of all my assurances until +the unmistakable confirmation of your evening bath. Then, as I +understood it, she was extremely remorseful to you and indignant against +my violence.... + +But when I knelt with you, little urchin, upon my window-seat, it came +to me as a thing almost intolerably desirable that some day you should +become my real and understanding friend. I loved you profoundly. I +wanted to stretch forward into time and speak to you, man myself to the +man you are yet to be. It seemed to me that between us there must needs +be peculiar subtleties of sympathy. And I remembered that by the time +you were a man fully grown and emerging from the passionately tumultuous +openings of manhood, capable of forgiving me all my blundering +parentage, capable of perceiving all the justifying fine intention of my +ill-conceived disciplines and misdirections, I might be either an old +man, shriveling again to an inexplicable egotism, or dead. I saw myself +as I had seen my father--first enfeebled and then inaccessibly tranquil. +When presently you had gone from my study, I went to my writing-desk and +drew a paper pad towards me, and sat thinking and making idle marks upon +it with my pen. I wanted to exceed the limits of those frozen silences +that must come at last between us, write a book that should lie in your +world like a seed, and at last, as your own being ripened, flower into +living understanding by your side. + +This book, which before had been only an idea for a book, competing +against many other ideas and the demands of that toilsome work for +peace and understanding to which I have devoted the daily energies of my +life, had become, I felt, an imperative necessity between us. + + +Sec. 3 + +And then there happened one of those crises of dread and apprehension +and pain that are like a ploughing of the heart. It was brought home to +me that you might die even before the first pages of this book of yours +were written. You became feverish, complained of that queer pain you had +felt twice before, and for the third time you were ill with +appendicitis. Your mother and I came and regarded your touzled head and +flushed little face on the pillow as you slept uneasily, and decided +that we must take no more risks with you. So soon as your temperature +had fallen again we set about the business of an operation. + +We told each other that nowadays these operations were as safe as going +to sleep in your bed, but we knew better. Our own doctor had lost his +son. "That," we said, "was different." But we knew well enough in our +hearts that you were going very near to the edge of death, nearer than +you had ever been since first you came clucking into the world. + +The operation was done at home. A capable, fair-complexioned nurse took +possession of us; and my study, because it has the best light, was +transfigured into an admirable operating-room. All its furnishings were +sent away, every cloth and curtain, and the walls and floor were covered +with white sterilized sheets. The high little mechanical table they +erected before the window seemed to me like an altar on which I had to +offer up my son. There were basins of disinfectants and towels +conveniently about, the operator came, took out his array of scalpels +and forceps and little sponges from the black bag he carried, put them +ready for his hand, and then covered them from your sight with a white +cloth, and I brought you down in my arms, wrapped in a blanket, from +your bedroom to the anaesthetist. You were beautifully trustful and +submissive and unafraid. I stood by you until the chloroform had done +its work, and then left you there, lest my presence should in the +slightest degree embarrass the surgeon. The anaesthetic had taken all the +color out of your face, and you looked pinched and shrunken and greenish +and very small and pitiful. I went into the drawing-room and stood there +with your mother and made conversation. I cannot recall what we said, I +think it was about the moorland to which we were going for your +convalescence. Indeed, we were but the ghosts of ourselves; all our +substance seemed listening, listening to the little sounds that came to +us from the study. + +Then after long ages there was a going to and fro of feet, a bump, the +opening of a door, and our own doctor came into the room rubbing his +hands together and doing nothing to conceal his profound relief. +"Admirable," he said, "altogether successful." I went up to you and saw +a tumbled little person in the bed, still heavily insensible and moaning +slightly. By the table were bloody towels, and in a shallow glass tray +was a small object like a damaged piece of earthworm. "Not a bit too +soon," said the surgeon, holding this up in his forceps for my +inspection. "It's on the very verge of perforation." I affected a +detached and scientific interest, but the prevailing impression in my +mind was that this was a fragment from very nearly the centre of your +being. + +He took it away with him, I know not whither. Perhaps it is now in +spirits in a specimen jar, an example to all medical students of what to +avoid in an appendix; perhaps it was stained and frozen, and +microtomized into transparent sections as they do such things, and +mounted on glass slips and distributed about the world for curious +histologists to wreak their eyes upon. For a time you lay uneasily still +and then woke up to pain. Even then you got a fresh purchase on my +heart. It has always been our custom to discourage weeping and outcries, +and you did not forget your training. "I shan't mind so much, dadda," +you remarked to me, "if I may yelp." So for a day, by special +concession, you yelped, and then the sting of those fresh wounds +departed. + +Within a fortnight, so quickly does an aseptic wound heal up again, you +were running about in the sun, and I had come back, as one comes back to +a thing forgotten, to the first beginnings of this chapter on my desk. +But for a time I could not go on working at it because of the fear I had +felt, and it is only now in June, in this house in France to which we +have come for the summer, with you more flagrantly healthy than I have +ever known you before, that my heart creeps out of its hole again, and I +can go on with my story. + + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND + +BOYHOOD + + +Sec. 1 + +I was a Harbury boy as my father and grandfather were before me and as +you are presently to be. I went to Harbury at the age of fourteen. Until +then I was educated at home, first by a governess and then by my +father's curate, Mr. Siddons, who went from us to St. Philip's in +Hampstead, and, succeeding marvellously there, is now Bishop of +Exminster. My father became rector of Burnmore when I was nine; my +mother had been dead four years, and my second cousin, Jane Stratton, +was already his housekeeper. My father held the living until his +resignation when I was nearly thirty. So that all the most +impressionable years of my life centre upon the Burnmore rectory and the +easy spaciousness of Burnmore Park. My boyhood and adolescence +alternated between the ivied red-brick and ancient traditions of Harbury +(and afterwards Christ-church) and that still untroubled countryside. + +I was never a town dweller until I married and we took our present house +in Holland Park. I went into London at last as one goes into an arena. +It cramps me and wearies me and at times nearly overwhelms me, but +there it is that the life of men centres and my work lies. But every +summer we do as we have done this year and go to some house in the +country, near to forests or moorland or suchlike open and uncultivated +country, where one may have the refreshment of freedom among natural and +unhurried things. This year we are in a walled garden upon the Seine, +about four miles above Chateau Galliard, and with the forest reaching up +to the paddock beyond the orchard close.... + +You will understand better when I have told you my story why I saw +Burnmore for the last time when I was one-and-twenty and why my memories +of it shine so crystalline clear. I have a thousand vivid miniatures of +it in my mind and all of them are beautiful to me, so that I could quite +easily write a whole book of landscapes from the Park alone. I can still +recall quite vividly the warm beauty-soaked sensation of going out into +the morning sunshine of the Park, with my lunch in a little green Swiss +tin under my arm and the vast interminable day all before me, the +gigantic, divinely unconditional day that only boyhood knows, and the +Park so great and various that it was more than two hours' going for me +to reach its eastern fences. I was only a little older then than you are +now. Sometimes I went right up through the woods to the house to +companion with Philip and Guy Christian and their sister--I loved her +then, and one day I was to love her with all my heart--but in those +boyish times I liked most to go alone. + +My memories of the Park are all under blue sky and sunshine, with just a +thunderstorm or so; on wet days and cold days I was kept to closer +limits; and it seems to me now rather an intellectual conviction than a +positive memory that save for a few pine-clad patches in the extreme +south-east, its soil was all thick clay. That meant for me only +beautiful green marshes, a number of vividly interesting meres upon the +course of its stream, and a wealth of gigantic oaks. The meres lay at +various levels, and the hand of Lady Ladislaw had assisted nature in +their enrichment with lilies and water plants. There were places of +sedge and scented rush, amidst which were sapphire mists of +forget-me-not for long stretches, skirmishing commandoes of yellow iris +and wide wastes of floating water-lilies. The gardens passed insensibly +into the Park, and beyond the house were broad stretches of grass, +sun-lit, barred with the deep-green shadows of great trees, and animated +with groups and lines of fallow deer. Near the house was an Italianate +garden, with balustradings and statuary, and a great wealth of roses and +flowering shrubs. + +Then there were bracken wildernesses in which the does lurked with the +young fawns, and a hollow, shallow and wide, with the turf greatly +attacked by rabbits, and exceptionally threadbare, where a stricken oak, +lightning-stripped, spread out its ghastly arms above contorted rotting +branches and the mysterious skeletons of I should think five several +deer. In the evening-time the woods behind this place of bones--they +were woods of straight-growing, rather crowded trees and standing as it +were a little aloof--became even under the warmest sunset grey and +cold--and as if they waited.... + +And in the distant corner where the sand was, rose suddenly a steep +little hill, surmounted by a wild and splendid group of pines, through +which one looked across a vale of cornfields at an ancient town that +became strange and magical as the sun went down, so that I was held +gazing at it, and afterwards had to flee the twilight across the windy +spaces and under the dim and darkling trees. It is only now in the +distant retrospect that I identify that far-off city of wonder, and +luminous mist with the commonplace little town, through whose narrow +streets we drove to the railway station. But, of course, that is what it +must have been. + +There are persons to be found mixed up in those childish memories,--Lady +Ladislaw, tall and gracious, in dresses of floating blue or grey, or +thin, subtly folding, flowering stuffs, Philip and his sister, Guy, the +old butler, a multitude of fainter figures long become nameless and +featureless; they are far less vivid in my memory than the fine +solitudes of the Park itself--and the dreams I had there. + +I wonder if you dream as I dreamt. I wonder whether indeed I dreamt as +now I think I did. Have I, in these latter years, given form and +substance and a name to things as vague in themselves as the urgencies +of instinct? Did I really go into those woods and waving green places as +one keeps a tryst, expectant of a fellowship more free and delicate and +delightful than any I knew. Did I know in those days of nymphs and +dryads and fauns and all those happy soulless beings with which the +desire of man's heart has animated the wilderness. Once certainly I +crawled slowly through the tall bracken and at last lay still for an +interminable while, convinced that so I should see those shadows +populous with fairies, with green little people. How patiently I lay! +But the stems creaked and stirred, and my heart would keep on beating +like a drum in my throat. + +It is incredible that once a furry whispering half-human creature with +bright brown eyes came and for a time played with me near where the tall +ferns foam in a broad torrent from between the big chestnuts down to the +upper mere. That must have been real dreaming, and yet now, with all my +sanities and scepticisms, I could half believe it real. + + +Sec. 2 + +You become reserved. Perhaps not exceptionally so, but as all children +become reserved. Already you understand that your heart is very +preciously your own. You keep it from me and everyone, so much so, so +justifiably so, that when by virtue of our kindred and all that we have +in common I get sudden glimpses right into your depths, there mixes with +the swift spasm of love I feel, a dread--lest you should catch me, as it +were, spying into you and that one of us, I know not which, should feel +ashamed. + +Every child passes into this secret stage; it closes in from its first +frankness; it carries off the growing jewel of its consciousness to hide +from all mankind.... I think I can see why this should be so, but I +cannot tell why in so many cases no jewel is given back again at last, +alight, ripened, wonderful, glowing with the deep fires of experience. I +think that is what ought to happen; it is what does happen now with true +poets and true artists. Someday I think it will be the life of all +normal human souls. But usually it does not seem to happen at all. +Children pass out of a stage--open, beautiful, exquisitely simple--into +silences and discretions beneath an imposed and artificial life. And +they are lost. Out of the finished, careful, watchful, restrained and +limited man or woman, no child emerges again.... + +I remember very distinctly how I myself came by imperceptible increments +of reservation to withdraw those early delicacies of judgments, those +original and personal standards and appreciations, from sight and +expression. I can recall specific moments when I perceive now that my +little childish figure stood, as it were, obstinately and with a sense +of novelty in a doorway denying the self within. + +It was partly, I think, a simple instinct that drew that curtain of +silences and concealments, it was much more a realization that I had no +power of lucidity to save the words and deeds I sought to make +expressive from complete misunderstanding. But most of all it was the +perception that I was under training and compulsion for ends that were +all askew and irrelevant to the trend of my imaginations, the quality of +my dreams. There was around me something unfriendly to this inner +world--something very ready to pass from unfriendliness to acute +hostility; and if, indeed, I succeeded in giving anything of my inner +self to others, it was only, as people put it, to give myself away. + +My nurses, my governess, my tutor, my father, the servants about me, +seemed all bent upon imposing an artificial personality upon me. Only in +a very limited sense did they want me. What they wanted was something +that could be made out of me by extensive suppressions and additions. +They ignored the fact that I had been born with a shape of my own; they +were resolved I should be pressed into a mould and cast. + +It was not that they wanted outer conformity to certain needs and +standards--that, I think, would be a reasonable thing enough to +demand--but they wanted me to subdue my most private thoughts to their +ideals. My nurses and my governesses would rate me for my very feelings, +would clamor for gratitude and reproach me bitterly for betraying that I +did not at some particular moment--love. + +(Only yesterday I heard Mademoiselle Potin doing that very same thing to +you. "It is that you do not care, Master Steve. It is that you do not +care. You do not want to care.") + +They went too far in that invasion of my personal life, but I perceive +quite clearly the present need for most of the process of moulding and +subjugation that children must undergo. Human society is a new thing +upon the earth, an invention of the last ten thousand years. Man is a +creature as yet not freely and instinctively gregarious; in his more +primordial state he must have been an animal of very small groups and +limited associations, an animal rather self-centred and fierce, and he +is still but imperfectly adapted either morally or physically to the +wider social life his crowding interactions force upon him. He still +learns speech and computation and civility and all the devices of this +artificially extended and continually broadening tribal life with an +extreme reluctance. He has to be shaped in the interests of the species, +I admit, to the newer conditions; the growing social order must be +protected from the keen edge of his still savage individuality, and he +must be trained in his own interests to save himself from the +destruction of impossible revolts. But how clumsily is the thing done! +How we are caught and jammed and pressed and crippled into citizenship! +How excessive and crushing is the suppression, and how inadequate! + +Every child feels that, even if every child does not clearly know it. +Every child presently begins to hide itself from the confused tyrannies +of the social process, from the searching inspections and injunctions +and interferences of parent and priest and teacher. + +"I have got to be _so_," we all say deep down in ourselves and more or +less distinctly according to the lucidities of our minds; "but in my +heart I am _this_." + +And in the outcome we all try to seem at least to be _so_, while an +ineffectual rebel struggles passionately, like a beast caught in a trap, +for ends altogether more deep and dangerous, for the rose and the star +and the wildfire,--for beauty and beautiful things. These, we all know +in our darkly vital recesses, are the real needs of life, the obediences +imposed upon us by our crude necessities and jostling proximities, mere +incidentals on our way to those profounder purposes.... + +And when I write thus of our selves I mean our bodies quite as much as +our imaginations; the two sides of us are covered up alike and put alike +into disguises and unnatural shapes, we are taught and forced to hide +them for the same reasons, from a fear of ourselves and a fear of the +people about us. The sense of beauty, the sense of one's body, the +freedom of thought and of desire and the wonder of life, are all +interwoven strands. I remember that in the Park of Burnmore one great +craving I had was to take off my clothes there altogether, and bathe in +a clear place among loosestrife and meadowsweet, and afterwards lie wet +and naked upon the soft green turf with the sun shining upon me. But I +thought also that that was a very wicked and shameful craving to have, +and I never dared give way to it. + + +Sec. 3 + +As I think of myself and all these glowing secrecies and hidden fancies +within, walking along beside old Siddons, and half listening to his +instructive discourse, I see myself as though I was an image of all +humanity under tuition for the social life. + +I write "old Siddons," for so he seemed to me then. In truth he was +scarcely a dozen years older than I, and the other day when I exchanged +salutations with his gaitered presence in the Haymarket, on his way I +suppose to the Athenaeum, it struck me that he it is who is now the +younger man. But at Burnmore he was eighteen inches or more above my +head and all the way of school and university beyond me; full of the +world they had fitted him for and eager to impart its doctrines. He went +along in his tweeds that were studiously untidy, a Norfolk jacket of one +clerically-greyish stuff and trousers of another somewhat lighter +pattern, in thick boots, the collar of his calling, and a broad-minded +hat, bearing his face heavenward as he talked, and not so much aware of +me as appreciating the things he was saying. And sometimes he was +manifestly talking to himself and airing his outlook. He carried a +walking-stick, a manly, homely, knobby, donnish walking-stick. + +He forced the pace a little, for his legs were long and he had acquired +the habit of strenuous pedestrianism at Oxford with all the other +things; he obliged me to go at a kind of skipping trot, and he preferred +the high roads towards Wickenham for our walks, because they were +flatter and there was little traffic upon them in those days before the +motor car, and we could keep abreast and go on talking uninterruptedly. +That is to say, he could. + +What talk it was! + +Of all the virtues that the young should have. He spoke of courage and +how splendid it was to accustom oneself not even to feel fear; of truth, +and difficult cases when one might conceivably injure others by telling +the truth and so perhaps, perhaps qualify the rigor of one's integrity, +but how one should never hesitate to injure one's own self in that +matter. Then in another phase he talked of belief--and the +disagreeableness of dissenters. But here, I remember, there was a +discussion. I have forgotten how I put the thing, but in some boyish +phrasing or other I must have thrown out the idea that thought is free +and beliefs uncontrollable. What of conformity, if the truth was that +you doubted? "Not if you make an effort," I remember him saying, "not if +you make an effort. I have had my struggles. But if you say firmly to +yourself, the Church teaches this. If you dismiss mere carping and say +that." + +"But suppose you can't," I must have urged. + +"You can if you will," he said with a note near enthusiasm. "I have been +through all that. I did it. I dismissed doubts. I wouldn't listen. I +felt, _This won't do. All this leads nowhere._" + +And he it was told me the classic story of that presumptuous schoolboy +who went to his Head Master and declared himself an atheist. There were +no dialectics but a prompt horse-whipping. "In after life," said Mr. +Siddons, with unctuous gratification, "he came to recognize that +thrashing as the very best thing that had ever happened to him. The +kindest thing." + +"Yes," urged the obstinate rebel within me, "but--the Truth, that +fearless insistence on the Truth!" + +I could, however, find nothing effective to say aloud, and Siddons +prevailed over me. That story made my blood boil, it filled me with an +anticipatory hatred of and hostility to Head Masters, and at the same +time there was something in it, brutally truer to the conditions of +human association than any argument. + +I do not remember the various steps by which I came to be discussing +doubts so early in my life. I could not have been much more than +thirteen when that conversation occurred. I am I think perhaps +exceptionally unconscious about myself. I find I can recall the sayings +and even the gestures of other people far more distinctly than the +things I said and did myself. Even my dreams and imaginings are more +active than my positive thoughts and proceedings. But I was no doubt +very much stimulated by the literature lying about my home and the +gleans and echoes of controversies that played like summer lightning +round and about the horizons of my world. Over my head and after I had +gone to bed, my father and Siddons were talking, my cousin was listening +with strained apprehensions, there was a new spirit in my father's +sermons; it was the storm of Huxley-Darwin controversies that had at +last reached Burnmore. I was an intelligent little listener, an eager +reader of anything that came to hand, Mr. Siddons had a disposition to +fight his battles over again in his monologues to me; and after all at +thirteen one isn't a baby. The small boy of the lower classes used in +those days to start life for himself long before then. + +How dramatic a phase it was in the history of the human mind when +science suddenly came into the vicarages, into all the studies and quiet +places that had been the fastnesses of conviction and our ideals, and +denied, with all the power of evidence it had been accumulating for so +long, and so obscurely and inaggressively, with fossils and strata, with +embryology and comparative anatomy, the doctrine of the historical Fall +and all the current scheme of orthodoxy that was based on that! What a +quickening shock it must have been in countless thousands of educated +lives! And my father after a toughly honest resistance was won over to +Darwinism, the idea of Evolution got hold of him, the idea that life +itself was intolerant of vain repetitions; and he had had to "consider +his position" in the church. To him as to innumerable other honest, +middle-aged and comfortable men, Darwinism came as a dreadful invitation +to go out into the wilderness. Over my head and just out of range of my +ears he was debating that issue with Siddons as a foil and my cousin as +a horrified antagonist. Slowly he was developing his conception of +compromise. And meanwhile he wasn't going out into the wilderness at +all, but punctually to and fro, along the edge of the lawn by the bed of +hollyhocks and through the little green door in the garden wall, and +across the corner of the churchyard to the vestry and the perennial +services and sacraments of the church. + +But he never talked to me privately of religion. He left that for my +cousin and Mr. Siddons to do or not to do as they felt disposed, and in +those silences of his I may have found another confirmation of my +growing feeling that religion was from one point of view a thing +somehow remote and unreal, claiming unjustifiable interventions in the +detailed conduct of my life, and from another a peculiar concern of my +father's and Mr. Siddons', to which they went--through the vestry, +changing into strange garments on the way. + + +Sec. 4 + +I do not want to leave the impression which my last section may have +conveyed that at the age of thirteen or thereabouts I walked about with +Mr. Siddons discussing doubt in a candid and intelligent manner and +maintaining theological positions. That particular conversation, you +must imagine with Mr. Siddons somewhat monologuing, addressing himself +not only to my present self, but with an unaccustomed valiance to my +absent father. What I may have said or not said, whether I did indeed +dispute or merely and by a kind of accident implied objections, I have +altogether forgotten long ago. + +A boy far more than a man is mentally a discontinuous being. The +drifting chaos of his mind makes its experimental beginnings at a +hundred different points and in a hundred different spirits and +directions; here he flashes into a concrete realization, here into a +conviction unconsciously incompatible; here is something originally +conceived, here something uncritically accepted. I know that I +criticized Mr. Siddons quite acutely, and disbelieved in him. I know +also that I accepted all sorts of suggestions from him quite +unhesitatingly and that I did my utmost to satisfy his standards and +realize his ideals of me. + +Like an outer casing to that primordial creature of senses and dreams +which came to the surface in the solitudes of the Park was my +Siddonsesque self, a high-minded and clean and brave English boy, +conscientiously loyal to queen and country, athletic and a good +sportsman and acutely alive to good and bad "form." Mr. Siddons made me +aware of my clothed self as a visible object, I surveyed my garmented +being in mirrors and was trained to feel the "awfulness" of various +other small boys who appeared transitorily in the smaller Park when Lady +Ladislaw extended her wide hospitality to certain benevolent London +associations. Their ill-fitting clothing, their undisciplined outcries, +their slouching, their bad throwing and defective aspirates were made +matters for detestation in my plastic mind. Those things, I was assured, +placed them outside the pale of any common humanity. + +"Very unfortunate and all that," said Mr. Siddons, "and uncommonly good +of Lady Ladislaw to have them down. But dirty little cads, Stephen, +dirty little cads; so don't go near 'em if you can help it." + +They played an indecent sort of cricket with coats instead of a wicket! + +Mr. Siddons was very grave about games and the strict ritual and proper +apparatus for games. He believed that Waterloo was won by the indirect +influence of public school cricket--disregarding many other contributory +factors. We did not play very much, but we "practised" sedulously at a +net in the paddock with the gardener and the doctor's almost grown-up +sons. I thought missing a possible catch was an impropriety. I +studiously maintained the correct attitude, alert and elastic, while I +was fielding. Moreover I had a shameful secret, that I did not really +know where a ball ought to pitch. I wasn't clear about it and I did not +dare to ask. Also until I was nearly thirteen I couldn't bowl overarm. +Such is the enduring force of early suggestion, my dear son, that I feel +a faint twinge of shame as I set this down for your humiliated eyes. But +so it was. May you be more precocious! + +Then I was induced to believe that I really liked hunting and killing +things. In the depths of my being I was a gentle and primitive savage +towards animals; I believed they were as subtle and wise as myself and +full of a magic of their own, but Mr. Siddons nevertheless got me out +into the south Warren, where I had often watched the rabbits setting +their silly cock-eared sentinels and lolloping out to feed about +sundown, and beguiled me into shooting a furry little fellow-creature--I +can still see its eyelid quiver as it died--and carrying it home in +triumph. On another occasion I remember I was worked up into a ferocious +excitement about the rats in the old barn. We went ratting, just as +though I was Tom Brown or Harry East or any other of the beastly little +models of cant and cruelty we English boys were trained to imitate. It +was great sport. It was a tremendous spree. The distracted movements, +the scampering and pawing of the little pink forefeet of one squawking +little fugitive, that I hit with a stick and then beat to a shapeless +bag of fur, haunted my dreams for years, and then I saw the bowels of +another still living victim that had been torn open by one of the +terriers, and abruptly I fled out into the yard and was violently sick; +the best of the fun was over so far as I was concerned. + +My cousin saved me from the uttermost shame of my failure by saying +that I had been excited too soon after my dinner.... + +And also I collected stamps and birds' eggs. + +Mr. Siddons hypnotized me into believing that I really wanted these +things; he gave me an egg-cabinet for a birthday present and told me +exemplary stories of the wonderful collections other boys had made. My +own natural disposition to watch nests and establish heaven knows what +friendly intimacy with the birds--perhaps I dreamt their mother might +let me help to feed the young ones--gave place to a feverish artful +hunting, a clutch, and then, detestable process, the blowing of the egg. +Of course we were very humane; we never took the nest, but just +frightened off the sitting bird and grabbed a warm egg or so. And the +poor perforated, rather damaged little egg-shells accumulated in the +drawers, against the wished-for but never actually realized day of glory +when we should meet another collector who wouldn't have--something that +we had. So far as it was for anything and not mere imbecile +imitativeness, it was for that. + +And writing thus of eggs reminds me that I got into a row with Mr. +Siddons for cruelty. + +I discovered there was the nest of a little tit in a hole between two +stones in the rock bank that bordered the lawn. I found it out when I +was sitting on the garden seat near by, learning Latin irregular verbs. +I saw the minute preposterous round birds going and coming, and I found +something so absurdly amiable and confiding about them--they sat +balancing and oscillating on a standard rose and cheeped at me to go and +then dived nestward and gave away their secret out of sheer +impatience--that I could not bring myself to explore further, and kept +the matter altogether secret from the enthusiasm of Mr. Siddons. And in +a few days there were no more eggs and I could hear the hungry little +nestlings making the minutest of fairy hullabaloos, the very finest spun +silk of sound; a tremendous traffic in victual began and I was the +trusted friend of the family. + +Then one morning I was filled with amazement and anguish. There was a +rock torn down and lying in the path; a paw had gone up to that little +warm place. Across the gravel, shreds of the nest and a wisp or so of +down were scattered. I could imagine the brief horrors of that night +attack. I started off, picking up stones as I went, to murder that sandy +devil, the stable cat. I got her once--alas! that I am still glad to +think of it--and just missed her as she flashed, a ginger streak, +through the gate into the paddock. + +"_Now_ Steve! Now!" came Mr. Siddons' voice behind me.... + +How can one explain things of that sort to a man like Siddons? I took my +lecture on the Utter Caddishness of Wanton Cruelty in a black rebellious +silence. The affair and my own emotions were not only far beyond my +powers of explanation, but far beyond my power of understanding. Just +then my soul was in shapeless and aimless revolt against something +greater and higher and deeper and darker than Siddons, and his +reproaches were no more than the chattering of a squirrel while a storm +uproots great trees. I wanted to kill the cat. I wanted to kill whatever +had made that cat. + + +Sec. 5 + +Mr. Siddons it was who first planted the conception of Life as a Career +in my mind. + +In those talks that did so much towards shaping me into the likeness of +a modest, reserved, sporting, seemly, clean and brave, patriotic and +decently slangy young Englishman, he was constantly reverting to that +view of existence. He spoke of failures and successes, talked of +statesmen and administrators, peerages and Westminster Abbey. "Nelson," +he said, "was once a clergyman's son like you." + +"England has been made by the sons of the clergy." + +He talked of the things that led to failure and the things that had made +men prominent and famous. + +"Discursiveness ruins a man," I remember him saying. "Choose your goal +and press to it." + +"Never do anything needlessly odd. It's a sort of impertinence to all +the endless leaders of the past who created our traditions. Do not +commit yourself hastily to opinions, but once you have done so, stick to +them. The world would far rather have a firm man wrong, than a weak man +hesitatingly right. Stick to them." + +"One has to remember," I recall him meditating, far over my head with +his face upturned, "that Institutions are more important than Views. +Very often one adopts a View only to express one's belief in an +Institution.... Men can do with almost all sorts of Views, but only with +certain Institutions. All this Doubt doesn't touch a truth like that. +One does not refuse to live in a house because of the old symbols one +finds upon the door.... If they _are_ old symbols...." + +Out of such private contemplations he would descend suddenly upon me. + +"What are _you_ going to do with your life, Steve?" he would ask. + +"There is no happiness in life without some form of service. Where do +you mean to serve? With your bent for science and natural history, it +wouldn't be difficult for you to get into the I.C.S. I doubt if you'd do +anything at the law; it's a rough game, Steve, though the prizes are +big. Big prizes the lawyers get. I've known a man in the Privy Council +under forty--and that without anything much in the way of a family.... +But always one must concentrate. The one thing England will not stand is +a loafer, a wool-gatherer, a man who goes about musing and half-awake. +It's our energy. We're western. It's that has made us all we are." + +I knew whither that pointed. Never so far as I can remember did Mr. +Siddons criticize either myself or my father directly, but I understood +with the utmost clearness that he found my father indolent and +hesitating, and myself more than a little bit of a mollycoddle, and in +urgent need of pulling together. + + +Sec. 6 + +Harbury went on with that process of suppressing, encrusting, hardening, +and bracing-up which Mr. Siddons had begun. For a time I pulled myself +together very thoroughly. I am not ungrateful nor unfaithful to Harbury; +in your turn you will go there, you will have to live your life in this +British world of ours and you must learn its language and manners, +acquire its reserves and develop the approved toughness and patterning +of cuticle. Afterwards if you please you may quarrel with it. But don't +when the time comes quarrel with the present conditions of human +association and think it is only with Harbury you quarrel. What man has +become and may become beneath the masks and impositions of civilization, +in his intimate texture and in the depths of his being, I begin now in +my middle age to appreciate. No longer is he an instinctive savage but a +creature of almost incredible variability and wonderful new +possibilities. Marvels undreamt of, power still inconceivable, an empire +beyond the uttermost stars; such is man's inheritance. But for the +present, until we get a mastery of those vague and mighty intimations at +once so perplexing and so reassuring, if we are to live at all in the +multitudinousness of human society we must submit to some scheme of +clumsy compromises and conventions or other,--and for us Strattons the +Harbury system is the most convenient. You will have to go to the old +school. + +I went to Rendle's. I just missed getting into college; I was two places +below the lowest successful boy. I was Maxton's fag to begin with, and +my chief chum was Raymond, who is your friend also, and who comes so +often to this house. I preferred water to land, boats to cricket, +because of that difficulty about pitch I have already mentioned. But I +was no great sportsman. Raymond and I shared a boat, and spent most of +the time we gave to it under the big trees near Dartpool Lock, reading +or talking. We would pull up to Sandy Hall perhaps once a week. I never +rowed in any of the eights, though I was urged to do so. I swam fairly +well, and got my colors on the strength of my diving. + +On the whole I found Harbury a satisfactory and amusing place, I was +neither bullied nor do I think I greatly bullied, and of all that +furtive and puerile lasciviousness of which one hears so many hints +nowadays--excitable people talk of it as though it was the most +monstrous and singular of vices instead of a slightly debasing but +almost unavoidable and very obvious result of heaping boys together +under the inefficient control of a timid pretentious class of men--of +such uncleanness as I say, scarcely more than a glimpse and a whisper +and a vague tentative talk or so reached me. Little more will reach you, +for that kind of thing, like the hells of Swedenborg, finds its own. + +I had already developed my growing instinct for observance to a very +considerable extent under Siddons, and at Harbury I remember myself, and +people remember me, as an almost stiffly correct youth. I was pretty +good at most of the work, and exceptionally so at history, geology, and +the biological side of natural science. I had to restrain my interest in +these latter subjects lest I should appear to be a "swat," and a +modern-side swat at that. I was early in the sixth, and rather a +favorite with old Latimer. He incited me to exercise what he called a +wholesome influence on the younger boys, and I succeeded in doing this +fairly well without any gross interventions. I implied rather than +professed soundly orthodox views about things in general, and I was +extremely careful to tilt my straw hat forward over my nose so as just +not to expose the crown of my head behind, and to turn up my trousers +with exactly that width of margin which the judgment of my +fellow-creatures had decided was correct. My socks were spirited without +being vulgar, and the ties I wore were tied with a studious avoidance +of either slovenliness or priggish neatness. I wrote two articles in the +Harburonian, became something of a debater in the Literacy and +Political, conducted many long conversations with my senior +contemporaries upon religion, politics, sport and social life, and +concealed my inmost thoughts from every human being. Indeed, so +effective had been the training of Harbury and Mr. Siddons, that I think +at that time I came very near concealing them from myself. I could +suppress wonder, I could pass by beauty as if I did not see it, almost I +think I did not see it for a time, and yet I remember it in those years +too--a hundred beautiful things. + +Harbury itself is a very beautiful place. The country about it has all +the charm of river scenery in a settled and ancient land, and the great +castle and piled town of Wetmore, cliffs of battlemented grey wall +rising above a dense cluster of red roofs, form the background to +innumerable gracious prospects of great stream-fed trees, level meadows +of buttercups, sweeping curves of osier and rush-rimmed river, the +playing fields and the sedgy, lily-spangled levels of Avonlea. The +college itself is mostly late Tudor and Stuart brickwork, very ripe and +mellow now, but the great grey chapel with its glorious east window +floats over the whole like a voice singing in the evening. And the +evening cloudscapes of Harbury are a perpetual succession of glorious +effects, now serene, now mysteriously threatening and profound, now +towering to incredible heights, now revealing undreamt-of distances of +luminous color. Assuredly I must have delighted in all those aspects, or +why should I remember them so well? But I recall, I mean, no confessed +recognition of them; no deliberate going-out of my spirit, open and +unashamed, to such things. + +I suppose one's early adolescence is necessarily the period of maximum +shyness in one's life. Even to Raymond I attempted no extremities of +confidence. Even to myself I tried to be the thing that was expected of +me. I professed a modest desire for temperate and tolerable achievement +in life, though deep in my lost depths I wanted passionately to excel; I +worked hard, much harder than I allowed to appear, and I said I did it +for the credit of the school; I affected a dignified loyalty to queen +and country and church; I pretended a stoical disdain for appetites and +delights and all the arts, though now and then a chance fragment of +poetry would light me like a fire, or a lovely picture stir unwonted +urgencies, though visions of delight haunted the shadows of my +imagination and did not always fly when I regarded them. But on the +other hand I affected an interest in games that I was far from feeling. +Of some boys I was violently jealous, and this also I masked beneath a +generous appreciation. Certain popularities I applauded while I doubted. +Whatever my intimate motives I became less and less disposed to obey +them until I had translated them into a plausible rendering of the +accepted code. If I could not so translate them I found it wise to +control them. When I wanted urgently one summer to wander by night over +the hills towards Kestering and lie upon heather and look up at the +stars and wonder about them, I cast about and at last hit upon the +well-known and approved sport of treacling for moths, as a cloak for so +strange an indulgence. + +I must have known even then what a mask and front I was, because I knew +quite well how things were with other people. I listened politely and +respected and understood the admirable explanations of my friends. When +some fellow got a scholarship unexpectedly and declared it was rotten +bad luck on the other chap, seeing the papers he had done, and doubted +whether he shouldn't resign, I had an intuitive knowledge that he +wouldn't resign, and I do not remember any time in my career as the +respectful listener to Mr. Siddons' aspirations for service and +devotion, when I did not perceive quite clearly his undeviating eye upon +a bishopric. He thought of gaiters though he talked of wings. + +How firmly the bonds of an old relationship can hold one! I remember +when a few years ago he reached that toiled-for goal, I wrote in a tone +of gratified surprise that in this blatant age, such disinterested +effort as his should receive even so belated a recognition. Yet what +else was there for me to write? We all have our Siddonses, with whom +there are no alternatives but insincerity or a disproportionate +destructiveness. I am still largely Siddonsized, little son, and so, I +fear, you will have to be. + + +Sec. 7 + +The clue to all the perplexities of law and custom lies in this, that +human association is an artificiality. We do not run together naturally +and easily as grazing deer do or feeding starlings or a shoal of fish. +We are a sort of creature which is only resuming association after a +long heredity of extreme separation. We are beings strongly +individualized, we are dominated by that passion which is no more and +no less than individuality in action,--jealousy. Jealousy is a fierce +insistence on ourselves, an instinctive intolerance of our +fellow-creatures, ranging between an insatiable aggression as its +buoyant phase and a savage defensiveness when it is touched by fear. In +our expansive moments we want to dominate and control everyone and +destroy every unlikeness to ourselves; in our recessive phases our homes +are our castles and we want to be let alone. + +Now all law, all social order, all custom, is a patch-up and a +concession to this separating passion of self-insistence. It is an +evasion of conflict and social death. Human society is as yet only a +truce and not an alliance. + +When you understand that, you will begin to understand a thousand +perplexing things in legislation and social life. You will understand +the necessity of all those restrictions that are called +"conventionality," and the inevitableness of the general hostility to +singularity. To be exceptional is to assert a difference, to disregard +the banked-up forces of jealousy and break the essential conditions of +the social contract. It invites either resentment or aggression. So we +all wear much the same clothing, affect modesty, use the same phrases, +respect one another's "rights," and pretend a greater disinterestedness +than we feel.... + +You have to face this reality as you must face all reality. This is the +reality of laws and government; this is the reality of customs and +institutions; _a convention between jealousies_. This is reality, just +as the cat's way with the nestlings was reality, and the squealing rat +one smashed in a paroxysm of cruelty and disgust in the barn. + +But it isn't the only reality. Equally real is the passionate revolt of +my heart against cruelty, and the deep fluctuating impulse not to +pretend, to set aside fear and jealousy, to come nakedly out of the +compromises and secretive methods of every-day living into the light, +into a wide impersonal love, into a new way of living for mankind.... + + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD + +INTENTIONS AND THE LADY MARY CHRISTIAN + + +Sec. 1 + +I know that before the end of my Harbury days I was already dreaming of +a Career, of some great and conspicuous usefulness in the world. That +has always haunted my mind and haunts it now. I may be cured perhaps of +the large and showy anticipations of youth, I may have learnt to drop +the "great and conspicuous," but still I find it necessary to believe +that I matter, that I play a part no one else can play in a progress, in +a universal scheme moving towards triumphant ends. + +Almost wholly I think I was dreaming of public service in those days. +The Harbury tradition pointed steadfastly towards the state, and all my +world was bare of allurements to any other type of ambition. Success in +art or literature did not appeal to us, and a Harbury boy would as soon +think of being a great tinker as a great philosopher. Science we called +"stinks"; our three science masters were _ex officio_ ridiculous and the +practical laboratory a refuge for oddities. But a good half of our +fathers at least were peers or members of parliament, and our sense of +politics was close and keen. History, and particularly history as it +came up through the eighteenth century to our own times, supplied us +with a gallery of intimate models, our great uncles and grandfathers and +ancestors at large figured abundantly in the story and furnished the +pattern to which we cut our anticipations of life. It was a season of +Imperialism, the picturesque Imperialism of the earlier Kipling phase, +and we were all of us enthusiasts for the Empire. It was the empire of +the White Man's Burthen in those days; the sordid anti-climax of the +Tariff Reform Movement was still some years ahead of us. It was easier +for us at Harbury to believe then than it has become since, in our own +racial and national and class supremacy. We were the Anglo-Saxons, the +elect of the earth, leading the world in social organization, in science +and economic method. In India and the east more particularly we were the +apostles of even-handed justice, relentless veracity, personal +cleanliness, and modern efficiency. In a spirit of adventurous +benevolence we were spreading those blessings over a reluctant and +occasionally recalcitrant world of people for the most part "colored." +Our success in this had aroused the bitter envy and rivalry of various +continental nations, and particularly of France, Russia, and Germany. +But France had been diverted to North Africa, Russia to Eastern Asia, +and Germany was already the most considered antagonist in our path +towards an empire over the world. + +This was the spacious and by no means ignoble project of the later +nineties. Most of us Harbury boys, trained as I had been trained to be +uncritical, saw the national outlook in those terms. We knew little or +nothing, until the fierce wranglings of the Free Traders and Tariff +Reformers a few years later brought it home to us, of the commercial, +financial and squalid side of our relations with the vast congeries of +exploited new territories and subordinated and subjugated populations. +We knew nothing of the social conditions of the mass of people in our +own country. We were blankly ignorant of economics. We knew nothing of +that process of expropriation and the exploitation of labor which is +giving the world the Servile State. The very phrase was twenty years +ahead of us. We believed that an Englishman was a better thing in every +way than any other sort of man, that English literature, science and +philosophy were a shining and unapproachable light to all other peoples, +that our soldiers were better than all other soldiers and our sailors +than all other sailors. Such civilization and enterprise as existed in +Germany for instance we regarded as a shadow, an envious shadow, +following our own; it was still generally believed in those days that +German trade was concerned entirely with the dishonest imitation of our +unapproachable English goods. And as for the United States, well, the +United States though blessed with a strain of English blood, were +nevertheless "out of it," marooned in a continent of their own and--we +had to admit it--corrupt. + +Given such ignorance, you know, it wasn't by any means ignoble to be +patriotic, to dream of this propagandist Empire of ours spreading its +great peace and culture, its virtue and its amazing and unprecedented +honesty,--its honesty!--round the world. + + +Sec. 2 + +When I look and try to recover those early intentions of mine I am +astonished at the way in which I took them ready-made from the world +immediately about me. In some way I seem to have stopped looking--if +ever I had begun looking--at the heights and depths above and below that +immediate life. I seem to have regarded these profounder realities no +more during this phase of concentration than a cow in a field regards +the sky. My father's vestments, the Burnmore altar, the Harbury pulpit +and Mr. Siddons, stood between me and the idea of God, so that it needed +years and much bitter disillusionment before I discovered my need of it. +And I was as wanting in subtlety as in depth. We did no logic nor +philosophy at Harbury, and at Oxford it was not so much thought we came +to deal with as a mistranslation and vulgarization of ancient and alien +exercises in thinking. There is no such effective serum against +philosophy as the scholarly decoction of a dead philosopher. The +philosophical teaching of Oxford at the end of the last century was not +so much teaching as a protective inoculation. The stuff was administered +with a mysterious gilding of Greek and reverence, old Hegel's monstrous +web was the ultimate modernity, and Plato, that intellectual +journalist-artist, that bright, restless experimentalist in ideas, was +as it were the God of Wisdom, only a little less omniscient (and on the +whole more of a scholar and a gentleman) than the God of fact.... + +So I fell back upon the empire in my first attempts to unify my life. I +would serve the empire. That should be my total significance. There was +a Roman touch, I perceive, in this devotion. Just how or where I should +serve the empire I had not as yet determined. At times I thought of the +civil service, in my more ambitious moments I turned my thoughts to +politics. But it was doubtful whether my private expectations made the +last a reasonable possibility. + +I would serve the empire. + + +Sec. 3 + +And all the while that the first attempts to consolidate, to gather +one's life together into a purpose and a plan of campaign, are going on +upon the field of the young man's life, there come and go and come again +in the sky above him the threatening clouds, the ethereal cirrus, the +red dawns and glowing afternoons of that passion of love which is the +source and renewal of being. There are times when that solicitude +matters no more than a spring-time sky to a runner who wins towards the +post, there are times when its passionate urgency dominates every fact +in his world. + + +Sec. 4 + +One must have children and love them passionately before one realizes +the deep indignity of accident in life. It is not that I mind so much +when unexpected and disconcerting things happen to you or your sisters, +but that I mind before they happen. My dreams and anticipations of your +lives are all marred by my sense of the huge importance mere chance +encounters and incalculable necessities will play in them. And in +friendship and still more here, in this central business of love, +accident rules it seems to me almost altogether. What personalities you +will encounter in life, and have for a chief interest in life, is nearly +as much a matter of chance as the drift of a grain of pollen in the +pine forest. And once the light hazard has blown it has blown, never to +drive again. In other schoolrooms and nurseries, in slum living-rooms +perhaps or workhouse wards or palaces, round the other side of the +earth, in Canada or Russia or China, other little creatures are trying +their small limbs, clutching at things about them with infantile hands, +who someday will come into your life with a power and magic monstrous +and irrational and irresistible. They will break the limits of your +concentrating self, call you out to the service of beauty and the +service of the race, sound you to your highest and your lowest, give you +your chance to be godlike or filthy, divine or utterly ignoble, react +together with you upon the very core and essence of your being. These +unknowns are the substance of your fate. You will in extreme intimacy +love them, hate them, serve them, struggle with them, and in that +interaction the vital force in you and the substance of your days will +be spent. + +And who they may chance to be and their peculiar quality and effect is +haphazard, utterly beyond designing. + +Law and custom conspire with the natural circumstances of man to +exaggerate every consequence of this accumulating accident, and make it +definite and fatal.... + +I find it quite impossible now to recall the steps and stages by which +this power of sex invaded my life. It seems to me now that it began very +much as a gale begins, in catspaws upon the water and little rustlings +among the leaves, and then stillness and then a distant soughing again +and a pause, and then a wider and longer disturbance and so more and +more, with a gathering continuity, until at last the stars were hidden, +the heavens were hidden; all the heights and depths of life were +obscured by stormy impulses and passionate desires. I suppose that +quite at the first there were simple curiosities; no doubt they were +vivid at the time but they have left scarcely a trace; there were vague +first intimations of a peculiar excitement. I do remember more +distinctly phases when there was a going-out from myself towards these +things, these interests, and then a reaction of shame and concealment. + +And these memories were mixed up with others not sexual at all, and +particularly with the perception of beauty in things inanimate, with +lights seen at twilight and the tender mysteriousness of the dusk and +the confused disturbing scents of flowers in the evening and the +enigmatical serene animation of stars in the summer sky.... + +I think perhaps that my boyhood was exceptionally free from vulgarizing +influences in this direction. There were few novels in my father's house +and I neither saw nor read any plays until I was near manhood, so that I +thought naturally about love and not rather artificially round and about +love as so many imaginative young people are trained to do. I fell in +love once or twice while I was still quite a boy. These earliest +experiences rarely got beyond a sort of dumb awe, a vague, vast, +ineffectual desire for self-immolation. For a time I remember I +worshipped Lady Ladislaw with all my being. Then I talked to a girl in a +train--I forget upon what journey--but I remember very vividly her quick +color and a certain roguish smile. I spread my adoration at her feet, +fresh and frank. I wanted to write to her. Indeed I wanted to devote all +my being to her. I begged hard, but there was someone called Auntie who +had to be considered, an Atropos for that thread of romance. + +Then there was a photograph in my father's study of the Delphic Sibyl +from the Sistine Chapel, that for a time held my heart, and--Yes, there +was a girl in a tobacconist's shop in the Harbury High Street. Drawn by +an irresistible impulse I used to go and buy cigarettes--and sometimes +converse about the weather. But afterwards in solitude I would meditate +tremendous conversations and encounters with her. The cigarettes +increased the natural melancholy of my state and led to a reproof from +old Henson. Almost always I suppose there is that girl in the +tobacconist's shop.... + +I believe if I made an effort I could disinter some dozens of such +memories, more and more faded until the marginal ones would be +featureless and all but altogether effaced. As I look back at it now I +am struck by an absurd image; it is as if a fish nibbled at this bait +and then at that. + +Given but the slightest aid from accidental circumstances and any of +those slight attractions might have become a power to deflect all my +life. + +The day of decision arrived when, the Lady Mary Christian came smiling +out of the sunshine to me into the pavilion at Burnmore. With that the +phase of stirrings and intimations was over for ever in my life. All +those other impressions went then to the dusty lumber room from which I +now so slightingly disinter them. + + +Sec. 5 + +We five had all been playmates together. There were Lord Maxton, who was +killed at Paardeberg while I was in Ladysmith, he was my senior by +nearly a year, Philip, who is now Earl Ladislaw and who was about +eighteen months younger than I, Mary, my contemporary within eight days, +and Guy, whom we regarded as a baby and who was called, apparently on +account of some early linguistic efforts, "Brugglesmith." He did his +best to avenge his juniority as time passed on by an enormous length of +limb. I had more imagination than Maxton and was a good deal better +read, so that Mary and I dominated most of the games of Indians and +warfare and exploration in which we passed our long days together. When +the Christians were at Burnmore, and they usually spent three or four +months in the year there, I had a kind of standing invitation to be with +them. Sometimes there would also be two Christian cousins to swell our +party, and sometimes there would be a raid of the Fawney children with a +detestable governess who was perpetually vociferating reproaches, but +these latter were absent-minded, lax young persons, and we did not +greatly love them. + +It is curious how little I remember of Mary's childhood. All that has +happened between us since lies between that and my present self like +some luminous impenetrable mist. I know we liked each other, that I was +taller than she was and thought her legs unreasonably thin, and that +once when I knelt by accident on a dead stick she had brought into an +Indian camp we had made near the end of the west shrubbery, she flew at +me in a sudden fury, smacked my face, scratched me and had to be +suppressed, and was suppressed with extreme difficulty by the united +manhood of us three elder boys. Then it was I noted first the blazing +blueness of her eyes. She was light and very plucky, so that none of us +cared to climb against her, and she was as difficult to hold as an eel. +But all these traits and characteristics vanished when she was +transformed. + +For what seems now a long space of time I had not seen her or any of the +family except Philip; it was certainly a year or more, probably two; +Maxton was at a crammer's and I think the others must have been in +Canada with Lord Ladislaw. Then came some sort of estrangement between +him and his wife, and she returned with Mary and Guy to Burnmore and +stayed there all through the summer. + +I was in a state of transition between the infinitely great and the +infinitely little. I had just ceased to be that noble and potent being, +that almost statesmanlike personage, a sixth form boy at Harbury, and I +was going to be an Oxford undergraduate. Philip and I came down together +by the same train from Harbury, I shared the Burnmore dog-cart and +luggage cart, and he dropped me at the rectory. I was a long-limbed +youngster of seventeen, as tall as I am now, and fair, so fair that I +was still boyish-faced while most of my contemporaries and Philip (who +favored his father) were at least smudgy with moustaches. With the +head-master's valediction and the grave elder-brotherliness of old +Henson, and the shrill cheers of a little crowd of juniors still echoing +in my head, I very naturally came home in a mood of exalted gravity, and +I can still remember pacing up and down the oblong lawn behind the +rockery and the fig-tree wall with my father, talking of my outlook with +all the tremendous _savoir faire_ that was natural to my age, and noting +with a secret gratification that our shoulders were now on a level. No +doubt we were discussing Oxford and all that I was to do at Oxford; I +don't remember a word of our speech though I recall the exact tint of +its color and the distinctive feeling of our measured equal paces in the +sunshine.... + +I must have gone up to Burnmore House the following afternoon. I went up +alone and I was sent out through the little door at the end of the big +gallery into the garden. In those days Lady Ladislaw had made an Indian +pavilion under the tall trees at the east end of the house, and here I +found her with her cousin Helena Christian entertaining a mixture of +people, a carriageful from Hampton End, the two elder Fawneys and a man +in brown who had I think ridden over from Chestoxter Castle. Lady +Ladislaw welcomed me with ample graciousness--as though I was a +personage. "The children" she said were still at tennis, and as she +spoke I saw Guy, grown nearly beyond recognition and then a shining +being in white, very straight and graceful, with a big soft hat and +overshadowed eyes that smiled, come out from the hurried endearments of +the sunflakes under the shadows of the great chestnuts, into the glow of +summer light before the pavilion. + +"Steve arrived!" she cried, and waved a welcoming racquet. + +I do not remember what I said to her or what else she said or what +anyone said. But I believe I could paint every detail of her effect. I +know that when she came out of the brightness into the shadow of the +pavilion it was like a regal condescension, and I know that she was +wonderfully self-possessed and helpful with her mother's hospitalities, +and that I marvelled I had never before perceived the subtler sweetness +in the cadence of her voice. I seem also to remember a severe internal +struggle for my self-possession, and that I had to recall my exalted +position in the sixth form to save myself from becoming tongue-tied and +abashed and awkward and utterly shamed. + +You see she had her hair up and very prettily dressed, and those +aggressive lean legs of hers had vanished, and she was sheathed in +muslin that showed her the most delicately slender and beautiful of +young women. And she seemed so radiantly sure of herself! + +After our first greeting I do not think I spoke to her or looked at her +again throughout the meal. I took things that she handed me with an +appearance of supreme indifference, was politely attentive to the elder +Miss Fawney, and engaged with Lady Ladislaw and the horsey little man in +brown in a discussion of the possibility of mechanical vehicles upon the +high road. That was in the early nineties. We were all of opinion that +it was impossible to make a sufficiently light engine for the purpose. +Afterwards Mary confessed to me how she had been looking forward to our +meeting, and how snubbed I had made her feel.... + +Then a little later than this meeting in the pavilion, though I am not +clear now whether it was the same or some subsequent afternoon, we are +walking in the sunken garden, and great clouds of purple clematis and +some less lavish heliotrope-colored creeper, foam up against the ruddy +stone balustrading. Just in front of us a fountain gushes out of a +grotto of artificial stalagmite and bathes the pedestal of an absurd +little statuette of the God of Love. We are talking almost easily. She +looks sideways at my face, already with the quiet controlled +watchfulness of a woman interested in a man, she smiles and she talks of +flowers and sunshine, the Canadian winter--and with an abrupt +transition, of old times we've had together in the shrubbery and the +wilderness of bracken out beyond. She seems tremendously grown-up and +womanly to me. I am talking my best, and glad, and in a manner scared at +the thrill her newly discovered beauty gives me, and keeping up my +dignity and coherence with an effort. My attention is constantly being +distracted to note how prettily she moves, to wonder why it is I never +noticed the sweet fall, the faint delightful whisper of a lisp in her +voice before. + +We agree about the flowers and the sunshine and the Canadian +winter--about everything. "I think so often of those games we used to +invent," she declares. "So do I," I say, "so do I." And then with a +sudden boldness: "Once I broke a stick of yours, a rotten stick you +thought a sound one. Do you remember?" + +Then we laugh together and seem to approach across a painful, +unnecessary distance that has separated us. It vanishes for ever. "I +couldn't now," she says, "smack your face like that, Stephen." + +That seems to me a brilliantly daring and delightful thing for her to +say, and jolly of her to use my Christian name too! "I believe I +scratched," she adds. + +"You never scratched," I assert with warm conviction. "Never." + +"I did," she insists and I deny. "You couldn't." + +"We're growing up," she cries. "That's what has happened to us. We shall +never fight again with our hands and feet, never--until death do us +part." + +"For better, or worse," I say, with a sense of wit and enterprise beyond +all human precedent. + +"For richer, or poorer," she cries, taking up my challenge with a +lifting laugh in her voice. + +And then to make it all nothing again, she exclaims at the white lilies +that rise against masses of sweet bay along the further wall.... + +How plainly I can recall it all! How plainly and how brightly! As we +came up the broad steps at the further end towards the tennis lawn, she +turned suddenly upon me and with a novel assurance of command told me to +stand still. "_There_," she said with a hand out and seemed to survey me +with her chin up and her white neck at the level of my eyes. "Yes. A +whole step," she estimated, "and more, taller than I. You will look down +on me, Stephen, now, for all the rest of our days." + +"I shall always stand," I answered, "a step or so below you." + +"No," she said, "come up to the level. A girl should be smaller than a +man. You are a man, Stephen--almost.... You must be near six feet.... +Here's Guy with the box of balls." + +She flitted about the tennis court before me, playing with Philip +against Guy and myself. She punished some opening condescensions with a +wicked vigor--and presently Guy and I were straining every nerve to save +the set. She had a low close serve I remember that seemed perfectly +straightforward and simple, and was very difficult to return. + + +Sec. 6 + +All that golden summer on the threshold of my manhood was filled by +Mary. I loved her with the love of a boy and a man. Either I was with +Mary or I was hoping and planning to be with Mary or I was full of some +vivid new impression of her or some enigmatical speech, some pregnant +nothing, some glance or gesture engaged and perplexed my mind. In those +days I slept the profound sweet sleep of youth, but whenever that deep +flow broke towards the shallows, as I sank into it at night and came out +of it at morning, I passed through dreams of Mary to and from a world of +waking thought of her. + +There must have been days of friendly intercourse when it seemed we +talked nothings and wandered and meandered among subjects, but always we +had our eyes on one another. And afterwards I would spend long hours in +recalling and analyzing those nothings, questioning their nothingness, +making out of things too submerged and impalpable for the rough drags of +recollection, promises and indications. I would invent ingenious things +to say, things pushing out suddenly from nothingness to extreme +significance. I rehearsed a hundred declarations. + +It was easy for us to be very much together. We were very free that +summer and life was all leisure. Lady Ladislaw was busied with her own +concerns; she sometimes went away for two or three days leaving no one +but an attenuated governess with even the shadow of a claim to interfere +with Mary. Moreover she was used to seeing me with her children at +Burnmore; we were still in her eyes no more than children.... And also +perhaps she did not greatly mind if indeed we did a little fall in love +together. To her that may have seemed a very natural and slight and +transitory possibility.... + +One afternoon of warm shadows in the wood near the red-lacquered Chinese +bridge, we two were alone together and we fell silent. I was trembling +and full of a wild courage. I can feel now the exquisite surmise, the +doubt of that moment. Our eyes met. She looked up at me with an +unwonted touch of fear in her expression and I laid my hands on her. She +did not recoil, she stood mute with her lips pressed together, looking +at me steadfastly. I can feel that moment now as a tremendous +hesitation, blank and yet full of light and life, like a clear sky in +the moment before dawn.... + +She made a little move towards me. Impulsively, with no word said, we +kissed. + + +Sec. 7 + +I would like very much to give you a portrait of Mary as she was in +those days. Every portrait I ever had of her I burnt in the sincerity of +what was to have been our final separation, and now I have nothing of +her in my possession. I suppose that in the files of old illustrated +weeklies somewhere, a score of portraits must be findable. Yet +photographs have a queer quality of falsehood. They have no movement and +always there was a little movement about Mary just as there is always a +little scent about flowers. She was slender and graceful, so that she +seemed taller than she was, she had beautifully shaped arms and a +brightness in her face; it seemed to me always that there was light in +her face, more than the light that shone upon it. Her fair, very +slightly reddish hair--it was warm like Australian gold--flowed with a +sort of joyous bravery back from her low broad forehead; the color under +her delicate skin was bright and quick, and her mouth always smiled +faintly. There was a peculiar charm for me about her mouth, a +whimsicality, a sort of humorous resolve in the way in which the upper +lip fell upon the lower and in a faint obliquity that increased with +her quickening smile. She spoke with a very clear delicate intonation +that made one want to hear her speak again; she often said faintly +daring things, and when she did, she had that little catch in the +breath--of one who dares. She did not talk hastily; often before she +spoke came a brief grave pause. Her eyes were brightly blue except when +the spirit of mischief took her and then they became black, and there +was something about the upper and lower lids that made them not only the +prettiest but the sweetest and kindliest eyes in the world. And she +moved with a quiet rapidity, without any needless movements, to do +whatever she had a mind to do.... + +But how impossible it is to convey the personal charm of a human being. +I catalogue these things and it is as if she moved about silently behind +my stumbling enumeration and smiled at me still, with her eyes a little +darkened, mocking me. That phantom will never be gone from my mind. It +was all of these things and none of these things that made me hers, as I +have never been any other person's.... + +We grew up together. The girl of nineteen mingles in my memory with the +woman of twenty-five. + +Always we were equals, or if anything she was the better of us two. I +never made love to her in the commoner sense of the word, a sense in +which the woman is conceived of as shy, unawakened, younger, more +plastic, and the man as tempting, creating responses, persuading and +compelling. We made love to each other as youth should, we were friends +lit by a passion.... I think that is the best love. If I could wish your +future I would have you love someone neither older and stronger nor +younger and weaker than yourself. I would have you have neither a toy +nor a devotion, for the one makes the woman contemptible and the other +the man. There should be something almost sisterly between you. Love +neither a goddess nor a captive woman. But I would wish you a better +fate in your love than chanced to me. + +Mary was not only naturally far more quick-minded, more swiftly +understanding than I, but more widely educated. Mine was the stiff +limited education of the English public school and university; I could +not speak and read and think French and German as she could for all that +I had a pedantic knowledge of the older forms of those tongues; and the +classics and mathematics upon which I had spent the substance of my +years were indeed of little use to me, have never been of any real use +to me, they were ladders too clumsy to carry about and too short to +reach anything. My general ideas came from the newspapers and the +reviews. She on the other hand had read much, had heard no end of good +conversation, the conversation of people who mattered, had thought for +herself and had picked the brains of her brothers. Her mother had let +her read whatever books she liked, partly because she believed that was +the proper thing to do, and partly because it was so much less trouble +to be liberal in such things. + +We had the gravest conversations. + +I do not remember that we talked much of love, though we were very much +in love. We kissed; sometimes greatly daring we walked hand in hand; +once I took her in my arms and carried her over a swampy place beyond +the Killing Wood, and held her closely to me; that was a great event +between us; but we were shy of one another, shy even of very intimate +words; and a thousand daring and beautiful things I dreamt of saying to +her went unsaid. I do not remember any endearing names from that time. +But we jested and shared our humors, shaped our developing ideas in +quaint forms to amuse one another and talked--as young men talk +together. + +We talked of religion; I think she was the first person to thaw the +private silences that had kept me bound in these matters even from +myself for years. I can still recall her face, a little flushed and +coming nearer to mine after avowals and comparisons. "But Stephen," she +says; "if none of these things are really true, why do they keep on +telling them to us? What is true? What are we for? What is Everything +for?" + +I remember the awkwardness I felt at these indelicate thrusts into +topics I had come to regard as forbidden. + +"I suppose there's a sort of truth in them," I said, and then more +Siddonsesquely: "endless people wiser than we are----" + +"Yes," she said. "But that doesn't matter to us. Endless people wiser +than we are have said one thing, and endless people wiser than we are +have said exactly the opposite. It's _we_ who have to understand--for +ourselves.... We don't understand, Stephen." + +I was forced to a choice between faith and denial. But I parried with +questions. "Don't you," I asked, "feel there is a God?" + +She hesitated. "There is something--something very beautiful," she said +and stopped as if her breath had gone. "That is all I know, Stephen...." + +And I remember too that we talked endlessly about the things I was to do +in the world. I do not remember that we talked about the things she was +to do, by some sort of instinct and some sort of dexterity she evaded +that, from the very first she had reserves from me, but my career and +purpose became as it were the form in which we discussed all the +purposes of life. I became Man in her imagination, the protagonist of +the world. At first I displayed the modest worthy desire for respectable +service that Harbury had taught me, but her clear, sceptical little +voice pierced and tore all those pretences to shreds. "Do some decent +public work," I said, or some such phrase. + +"But is that All you want?" I hear her asking. "Is that All you want?" + +I lay prone upon the turf and dug up a root of grass with my penknife. +"Before I met you it was," I said. + +"And now?" + +"I want you." + +"I'm nothing to want. I want you to want all the world.... _Why +shouldn't you?_" + +I think I must have talked of the greatness of serving the empire. "Yes, +but splendidly," she insisted. "Not doing little things for other +people--who aren't doing anything at all. I want you to conquer people +and lead people.... When I see you, Stephen, sometimes--I almost wish I +were a man. In order to be able to do all the things that you are going +to do." + +"For you," I said, "for you." + +I stretched out my hand for hers, and my gesture went disregarded. + +She sat rather crouched together with her eyes gazing far away across +the great spaces of the park. + +"That is what women are for," she said. "To make men see how splendid +life can be. To lift them up--out of a sort of timid grubbiness----" She +turned upon me suddenly. "Stephen," she said, "promise me. Whatever you +become, you promise and swear here and now never to be grey and grubby, +never to be humpy and snuffy, never to be respectable and modest and +dull and a little fat, like--like everybody. Ever." + +"I swear," I said. + +"By me." + +"By you. No book to kiss! Please, give me your hand." + + +Sec. 8 + +All through that summer we saw much of each other. I was up at the House +perhaps every other day; we young people were supposed to be all in a +company together down by the tennis lawns, but indeed we dispersed and +came and went by a kind of tacit understanding, Guy and Philip each with +one of the Fawney girls and I with Mary. I put all sorts of +constructions upon the freedom I was given with her, but I perceive now +that we still seemed scarcely more than children to Lady Ladislaw, and +that the idea of our marriage was as inconceivable to her as if we had +been brother and sister. Matrimonially I was as impossible as one of the +stable boys. All the money I could hope to earn for years to come would +not have sufficed even to buy Mary clothes. But as yet we thought little +of matters so remote, glad in our wonderful new discovery of love, and +when at last I went off to Oxford, albeit the parting moved us to much +tenderness and vows and embraces, I had no suspicion that never more in +all our lives would Mary and I meet freely and gladly without +restriction. Yet so it was. From that day came restraints and +difficulties; the shadow of furtiveness fell between us; our +correspondence had to be concealed. + +I went to Oxford as one goes into exile; she to London. I would post to +her so that the letters reached Landor House before lunch time when the +sun of Lady Ladislaw came over the horizon, but indeed as yet no one was +watching her letters. Afterwards as she moved about she gave me other +instructions, and for the most part I wrote to her in envelopes +addressed for her by one of the Fawney girls, who was under her spell +and made no enquiry for what purpose these envelopes were needed. + +To me of course Mary wrote without restraint. All her letters to me were +destroyed after our crisis, but some of mine to her she kept for many +years; at last they came back to me so that I have them now. And for all +their occasional cheapness and crudity, I do not find anything in them +to be ashamed of. They reflect, they are chiefly concerned with that +search for a career of fine service which was then the chief +preoccupation of my mind, the bias is all to a large imperialism, but it +is manifest that already the first ripples of a rising tide of criticism +against the imperialist movement had reached and were exercising me. In +one letter I am explaining that imperialism is not a mere +aggressiveness, but the establishment of peace and order throughout half +the world. "We may never withdraw," I wrote with all the confidence of a +Foreign Secretary, "from all these great territories of ours, but we +shall stay only to raise their peoples ultimately to an equal +citizenship with ourselves." And then in the same letter: "and if I do +not devote myself to the Empire what else is there that gives anything +like the same opportunity of a purpose in life." I find myself in +another tolerantly disposed to "accept socialism," but manifestly +hostile to "the narrow mental habits of the socialists." The large note +of youth! And in another I am clearly very proud and excited and a +little mock-modest over the success of my first two speeches in the +Union. + +On the whole I like the rather boyish, tremendously serious young man of +those letters. An egotist, of course, but what youth was ever anything +else? I may write that much freely now, for by this time he is almost as +much outside my personality as you or my father. He is the young +Stratton, one of a line. I like his gravity; if youth is not grave with +all the great spectacle of life opening at its feet, then surely no age +need be grave. I love and envy his simplicity and honesty. His sham +modesty and so forth are so translucent as scarcely to matter. It is +clear I was opening my heart to myself as I opened it to Mary. I wasn't +acting to her. I meant what I said. And as I remember her answers she +took much the same high tone with me, though her style of writing was +far lighter than mine, more easy and witty and less continuous. She +flashed and flickered. As for confessed love-making there is very +little,--I find at the end of one of my notes after the signature, "I +love you, I love you." And she was even more restrained. Such little +phrases as "Dear Stevenage"--that was one of her odd names for me--"I +wish you were here," or "Dear, _dear_ Stevenage," were epistolary +events, and I would re-read the blessed wonderful outbreak a hundred +times.... + +Our separation lengthened. There was a queer detached unexpected +meeting in London in December, for some afternoon gathering. I was shy +and the more disconcerted because she was in winter town clothes that +made her seem strange and changed. Then came the devastating intimation +that all through the next summer the Ladislaws were to be in Scotland. + +I did my boyish utmost to get to Scotland. They were at Lankart near +Invermoriston, and the nearest thing I could contrive was to join a +reading party in Skye, a reading party of older men who manifestly had +no great desire for me. For more than a year we never met at all, and +all sorts of new things happened to us both. I perceived they happened +to me, but I did not think they happened to her. Of course we changed. +Of course in a measure and relatively we forgot. Of course there were +weeks when we never thought of each other at all. Then would come phases +of hunger. I remember a little note of hers. "Oh Stevenage," it was +scrawled, "perhaps next Easter!" Next Easter was an aching desolation. +The blinds of Burnmore House remained drawn; the place was empty except +for three old servants on board-wages. The Christians went instead to +the Canary Isles, following some occult impulse of Lady Ladislaw's. Lord +Ladislaw spent the winter in Italy. + +What an empty useless beauty the great Park possessed during those +seasons of intermission! There were a score of places in it we had made +our own.... + +Her letters to Oxford would cease for weeks, and suddenly revive and +become frequent. Now and then would come a love-letter that seemed to +shine like stars as I read it; for the most part they were low-pitched, +friendly or humorous letters in a roundish girlish writing that was +maturing into a squarely characteristic hand. My letters to her too I +suppose varied as greatly. We began to be used to living so apart. There +were weeks of silence.... + +Yet always when I thought of my life as a whole, Mary ruled it. With her +alone I had talked of my possible work and purpose; to her alone had I +confessed to ambitions beyond such modest worthiness as a public school +drills us to affect.... + +Then the whole sky of my life lit up again with a strange light of +excitement and hope. I had a note, glad and serenely friendly, to say +they were to spend all the summer at Burnmore. + +I remember how I handled and scrutinized that letter, seeking for some +intimation that our former intimacy was still alive. We were to meet. +How should we meet? How would she look at me? What would she think of +me? + + +Sec. 9 + +Of course it was all different. Our first encounter in this new phase +had a quality of extreme disillusionment. The warm living creature, who +would whisper, who would kiss with wonderful lips, who would say strange +daring things, who had soft hair one might touch with a thrilling and +worshipful hand, who changed one at a word or a look into a God of +pride, became as if she had been no more than a dream. A self-possessed +young aristocrat in white and brown glanced at me from amidst a group of +brilliant people on the terrace, nodded as it seemed quite carelessly +in acknowledgment of my salutation, and resumed her confident +conversation with a tall stooping man, no less a person than Evesham, +the Prime Minister. He was lunching at Burnmore on his way across +country to the Rileys. I heard that dear laugh of hers, as ready and +easy as when she laughed with me. I had not heard it for nearly three +years--nor any sound that had its sweetness. "But Mr. Evesham," she was +saying, "nowadays we don't believe that sort of thing----" + +"There are a lot of things still for you to believe," says Mr. Evesham +beaming. "A lot of things! One's capacity increases. It grows with +exercise. Justin will bear me out." + +Beyond her stood an undersized, brown-clad middle-aged man with a big +head, a dark face and expressive brown eyes fixed now in unrestrained +admiration on Mary's laughing face. This then was Justin, the incredibly +rich and powerful, whose comprehensive operations could make and break a +thousand fortunes in a day. He answered Evesham carelessly, with his +gaze still on Mary, and in a voice too low for my straining ears. There +was some woman in the group also, but she has left nothing upon my mind +whatever except an effect of black and a very decorative green sunshade. +She greeted Justin's remark, I remember, with the little yelp of +laughter that characterized that set. I think too there was someone else +in the group; but I cannot clearly recall who.... + +Presently as I and Philip made unreal conversation together I saw Mary +disengage herself and come towards us. It was as if a princess came +towards a beggar. Absurd are the changes of phase between women and +men. A year or so ago and all of us had been but "the children" +together; now here were I and Philip mere youths still, nobodies, echoes +and aspirations, crude promises at the best, and here was Mary in full +flower, as glorious and central as the Hampton Court azaleas in spring. + +"And this is Stephen," she said, aglow with happy confidence. + +I made no memorable reply, and there was a little pause thick with mute +questionings. + +"After lunch," she said with her eye on mine, "I am going to measure +against you on the steps. I'd hoped--when you weren't looking--I might +creep up----" + +"I've taken no advantage," I said. + +"You've kept your lead." + +Justin had followed her towards us, and now held out a hand to Philip. +"Well, Philip my boy," he said, and defined our places. Philip made some +introductory gesture with a word or so towards me. Justin glanced at me +as one might glance at someone's new dog, gave an expressionless nod to +my stiff movement of recognition, and addressed himself at once to Mary. + +"Lady Mary," he said, "I've wanted to tell you----" + +I caught her quick eye for a moment and knew she had more to say to me, +but neither she nor I had the skill and alacrity to get that said. + +"I wanted to tell you," said Justin, "I've found a little Japanese who's +done exactly what you wanted with that group of dwarf maples." + +She clearly didn't understand. + +"But what did I want, Mr. Justin?" she asked. + +"Don't say that you forget?" cried Justin. "Oh don't tell me you +forget! You wanted a little exact copy of a Japanese house---- I've had +it done. Beneath the trees...." + +"And so you're back in Burnmore, Mr. Stratton," said Lady Ladislaw +intervening between me and their duologue. And I never knew how pleased +Mary was with this faithful realization of her passing and forgotten +fancy. My hostess greeted me warmly and pressed my hand, smiled +mechanically and looked over my shoulder all the while to Mr. Evesham +and her company generally, and then came the deep uproar of a gong from +the house and we were all moving in groups and couples luncheonward. + +Justin walked with Lady Mary, and she was I saw an inch taller than his +squat solidity. A tall lady in rose-pink had taken possession of Guy, +Evesham and Lady Ladislaw made the two centres of a straggling group who +were bandying recondite political allusions. Then came one or two +couples and trios with nothing very much to say and active ears. Philip +and I brought up the rear silently and in all humility. Even young Guy +had gone over our heads. I was too full of a stupendous realization for +any words. Of course, during those years, she had been doing--no end of +things! And while I had been just drudging with lectures and books and +theorizing about the Empire and what I could do with it, and taking +exercise, she had learnt, it seemed--the World. + + +Sec. 10 + +Lunch was in the great dining-room. There was a big table and two +smaller ones; we sat down anyhow, but the first comers had grouped +themselves about Lady Ladislaw and Evesham and Justin and Mary in a +central orb, and I had to drift perforce to one of the satellites. I +secured a seat whence I could get a glimpse ever and again over Justin's +assiduous shoulders of a delicate profile, and I found myself +immediately engaged in answering the innumerable impossible questions of +Lady Viping, the widow of terrible old Sir Joshua, that devastating +divorce court judge who didn't believe in divorces. His domestic +confidences had I think corrupted her mind altogether. She cared for +nothing but evidence. She was a rustling, incessant, sandy, peering +woman with a lorgnette and rapid, confidential lisping undertones, and +she wanted to know who everybody was and how they were related. This +kept us turning towards the other tables--and when my information failed +she would call upon Sir Godfrey Klavier, who was explaining, rather +testily on account of her interruptions, to Philip Christian and a +little lady in black and the elder Fawney girl just why he didn't +believe Lady Ladislaw's new golf course would succeed. There were two or +three other casual people at our table; one of the Roden girls, a young +guardsman and, I think, some other man whom I don't clearly remember. + +"And so that's the great Mr. Justin," rustled Lady Viping and stared +across me. + +(I saw Evesham, leaning rather over the table to point some remark at +Mary, and noted her lips part to reply.) + +"What _is_ the word?" insisted Lady Viping like a fly in my ear. + +I turned on her guiltily. + +"Whether it's brachy," said Lady Viping, "or whether it's dolly--_I_ can +never remember?" + +I guessed she was talking of Justin's head. "Oh!--brachycephalic," I +said. + +I had lost Mary's answer. + +"They say he's a woman hater," said Lady Viping. "It hardly looks like +it now, does it?" + +"Who?" I asked. "What?--oh!--Justin." + +"The great financial cannibal. Suppose she turned him into a +philanthropist! Stranger things have happened. Look!--now. The man's +face is positively tender." + +I hated looking, and I could not help but look. It was as if this +detestable old woman was dragging me down and down, down far below all +dignity to her own level of a peeping observer. Justin was saying +something to Mary in an undertone, something that made her glance up +swiftly and at me before she answered, and there I was with my head side +by side with those quivering dyed curls, that flighty black bonnet, that +remorseless observant lorgnette. I could have sworn aloud at the +hopeless indignity of my pose. + +I saw Mary color quickly before I looked away. + +"Charming, isn't she?" said Lady Viping, and I discovered those infernal +glasses were for a moment honoring me. They shut with a click. "Ham," +said Lady Viping. "I told him no ham--and now I remember--I like ham. Or +rather I like spinach. I forgot the spinach. One has the ham for the +spinach,--don't you think? Yes,--tell him. She's a perfect Dresden +ornament, Mr. Stratton. She's adorable ... (lorgnette and search for +fresh topics). Who is the dark lady with the slight moustache--sitting +there next to Guy? Sir Godfrey, who is the dark lady? No, I don't mean +Mary Fitton. Over there! Mrs. Roperstone. Ooh. _The_ Mrs. Roperstone. +(Renewed lorgnette and click.) Yes--ham. With spinach. A lot of spinach. +There's Mr. Evesham laughing again. He's greatly amused. Unusual for him +to laugh twice. At least, aloud. (Rustle and adjustment of lorgnette.) +Mr. Stratton, don't you think?--exactly like a little shepherdess. Only +I can't say I think Mr. Justin is like a shepherd. On the whole, more +like a large cloisonne jar. Now Guy would do. As a pair they're +beautiful. Pity they're brother and sister. Curious how that boy manages +to be big and yet delicate. H'm. Mixed mantel ornaments. Sir Godfrey, +how old _is_ Mrs. Roperstone?... You never know on principle. I think I +shall make Mr. Stratton guess. What do you think, Mr. Stratton?... You +never guess on principle! Well, we're all very high principled. (Fresh +exploratory movements of the lorgnette.) Mr. Stratton, tell me; is that +little peaked man near Lady Ladislaw Mr. Roperstone? I thought as much!" + +All this chatter is mixed up in my mind with an unusual sense of +hovering attentive menservants, who seemed all of them to my heated +imagination to be watching me (and particularly one clean-shaven, +reddish-haired, full-faced young man) lest I looked too much at the Lady +Mary Christian. Of course they were merely watching our plates and +glasses, but my nerves and temper were now in such a state that if my +man went off to the buffet to get Sir Godfrey the pickled walnuts, I +fancied he went to report the progress of my infatuation, and if a +strange face appeared with the cider cup, that this was a new observer +come to mark the revelation of my behavior. My food embarrassed me. I +found hidden meanings in the talk of the Roden girl and her guardsman, +and an ironical discovery in Sir Godfrey's eye.... + +I felt indignant with Mary. I felt she disowned me and deserted me and +repudiated me, that she ought in some manner to have recognized me. I +gave her no credit for her speech to me before the lunch, or her promise +to measure against me again. I blinded myself to all her frank +friendliness. I felt she ought not to notice Justin, ought not to answer +him.... + +Clearly she liked those men to flatter her, she liked it.... + +I remember too, so that I must have noted it and felt it then as a thing +perceived for the first time, the large dignity of the room, the tall +windows and splendid rich curtains, the darkened Hoppners upon the +walls. I noted too the quality and abundance of the table things, and +there were grapes and peaches, strawberries, cherries and green almonds, +piled lavishly above the waiting dessert plates with the golden knives +and forks, upon a table in the sunshine of the great bay. The very +sunshine filtered through the tall narrow panes from the great chestnut +trees without, seemed of a different quality from the common light of +day.... + +I felt like a poor relation. I sympathized with Anarchists. We had come +out of the Park now finally, both Mary and I--into this.... + +"Mr. Stratton I am sure agrees with me." + +For a time I had been marooned conversationally, and Lady Viping had +engaged Sir Godfrey. Evidently he was refractory and she was back at me. + +"Look at it now in profile," she said, and directed me once more to that +unendurable grouping. Justin again! + +"It's a heavy face," I said. + +"It's a powerful face. I wouldn't care anyhow to be up against it--as +people say." And the lorgnette shut with a click. "What is this? +Peaches!--Yes, and give me some cream." ... + +I hovered long for that measuring I had been promised on the steps, but +either Mary had forgotten or she deemed it wiser to forget. + + +Sec. 11 + +I took my leave of Lady Ladislaw when the departure of Evesham broke the +party into dispersing fragments. I started down the drive towards the +rectory and then vaulted the railings by the paddock and struck across +beyond the mere. I could not go home with the immense burthen of thought +and new ideas and emotions that had come upon me. I felt confused and +shattered to incoherence by the new quality of Mary's atmosphere. I +turned my steps towards the wilder, lonelier part of the park beyond the +Killing Wood, and lay down in a wide space of grass between two +divergent thickets of bracken, and remained there for a very long time. + +There it was in the park that for the first time I pitted myself against +life upon a definite issue, and prepared my first experience of defeat. +"I _will_ have her," I said, hammering at the turf with my fist. "I +will. I do not care if I give all my life...." + +Then I lay still and bit the sweetness out of joints of grass, and +presently thought and planned. + + + + +CHAPTER THE FOURTH + +THE MARRIAGE OF THE LADY MARY CHRISTIAN + + +Sec. 1 + +For three or four days I could get no word with Mary. I could not now +come and go as I had been able to do in the days when we were still "the +children." I could not work, I could not rest, I prowled as near as I +could to Burnmore House hoping for some glimpse of her, waiting for the +moment when I could decently present myself again at the house. + +When at last I called, Justin had gone and things had some flavor of the +ancient time. Lady Ladislaw received me with an airy intimacy, all the +careful responsibility of her luncheon party manner thrown aside. "And +how goes Cambridge?" she sang, sailing through the great saloon towards +me, and I thought that for the occasion Cambridge instead of Oxford +would serve sufficiently well. "You'll find them all at tennis," said +Lady Ladislaw, and waved me on to the gardens. There I found all four of +them and had to wait until their set was finished. + +"Mary," I said at the first chance, "are we never to talk again?" + +"It's all different," she said. + +"I am dying to talk to you--as we used to talk." + +"And I--Stevenage. But---- You see?" + +"Next time I come," I said, "I shall bring you a letter. There is so +much----" + +"No," she said. "Can't you get up in the morning? Very early--five or +six. No one is up until ever so late." + +"I'd stay up all night." + +"Serve!" said Maxton, who was playing the two of us and had stopped I +think to tighten a shoe. + +Things conspired against any more intimacy for a time. But we got our +moment on the way to tea. She glanced back at Philip, who was loosening +the net, and then forward to estimate the distance of Maxton and Guy. +"They're all three going," she said, "after Tuesday. Then--before six." + +"Wednesday?" + +"Yes." + +"Suppose after all," she threw out, "I can't come." + +"Fortunes of war." + +"If I can't come one morning I may come another," she spoke hastily, and +I perceived that Guy and Maxton had turned and were waiting for us. + +"You know the old Ice House?" + +"Towards the gardens?" + +"Yes. On the further side. Don't come by the road, come across by the +end of the mere. Lie in the bracken until you see me coming.... I've not +played tennis a dozen times this year. Not half a dozen." + +This last was for the boys. + +"You've played twenty times at least since you've been here," said Guy, +with the simple bluntness of a brother. "I'm certain." + + +Sec. 2 + +To this day a dewy morning in late August brings back the thought of +Mary and those stolen meetings. I have the minutest recollection of the +misty bloom upon the turf, and the ragged, filmy carpet of gossamer on +either hand, of the warm wetness of every little blade and blossom and +of the little scraps and seeds of grass upon my soaking and discolored +boots. Our footsteps were dark green upon the dew-grey grass. And I feel +the same hungry freshness again at the thought of those stolen meetings. +Presently came the sunrise, blinding, warming, dew-dispelling arrows of +gold smiting through the tree stems, a flood of light foaming over the +bracken and gilding the under sides of the branches. Everything is +different and distinctive in those opening hours; everything has a +different value from what it has by day. All the little things upon the +ground, fallen branches, tussocks, wood-piles, have a peculiar intensity +and importance, seem magnified, because of the length of their shadows +in the slanting rays, and all the great trees seem lifted above the +light and merged with the sky. And at last, a cool grey outline against +the blaze and with a glancing iridescent halo about her, comes Mary, +flitting, adventurous, friendly, wonderful. + +"Oh Stevenage!" she cries, "to see you again!" + +We each hold out both our hands and clasp and hesitate and rather shyly +kiss. + +"Come!" she says, "we can talk for an hour. It's still not six. And +there is a fallen branch where we can sit and put our feet out of the +wet. Oh! it's so good to be out of things again--clean out of +things--with you. Look! there is a stag watching us." + +"You're glad to be with me?" I ask, jealous of the very sunrise. + +"I am always glad," she says, "to be with you. Why don't we always get +up at dawn, Stevenage, every day of our lives?" + +We go rustling through the grass to the prostrate timber she has chosen. +(I can remember even the thin bracelet on the wrist of the hand that +lifted her skirt.) I help her to clamber into a comfortable fork from +which her feet can swing.... + +Such fragments as this are as bright, as undimmed, as if we had met this +morning. But then comes our conversation, and that I find vague and +irregularly obliterated. But I think I must have urged her to say she +loved me, and beat about the bush of that declaration, too fearful to +put my heart's wish to the issue, that she would promise to wait three +years for me--until I could prove it was not madness for her to marry +me. "I have been thinking of it all night and every night since I have +been here," I said. "Somehow I will do something. In some way--I will +get hold of things. Believe me!--with all my strength." + +I was standing between the forking boughs, and she was looking down upon +me. + +"Stephen dear," she said, "dear, dear Boy; I have never wanted to kiss +you so much in all my life. Dear, come close to me." + +She bent her fresh young face down to mine, her fingers were in my hair. + +"My Knight," she whispered close to me. "My beautiful young Knight." + +I whispered back and touched her dew fresh lips.... + +"And tell me what you would do to conquer the world for me?" she asked. + +I cannot remember now a word of all the vague threatenings against the +sundering universe with which I replied. Her hand was on my shoulder as +she listened.... + +But I do know that even on this first morning she left me with a sense +of beautiful unreality, of having dipped for some precious moments into +heroic gossamer. All my world subjugation seemed already as evanescent +as the morning haze and the vanishing dews as I stood, a little hidden +in the shadows of the Killing Wood and ready to plunge back at the first +hint of an observer, and watched her slender whiteness flit +circumspectly towards the house. + + +Sec. 3 + +Our next three or four meetings are not so clearly defined. We did not +meet every morning for fear that her early rising should seem too +punctual to be no more than a chance impulse, nor did we go to the same +place. But there stands out very clearly a conversation in a different +mood. We had met at the sham ruins at the far end of the great +shrubbery, a huge shattered Corinthian portico of rather damaged stucco +giving wide views of the hills towards Alfridsham between its three +erect pillars, and affording a dry seat upon its fallen ones. It was an +overcast morning, I remember probably the hour was earlier; a kind of +twilight clearness made the world seem strange and the bushes and trees +between us and the house very heavy and still and dark. And we were at +cross purpose, for now it was becoming clear to me that Mary did not +mean to marry me, that she dreaded making any promise to me for the +future, that all the heroic common cause I wanted with her, was quite +alien to her dreams. + +"But Mary," I said looking at her colorless delicate face, "don't you +love me? Don't you want me?" + +"You know I love you, Stevenage," she said. "You know." + +"But if two people love one another, they want to be always together, +they want to belong to each other." + +She looked at me with her face very intent upon her meaning. +"Stevenage," she said after one of those steadfast pauses of hers, "I +want to belong to myself." + +"Naturally," I said with an air of disposing of an argument, and then +paused. + +"Why should one have to tie oneself always to one other human being?" +she asked. "Why must it be like that?" + +I do not remember how I tried to meet this extraordinary idea. "One +loves," I may have said. The subtle scepticisms of her mind went +altogether beyond my habits of thinking; it had never occurred to me +that there was any other way of living except in these voluntary and +involuntary mutual servitudes in which men and women live and die. "If +you love me," I urged, "if you love me---- I want nothing better in all +my life but to love and serve and keep you and make you happy." + +She surveyed me and weighed my words against her own. + +"I love meeting you," she said. "I love your going because it means +that afterwards you will come again. I love this--this slipping out to +you. But up there, there is a room in the house that is _my_ +place--me--my own. Nobody follows me there. I want to go on living, +Stevenage, just as I am living now. I don't want to become someone's +certain possession, to be just usual and familiar to anyone. No, not +even to you." + +"But if you love," I cried. + +"To you least of all. Don't you see?--I want to be wonderful to you, +Stevenage, more than to anyone. I want--I want always to make your heart +beat faster. I want always to be coming to you with my own heart beating +faster. Always and always I want it to be like that. Just as it has been +on these mornings. It has been beautiful--altogether beautiful." + +"Yes," I said, rather helplessly, and struggled with great issues I had +never faced before. + +"It isn't," I said, "how people live." + +"It is how I want to live," said Mary. + +"It isn't the way life goes." + +"I want it to be. Why shouldn't it be? Why at any rate shouldn't it be +for me?" + + +Sec. 4 + +I made some desperate schemes to grow suddenly rich and powerful, and I +learnt for the first time my true economic value. Already my father and +I had been discussing my prospects in life and he had been finding me +vague and difficult. I was full of large political intentions, but so +far I had made no definite plans for a living that would render my +political ambitions possible. It was becoming apparent to me that for a +poor man in England, the only possible route to political distinction is +the bar, and I was doing my best to reconcile myself to the years of +waiting and practice that would have to precede my political debut. + +My father disliked the law. And I do not think it reconciled him to the +idea of my being a barrister that afterwards I hoped to become a +politician. "It isn't in our temperament, Stephen," he said. "It's a +pushing, bullying, cramming, base life. I don't see you succeeding +there, and I don't see myself rejoicing even if you do succeed. You have +to shout, and Strattons don't shout; you have to be smart and tricky and +there's never been a smart and tricky Stratton yet; you have to snatch +opportunities and get the better of the people and misrepresent the +realities of every case you touch. You're a paid misrepresenter. They +say you'll get a fellowship, Stephen. Why not stay up, and do some +thinking for a year or so. There'll be enough to keep you. Write a +little." + +"The bar," I said, "is only a means to an end." + +"If you succeed." + +"If I succeed. One has to take the chances of life everywhere." + +"And what is the end?" + +"Constructive statesmanship." + +"Not in that way," said my father, pouring himself a second glass of +port, and turned over my high-sounding phrase with a faint hint of +distaste; "Constructive Statesmanship. No. Once a barrister always a +barrister. You'll only be a party politician.... Vulgar men.... +Vulgar.... If you succeed that is...." + +He criticized me but he did not oppose me, and already in the beginning +of the summer we had settled that I should be called to the bar. + +Now suddenly I wanted to go back upon all these determinations. I began +to demand in the intellectual slang of the time "more actuality," and to +amaze my father with talk about empire makers and the greatness of Lord +Strathcona and Cecil Rhodes. Why, I asked, shouldn't I travel for a year +in search of opportunity? At Oxford I had made acquaintance with a son +of Pramley's, the big Mexican and Borneo man, and to him I wrote, +apropos of a half-forgotten midnight talk in the rooms of some common +friend. He wrote back with the suggestion that I should go and talk to +his father, and I tore myself away from Mary and went up to see that +great exploiter of undeveloped possibilities and have one of the most +illuminating and humiliating conversations in the world. He was, I +remember, a little pale-complexioned, slow-speaking man with a humorous +blue eye, a faint, just perceptible northern accent and a trick of +keeping silent for a moment after you had finished speaking, and he +talked to me as one might talk to a child of eight who wanted to know +how one could become a commander-in-chief. His son had evidently +emphasized my Union reputation, and he would have been quite willing, I +perceived, to give me employment if I had displayed the slightest +intelligence or ability in any utilizable direction. But quite +dreadfully he sounded my equipment with me and showed me the emptiness +of my stores. + +"You want some way that gives you a chance of growing rich rapidly," he +said. "Aye. It's not a bad idea. But there's others, you know, have +tried that game before ye. + +"You don't want riches just for riches but for an end. Aye! Aye! It's +the spending attracts ye. You'd not have me think you'd the sin of +avarice. I'm clear on that about ye. + +"Well," he explained, "it's all one of three things we do, you +know--prospecting and forestalling and--just stealing, and the only +respectable way is prospecting. You'd prefer the respectable way, I +suppose?... I knew ye would. Well, let's see what chances ye have." + +And he began to probe my practical knowledge. It was like an unfit man +stripping for a medical inspection. Did I know anything of oil, of +rubber, of sugar, of substances generally, had I studied mineralogy or +geology, had I any ideas of industrial processes, of technical +chemistry, of rare minerals, of labor problems and the handling of alien +labor, of the economics of railway management or of camping out in dry, +thinly populated countries, or again could I maybe speak Spanish or +Italian or Russian? The little dons who career about Oxford afoot and +awheel, wearing old gowns and mortarboards, giggling over Spooner's +latest, and being tremendous "characters" in the intervals of concocting +the ruling-class mind, had turned my mind away from such matters +altogether. I had left that sort of thing to Germans and east-end Jews +and young men from the upper-grade board schools of Sheffield and +Birmingham. I was made to realize appalling wildernesses of +ignorance.... + +"You see," said old Pramley, "you don't seem to know anything whatever. +It's a deeficulty. It'll stand in your way a little now, though no +doubt you'd be quick at the uptake--after all the education they've +given ye.... But it stands in your way, if ye think of setting out to do +something large and effective, just immediately...." + +Moreover it came out, I forget now how, that I hadn't clearly grasped +the difference between cumulative and non-cumulative preference +shares.... + +I remember too how I dined alone that evening in a mood between frantic +exasperation and utter abasement in the window of the Mediated +Universities Club, of which I was a junior member under the +undergraduate rule. And I lay awake all night in one of the austere club +bedrooms, saying to old Pramley a number of extremely able and +penetrating things that had unhappily not occurred to me during the +progress of our interview. I didn't go back to Burnmore for several +days. I had set my heart on achieving something, on returning with some +earnest of the great attack I was to make upon the separating great +world between myself and Mary. I am far enough off now from that angry +and passionate youngster to smile at the thought that my subjugation of +things in general and high finance in particular took at last the form +of proposing to go into the office of Bean, Medhurst, Stockton, and +Schnadhorst upon half commission terms. I was awaiting my father's reply +to this startling new suggestion when I got a telegram from Mary. "We +are going to Scotland unexpectedly. Come down and see me." I went home +instantly, and told my father I had come to talk things over with him. A +note from Mary lay upon the hall-table as I came in and encountered my +father. "I thought it better to come down to you," I said with my +glance roving to find that, and then I met his eye. It wasn't altogether +an unkindly eye, but I winced dishonestly. + +"Talking is better for all sorts of things," said my father, and wanted +to know if the weather had been as hot in London as it had been in +Burnmore. + +Mary's note was in pencil, scribbled hastily. I was to wait after eleven +that night near the great rose bushes behind the pavilion. Long before +eleven I was there, on a seat in a thick shadow looking across great +lakes of moonlight towards the phantom statuary of the Italianate garden +and the dark laurels that partly masked the house. I waited nearly an +hour, an hour of stillness and small creepings and cheepings and goings +to and fro among the branches. + +In the bushes near by me a little green glow-worm shared my vigil. + +And then, wrapped about in a dark velvet cloak, still in her white +dinner dress, with shining, gleaming, glancing stones about her dear +throat, warm and wonderful and glowing and daring, Mary came flitting +out of the shadows to me. + +"My dear," she whispered, panting and withdrawing a little from our +first passionate embrace, "Oh my dear!... How did I come? Twice before, +when I was a girl, I got out this way. By the corner of the conservatory +and down the laundry wall. You can't see from here, but it's easy--easy. +There's a tree that helps. And now I have come that way to you. +_You!..._ + +"Oh! love me, my Stephen, love me, dear. Love me as if we were never to +love again. Am I beautiful, my dear? Am I beautiful in the moonlight? +Tell me!... + +"Perhaps this is the night of our lives, dear! Perhaps never again will +you and I be happy!... + +"But the wonder, dear, the beauty! Isn't it still? It's as if nothing +really stood solid and dry. As if everything floated.... + +"Everyone in all the world has gone to sleep to-night and left the world +to us. Come! Come this way and peep at the house, there. Stoop--under +the branches. See, not a light is left! And all its blinds are drawn and +its eyes shut. One window is open, _my_ little window, Stephen! but that +is in the shadow where that creeper makes everything black. + +"Along here a little further is night-stock. Now--Now! Sniff, Stephen! +Sniff! The scent of it! It lies--like a bank of scented air.... And +Stephen, there! Look!... A star--a star without a sound, falling out of +the blue! It's gone!" + +There was her dear face close to mine, soft under the soft moonlight, +and the breath of her sweet speech mingled with the scent of the +night-stock.... + +That was indeed the most beautiful night of my life, a night of +moonlight and cool fragrance and adventurous excitement. We were +transported out of this old world of dusty limitations; it was as if for +those hours the curse of man was lifted from our lives. No one +discovered us, no evil thing came near us. For a long time we lay close +in one another's arms upon a bank of thyme. Our heads were close +together; her eyelashes swept my cheek, we spoke rarely and in soft +whispers, and our hearts were beating, beating. We were as solemn as +great mountains and as innocent as sleeping children. Our kisses were +kisses of moonlight. And it seemed to me that nothing that had ever +happened or could happen afterwards, mattered against that happiness.... + +It was nearly three when at last I came back into my father's garden. No +one had missed me from my room and the house was all asleep, but I could +not get in because I had closed a latch behind me, and so I stayed in +the little arbor until day, watching the day break upon long beaches of +pale cloud over the hills towards Alfridsham. I slept at last with my +head upon my arms upon the stone table, until the noise of shooting +bolts and doors being unlocked roused me to watch my chance and slip +back again into the house, and up the shuttered darkened staircase to my +tranquil, undisturbed bedroom. + + +Sec. 5 + +It was in the vein of something evasive in Mary's character that she let +me hear first of her engagement to Justin through the _Times_. Away +there in Scotland she got I suppose new perspectives, new ideas; the +glow of our immediate passion faded. The thing must have been drawing in +upon her for some time. Perhaps she had meant to tell me of it all that +night when she had summoned me to Burnmore. Looking back now I am the +more persuaded that she did. But the thing came to me in London with the +effect of an immense treachery. Within a day or so of the newspaper's +announcement she had written me a long letter answering some argument of +mine, and saying nothing whatever of the people about her. Even then +Justin must have been asking her to marry him. Her mind must have been +full of that question. Then came a storm of disappointment, humiliation +and anger with this realization. I can still feel myself writing and +destroying letters to her, letters of satire, of protest. Oddly enough I +cannot recall the letter that at last I sent her, but it is eloquent of +the weak boyishness of my position that I sent it in our usual furtive +manner, accepted every precaution that confessed the impossibility of +our relationship. "No," she scribbled back, "you do not understand. I +cannot write. I must talk to you." + +We had a secret meeting. + +With Beatrice Normandy's connivance she managed to get away for the +better part of the day, and we spent a long morning in argument in the +Botanical Gardens--that obvious solitude--and afterwards we lunched upon +ham and ginger beer at a little open-air restaurant near the Broad Walk +and talked on until nearly four. We were so young that I think we both +felt, beneath our very real and vivid emotions, a gratifying sense of +romantic resourcefulness in this prolonged discussion. There is +something ridiculously petty and imitative about youth, something too, +naively noble and adventurous. I can never determine if older people are +less generous and imaginative or merely less absurd. I still recall the +autumnal melancholy of that queer, neglected-looking place, in which I +had never been before, and which I have never revisited--a memory of +walking along narrow garden paths beside queer leaf-choked artificial +channels of water under yellow-tinted trees, of rustic bridges going +nowhere in particular, and of a kind of brickwork ruined castle, greatly +decayed and ivy-grown, in which we sat for a long time looking out upon +a lawn and a wide gravel path leading to a colossal frontage of +conservatory. + +I must have been resentful and bitter in the beginning of that talk. I +do not remember that I had any command of the situation or did anything +but protest throughout that day. I was too full of the egotism of the +young lover to mark Mary's moods and feelings. It was only afterwards +that I came to understand that she was not wilfully and deliberately +following the course that was to separate us, that she was taking it +with hesitations and regrets. Yet she spoke plainly enough, she spoke +with a manifest sincerity of feeling. And while I had neither the grasp +nor the subtlety to get behind her mind I perceive now as I think things +out that Lady Ladislaw had both watched and acted, had determined her +daughter's ideas, sown her mind with suggestions, imposed upon her a +conception of her situation that now dominated all her thoughts. + +"Dear Stephen," reiterated Mary, "I love you. I do, clearly, definitely, +deliberately love you. Haven't I told you that? Haven't I made that +plain to you?" + +"But you are going to marry Justin!" + +"Stephen dear, can I possibly marry you? Can I?" + +"Why not? Why not make the adventure of life with me? Dare!" + +She looked down on me. She was sitting upon a parapet of the brickwork +and I was below her. She seemed to be weighing possibilities. + +"Why not?" I cried. "Even now. Why not run away with me, throw our two +lives together? Do as lovers have dared to do since the beginning of +things! Let us go somewhere together----" + +"But Stephen," she asked softly, "_where_?" + +"Anywhere!" + +She spoke as an elder might do to a child. "No! tell me where--exactly. +Where would it be? Where should we go? How should we live? Tell me. Make +me see it, Stephen." + +"You are too cruel to me, Mary," I said. "How can I--on the spur of the +moment--arrange----?" + +"But dear, suppose it was somewhere very grimy and narrow! +Something--like some of those back streets I came through to get here. +Suppose it was some dreadful place. And you had no money. And we were +both worried and miserable. One gets ill in such places. If I loved you, +Stephen--I mean if you and I--if you and I were to be together, I should +want it to be in sunshine, I should want it to be among beautiful +forests and mountains. Somewhere very beautiful...." + +"Why not?" + +"Because--to-day I know. There are no such places in the world for us. +Stephen, they are dreams." + +"For three years now," I said, "I have dreamed such dreams. + +"Oh!" I cried out, stung by my own words, "but this is cowardice! Why +should we submit to this old world! Why should we give up--things you +have dreamed as well as I! You said once--to hear my voice--calling in +the morning.... Let us take each other, Mary, now. _Now!_ Let us take +each other, and"--I still remember my impotent phrase--"afterwards count +the cost!" + +"If I were a queen," said Mary. "But you see I am not a queen." ... + +So we talked in fragments and snatches of argument, and all she said +made me see more clearly the large hopelessness of my desire. "At +least," I urged, "do not marry Justin now. Give me a chance. Give me +three years, Mary, three short years, to work, to do something!" + +She knew so clearly now the quality of her own intentions. + +"Dear Stephen," she explained, "if I were to come away with you and +marry you, in just a little time I should cease to be your lover, I +should be your squaw. I should have to share your worries and make your +coffee--and disappoint you, disappoint you and fail you in a hundred +ways. Think! Should I be any good as a squaw? How can one love when one +knows the coffee isn't what it should be, and one is giving one's lover +indigestion? And I don't _want_ to be your squaw. I don't want that at +all. It isn't how I feel for you. I don't _want_ to be your servant and +your possession." + +"But you will be Justin's--squaw, you are going to marry him!" + +"That is all different, Stevenage. Between him and me there will be +space, air, dignity, endless servants----" + +"But," I choked. "You! He! He will make love to you, Mary." + +"You don't understand, Stephen." + +"He will make love to you, Mary. Mary! don't you understand? These +things---- We've never talked of them.... You will bear him children!" + +"No," she said. + +"But----" + +"No. He promises. Stephen,--I am to own myself." + +"But--He marries you!" + +"Yes. Because he--he admires me. He cannot live without me. He loves my +company. He loves to be seen with me. He wants me with him to enjoy all +the things he has. Can't you understand, Stephen?" + +"But do you mean----?" + +Our eyes met. + +"Stephen," she said, "I swear." + +"But---- He hopes." + +"I don't care. He has promised. I have his promise. I shall be free. Oh! +I shall be free--free! He is a different man from you, Stephen. He isn't +so fierce; he isn't so greedy." + +"But it parts us!" + +"Only from impossible things." + +"It parts us." + +"It does not even part us, Stevenage. We shall see one another! we shall +talk to one another." + +"I shall lose you." + +"I shall keep you." + +"But I--do you expect me to be content with _this_?" + +"I will make you content. Oh! Stephen dear, can't there be love--love +without this clutching, this gripping, this carrying off?" + +"You will be carried altogether out of my world." + +"If I thought that, Stephen, indeed I would not marry him." + +But I insisted we should be parted, and parted in the end for ever, and +there I was the wiser of the two. I knew the insatiable urgency within +myself. I knew that if I continued to meet Mary I should continue to +desire her until I possessed her altogether. + + +Sec. 6 + +I cannot reproduce with any greater exactness than this the quality and +gist of our day-long conversation. Between us was a deep affection, and +instinctive attraction, and our mental temperaments and our fundamental +ideas were profoundly incompatible. We were both still very young in +quality, we had scarcely begun to think ourselves out, we were greatly +swayed by the suggestion of our circumstances, complex, incoherent and +formless emotions confused our minds. But I see now that in us there +struggled vast creative forces, forces that through a long future, in +forms as yet undreamt of, must needs mould the destiny of our race. Far +more than Mary I was accepting the conventions of our time. It seemed to +me not merely reasonable but necessary that because she loved me she +should place her life in my youthful and inexpert keeping, share my +struggles and the real hardships they would have meant for her, devote +herself to my happiness, bear me children, be my inspiration in +imaginative moments, my squaw, helper and possession through the whole +twenty-four hours of every day, and incidentally somehow rear whatever +family we happened to produce, and I was still amazed in the depths of +my being that she did not reciprocate this simple and comprehensive +intention. I was ready enough I thought for equivalent sacrifices. I was +prepared to give my whole life, subordinate all my ambitions, to the +effort to maintain our home. If only I could have her, have her for my +own, I was ready to pledge every hour I had still to live to that +service. It seemed mere perversity to me then that she should turn even +such vows as that against me. + +"But I don't want it, Stevenage," she said. "I don't want it. I want you +to go on to the service of the empire, I want to see you do great +things, do all the things we've talked about and written about. Don't +you see how much better that is for you and for me--and for the world +and our lives? I don't want you to become a horrible little specialist +in feeding and keeping me." + +"Then--then _wait_ for me!" I cried. + +"But--I want to live myself! I don't want to wait. I want a great house, +I want a great position, I want space and freedom. I want to have +clothes--and be as splendid as your career is going to be. I want to be +a great and shining lady in your life. I can't always live as I do now, +dependent on my mother, whirled about by her movements, living in her +light. Why should I be just a hard-up Vestal Virgin, Stephen, in your +honor? You will not be able to marry me for years and years and +years--unless you neglect your work, unless you throw away everything +that is worth having between us in order just to get me." + +"But I want _you_, Mary," I cried, drumming at the little green table +with my fist. "I want you. I want nothing else in all the world unless +it has to do with you." + +"You've got me--as much as anyone will ever have me. You'll always have +me. Always I will write to you, talk to you, watch you. Why are you so +greedy, Stephen? Why are you so ignoble? If I were to come now and marry +you, it wouldn't help you. It would turn you into--a wife-keeper, into +the sort of uninteresting preoccupied man one sees running after and +gloating over the woman he's bought--at the price of his money and his +dignity--and everything.... It's not proper for a man to live so for a +woman and her children. It's dwarfish. It's enslaving. It's--it's +indecent. Stephen! I'd hate you so." ... + + +Sec. 7 + +We parted at last at a cab-rank near a bridge over the Canal at the +western end of Park Village. I remember that I made a last appeal to her +as we walked towards it, and that we loitered on the bridge, careless of +who might see us there, in a final conflict of our wills. "Before it is +too late, Mary, dear," I said. + +She shook her head, her white lips pressed together. + +"But after the things that have happened. That night--the moonlight!" + +"It's not fair," she said, "for you to talk of that. It isn't fair." + +"But Mary. This is parting. This indeed is parting." + +She answered never a word. + +"Then at least talk to me again for one time more." + +"Afterwards," she said. "Afterwards I will talk to you. Don't make +things too hard for me, Stephen." + +"If I could I would make this impossible. It's--it's hateful." + +She turned to the kerb, and for a second or so we stood there without +speaking. Then I beckoned to a hansom. + +She told me Beatrice Normandy's address. + +I helped her into the cab. "Good-bye," I said with a weak affectation +of an everyday separation, and I turned to the cabman with her +instructions. + +Then again we looked at one another. The cabman waited. "All right, +sir?" he asked. + +"Go ahead!" I said, and lifted my hat to the little white face within. + +I watched the cab until it vanished round the curve of the road. Then I +turned about to a world that had become very large and empty and +meaningless. + + +Sec. 8 + +I struggled feebly to arrest the course of events. I wrote Mary some +violent and bitter letters. I treated her as though she alone were +responsible for my life and hers; I said she had diverted my energies, +betrayed me, ruined my life. I hinted she was cold-blooded, mercenary, +shameless. Someday you, with that quick temper of yours and your power +of expression, will understand that impulse to write, to pour out a +passionately unjust interpretation of some nearly intolerable situation, +and it is not the least of all the things I owe to Mary that she +understood my passion and forgave those letters and forgot them. I tried +twice to go and see her. But I do not think I need tell you, little son, +of these self-inflicted humiliations and degradations. An angry man is +none the less a pitiful man because he is injurious. The hope that had +held together all the project of my life was gone, and all my thoughts +and emotions lay scattered in confusion.... + +You see, my little son, there are two sorts of love; we use one name +for very different things. The love that a father bears his children, +that a mother feels, that comes sometimes, a strange brightness and +tenderness that is half pain, at the revelation of some touching aspect +of one long known to one, at the sight of a wife bent with fatigue and +unsuspicious of one's presence, at the wretchedness and perplexity of +some wrong-doing brother, or at an old servant's unanticipated tears, +that is love--like the love God must bear us. That is the love we must +spread from those of our marrow until it reaches out to all mankind, +that will some day reach out to all mankind. But the love of a young man +for a woman takes this quality only in rare moments of illumination and +complete assurance. My love for Mary was a demand, it was a wanton claim +I scored the more deeply against her for every moment of happiness she +gave me. I see now that as I emerged from the first abjection of my +admiration and began to feel assured of her affection, I meant nothing +by her but to possess her, I did not want her to be happy as I want you +to be happy even at the price of my life; I wanted her. I wanted her as +barbarians want a hunted enemy, alive or dead. It was a flaming jealousy +to have her mine. That granted, then I was prepared for all +devotions.... + +This is how men love women. Almost as exclusively and fiercely I think +do women love men. And the deepest question before humanity is just how +far this jealous greed may be subdued to a more generous passion. The +fierce jealousy of men for women and women for men is the very heart of +all our social jealousies, the underlying tension of this crowded modern +life that has grown out of the ampler, simpler, ancient life of men. +That is why we compete against one another so bitterly, refuse +association and generous co-operations, keep the struggle for existence +hard and bitter, hamper and subordinate the women as they in their turn +would if they could hamper and subordinate the men--because each must +thoroughly have his own. + +And I knew my own heart too well to have any faith in Justin and his +word. He was taking what he could, and his mind would never rest until +some day he had all. I had seen him only once, but the heavy and +resolute profile above his bent back and slender shoulders stuck in my +memory. + +If he was cruel to Mary, I told her, or broke his least promise to her, +I should kill him. + + +Sec. 9 + +My distress grew rather than diminished in the days immediately before +her marriage, and that day itself stands out by itself in my memory, a +day of wandering and passionate unrest. My imagination tormented me with +thoughts of Justin as a perpetual privileged wooer. + +Well, well,--I will not tell you, I will not write the ugly mockeries my +imagination conjured up. I was constantly on the verge of talking and +cursing aloud to myself, or striking aimlessly at nothing with clenched +fists. I was too stupid to leave London, too disturbed for work or any +distraction of my mind. I wandered about the streets of London all day. +In the morning I came near going to the church and making some +preposterous interruptions. And I remember discovering three or four +carriages adorned with white favors and a little waiting crowd outside +that extinguisher-spired place at the top of Regent Street, and +wondering for a moment or so at their common preoccupation, and then +understanding. Of course, another marriage! Of all devilish +institutions! + +What was I to do with my life now? What was to become of my life? I can +still recall the sense of blank unanswerableness with which these +questions dominated my mind, and associated with it is an effect of +myself as a small human being, singular and apart, wandering through a +number of London landscapes. At one time I was in a great grey +smoke-rimmed autumnal space of park, much cut up by railings and worn by +cricket pitches, far away from any idea of the Thames, and in the +distance over the tops of trees I discovered perplexingly the clustering +masts and spars of ships. I have never seen that place since. Then the +Angel at Islington is absurdly mixed up with the distresses of this day. +I attempted some great detour thence, and found myself with a dumb +irritation returning to the place from another direction. I remember too +a wide street over which passes a thundering railway bridge borne upon +colossal rounded pillars of iron, and carrying in white and blue some +big advertisement, I think of the _Daily Telegraph_. Near there I +thought a crowd was gathered about the victim of some accident, and +thrusting myself among the people with a vague idea of help, discovered +a man selling a remedy for corns. And somewhere about this north region +I discovered I was faint with hunger, and got some bread and cheese and +beer in a gaudily decorated saloon bar with a sanded floor. I resisted +a monstrous impulse to stay in that place and drink myself into +inactivity and stupefaction with beer. + +Then for a long time I sat upon an iron seat near some flower beds in a +kind of garden that had the headstones of graves arranged in a row +against a yellow brick wall. The place was flooded with the amber +sunshine of a September afternoon. I shared the seat with a nursemaid in +charge of a perambulator and several scuffling uneasy children, and I +kept repeating to myself: "By now it is all over. The thing is done." + +My sense of the enormity of London increased with the twilight, and +began to prevail a little against my intense personal wretchedness. I +remember wastes of building enterprise, interminable vistas of wide dark +streets, with passing trams, and here and there at strategic corners +coruscating groups of shops. And somewhere I came along a narrow street +suddenly upon the distant prospect of a great monstrous absurd place on +a steep hill against the last brightness of the evening sky, a burlesque +block of building with huge truncated pyramids at either corner, that I +have since learnt was the Alexandra Palace. It was so queer and bulky +that it arrested and held my attention, struck on my memory with an +almost dreamlike quality, so that years afterwards I went to Muswell +Hill to see if indeed there really was such a place on earth, or whether +I had had a waking nightmare during my wanderings.... + +I wandered far that night, very far. Some girl accosted me, a thin-faced +ruined child younger by a year or so than myself. I remembered how I +talked to her, foolish rambling talk. "If you loved a man, and he was +poor, you'd wait," I said, "you'd stick to him. You'd not leave him +just to get married to a richer man." + +We prowled talking for a time, and sat upon a seat somewhere near the +Regent's Park canal. I rather think I planned to rescue her from a +fallen life, but somehow we dropped that topic. I know she kissed me. I +have a queer impression that it came into my head to marry her. I put +all my loose money in her hands at last and went away extraordinarily +comforted by her, I know not how, leaving her no doubt wondering +greatly. + +I did not go to bed that night at all, nor to the office next morning. I +never showed myself in the office again. Instead I went straight down to +my father, and told him I wanted to go to the war forthwith. I had an +indistinct memory of a promise I had made Mary to stay in England, but I +felt it was altogether unendurable that I should ever meet her again. My +father sat at table over the remains of his lunch, and regarded me with +astonishment, with the beginnings of protest. + +"I want to get away," I said, and to my own amazement and shame I burst +into tears. + +"My boy!" he gasped, astonished and terrified. "You've--you've not +done--some foolish thing?" + +"No," I said, already wiping the tears from my face, "nothing.... But I +want to go away." + +"You shall do as you please," he said, and sat for a moment regarding +his only son with unfathomable eyes. + +Then he got up with a manner altogether matter-of-fact, came half-way +round the table and mixed me a whisky and soda. "It won't be much of a +war, I'm told," he said with the syphon in his hands, breaking a +silence. "I sometimes wish--I had seen a bit of soldiering. And this +seems to be an almost unavoidable war. Now, at any rate, it's +unavoidable.... Drink this and have a biscuit." + +He turned to the mantelshelf, and filled his pipe with his broad back to +me. "Yes," he said, "you---- You'll be interested in the war. I hope---- +I hope you'll have a good time there...." + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIFTH + +THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA + + +Sec. 1 + +Mary and I did not meet again for five years, and for nearly all that +time I remained in South Africa. I went from England a boy; I came back +seasoned into manhood. They had been years of crowded experience, rapid +yet complicated growth, disillusionment and thought. Responsibility had +come to me. I had seen death, I had seen suffering, and held the lives +of men in my hands. + +Of course one does not become a soldier on active service at once for +the wishing, and there was not at first that ready disposition on the +part of the home military authorities which arose later, to send out +young enthusiasts. I could ride and shoot fairly well, and accordingly I +decided to go on my own account to Durban--for it was manifest that +things would begin in Natal--and there attach myself to some of the +local volunteer corps that would certainly be raised. This took me out +of England at once, a thing that fell in very well with my mood. I +would, I was resolved, begin life afresh. I would force myself to think +of nothing but the war. I would never if I could help it think of Mary +again. + +The war had already begun when I reached Durban. The town was seething +with the news of a great British victory at Dundee. We came into the +port through rain and rough weather and passed a big white liner loaded +up feverishly from steam tenders with wealthy refugees going +England-ward. From two troopships against the wharves there was a great +business of landing horses--the horses of the dragoons and hussars from +India. I spent the best part of my first night in South Africa in the +streets looking in vain for a bedroom, and was helped at last by a +kindly rickshaw Zulu to a shanty where I slept upon three chairs. I +remember I felt singularly unwanted. + +The next day I set about my volunteering. By midday I had opened +communications with that extremely untried and problematical body, the +Imperial Light Horse, and in three days more I was in the company of a +mixed batch of men, mostly Australian volunteers, on my way to a place I +had never heard of before called Ladysmith, through a country of +increasing picturesqueness and along a curious curving little line whose +down traffic seemed always waiting in sidings, and consisted of crowded +little trains full of pitiful fugitives, white, brown, and black, +stifled and starving. They were all clamoring to buy food and drink--and +none seemed forthcoming. We shunted once to allow a southbound train to +pass, a peculiar train that sent everyone on to the line to +see--prisoners of war! There they were, real live enemies, rather glum, +looking out at us with faces very like our own--but rather more +unshaven. They had come from the battle of Elandslaagte.... + +I had never been out of England before except for a little +mountaineering in the French Alps and one walking excursion in the Black +Forest, and the scenery of lower Natal amazed me. I had expected +nothing nearly so tropical, so rich and vivid. There were little +Mozambique monkeys chattering in the thick-set trees beside the line and +a quantity of unfamiliar birds and gaudy flowers amidst the abundant +deep greenery. There were aloe and cactus hedges, patches of unfamiliar +cultivation upon the hills; bunchy, frondy growths that I learnt were +bananas and plantains, and there were barbaric insanitary-looking Kaffir +kraals which I supposed had vanished before our civilization. There +seemed an enormous quantity of Kaffirs all along the line--and all of +them, men, women, and children, were staring at the train. The scenery +grew finer and bolder, and more bare and mountainous, until at last we +came out into the great basin in which lay this Ladysmith. It seemed a +poor unimportant, dusty little street of huts as we approached it, but +the great crests beyond struck me as very beautiful in the morning +light.... + +I forgot the beauty of those hills as we drew into the station. It was +the morning after the surrender of Nicholson's Nek. I had come to join +an army already tremendously astonished and shattered. The sunny +prospect of a triumphal procession to Pretoria which had been still in +men's minds at Durban had vanished altogether. In rather less than a +fortnight of stubborn fighting we had displayed a strategy that was +flighty rather than brilliant, and lost a whole battery of guns and +nearly twelve hundred prisoners. We had had compensations, our common +soldiers were good stuff at any rate, but the fact was clear that we +were fighting an army not only very much bigger than ours but better +equipped, with bigger guns, better information, and it seemed superior +strategy. We were being shoved back into this Ladysmith and encircled. +This confused, disconcerted, and thoroughly bad-tempered army, whose +mules and bullocks cumbered the central street of the place, was all +that was left of the British Empire in Natal. Behind it was an +unprotected country and the line to Pietermaritzburg, Durban, and the +sea. + +You cannot imagine how amazed I felt at it. I had been prepared for a +sort of Kentucky quality in the enemy, illiteracy, pluck, guile and good +shooting, but to find them with more modern arms than our own, more +modern methods! Weren't we there, after all, to teach _them_! Weren't we +the Twentieth and they the Eighteenth Century? The town had been shelled +the day before from those very hills I had admired; at any time it might +be shelled again. The nose of a big gun was pointed out to me by a +blasphemous little private in the Devons. It was a tremendous, a +profoundly impressive, black snout. His opinions of the directing wisdom +at home were unquotable. The platform was a wild confusion of women and +children and colored people,--there was even an invalid lady on a +stretcher. Every non-combatant who could be got out of Ladysmith was +being hustled out that day. Everyone was smarting with the sense of +defeat in progress, everyone was disappointed and worried; one got short +answers to one's questions. For a time I couldn't even find out where I +had to go.... + + +Sec. 2 + +I fired my first shot at a fellow-creature within four days of my +arrival. We rode out down the road to the south to search some hills, +and found the Boers in fair strength away to the east of us. We were +dismounted and pushed up on foot through a wood to a grassy crest. There +for the first time I saw the enemy, little respectable-looking +unsoldierlike figures, mostly in black, dodging about upon a ridge +perhaps a mile away. I took a shot at one of these figures just before +it vanished into a gully. One or two bullets came overhead, and I tried +to remember what I had picked up about cover. They made a sound, +_whiff-er-whiff_, a kind of tearing whistle, and there was nothing but a +distant crackling to give one a hint of their direction until they took +effect. I remember the peculiar smell of the grass amidst which I +crouched, my sudden disgust to realize I was lying, and had to lie now +for an indefinite time, in the open sunlight and far from any shade, and +how I wondered whether after all I had wanted to come to this war. + +We lay shooting intermittently until the afternoon, I couldn't +understand why; we went forward a little, and at last retired upon +Ladysmith. On the way down to the horses, I came upon my first dead man. +He was lying in a crumpled heap not fifty yards from where I had been +shooting. There he lay, the shattered mirror of a world. One side of his +skull over the ear had been knocked away by a nearly spent bullet, and +he was crumpled up and face upward as though he had struggled to his +feet and fallen back. He looked rather horrible, with blue eyes wide +open and glassily amazed, and the black flies clustering upon his +clotted wound and round his open mouth.... + +I halted for a moment at the sight, and found the keen scrutiny of a +fellow trooper upon me. "No good waiting for him," I said with an +affectation of indifference. But all through the night I saw him again, +and marvelled at the stupendous absurdity of such a death. I was a +little feverish, I remember, and engaged in an interminable theological +argument with myself, why when a man is dead he should leave so queer +and irrelevant a thing as a body to decay.... + +I was already very far away from London and Burnmore Park. I doubt if I +thought of Mary at all for many days. + + +Sec. 3 + +It isn't my business to write here any consecutive story of my war +experiences. Luck and some latent quality in my composition made me a +fairly successful soldier. Among other things I have an exceptionally +good sense of direction, and that was very useful to me, and in Burnmore +Park I suppose I had picked up many of the qualities of a scout. I did +some fair outpost work during the Ladysmith siege, I could report as +well as crawl and watch, and I was already a sergeant when we made a +night attack and captured and blew up Long Tom. There, after the fight, +while we were covering the engineers, I got a queer steel ball about the +size of a pea in my arm, a bicycle bearings ball it was, and had my +first experience of an army surgeon's knife next day. It was much less +painful than I had expected. I was also hit during the big assault on +the sixth of January in the left shoulder, but so very slightly that I +wasn't technically disabled. They were the only wounds I got in the war, +but I went under with dysentery before the relief; and though I was by +no means a bad case I was a very yellow-faced, broken-looking +convalescent when at last the Boer hosts rolled northward again and +Buller's men came riding across the flats.... + +I had seen some stimulating things during those four months of actual +warfare, a hundred intense impressions of death, wounds, anger, +patience, brutality, courage, generosity and wasteful destruction--above +all, wasteful destruction--to correct the easy optimistic patriotism of +my university days. There is a depression in the opening stages of fever +and a feebleness in a convalescence on a starvation diet that leads men +to broad and sober views. (Heavens! how I hated the horse +extract--'chevril' we called it--that served us for beef tea.) When I +came down from Ladysmith to the sea to pick up my strength I had not an +illusion left about the serene, divinely appointed empire of the +English. But if I had less national conceit, I had certainly more +patriotic determination. That grew with every day of returning health. +The reality of this war had got hold of my imagination, as indeed for a +time it got hold of the English imagination altogether, and I was now +almost fiercely keen to learn and do. At the first chance I returned to +active service, and now I was no longer a disconsolate lover taking war +for a cure, but an earnest, and I think reasonably able, young officer, +very alert for chances. + +I got those chances soon enough. I rejoined our men beyond Kimberley, on +the way to Mafeking,--we were the extreme British left in the advance +upon Pretoria--and I rode with Mahon and was ambushed with him in a +little affair beyond Koodoosrand. It was a sudden brisk encounter. We +got fired into at close quarters, but we knew our work by that time, +and charged home and brought in a handful of prisoners to make up for +the men we had lost. A few days later we came into the flattened ruins +of the quaintest siege in history.... + +Three days after we relieved Mafeking I had the luck to catch one of +Snyman's retreating guns rather easily, the only big gun that was taken +at Mafeking. I came upon it unexpectedly with about twenty men, spotted +a clump of brush four hundred yards ahead, galloped into it before the +Boers realized the boldness of our game, shot all the draught oxen while +they hesitated, and held them up until Chambers arrived on the scene. +The incident got perhaps a disproportionate share of attention in the +papers at home, because of the way in which Mafeking had been kept in +focus. I was mentioned twice again in despatches before we rode across +to join Roberts in Pretoria and see what we believed to be the end of +the war. We were too late to go on up to Komatipoort, and had some +rather blank and troublesome work on the north side of the town. That +was indeed the end of the great war; the rest was a struggle with +guerillas. + +Everyone thought things were altogether over. I wrote to my father +discussing the probable date of my return. But there were great chances +still to come for an active young officer; the guerilla war was to +prolong the struggle yet for a whole laborious, eventful year, and I was +to make the most of those later opportunities.... + +Those years in South Africa are stuck into my mind like--like those pink +colored pages about something else one finds at times in a railway +_Indicateur_. Chance had put this work in my way, and started me upon +it with a reputation that wasn't altogether deserved, and I found I +could only live up to it and get things done well by a fixed and extreme +concentration of my attention. But the whole business was so interesting +that I found it possible to make that concentration. Essentially warfare +is a game of elaborate but witty problems in precaution and +anticipation, with amazing scope for invention. You so saturate your +mind with the facts and possibilities of the situation that intuitions +emerge. It did not do to think of anything beyond those facts and +possibilities and dodges and counterdodges, for to do so was to let in +irrelevant and distracting lights. During all that concluding year of +service I was not so much myself as a forced and artificial thing I made +out of myself to meet the special needs of the time. I became a +Boer-outwitting animal. When I was tired of this specialized thinking, +then the best relief, I found, was some quite trivial +occupation--playing poker, yelling in the chorus of some interminable +song one of the men would sing, or coining South African Limericks or +playing burlesque _bouts-rimes_ with Fred Maxim, who was then my second +in command.... + +Yet occasionally thought overtook me. I remember lying one night out +upon a huge dark hillside, in a melancholy wilderness of rock-ribbed +hills, waiting for one of the flying commandoes that were breaking +northward from Cape Colony towards the Orange River in front of Colonel +Eustace. We had been riding all day, I was taking risks in what I was +doing, and there is something very cheerless in a fireless bivouac. My +mind became uncontrollably active. + +It was a clear, still night. The young moon set early in a glow of white +that threw the jagged contours of a hill to the south-east into +strange, weird prominence. The patches of moonshine evaporated from the +summits of the nearer hills, and left them hard and dark. Then there was +nothing but a great soft black darkness below that jagged edge and above +it the stars very large and bright. Somewhere under that enormous +serenity to the south of us the hunted Boers must be halting to snatch +an hour or so of rest, and beyond them again extended the long thin net +of the pursuing British. It all seemed infinitely small and remote, +there was no sound of it, no hint of it, no searchlight at work, no +faintest streamer of smoke nor the reflection of a solitary fire in the +sky.... + +All this business that had held my mind so long was reduced to +insignificance between the blackness of the hills and the greatness of +the sky; a little trouble, it seemed of no importance under the Southern +Cross. And I fell wondering, as I had not wondered for long, at the +forces that had brought me to this occupation and the strangeness of +this game of war which had filled the minds and tempered the spirit of a +quarter of a million of men for two hard-living years. + +I fell thinking of the dead. + +No soldier in a proper state of mind ever thinks of the dead. At times +of course one suspects, one catches a man glancing at the pair of boots +sticking out stiffly from under a blanket, but at once he speaks of +other things. Nevertheless some suppressed part of my being had been +stirring up ugly and monstrous memories, of distortion, disfigurement, +torment and decay, of dead men in stained and ragged clothes, with their +sole-worn boots drawn up under them, of the blood trail of a dying man +who had crawled up to a dead comrade rather than die alone, of Kaffirs +heaping limp, pitiful bodies together for burial, of the voices of +inaccessible wounded in the rain on Waggon Hill crying in the night, of +a heap of men we found in a donga three days dead, of the dumb agony of +shell-torn horses, and the vast distressful litter and heavy brooding +stench, the cans and cartridge-cases and filth and bloody rags of a +shelled and captured laager. I will confess I have never lost my horror +of dead bodies; they are dreadful to me--dreadful. I dread their stiff +attitudes, their terrible intent inattention. To this day such memories +haunt me. That night they nearly overwhelmed me.... I thought of the +grim silence of the surgeon's tent, the miseries and disordered ravings +of the fever hospital, of the midnight burial of a journalist at +Ladysmith with the distant searchlight on Bulwana flicking suddenly upon +our faces and making the coffin shine silver white. What a vast trail of +destruction South Africa had become! I thought of the black scorched +stones of burnt and abandoned farms, of wretched natives we had found +shot like dogs and flung aside, rottenly amazed, decaying in infinite +indignity; of stories of treachery and fierce revenges sweeping along in +the trail of the greater fighting. I knew too well of certain +atrocities,--one had to believe them incredibly stupid to escape the +conviction that they were incredibly evil. + +For a time my mind could make no headway against its monstrous +assemblage of horror. There was something in that jagged black hill +against the moonshine and the gigantic basin of darkness out of which it +rose that seemed to gather all these gaunt and grisly effects into one +appalling heap of agonizing futility. That rock rose up and crouched +like something that broods and watches. + +I remember I sat up in the darkness staring at it. + +I found myself murmuring: "Get the proportions of things, get the +proportions of things!" I had an absurd impression of a duel between +myself and the cavernous antagonism of the huge black spaces below me. I +argued that all this pain and waste was no more than the selvedge of a +proportionately limitless fabric of sane, interested, impassioned and +joyous living. These stiff still memories seemed to refute me. But why +us? they seemed to insist. In some way it's essential,--this margin. I +stopped at that. + +"If all this pain, waste, violence, anguish is essential to life, why +does my spirit rise against it? What is wrong with me?" I got from that +into a corner of self-examination. Did I respond overmuch to these +painful aspects in life? When I was a boy I had never had the spirit +even to kill rats. Siddons came into the meditation, Siddons, the +essential Englishman, a little scornful, throwing out contemptuous +phrases. Soft! Was I a soft? What was a soft? Something not rough, not +hearty and bloody! I felt I had to own to the word--after years of +resistance. A dreadful thing it is when a great empire has to rely upon +soft soldiers. + +Was civilization breeding a type of human being too tender to go on +living? I stuck for a time as one does on these nocturnal occasions at +the word "hypersensitive," going round it and about it.... + +I do not know now how it was that I passed from a mood so darkened and +sunless to one of exceptional exaltation, but I recall very clearly that +I did. I believe that I made a crowning effort against this despair and +horror that had found me out in the darkness and overcome. I cried in +my heart for help, as a lost child cries, to God. I seem to remember a +rush of impassioned prayer, not only for myself, not chiefly for myself, +but for all those smashed and soiled and spoilt and battered residues of +men whose memories tormented me. I prayed to God that they had not lived +in vain, that particularly those poor Kaffir scouts might not have lived +in vain. "They are like children," I said. "It was a murder of +children.... _By children!_" + +My horror passed insensibly. I have to feel the dreadfulness of these +things, I told myself, because it is good for such a creature as I to +feel them dreadful, but if one understood it would all be simple. Not +dreadful at all. I clung to that and repeated it,--"it would all be +perfectly simple." It would come out no more horrible than the things +that used to frighten me as a child,--the shadow on the stairs, the +white moonrise reflected on a barked and withered tree, a peculiar dream +of moving geometrical forms, an ugly illustration in the "Arabian +Nights." ... + +I do not know how long I wrestled with God and prayed that night, but +abruptly the shadows broke; and very suddenly and swiftly my spirit +seemed to flame up into space like some white beacon that is set alight. +Everything became light and clear and confident. I was assured that all +was well with us, with us who lived and fought and with the dead who +rotted now in fifty thousand hasty graves.... + +For a long time it seemed I was repeating again and again with soundless +lips and finding the deepest comfort in my words:--"And out of our +agonies comes victory, out of our agonies comes victory! Have pity on +us, God our Father!" + +I think that mood passed quite insensibly from waking to a kind of +clear dreaming. I have an impression that I fell asleep and was aroused +by a gun. Yet I was certainly still sitting up when I heard that gun. + +I was astonished to find things darkly visible about me. I had not noted +that the stars were growing pale until the sound of this gun very far +away called my mind back to the grooves in which it was now accustomed +to move. I started into absolute wakefulness. A gun?... + +I found myself trying to see my watch. + +I heard a slipping and clatter of pebbles near me, and discovered Fred +Maxim at my side. "Look!" he said, hoarse with excitement. "Already!" He +pointed to a string of dim little figures galloping helter-skelter over +the neck and down the gap in the hills towards us. + +They came up against the pale western sky, little nodding swaying black +dots, and flashed over and were lost in the misty purple groove towards +us. They must have been riding through the night--the British following. +To them we were invisible. Behind us was the shining east, we were in a +shadow still too dark to betray us. + +In a moment I was afoot and called out to the men, my philosophy, my +deep questionings, all torn out of my mind like a page of scribbled +poetry plucked out of a business note-book. Khaki figures were up all +about me passing the word and hurrying to their places. All the +dispositions I had made overnight came back clear and sharp into my +mind. We hadn't long for preparations.... + +It seems now there were only a few busy moments before the fighting +began. It must have been much longer in reality. By that time we had +seen their gun come over and a train of carts. They were blundering +right into us. Every moment it was getting lighter, and the moment of +contact nearer. Then "Crack!" from down below among the rocks, and there +was a sudden stoppage of the trail of dark shapes upon the hillside. +"Crack!" came a shot from our extreme left. I damned the impatient men +who had shot away the secret of our presence. But we had to keep them at +a shooting distance. Would the Boers have the wit to charge through us +before the daylight came, or should we hold them? I had a swift, +disturbing idea. Would they try a bolt across our front to the left? Had +we extended far enough across the deep valley to our left? But they'd +hesitate on account of their gun. The gun couldn't go that way because +of the gullies and thickets.... But suppose they tried it! I hung +between momentous decisions.... + +Then all up the dim hillside I could make out the Boers halting and +riding back. One rifle across there flashed. + +We held them!... + +We had begun the fight of Pieters Nek which ended before midday with the +surrender of Simon Botha and over seven hundred men. It was the crown of +all my soldiering. + + +Sec. 4 + +I came back to England at last when I was twenty-six. After the peace of +Vereeniging I worked under the Repatriation Commission which controlled +the distribution of returning prisoners and concentrated population to +their homes; for the most part I was distributing stock and grain, and +presently manoeuvring a sort of ploughing flying column that the dearth +of horses and oxen made necessary, work that was certainly as hard as if +far less exciting than war. That particular work of replanting the +desolated country with human beings took hold of my imagination, and for +a time at least seemed quite straightforward and understandable. The +comfort of ceasing to destroy! + +No one has written anything that really conveys the quality of that +repatriation process; the queer business of bringing these suspicious, +illiterate, despondent people back to their desolated homes, reuniting +swarthy fathers and stockish mothers, witnessing their touchingly +inexpressive encounters, doing what one could to put heart into their +resumption. Memories come back to me of great littered heaps of luggage, +bundles, blankets, rough boxes, piled newly purchased stores, ready-made +doors, window sashes heaped ready for the waggons, slow-moving, +apathetic figures sitting and eating, an infernal squawking of parrots, +sometimes a wailing of babies. Repatriation went on to a parrot +obligato, and I never hear a parrot squawk without a flash of South +Africa across my mind. All the prisoners, I believe, brought back +parrots--some two or three. I had to spread these people out, over a +country still grassless, with teams of war-worn oxen, mules and horses +that died by the dozen on my hands. The end of each individual instance +was a handshake, and one went lumbering on, leaving the children one had +deposited behind one already playing with old ration-tins or hunting +about for cartridge-cases, while adults stared at the work they had to +do. + +There was something elementary in all that redistribution. I felt at +times like a child playing in a nursery and putting out its bricks and +soldiers on the floor. There was a kind of greatness too about the +process, a quality of atonement. And the people I was taking back, the +men anyhow, were for the most part charming and wonderful people, very +simple and emotional, so that once a big bearded man, when I wanted him +in the face of an overflowing waggon to abandon about half-a-dozen great +angular colored West Indian shells he had lugged with him from Bermuda, +burst into tears of disappointment. I let him take them, and at the end +I saw them placed with joy and reverence in a little parlor, to become +the war heirlooms no doubt of a long and bearded family. As we shook +hands after our parting coffee he glanced at them with something between +gratitude and triumph in his eyes. + +Yes, that was a great work, more especially for a ripening youngster +such as I was at that time. The memory of long rides and tramps over +that limitless veld returns to me, lonely in spite of the creaking, +lumbering waggons and transport riders and Kaffirs that followed behind. +South Africa is a country not only of immense spaces but of an immense +spaciousness. Everything is far apart; even the grass blades are far +apart. Sometimes one crossed wide stony wastes, sometimes came great +stretches of tall, yellow-green grass, wheel-high, sometimes a little +green patch of returning cultivation drew nearer for an hour or so, +sometimes the blundering, toilsome passage of a torrent interrupted our +slow onward march. And constantly one saw long lines of torn and twisted +barbed wire stretching away and away, and here and there one found +archipelagoes as it were in this dry ocean of the skeletons of cattle, +and there were places where troops had halted and their scattered +ration-tins shone like diamonds in the sunshine. Occasionally I struck +talk, some returning prisoner, some group of discharged British soldiers +become carpenters or bricklayers again and making their pound a day by +the work of rebuilding; always everyone was ready to expatiate upon the +situation. Usually, however, I was alone, thinking over this immense now +vanished tornado of a war and this equally astonishing work of healing +that was following it. + +I became keenly interested in all this great business, and thought at +first of remaining indefinitely in Africa. Repatriation was presently +done and finished. I had won Milner's good opinion, and he was anxious +for me to go on working in relation to the labor difficulty that rose +now more and more into prominence behind the agricultural re-settlement. +But when I faced that I found myself in the middle of a tangle +infinitely less simple than putting back an agricultural population upon +its land. + + +Sec. 5 + +For the first time in my life I was really looking at the social +fundamental of Labor. + +There is something astonishingly naive in the unconsciousness with which +people of our class float over the great economic realities. All my life +I had been hearing of the Working Classes, of Industrialism, of Labor +Problems and the Organization of Labor; but it was only now in South +Africa, in this chaotic, crude illuminating period of putting a smashed +and desolated social order together again, that I perceived these +familiar phrases represented something--something stupendously real. +There were, I began to recognize, two sides to civilization; one +traditional, immemorial, universal, the side of the homestead, the side +I had been seeing and restoring; and there was another, ancient, too, +but never universal, as old at least as the mines of Syracuse and the +building of the pyramids, the side that came into view when I emerged +from the dusty station and sighted the squat shanties and slender +chimneys of Johannesburg, that uprooted side of social life, that +accumulation of toilers divorced from the soil, which is Industrialism +and Labor and which carries such people as ourselves, and whatever +significance and possibilities we have, as an elephant carries its +rider. + +Now all Johannesburg and Pretoria were discussing Labor and nothing but +Labor. Bloemfontein was in conference thereon. Our work of repatriation +which had loomed so large on the southernward veld became here a +business at once incidental and remote. One felt that a little sooner or +a little later all that would resume and go on, as the rains would, and +the veld-grass. But this was something less kindred to the succession of +the seasons and the soil. This was a hitch in the upper fabric. Here in +the great ugly mine-scarred basin of the Rand, with its bare hillsides, +half the stamps were standing idle, machinery was eating its head off, +time and water were running to waste amidst an immense exasperated +disputation. Something had given way. The war had spoilt the Kaffir +"boy," he was demanding enormous wages, he was away from Johannesburg, +and above all, he would no longer "go underground." + +Implicit in all the argument and suggestion about me was this profoundly +suggestive fact that some people, quite a lot of people, scores of +thousands, had to "go underground." Implicit too always in the discourse +was the assumption that the talker or writer in question wasn't for a +moment to be expected to go there. Those others, whoever they were, had +to do that for us. Before the war it had been the artless Portuguese +Kaffir, but he alas! was being diverted to open-air employment at +Delagoa Bay. Should we raise wages and go on with the fatal process of +"spoiling the workers," should we by imposing a tremendous hut-tax drive +the Kaffir into our toils, should we carry the labor hunt across the +Zambesi into Central Africa, should we follow the lead of Lord Kitchener +and Mr. Creswell and employ the rather dangerous unskilled white labor +(with "ideas" about strikes and socialism) that had drifted into +Johannesburg, should we do tremendous things with labor-saving +machinery, or were we indeed (desperate yet tempting resort!) to bring +in the cheap Indian or Chinese coolie? + +Steadily things were drifting towards that last tremendous experiment. +There was a vigorous opposition in South Africa and in England (growing +there to an outcry), but behind that proposal was the one vitalizing +conviction in modern initiative:--indisputably it would pay, _it would +pay_!... + +The human mind has a much more complex and fluctuating process than most +of those explanatory people who write about psychology would have us +believe. Instead of that simple, direct movement, like the movement of a +point, forward and from here to there, one's thoughts advance like an +army, sometimes extended over an enormous front, sometimes in echelon, +sometimes bunched in a column throwing out skirmishing clouds of +emotion, some flying and soaring, some crawling, some stopping and +dying.... In this matter of Labor, for example, I have thought so much, +thought over the ground again and again, come into it from this way and +from that way, that for the life of me I find it impossible to state at +all clearly how much I made of these questions during that Johannesburg +time. I cannot get back into those ancient ignorances, revive my old +astonishments and discoveries. Certainly I envisaged the whole process +much less clearly than I do now, ignored difficulties that have since +entangled me, regarded with a tremendous perplexity aspects that have +now become lucidly plain. I came back to England confused, and doing +what confused people are apt to do, clinging to an inadequate phrase +that seemed at any rate to define a course of action. The word +"efficiency" had got hold of me. All our troubles came, one assumed, +from being "inefficient." One turned towards politics with a bustling +air, and was all for fault-finding and renovation. + +I sit here at my desk, pen in hand, and trace figures on the +blotting-paper, and wonder how much I understood at that time. I came +back to England to work on the side of "efficiency," that is quite +certain. A little later I was writing articles and letters about it, so +that much is documented. But I think I must have apprehended too by that +time some vague outline at least of those wider issues in the saecular +conflict between the new forms of human association and the old, to +which contemporary politics and our national fate are no more than +transitory eddies and rufflings of the surface waters. It was all so +nakedly plain there. On the one hand was the primordial, on the other +the rankly new. The farm on the veld stood on the veld, a thing of the +veld, a thing rooted and established there and nowhere else. The dusty, +crude, brick-field desolation of the Rand on the other hand did not +really belong with any particularity to South Africa at all. It was one +with our camps and armies. It was part of something else, something +still bigger: a monstrous shadowy arm had thrust out from Europe and +torn open this country, erected these chimneys, piled these heaps--and +sent the ration-tins and cartridge-cases to follow them. It was gigantic +kindred with that ancient predecessor which had built the walls of +Zimbabwe. And this hungry, impatient demand for myriads of toilers, this +threatening inundation of black or brown or yellow bond-serfs was just +the natural voice of this colossal system to which I belonged, which had +brought me hither, and which I now perceived I did not even begin to +understand.... + +One day when asking my way to some forgotten destination, I had pointed +out to me the Grey and Roberts Deep Mine. Some familiarity in the name +set me thinking until I recalled that this was the mine in which I had +once heard Lady Ladislaw confess large holdings, this mine in which +gangs of indentured Chinamen would presently be sweating to pay the +wages of the game-keepers and roadmenders in Burnmore Park.... + +Yes, this was what I was taking in at that time, but it found +me--inexpressive; what I was saying on my return to England gave me no +intimation of the broad conceptions growing in my mind. I came back to +be one of the many scores of energetic and ambitious young men who were +parroting "Efficiency," stirring up people and more particularly +stirring up themselves with the utmost vigor,--and all the time within +their secret hearts more than a little at a loss.... + + +Sec. 6 + +While I had been in South Africa circumstances had conspired to alter my +prospects in life very greatly. Unanticipated freedoms and opportunities +had come to me, and it was no longer out of the question for me to think +of a parliamentary career. Our fortunes had altered. My father had +ceased to be rector of Burnmore, and had become a comparatively wealthy +man. + +My second cousin, Reginald Stratton, had been drowned in Finland, and +his father had only survived the shock of his death a fortnight; his +sister, Arthur Mason's first wife, had died in giving birth to a +stillborn child the year before, and my father found himself suddenly +the owner of all that large stretch of developing downland and building +land which old Reginald had bought between Shaddock and Golding on the +south and West Esher station on the north, and in addition of +considerable investments in northern industrials. It was an odd +collusion of mortality; we had had only the coldest relations with our +cousins, and now abruptly through their commercial and speculative +activities, which we had always affected to despise and ignore, I was in +a position to attempt the realization of my old political ambitions. + +My cousins' house had not been to my father's taste. He had let it, and +I came to a new home in a pleasant, plain red-brick house, a hundred and +fifty years old perhaps, on an open and sunny hillside, sheltered by +trees eastward and northward, a few miles to the south-west of +Guildford. It had all the gracious proportions, the dignified +simplicity, the roomy comfort of the good building of that time. It +looked sunward; we breakfasted in sunshine in the library, and outside +was an old wall with peach trees and a row of pillar roses heavily in +flower. I had a little feared this place; Burnmore Rectory had been so +absolutely home to me with its quiet serenities, its ample familiar +garden, its greenhouses and intimately known corners, but I perceived I +might have trusted my father's character to preserve his essential +atmosphere. He was so much himself as I remembered him that I did not +even observe for a day or so that he had not only aged considerably but +discarded the last vestiges of clerical costume in his attire. He met me +in front of the house and led me into a wide panelled hall and wrung my +hand again and again, deeply moved and very inexpressive. "Did you have +a good journey?" he asked again and again, with tears in his eyes. "Did +you have a comfortable journey?" + +"I've not seen the house," said I. "It looks fine." + +"_You're_ a man," he said, and patted my shoulder. "Of course! It was at +Burnmore." + +"You're not changed," I said. "You're not an atom changed." + +"How could I?" he replied. "Come--come and have something to eat. You +ought to have something to eat." + +We talked of the house and what a good house it was, and he took me out +into the garden to see the peaches and grape vine and then brought me +back without showing them to me in order to greet my cousin. "It's very +like Burnmore," he said with his eyes devouring me, "very like. A +little more space and--no services. No services at all. That makes a gap +of course. There's a little chap about here, you'll find--his name is +Wednesday--who sorts my papers and calls himself my secretary.... Not +necessary perhaps but--_I missed the curate_." + +He said he was reading more than he used to do now that the parish was +off his hands, and he was preparing material for a book. It was, he +explained later, to take the form of a huge essay ostensibly on Secular +Canons, but its purport was to be no less than the complete +secularization of the Church of England. At first he wanted merely to +throw open the cathedral chapters to distinguished laymen, irrespective +of their theological opinions, and to make each English cathedral a +centre of intellectual activity, a college as it were of philosophers +and writers. But afterwards his suggestions grew bolder, the Articles of +Religion were to be set aside, the creeds made optional even for the +clergy. His dream became more and more richly picturesque until at last +he saw Canterbury a realized Thelema, and St. Paul's a new Academic +Grove. He was to work at that remarkable proposal intermittently for +many years, and to leave it at last no more than a shapeless mass of +memoranda, fragmentary essays, and selected passages for quotation. Yet +mere patchwork and scrapbook as it would be, I still have some thought +of publishing it. There is a large human charity about it, a sun too +broad and warm, a reasonableness too wide and free perhaps for the timid +convulsive quality of our time, yet all good as good wine for the wise. +Is it incredible that a day should come when our great grey monuments to +the Norman spirit should cease to be occupied by narrow-witted parsons +and besieged by narrow-souled dissenters, the soul of our race in exile +from the home and place our fathers built for it?... + +If he was not perceptibly changed, I thought my cousin Jane had become +more than a little sharper and stiffer. She did not like my uncle's own +personal secularization, and still less the glimpses she got of the +ampler intentions of his book. She missed the proximity to the church +and her parochial authority. But she was always a silent woman, and made +her comments with her profile and not with her tongue.... + +"I'm glad you've come back, Stephen," said my father as we sat together +after dinner and her departure, with port and tall silver candlesticks +and shining mahogany between us. "I've missed you. I've done my best to +follow things out there. I've got, I suppose, every press mention +there's been of you during the war and since. I've subscribed to two +press-cutting agencies, so that if one missed you the other fellow got +you. Perhaps you'll like to read them over one of these days.... You +see, there's not been a soldier in the family since the Peninsular War, +and so I've been particularly interested.... You must tell me all the +things you're thinking of, and what you mean to do. This last +stuff--this Chinese business--it puzzles me. I want to know what you +think of it--and everything." + +I did my best to give him my ideas such as they were. And as they were +still very vague ideas I have no doubt he found me rhetorical. I can +imagine myself talking of the White Man's Burthen, and how in Africa it +had seemed at first to sit rather staggeringly upon our under-trained +shoulders. I spoke of slackness and planlessness. + +"I've come back in search of efficiency." I have no doubt I said that +at any rate. + +"We're trying to run this big empire," I may have explained, "with +under-trained, under-educated, poor-spirited stuff, and we shall come a +cropper unless we raise our quality. I'm still Imperialist, more than +ever I was. But I'm an Imperialist on a different footing. I've no great +illusions left about the Superiority of the Anglo-Saxons. All that has +gone. But I do think it will be a monstrous waste, a disaster to human +possibilities if this great liberal-spirited empire sprawls itself +asunder for the want of a little gravity and purpose. And it's here the +work has to be done, the work of training and bracing up and stimulating +the public imagination...." + +Yes, that would be the sort of thing I should have said in those days. +There's an old _National Review_ on my desk as I write, containing an +article by me with some of those very phrases in it. I have been looking +at it in order to remind myself of my own forgotten eloquence. + +"Yes," I remember my father saying. "Yes." And then after reflection, +"But those coolies, those Chinese coolies. You can't build up an +imperial population by importing coolies." + +"I don't like that side of the business myself," I said. "It's detail." + +"Perhaps. But the Liberals will turn you out on it next year. And then +start badgering public houses and looting the church.... And then this +Tariff talk! Everybody on our side seems to be mixing up the unity of +the empire with tariffs. It's a pity. Salisbury wouldn't have stood it. +Unity! Unity depends on a common literature and a common language and +common ideas and sympathies. It doesn't unite people for them to be +forced to trade with each other. Trading isn't friendship. I don't trade +with my friends and I don't make friends with my tradesmen. Natural +enemies--polite of course but antagonists. Are you keen over this Tariff +stuff, Steve?" + +"Not a bit," I said. "That too seems a detail." + +"It doesn't seem to be keeping its place as a detail," said my father. +"Very few men can touch tariffs and not get a little soiled. I hate all +this international sharping, all these attempts to get artificial +advantages, all this making poor people buy inferior goods dear, in the +name of the flag. If it comes to that, damn the flag! Custom-houses are +ugly things, Stephen; the dirty side of nationality. Dirty things, +ignoble, cross, cunning things.... They wake you up in the small hours +and rout over your bags.... An imperial people ought to be an urbane +people, a civilizing people--above such petty irritating things. I'd as +soon put barbed wire along the footpath across that field where the +village children go to school. Or claim that our mushrooms are +cultivated. Or prosecute a Sunday-Society Cockney for picking my +primroses. Custom-houses indeed! It's Chinese. There are things a Great +Country mustn't do, Stephen. A country like ours ought to get along +without the manners of a hard-breathing competitive cad.... If it can't +I'd rather it didn't get along.... What's the good of a huckster +country?--it's like having a wife on the streets. It's no excuse that +she brings you money. But since the peace, and that man Chamberlain's +visit to Africa, you Imperialists seem to have got this nasty spirit all +over you.... The Germans do it, you say!" + +My father shut one eye and regarded the color of his port against the +waning light. "Let _'em_," he said.... "Fancy!--quoting the _Germans_! +When I was a boy, there weren't any Germans. They came up after '70. +Statecraft from Germany! And statesmen from Birmingham! German silver +and Electroplated Empires.... No." + +"It's just a part of our narrow outlook," I answered from the hearthrug, +after a pause. "It's because we're so--limited that everyone is +translating the greatness of empire into preferential trading and +jealousy of Germany. It's for something bigger than that that I've +returned." + +"Those big things come slowly," said my father. And then with a sigh: +"Age after age. They seem at times--to be standing still. Good things go +with the bad; bad things come with the good...." + +I remember him saying that as though I could still hear him. + +It must have been after dinner, for he was sitting, duskily indistinct, +against the light, with a voice coming out to him. The candles had not +been brought in, and the view one saw through the big plate glass window +behind him was very clear and splendid. Those little Wealden hills in +Surrey and Sussex assume at times, for all that by Swiss standards they +are the merest ridges of earth, the dignity and mystery of great +mountains. Now, the crests of Hindhead and Blackdown, purple black +against the level gold of the evening sky, might have been some +high-flung boundary chain. Nearer there gathered banks and pools of +luminous lavender-tinted mist out of which hills of pinewood rose like +islands out of the sea. The intervening spaces were magnified to +continental dimensions. And the closer lowlier things over which we +looked, the cottages below us, were grey and black and dim, pierced by a +few luminous orange windows and with a solitary street lamp shining like +a star; the village might have been nestling a mountain's height below +instead of a couple of hundred feet. + +I left my hearthrug, and walked to the window to survey this. + +"Who's got all that land stretching away there; that little blunted +sierra of pines and escarpments I mean?" + +My father halted for an instant in his answer, and glanced over his +shoulder. + +"Wardingham and Baxter share all those coppices," he remarked. "They +come up to my corner on each side." + +"But the dark heather and pine land beyond. With just the gables of a +house among the trees." + +"Oh? _that_," he said with a careful note of indifference. +"That's--Justin. You know Justin. He used to come to Burnmore Park." + + + + +CHAPTER THE SIXTH + +LADY MARY JUSTIN + + +Sec. 1 + +I did not see Lady Mary Justin for nearly seven months after my return +to England. Of course I had known that a meeting was inevitable, and I +had taken that very carefully into consideration before I decided to +leave South Africa. But many things had happened to me during those +crowded years, so that it seemed possible that that former magic would +no longer sway and distress me. Not only had new imaginative interests +taken hold of me but--I had parted from adolescence. I was a man. I had +been through a great war, seen death abundantly, seen hardship and +passion, and known hunger and shame and desire. A hundred disillusioning +revelations of the quality of life had come to me; once for example when +we were taking some people to the concentration camps it had been +necessary to assist at the premature birth of a child by the wayside, a +startlingly gory and agonizing business for a young man to deal with. +Heavens! how it shocked me! I could give a score of such grim +pictures--and queer pictures.... + +And it wasn't only the earthlier aspects of the life about me but also +of the life within me that I had been discovering. The first wonder and +innocence, the worshipping, dawn-clear passion of youth, had gone out of +me for ever.... + + +Sec. 2 + +We met at a dinner. It was at a house the Tarvrilles had taken for the +season in Mayfair. The drawing-room was a big white square apartment +with several big pictures and a pane of plate glass above the fireplace +in the position in which one usually finds a mirror; this showed another +room beyond, containing an exceptionally large, gloriously colored +portrait in pastel--larger than I had ever thought pastels could be. +Except for the pictures both rooms were almost colorless. It was a +brilliant dinner, with a predominating note of ruby; three of the women +wore ruby velvet; and Ellersley was present just back from Arabia, and +Ethel Manton, Lady Hendon and the Duchess of Clynes. I was greeted by +Lady Tarvrille, spoke to Ellersley and Lady Hendon, and then discovered +a lady in a dress of blue and pearls standing quite still under a +picture in the opposite corner of the room and regarding me attentively. +It was Mary. Some man was beside her, a tall grey man with a broad +crimson ribbon, and I think he must have spoken of me to her. It was as +if she had just turned to look at me. + +Constantly during those intervening months I had been thinking of +meeting her. None the less there was a shock, not so much of surprise as +of deferred anticipation. There she stood like something amazingly +forgotten that was now amazingly recalled. She struck me in that brief +crowded instant of recognition as being exactly the person she had been +when we had made love in Burnmore Park; there were her eyes, at once +frank and sidelong, the old familiar sweep of her hair, the old familiar +tilt of the chin, the faint humor of her lip, and at the same time she +seemed to be something altogether different from the memories I had +cherished, she was something graver, something inherently more splendid +than they had recorded. Her face lit now with recognition. + +I went across to her at once, with some dull obviousness upon my lips. + +"And so you are back from Africa at last," she said, still unsmiling. "I +saw about you in the papers.... You had a good time." + +"I had great good luck," I replied. + +"I never dreamt when we were boy and girl together that you would make a +soldier." + +I think I said that luck made soldiers. + +Then I think we found a difficulty in going on with our talk, and began +a dull little argument that would have been stupidly egotistical on my +part if it hadn't been so obviously merely clumsy, about luck making +soldiers or only finding them out. I saw that she had not intended to +convey any doubt of my military capacity but only of that natural +insensitiveness which is supposed to be needed in a soldier. But our +minds were remote from the words upon our lips. We were like aphasiacs +who say one thing while they intend something altogether different. The +impulse that had brought me across to her had brought me up to a wall of +impossible utterances. It was with a real quality of rescue that our +hostess came between us to tell us our partners at the dinner-table, +and to introduce me to mine. "You shall have him again on your other +side," she said to Lady Mary with a charming smile for me, treating me +as if I was a lion in request instead of the mere outsider I was. + +We talked very little at dinner. Both of us I think were quite unequal +to the occasion. Whatever meetings we had imagined, certainly neither of +us had thought of this very possible encounter, a long disconcerting +hour side by side. I began to remember old happenings with an +astonishing vividness; there within six inches of me was the hand I had +kissed; her voice was the same to its lightest shade, her hair flowed +off her forehead with the same amazingly familiar wave. Was she too +remembering? But I perhaps had changed altogether.... + +"Why did you go away as you did?" she asked abruptly, when for a moment +we were isolated conversationally. "Why did you never write?" + +She had still that phantom lisp. + +"What else could I do?" + +She turned away from me and answered the man on her left, who had just +addressed her.... + +When the mid-dinner change came we talked a little about indifferent +things, making a stiff conversation like a bridge over a torrent of +unspoken intimacies. We discussed something; I think Lady Tarvrille's +flowers and the Cape Flora and gardens. She told me she had a Japanese +garden with three Japanese gardeners. They were wonderful little men to +watch. "Humming-bird gardeners," she called them. "They wear their +native costume." + +"We are your neighbors in Surrey," she said, going off abruptly from +that. "We are quite near to your father." + +She paused with that characteristic effect of deliberation in her +closed lips. Then she added: "I can see the trees behind your father's +house from the window of my room." + +"Yes," I said. "You take all our southward skyline." + +She turned her face to me with the manner of a great lady adding a new +acquaintance to her collection. But her eyes met mine very steadily and +intimately. "Mr. Stratton," she said--it was the first time in her life +she had called me that--"when we come back to Surrey I want you to come +and see me and tell me of all the things you are going to do. Will you?" + + +Sec. 3 + +That meeting, that revival, must have been late in November or early in +December. Already by that time I had met your mother. I write to you, +little son, not to you as you are now, but to the man you are someday to +be. I write to understand myself, and, so far as I can understand, to +make you understand. So that I want you to go back with me for a time +into the days before your birth, to think not of that dear spirit of +love who broods over you three children, that wise, sure mother who +rules your life, but of a young and slender girl, Rachel More, younger +then than you will be when at last this story comes into your hands. For +unless you think of her as being a girl, if you let your present +knowledge of her fill out this part in our story, you will fail to +understand the proportions of these two in my life. So I shall write of +her here as Rachel More, as if she were someone as completely +dissociated from yourself as Lady Mary; as if she were someone in the +story of my life who had as little to do with yours. + +I had met her in September. The house my father lived in is about twelve +miles away from your mother's home at Ridinghanger, and I was taken over +by Percy Restall in his motor-car. Restall had just become a convert to +this new mode of locomotion, and he was very active with a huge, +malignant-looking French car that opened behind, and had a kind of poke +bonnet and all sorts of features that have since disappeared from the +automobile world. He took everyone that he could lay hands upon for +rides,--he called it extending their range, and he called upon everyone +else to show off the car; he was responsible for more introduction and +social admixture in that part of Surrey than had occurred during the +previous century. We punctured in the Ridinghanger drive, Restall did +his own repairs, and so it was we stayed for nearly four hours and +instead of a mere caller I became a familiar friend of the family. + +Your mother then was still not eighteen, a soft white slip of being, +tall, slender, brown-haired and silent, with very still deep dark eyes. +She and your three aunts formed a very gracious group of young women +indeed; Alice then as now the most assertive, with a gay initiative and +a fluent tongue; Molly already a sun-brown gipsy, and Norah still a +pig-tailed thing of lank legs and wild embraces and the pinkest of swift +pink blushes; your uncle Sidney, with his shy lank moodiness, acted the +brotherly part of a foil. There were several stray visitors, young men +and maidens, there were always stray visitors in those days at +Ridinghanger, and your grandmother, rosy and bright-eyed, maintained a +gentle flow of creature comforts and kindly but humorous observations. I +do not remember your grandfather on this occasion; probably he wasn't +there. + +There was tea, and we played tennis and walked about and occasionally +visited Restall, who was getting dirtier and dirtier, and crosser and +crosser at his repairs, and spreading a continually more remarkable +assemblage of parts and instruments over the grass about him. He looked +at last more like a pitch in the Caledonian market than a decent country +gentleman paying an afternoon call. And then back to more tennis and +more talk. We fell into a discussion of Tariff Reform as we sat taking +tea. Two of the visitor youths were strongly infected by the new +teachings which were overshadowing the outlook of British Imperialism. +Some mean phrase about not conquering Africa for the German bagman, some +ugly turn of thought that at a touch brought down Empire to the level of +a tradesman's advantage, fell from one of them, and stirred me to sudden +indignation. I began to talk of things that had been gathering in my +mind for some time. + +I do not know what I said. It was in the vein of my father's talk no +doubt. But I think that for once I may have been eloquent. And in the +midst of my demand for ideals in politics that were wider and deeper +than artful buying and selling, that looked beyond a vulgar aggression +and a churl's dread and hatred of foreign things, while I struggled to +say how great and noble a thing empire might be, I saw Rachel's face. +This, it was manifest, was a new kind of talk to her. Her dark eyes were +alight with a beautiful enthusiasm for what I was trying to say, and +for what in the light of that glowing reception I seemed to be. + +I felt that queer shame one feels when one is taken suddenly at the full +value of one's utmost expressions. I felt as though I had cheated her, +was passing myself off for something as great and splendid as the Empire +of my dreams. It is hard to dissociate oneself from the fine things to +which one aspires. I stopped almost abruptly. Dumbly her eyes bade me go +on, but when I spoke again it was at a lower level.... + +That look in Rachel's eyes remained with me. My mind had flashed very +rapidly from the realization of its significance to the thought that if +one could be sure of that, then indeed one could pitch oneself high. +Rachel, I felt, had something for me that I needed profoundly, without +ever having known before that I needed it. She had the supreme gifts of +belief and devotion; in that instant's gleam it seemed she held them out +to me. + +Never before in my life had it seemed credible to me that anyone could +give me that, or that I could hope for such a gift of support and +sacrifice. Love as I had known it had been a community and an alliance, +a frank abundant meeting; but this was another kind of love that shone +for an instant and promised, and vanished shyly out of sight as I and +Rachel looked at one another. + +Some interruption occurred. Restall came, I think, blackened by +progress, to drink a cup of tea and negotiate the loan of a kitchen +skewer. A kitchen skewer it appeared was all that was needed to complete +his reconstruction in the avenue. Norah darted off for a kitchen skewer, +while Restall drank. And then there was a drift to tennis, and Rachel +and I were partners. All this time I was in a state of startled +attention towards her, full of this astounding impression that something +wonderful and unprecedented had flowed out from her towards my life, +full too of doubts now whether that shining response had ever occurred, +whether some trick of light and my brain had not deceived me. I wanted +tremendously to talk to her, and did not know how to begin in any +serious fashion. Beyond everything I wanted to see again that deep onset +of belief.... + +"Come again," said your grandmother to me, "come again!" after she had +tried in vain to make Restall stay for an informal supper. I was all for +staying, but Restall said darkly, "There are the Lamps." + +"But they will be all right," said Mrs. More. + +"I can't trust 'em," said Restall, with a deepening gloom. "Not after +_that_." The motor-car looked self-conscious and uncomfortable, but said +nothing by way of excuse, and Restall took me off in it like one whose +sun has set for ever. "I wouldn't be surprised," said Restall as we went +down the drive, "if the damned thing turned a somersault. It might +do--anything." Those were the brighter days of motoring. + +The next time I went over released from Restall's limitations, and +stayed to a jolly family supper. I found remarkably few obstacles in my +way to a better acquaintance with Rachel. You see I was an entirely +eligible and desirable young man in Mrs. More's eyes.... + + +Sec. 4 + +When I recall these long past emotions again, I am struck by the +profound essential difference between my feelings for your mother and +for Mary. They were so different that it seems scarcely rational to me +that they should be called by the same name. Yet each was love, +profoundly deep and sincere. The contrast lies, I think, in our relative +ages, and our relative maturity; that altered the quality of all our +emotions. The one was the love of a man of six-and-twenty, exceptionally +seasoned and experienced and responsible for his years, for a girl still +at school, a girl attractively beautiful, mysterious and unknown to him; +the other was the love of coevals, who had been playmates and intimate +companions, and of whom the woman was certainly as capable and wilful as +the man. + +Now it is exceptional for men to love women of their own age, it is the +commoner thing that they should love maidens younger and often much +younger than themselves. This is true more particularly of our own +class; the masculine thirties and forties marry the feminine twenties, +all the prevailing sentiment and usage between the sexes rises naturally +out of that. We treat this seniority as though it were a virile +characteristic; we treat the man as though he were a natural senior, we +expect a weakness, a timid deference, in the girl. I and Mary had loved +one another as two rivers run together on the way to the sea, we had +grown up side by side to the moment when we kissed; but I sought your +mother, I watched her and desired her and chose her, very tenderly and +worshipfully indeed, to be mine. I do not remember that there was any +corresponding intention in my mind to be hers. I do not think that that +idea came in at all. She was something to be won, something playing an +inferior and retreating part. And I was artificial in all my attitudes +to her, I thought of what would interest her, what would please her, I +knew from the outset that what she saw in me to rouse that deep, shy +glow of exaltation in her face was illusion, illusion it was my business +to sustain. And so I won her, and long years had to pass, years of +secret loneliness and hidden feelings, of preposterous pretences and +covert perplexities, before we escaped from that crippling tradition of +inequality and looked into one another's eyes with understanding and +forgiveness, a woman and a man. + +I made no great secret of the interest and attraction I found in Rachel, +and the Mores made none of their entire approval of me. I walked over on +the second occasion, and Ridinghanger opened out, a great flower of +genial appreciation that I came alone, hiding nothing of its dawning +perception that it was Rachel in particular I came to see. + +Your grandmother's match-making was as honest as the day. There was the +same salad of family and visitors as on the former afternoon, and this +time I met Freshman, who was destined to marry Alice; there was tea, +tennis, and, by your grandmother's suggestion, a walk to see the sunset +from the crest of the hill. Rachel and I walked across the breezy +moorland together, while I talked and tempted her to talk. + +What, I wonder, did we talk about? English scenery, I think, and African +scenery and the Weald about us, and the long history of the Weald and +its present and future, and at last even a little of politics. I had +never explored the mind of a girl of seventeen before; there was a +surprise in all she knew and a delight in all she didn't know, and about +herself a candor, a fresh simplicity of outlook that was sweeter than +the clear air about us, sweeter than sunshine or the rising song of a +lark. She believed so gallantly and beautifully, she was so perfectly, +unaffectedly and certainly prepared to be a brave and noble person--if +only life would let her. And she hadn't as yet any suspicion that life +might make that difficult.... + +I went to Ridinghanger a number of times in the spring and early summer. +I talked a great deal with Rachel, and still I did not make love to her. +It was always in my mind that I would make love to her, the heavens and +earth and all her family were propitious, glowing golden with consent +and approval, I thought she was the most wonderful and beautiful thing +in life, and her eyes, the intonation of her voice, her hurrying color +and a hundred little involuntary signs told me how she quickened at my +coming. But there was a shyness. I loved her as one loves and admires a +white flower or a beautiful child--some stranger's child. I felt that I +might make her afraid of me. I had never before thought that to make +love is a coarse thing. But still at high summer when I met Mary again +no definite thing had been said between myself and Rachel. But we knew, +each of us knew, that somewhere in a world less palpable, in fairyland, +in dreamland, we had met and made our vows. + + +Sec. 5 + +You see how far my imagination had gone towards readjustment when Mary +returned into my life. You see how strange and distant it was to meet +her again, changed completely into the great lady she had intended to +be, speaking to me with the restrained and practised charm of a woman +who is young and beautiful and prominent and powerful and secure. There +was no immediate sense of shock in that resumption of our broken +intercourse, it seemed to me that night simply that something odd and +curious had occurred. I do not remember how we parted that evening or +whether we even saw each other after dinner was over, but from that hour +forth Mary by insensible degrees resumed her old predominance in my +mind. I woke up in the night and thought about her, and next day I found +myself thinking of her, remembering things out of the past and recalling +and examining every detail of the overnight encounter. How cold and +ineffective we had been, both of us! We had been like people resuming a +disused and partially forgotten language. Had she changed towards me? +Did she indeed want to see me again or was that invitation a mere +demonstration of how entirely unimportant seeing me or not seeing me had +become? + +Then I would find myself thinking with the utmost particularity of her +face. Had it changed at all? Was it altogether changed? I seemed to have +forgotten everything and remembered everything; that peculiar slight +thickness of her eyelids that gave her eyes their tenderness, that light +firmness of her lips. Of course she would want to talk to me, as now I +perceived I wanted to talk to her. + +Was I in love with her still? It seemed to me then that I was not. It +had not been that hesitating fierceness, that pride and demand and +doubt, which is passionate love, that had made all my sensations strange +to me as I sat beside her. It had been something larger and finer, +something great and embracing, a return to fellowship. Here beside me, +veiled from me only by our transient embarrassment and the tarnish of +separation and silences, was the one person who had ever broken down the +crust of shy insincerity which is so incurably my characteristic and +talked intimately of the inmost things of life to me. I discovered now +for the first time how intense had been my loneliness for the past five +years. I discovered now that through all those years I had been hungry +for such talk as Mary alone could give me. My mind was filled with talk, +filled with things I desired to say to her; that chaos began to take on +a multitudinous expression at the touch of her spirit. I began to +imagine conversations with her, to prepare reports for her of those new +worlds of sensation and activity I had discovered since that boyish +parting. + +But when at last that talk came it was altogether different from any of +those I had invented. + +She wrote to me when she came down into Surrey and I walked over to +Martens the next afternoon. I found her in her own sitting-room, a +beautiful characteristic apartment with tall French windows hung with +blue curtains, a large writing-desk and a great litter of books. The +room gave upon a broad sunlit terrace with a balustrading of yellowish +stone, on which there stood great oleanders. Beyond was a flower garden +and then the dark shadows of cypresses. She was standing as I came in to +her, as though she had seen me coming across the lawns and had been +awaiting my entrance. "I thought you might come to-day," she said, and +told the manservant to deny her to other callers. Again she produced +that queer effect of being at once altogether the same and altogether +different from the Mary I had known. "Justin," she said, "is in Paris. +He comes back on Friday." I saw then that the change lay in her bearing, +that for the easy confidence of the girl she had now the deliberate +dignity and control of a married woman--a very splendidly and spaciously +married woman. Her manner had been purged of impulse. Since we had met +she had stood, the mistress of great houses, and had dealt with +thousands of people. + +"You walked over to me?" + +"I walked," I said. "It is nearly a straight path. You know it?" + +"You came over the heather beyond our pine wood," she confirmed. And +then I think we talked some polite unrealities about Surrey scenery and +the weather. It was so formal that by a common impulse we let the topic +suddenly die. We stood through a pause, a hesitation. Were we indeed to +go on at that altitude of cold civility? She turned to the window as if +the view was to serve again. + +"Sit down," she said and dropped into a chair against the light, looking +away from me across the wide green space of afternoon sunshine. I sat +down on a little sofa, at a loss also. + +"And so," she said, turning her face to me suddenly, "you come back into +my life." And I was amazed to see that the brightness of her eyes was +tears. "We've lived--five years." + +"You," I said clumsily, "have done all sorts of things. I hear of +you--patronizing young artists--organizing experiments in village +education." + +"Yes," she said, "I've done all sorts of things. One has to. Forced, +unreal things for the most part. You I expect have done--all sorts of +things also.... But yours have been real things...." + +"All things," I remarked sententiously, "are real. And all of them a +little unreal. South Africa has been wonderful. And now it is all over +one doubts if it really happened. Like that incredulous mood after a +storm of passion." + +"You've come back for good?" + +"For good. I want to do things in England." + +"Politics?" + +"If I can get into that." + +Again a pause. There came the characteristic moment of deliberation that +I remembered so well. + +"I never meant you," she said, "to go away.... You could have written. +You never answered the notes I sent." + +"I was frantic," I said, "with loss and jealousy. I wanted to forget." + +"And you forgot?" + +"I did my best." + +"I did my best," said Mary. "And now---- Have you forgotten?" + +"Nothing." + +"Nor I. I thought I had. Until I saw you again. I've thought of you +endlessly. I've wanted to talk to you. We had a way of talking together. +But you went away. You turned your back as though all that was +nothing--not worth having. You--you drove home my marriage, Stephen. You +made me know what a thing of sex a woman is to a man--and how little +else...." + +She paused. + +"You see," I said slowly. "You had made me, as people say, in love with +you.... I don't know--if you remember everything...." + +She looked me in the eyes for a moment. + +"I hadn't been fair," she said with an abrupt abandonment of accusation. +"But you know, Stephen, that night---- I meant to explain. And +afterwards.... Things sometimes go as one hasn't expected them to go, +even the things one has planned to say. I suppose--I treated +you--disgustingly." + +I protested. + +"Yes," she said. "I treated you as I did--and I thought you would stand +it. I _knew_, I knew then as well as you do now that male to my female +you wouldn't stand it, but somehow--I thought there were other things. +Things that could override that...." + +"Not," I said, "for a boy of one-and-twenty." + +"But in a man of twenty-six?" + +I weighed the question. "Things are different," I said, and then, "Yes. +Anyhow now--if I may come back penitent,--to a friendship." + +We looked at one another gravely. Faintly in our ears sounded the music +of past and distant things. We pretended to hear nothing of that, tried +honestly to hear nothing of it. I had not remembered how steadfast and +quiet her face could be. "Yes," she said, "a friendship." + +"I've always had you in my mind, Stephen," she said. "When I saw I +couldn't marry you, it seemed to me I had better marry and be free of +any further hope. I thought we could get over that. 'Let's get it over,' +I thought. Now--at any rate--we have got over that." Her eyes verified +her words a little doubtfully. "And we can talk and you can tell me of +your life, and the things you want to do that make life worth living. +Oh! life has been _stupid_ without you, Stephen, large and expensive and +aimless....Tell me of your politics. They say--Justin told me--you think +of parliament?" + +"I want to do that. I have been thinking---- In fact I am going to +stand." I found myself hesitating on the verge of phrases in the quality +of a review article. It was too unreal for her presence. And yet it was +this she seemed to want from me. "This," I said, "is a phase of great +opportunities. The war has stirred the Empire to a sense of itself, to a +sense of what it might be. Of course this Tariff Reform row is a squalid +nuisance; it may kill out all the fine spirit again before anything is +done. Everything will become a haggle, a chaffering of figures.... All +the more reason why we should try and save things from the commercial +traveller. If the Empire is anything at all, it is something infinitely +more than a combination in restraint of trade...." + +"Yes," she said. "And you want to take that line. The high line." + +"If one does not take the high line," I said, "what does one go into +politics for?" + +"Stephen," she smiled, "you haven't lost a sort of simplicity---- People +go into politics because it looks important, because other people go +into politics, because they can get titles and a sense of influence +and--other things. And then there are quarrels, old grudges to serve." + +"These are roughnesses of the surface." + +"Old Stephen!" she cried with the note of a mother. "They will worry you +in politics." + +I laughed. "Perhaps I'm not altogether so simple." + +"Oh! you'll get through. You have a way of going on. But I shall have +to watch over you. I see I shall have to watch over you. Tell me of the +things you mean to do. Where are you standing?" + +I began to tell her a little disjointedly of the probabilities of my +Yorkshire constituency.... + + +Sec. 6 + +I have a vivid vignette in my memory of my return to my father's house, +down through the pine woods and by the winding path across the deep +valley that separated our two ridges. I was thinking of Mary and nothing +but Mary in all the world and of the friendly sweetness of her eyes and +the clean strong sharpness of her voice. That sweet white figure of +Rachel that had been creeping to an ascendancy in my imagination was +moonlight to her sunrise. I knew it was Mary I loved and had always +loved. I wanted passionately to be as she desired, the friend she +demanded, that intimate brother and confederate, but all my heart cried +out for her, cried out for her altogether. + +I would be her friend, I repeated to myself, I would be her friend. I +would talk to her often, plan with her, work with her. I could put my +meanings into her life and she should throw her beauty over mine. I +began already to dream of the talk of to-morrow's meeting.... + + +Sec. 7 + +And now let me go on to tell at once the thing that changed life for +both of us altogether, that turned us out of the courses that seemed +set for us, our spacious, successful and divergent ways, she to the +tragedy of her death and I from all the prospects of the public career +that lay before me to the work that now, toilsomely, inadequately and +blunderingly enough, I do. It was to pierce and slash away the +appearances of life for me, it was to open my way to infinite +disillusionment, and unsuspected truths. Within a few weeks of our +second meeting Mary and I were passionately in love with one another; we +had indeed become lovers. The arrested attractions of our former love +released again, drew us inevitably to that. We tried to seem outwardly +only friends, with this hot glow between us. Our tormented secret was +half discovered and half betrayed itself. There followed a tragi-comedy +of hesitations and disunited struggle. Within four months the crisis of +our two lives was past.... + +It is not within my purpose to tell you, my son, of the particular +events, the particular comings and goings, the chance words, the chance +meetings, the fatal momentary misunderstandings that occurred between +us. I want to tell of something more general than that. This +misadventure is in our strain. It is our inheritance. It is a +possibility in the inheritance of all honest and emotional men and +women. There are no doubt people altogether cynical and adventurous to +whom these passions and desires are at once controllable and permissible +indulgences without any radiation of consequences, a secret and +detachable part of life, and there may be people of convictions so +strong and simple that these disturbances are eliminated, but we +Strattons are of a quality neither so low nor so high, we stoop and +rise, we are not convinced about our standards, and for many +generations to come, with us and with such people as the Christians, and +indeed with most of our sort of people, we shall be equally desirous of +free and intimate friendship and prone to blaze into passion and +disaster at that proximity. + +This is one of the essential riddles in the adaptation of such human +beings as ourselves to that greater civilized state of which I dream. It +is the gist of my story. It is one of the two essential riddles that +confront our kind. The servitude of sex and the servitude of labor are +the twin conditions upon which human society rests to-day, the two +limitations upon its progress towards a greater social order, to that +greater community, those uplands of light and happy freedom, towards +which that Being who was my father yesterday, who thinks in myself +to-day, and who will be you to-morrow and your sons after you, by his +very nature urges and must continue to urge the life of mankind. The +story of myself and Mary is a mere incident in that gigantic, scarce +conscious effort to get clear of toils and confusions and encumbrances, +and have our way with life. We are like little figures, dots ascendant +upon a vast hillside; I take up our intimacy for an instant and hold it +under a lens for you. I become more than myself then, and Mary stands +for innumerable women. It happened yesterday, and it is just a part of +that same history that made Edmond Stratton of the Hays elope with +Charlotte Anstruther and get himself run through the body at Haddington +two hundred years ago, which drove the Laidlaw-Christians to Virginia in +'45, gave Stratton Street to the moneylenders when George IV. was +Regent, and broke the heart of Margaret Stratton in the days when +Charles the First was king. With our individual variations and under +changed conditions the old desires and impulses stirred us, the old +antagonisms confronted us, the old difficulties and sloughs and +impassable places baffled us. There are times when I think of my history +among all those widespread repeated histories, until it seems to me that +the human Lover is like a creature who struggles for ever through a +thicket without an end.... + +There are no universal laws of affection and desire, but it is +manifestly true that for the most of us free talk, intimate association, +and any real fellowship between men and women turns with an extreme +readiness to love. And that being so it follows that under existing +conditions the unrestricted meeting and companionship of men and women +in society is a monstrous sham, a merely dangerous pretence of +encounters. The safe reality beneath those liberal appearances is that a +woman must be content with the easy friendship of other women and of one +man only, letting a superficial friendship towards all other men veil +impassable abysses of separation, and a man must in the same way have +one sole woman intimate. To all other women he must be a little blind, a +little deaf, politely inattentive. He must respect the transparent, +intangible, tacit purdah about them, respect it but never allude to it. +To me that is an intolerable state of affairs, but it is reality. If you +live in the spirit of any other understanding you will court social +disaster. I suppose it is a particularly intolerable state of affairs to +us Strattons because it is in our nature to want things to seem what +they are. That translucent yet impassible purdah outrages our veracity. +And it is plain to me that our social order cannot stand and is not +standing the tensions it creates. The convention that passions and +emotions are absent when they are palpably present broke down between +Mary and myself, as it breaks down in a thousand other cases, as it +breaks down everywhere. Our social life is honeycombed and rotten with +secret hidden relationships. The rigid, the obtuse and the +unscrupulously cunning escape; the honest passion sooner or later flares +out and destroys.... Here is a difficulty that no bullying imposition of +arbitrary rules on the one hand nor any reckless abandonment of law on +the other, can solve. Humanity has yet to find its method in sexual +things; it has to discover the use and the limitation of jealousy. And +before it can even begin to attempt to find, it has to cease its present +timid secret groping in shame and darkness and turn on the light of +knowledge. None of us knows much and most of us do not even know what is +known. + + +Sec. 8 + +The house is very quiet to-day. It is your mother's birthday, and you +three children have gone with her and Mademoiselle Potin into the forest +to celebrate the occasion. Presently I shall join you. The sunlit +garden, with its tall dreaming lilies against the trellised vines upon +the wall, the cedars and the grassy space about the sundial, have that +distinguished stillness, that definite, palpable and almost outlined +emptiness which is so to speak your negative presence. It is like a +sheet of sunlit colored paper out of which your figures have been cut. +There is a commotion of birds in the jasmine, and your Barker reclines +with an infinite tranquillity, a masterless dog, upon the lawn. I take +up this writing again after an interval of some weeks. I have been in +Paris, attending the Sabotage Conference, and dealing with those +intricate puzzles of justice and discipline and the secret sources of +contentment that have to be solved if sabotage is ever to vanish from +labor struggles again. I think a few points have been made clearer in +that curious riddle of reconciliations.... + +Now I resume this story. I turn over the sheets that were written and +finished before my departure, and come to the notes for what is to +follow. + +Perhaps my days of work in Paris have carried my mind on beyond the +point at which I left the narrative. I sit as it were among a pile of +memories that are now all disordered and mixed up together, their proper +sequences and connexions lost. I cannot trace the phases through which +our mutual passion rode up through the restrained and dignified +intentions of our friendship. But I know that presently we were in a +white heat of desire. There must have been passages that I now +altogether forget, moments of tense transition. I am more and more +convinced that our swiftest, intensest, mental changes leave far less +vivid memories than impressions one receives when one is comparatively +passive. And of this phase in my life of which I am now telling I have +clear memories of a time when we talked like brother and sister, or like +angels if you will, and hard upon that came a time when we were planning +in all our moments together how and when and where we might meet in +secret and meet again. + +Things drift with a phantom-like uncertainty into my mind and pass +again; those fierce motives of our transition have lost now all stable +form and feature, but I believe there was a curious tormenting urgency +in our jealousy of those others, of Justin on my part and of Rachel on +hers. At first we had talked quite freely about Rachel, had discussed my +conceivable marriage with her. We had indeed a little forced that topic, +as if to reassure ourselves of the honesty of our new footing. But the +force that urged us nearer pervaded all our being. It was hard enough to +be barred apart, to snatch back our hands from touching, to avoid each +other's eyes, to hurry a little out of the dusk towards the lit house +and its protecting servants, but the constant presence and suggestion of +those others from whom there were no bars, or towards whom bars could be +abolished at a look, at an impulse, exacerbated that hardship, roused a +fierce insatiable spirit of revolt within us. At times we grew angry +with each other's formalism, came near to quarrelling.... + +I associate these moods with the golden stillnesses of a prolonged and +sultry autumn, and with slowly falling leaves.... + +I will not tell you how that step was taken, it matters very little to +my story, nor will I tell which one of us it was first broke the +barriers down. + + +Sec. 9 + +But I do want to tell you certain things. I want to tell you them +because they are things that affect you closely. There was almost from +the first a difference between Mary and myself in this, that I wanted to +be public about our love, I wanted to be open and defiant, and +she--hesitated. She wanted to be secret. She wanted to keep me; I +sometimes think that she was moved to become my mistress because she +wanted to keep me. But she also wanted to keep everything else in her +life,--her position, her ample freedoms and wealth and dignity. Our love +was to be a secret cavern, Endymion's cave. I was ready enough to do +what I could to please her, and for a time I served that secrecy, lied, +pretended, agreed to false addresses, assumed names, and tangled myself +in a net-work of furtive proceedings. These are things that poison and +consume honest love. + +You will learn soon enough as you grow to be a man that beneath the +respectable assumptions of our social life there is an endless intricate +world of subterfuge and hidden and perverted passion,--for all passion +that wears a mask is perversion--and that thousands of people of our +sort are hiding and shamming about their desires, their gratifications, +their true relationships. I do not mean the open offenders, for they are +mostly honest and gallant people, but the men and women who sin in the +shadows, the people who are not clean and scandalous, but immoral and +respectable. This underworld is not for us. I wish that I who have +looked into it could in some way inoculate you now against the +repetition of my misadventure. We Strattons are daylight men, and if I +work now for widened facilities of divorce, for an organized freedom and +independence of women, and greater breadth of toleration, it is because +I know in my own person the degradations, the falsity, the bitterness, +that can lurk beneath the inflexible pretentions of the established code +to-day. + +And I want to tell you too of something altogether unforeseen that +happened to us, and that was this, that from the day that passion +carried us and we became in the narrower sense of the word lovers, all +the wider interests we had in common, our political intentions, our +impersonal schemes, began to pass out of our intercourse. Our situation +closed upon us like a trap and hid the sky. Something more intense had +our attention by the feet, and we used our wings no more. I do not think +that we even had the real happiness and beauty and delight of one +another. Because, I tell you, there is no light upon kiss or embrace +that is not done with pride. I do not know why it should be so, but +people of our race and quality are a little ashamed of mere +gratification in love. Always we seem in my memory to have been +whispering with flushed cheeks, and discussing +interminably--_situation_. Had something betrayed us, might something +betray, was this or that sufficiently cunning? Had we perhaps left a +footmark or failed to burn a note, was the second footman who was +detailed as my valet even now pausing astonished in the brushing of my +clothes with our crumpled secret in his hand? Between myself and the +clear vision of this world about me this infernal net-work of +precautions spread like a veil. + +And it was not only a matter of concealments but of positive deceptions. +The figure of Justin comes back to me. It is a curious thing that in +spite of our bitter antagonism and the savage jealousy we were to feel +for one another, there has always been, and there remains now in my +thought of him, a certain liking, a regret at our opposition, a quality +of friendliness. His broad face, which the common impression and the +caricaturist make so powerful and eagle-like, is really not a brutal or +heavy face at all. It is no doubt aquiline, after the fashion of an +eagle-owl, the mouth and chin broad and the eyes very far apart, but +there is a minute puckering of the brows which combines with that queer +streak of brown discoloration that runs across his cheek and into the +white of his eyes, to give something faintly plaintive and pitiful to +his expression, an effect enhanced by the dark softness of his eyes. +They are gentle eyes; it is absurd to suppose them the eyes of a +violently forceful man. And indeed they do not belie Justin. It is not +by vehemence or pressure that his wealth and power have been attained; +it is by the sheer detailed abundance of his mind. In that queer big +brain of his there is something of the calculating boy and not a little +of the chess champion; he has a kind of financial gift, he must be rich, +and grows richer. What else is there for him to do? How many times have +I not tried to glance carelessly at his face and scrutinize that look in +his eyes, and ask myself was that his usual look, or was it lit by an +instinctive jealousy? Did he perhaps begin to suspect? I had become a +persistent visitor in the house, he might well be jealous of such minor +favors as she showed me, for with him she talked but little and shared +no thoughts. His manner with her was tinctured by an habituated despair. +They were extraordinarily polite and friendly with one another.... + +I tried a hundred sophistications of my treachery to him. I assured +myself that a modern woman is mistress and owner of herself; no chattel, +and so forth. But he did not think so, and neither she nor I were +behaving as though we thought so. In innumerable little things we were +doing our best tacitly to reassure him. And so you see me shaking hands +with this man, affecting an interest in his topics and affairs, staying +in his house, eating his food and drinking his wine, that I might be the +nearer to his wife. It is not the first time that has been done in the +world, there are esoteric codes to justify all I did; I perceive there +are types of men to whom such relationships are attractive by the very +reason of their illicit excitement. But we Strattons are honest people, +there is no secretive passion in our blood; this is no game for us; +never you risk the playing of it, little son, big son as you will be +when you read this story. Perhaps, but I hope indeed not, this may reach +you too late to be a warning, come to you in mid-situation. Go through +with it then, inheritor of mine, and keep as clean as you can, follow +the warped honor that is still left to you--and if you can, come out of +the tangle.... + +It is not only Justin haunts the memories of that furtive time, but +Rachel More. I see her still as she was then, a straight, white-dressed +girl with big brown eyes that regarded me now with perplexity, now with +a faint dismay. I still went over to see her, and my manner had changed. +I had nothing to say to her now and everything to hide. Everything +between us hung arrested, and nothing could occur to make an end. + +I told Mary I must cease my visits to the Mores. I tried to make her +feel my own sense of an accumulating cruelty to Rachel. "But it explains +away so much," she said. "If you stop going there--everyone will talk. +Everything will swing round--and point here." + +"Rachel!" I protested. + +"No," she said, overbearing me, "you must keep on going to Ridinghanger. +You must. You must." ... + +For a long time I had said nothing to Mary of the burthen these +pretences were to me; it had seemed a monstrous ingratitude to find the +slightest flaw in the passionate love and intimacy she had given me. But +at last the divergence of our purposes became manifest to us both. A +time came when we perceived it clearly and discussed it openly. I have +still a vivid recollection of a golden October day when we had met at +the edge of the plantation that overlooks Bearshill. She had come +through the gardens into the pine-wood, and I had jumped the rusty +banked stream that runs down the Bearshill valley, and clambered the +barbed wire fence. I came up the steep bank and through a fringe of +furze to where she stood in the shade; I kissed her hand, and discovered +mine had been torn open by one of the thorns of the wire and was +dripping blood. "Mind my dress," she said, and we laughed as we kissed +with my arm held aloof. + +We sat down side by side upon the warm pine needles that carpeted the +sand, and she made a mothering fuss about my petty wound, and bound it +in my handkerchief. We looked together across the steep gorge at the +blue ridge of trees beyond. "Anyone," she said, "might have seen us this +minute." + +"I never thought," I said, and moved a foot away from her. + +"It's too late if they have," said she, pulling me back to her. "Over +beyond there, that must be Hindhead. Someone with a telescope----!" + +"That's less credible," I said. And it occurred to me that the grey +stretch of downland beyond must be the ridge to the west of +Ridinghanger. + +"I wish," I said, "it didn't matter. I wish I could come and go and +fear nobody--and spend long hours with you--oh! at our ease." + +"Now," she said, "we spend short hours. I wonder if I would like---- +It's no good, Stephen, letting ourselves think of things that can't be. +Here we are. Kiss that hand, my lover, there, just between wrist and +thumb--the little hollow. Yes, exactly there." + +But thoughts had been set going in my mind. "Why," I said presently, +"should you always speak of things that can't be? Why should we take all +this as if it were all that there could be? I want long hours. I want +you to shine all the day through on my life. Now, dear, it's as if the +sun was shown ever and again, and then put back behind an eclipse. I +come to you half-blinded, I go away unsatisfied. All the world is dark +in between, and little phantom _yous_ float over it." + +She rested her cheek on her hand and looked at me gravely. + +"You are hard to satisfy, brother heart," she said. + +"I live in snatches of brightness and all the rest of life is waiting +and thinking and waiting." + +"What else is there? Haven't we the brightness?" + +"I want you," I said. "I want _you_ altogether." + +"After so much?" + +"I want the more. Mary, I want you to come away with me. No, listen! +this life--don't think I'm not full of the beauty, the happiness, the +wonder---- But it's a suspense. It doesn't go on. It's just a dawn, +dear, a splendid dawn, a glory of color and brightness and freshness and +hope, and--no sun rises. I want the day. Everything else has stopped +with me and stopped with you. I do nothing with my politics now,--I +pretend. I have no plans in life except plans for meeting you and again +meeting you. I want to go on, I want to go on with you and take up work +and the world again--you beside me. I want you to come out of all this +life--out of all this immense wealthy emptiness of yours----" + +"Stop," she said, "and listen to me, Stephen." + +She paused with her lips pressed together, her brows a little knit. + +"I won't," she said slowly. "I am going on like this. I and you are +going to be lovers--just as we are lovers now--secret lovers. And I am +going to help you in all your projects, hold your party together--for +you will have a party--my house shall be its centre----" + +"But Justin----" + +"He takes no interest in politics. He will do what pleases me." + +I took some time before I answered. "You don't understand how men feel," +I said. + +She waited for what else I had to say. I lay prone, and gathered +together and shaped and reshaped a little heap of pine needles. "You +see---- I can't do it. I want you." + +She gripped a handful of my hair, and tugged hard between each word. +"Haven't you got me?" she asked between her teeth. "What more _could_ +you have?" + +"I want you openly." + +She folded her arms beneath her. "_No_," she said. + +For a little while neither of us spoke. + +"It's the trouble of the deceit?" she asked. + +"It's--the deceit." + +"We can stop all that," she said. + +I looked up at her face enquiringly. + +"By having no more to hide," she said, with her eyes full of tears. "If +it's nothing to you----" + +"It's everything to me," I said. "It's overwhelming me. Oh Mary, heart +of my life, my dear, come out of this! Come with me, come and be my +wife, make a clean thing of it! Let me take you away, and then let me +marry you. I know it's asking you--to come to a sort of poverty----" + +But Mary's blue eyes were alight with anger. "Isn't it a clean thing +_now_, Stephen?" she was crying. "Do you mean that you and I aren't +clean now? Will you never understand?" + +"Oh clean," I answered, "clean as Eve in the garden. But can we keep +clean? Won't the shadow of our falsehoods darken at all? Come out of it +while we are still clean. Come with me. Justin will divorce you. We can +stay abroad and marry and come back." + +Mary was kneeling up now with her hands upon her knees. + +"Come back to what?" she cried. "Parliament?--after that? You _boy!_ you +sentimentalist! you--you duffer! Do you think I'd let you do it for your +own sake even? Do you think I want you--spoilt? We should come back to +mope outside of things, we should come back to fret our lives out. I +won't do it, Stephen, I won't do it. End _this_ if you like, break our +hearts and throw them away and go on without them, but to turn all our +lives into a scandal, to give ourselves over to the mean and the +malicious, a prey to old women--and _you_ damned out of everything! A +man partly forgiven! A man who went wrong for a woman! _No!_" + +She sprang lightly to her feet and stood over me as I knelt before her. +"And I came here to be made love to, Stephen! I came here to be loved! +And you talk that nonsense! You remind me of everything--wretched!" + +She lifted up her hands and then struck down with them, a gesture of +infinite impatience. Her face as she bent to me was alive with a +friendly anger, her eyes suddenly dark. "You _duffer_!" she repeated.... + + +Sec. 10 + +Discovery followed hard upon that meeting. I had come over to Martens +with some book as a pretext; the man had told me that Lady Mary awaited +me in her blue parlor, and I went unannounced through the long gallery +to find her. The door stood a little ajar, I opened it softly so that +she did not hear me, and saw her seated at her writing-desk with her +back to me, and her cheek and eyebrow just touched by the sunlight from +the open terrace window. She was writing a note. I put my hand about her +shoulder, and bent to kiss her as she turned. Then as she came round to +me she started, was for a moment rigid, then thrust me from her and rose +very slowly to her feet. + +I turned to the window and became as rigid, facing Justin. He was +standing on the terrace, staring at us, with a face that looked stupid +and inexpressive and--very white. The sky behind him, appropriately +enough, was full of the tattered inky onset of a thunderstorm. So we +remained for a lengthy second perhaps, a trite _tableau vivant_. We two +seemed to hang helplessly upon Justin, and he was the first of us to +move. + +He made a queer, incomplete gesture with one hand, as if he wanted to +undo the top button of his waistcoat and then thought better of it. He +came very slowly into the room. When he spoke his voice had neither rage +nor denunciation in it. It was simply conversational. "I felt this was +going on," he said. And then to his wife with the note of one who +remarks dispassionately on a peculiar situation. "Yet somehow it seemed +wrong and unnatural to think such a thing of you." + +His face took on something of the vexed look of a child who struggles +with a difficult task. "Do you mind," he said to me, "will you go?" + +I took a moment for my reply. "No," I said. "Since you know at last---- +There are things to be said." + +"No," said Mary, suddenly. "Go! Let me talk to him." + +"No," I said, "my place is here beside you." + +He seemed not to hear me. His eyes were fixed on Mary. He seemed to +think he had dismissed me, and that I was no longer there. His mind was +not concerned about me, but about her. He spoke as though what he said +had been in his mind, and no doubt it had been in his mind, for many +days. "I didn't deserve this," he said to her. "I've tried to make your +life as you wanted your life. It's astonishing to find--I haven't. You +gave no sign. I suppose I ought to have felt all this happening, but it +comes upon me surprisingly. I don't know what I'm to do." He became +aware of me again. "And _you_!" he said. "What am I to do? To think that +you--while I have been treating her like some sacred thing...." + +The color was creeping back into his face. Indignation had come into +his voice, the first yellow lights of rising jealousy showed in his +eyes. + +"Stephen," I heard Mary say, "will you leave me to talk to my husband?" + +"There is only one thing to do," I said. "What is the need of talking? +We two are lovers, Justin." I spoke to both of them. "We two must go out +into the world, go out now together. This marriage of yours--it's no +marriage, no real marriage...." + +I think I said that. I seem to remember saying that; perhaps with other +phrases that I have forgotten. But my memory of what we said and did, +which is so photographically clear of these earlier passages that I +believe I can answer for every gesture and nearly every word that I have +set down, becomes suddenly turbid. The high tension of our first +confrontation was giving place to a flood of emotional impulse. We all +became eager to talk, to impose interpretations and justifications upon +our situation. We all three became divided between our partial attention +to one another and our urgent necessity to keep hold of our points of +view. That I think is the common tragedy of almost all human conflicts, +that rapid breakdown from the first cool apprehension of an issue to +heat, confusion, and insistence. I do not know if indeed we raised our +voices, but my memory has an effect of raised voices, and when at last I +went out of the house it seemed to me that the men-servants in the hall +were as hushed as beasts before a thunderstorm, and all of them quite +fully aware of the tremendous catastrophe that had come to Martens. And +moreover, as I recalled afterwards with astonishment, I went past them +and out into the driving rain unprotected, and not one of them stirred +a serviceable hand.... + +What was it we said? I have a vivid sense of declaring not once only but +several times that Mary and I were husband and wife "in the sight of +God." I was full of the idea that now she must inevitably be mine. I +must have spoken to Justin at times as if he had come merely to confirm +my view of the long dispute there had been between us. For a while my +mind resisted his extraordinary attitude that the matter lay between him +and Mary, that I was in some way an interloper. It seemed to me there +was nothing for it now but that Mary should stand by my side and face +Justin with the world behind him. I remember my confused sense that +presently she and I would have to go straight out of Martens. And she +was wearing a tea-gown, easy and open, and the flimsiest of slippers. +Any packing, any change of clothing, struck me as an incredible +anti-climax. I had visions of our going forth, hand in hand. Outside was +the soughing of a coming storm, a chill wind drove a tumult of leaves +along the terrace, the door slammed and yawned open again, and then came +the rain. Justin, I remember, still talking, closed the door. I tried to +think how I could get to the station five miles away, and then what we +could do in London. We should seem rather odd visitors to an +hotel--without luggage. All this was behind my valiant demand that she +should come with me, and come now. + +And then my mind was lanced by the thin edge of realization that she did +not intend to come now, and that Justin was resolved she should not do +so. After the first shock of finding herself discovered she had stood +pale but uncowed before her bureau, with her eyes rather on him than on +me. Her hands, I think, were behind her upon the edge of the writing +flap, and she was a little leaning upon them. She had the watchful alert +expression of one who faces an unanticipated but by no means +overwhelming situation. She cast a remark to me. "But I do not want to +come with you," she said. "I have told you I do not want to come with +you." All her mind seemed concentrated upon what she should do with +Justin. "You must send him away," he was saying. "It's an abominable +thing. It must stop. How can you dream it should go on?" + +"But you said when you married me I should be free, I should own myself! +You gave me this house----" + +"What! To disgrace myself!" + +I was moved to intervene. + +"You must choose between us, Mary," I cried. "It is impossible you +should stay here! You cannot stay here." + +She turned upon me, a creature at bay. "Why shouldn't I stay here? Why +must I choose between two men? I want neither of you. I want myself. I'm +not a thing. I'm a human being. I'm not your thing, Justin--nor yours, +Stephen. Yet you want to quarrel over me--like two dogs over a bone. I +am going to stay here--in my house! It's my house. I made it. Every room +of it is full of me. Here I am!" + +She stood there making this magnificently extravagant claim; her eyes +blazing blue, her hair a little dishevelled with a strand across her +cheek. + +Both I and Justin spoke together, and then turned in helpless anger upon +one another. I remember that with the clumsiest of weak gestures he bade +me begone from the house, and that I with a now rather deflated +rhetoric answered I would go only with Mary at my side. And there she +stood, less like a desperate rebel against the most fundamental social +relations than an indignant princess, and demanded of us and high +heaven, "Why should I be fought for? Why should I be fought for?" + +And then abruptly she gathered her skirts in her hand and advanced. +"Open that door, Stephen," she said, and was gone with a silken whirl +and rustle from our presence. + +We were left regarding one another with blank expressions. + +Her departure had torn the substance out of our dispute. For the moment +we found ourselves left with a new situation for which there is as yet +no tradition of behavior. We had become actors in that new human comedy +that is just beginning in the world, that comedy in which men still +dispute the possession and the manner of the possession of woman +according to the ancient rules, while they on their side are determining +ever more definitely that they will not be possessed.... + +We had little to say to one another,--mere echoes and endorsements of +our recent declarations. "She must come to me," said I. And he, "I will +save her from that at any cost." + +That was the gist of our confrontation, and then I turned about and +walked along the gallery towards the entrance, with Justin following me +slowly. I was full of the wrath of baffled heroics; I turned towards him +with something of a gesture. Down the perspective of the white and empty +gallery he appeared small and perplexed. The panes of the tall French +windows were slashed with rain.... + + +Sec. 11 + +I forget now absolutely what I may have expected to happen next. I +cannot remember my return to my father's house that day. But I know that +what did happen was the most unanticipated and incredible experience of +my life. It was as if the whole world of mankind were suddenly to turn +upside down and people go about calmly in positions of complete +inversion. I had a note from Mary on the morning after this discovery +that indeed dealt with that but was otherwise not very different from +endless notes I had received before our crisis. It was destroyed, so +that I do not know its exact text now, but it did not add anything +material to the situation, or give me the faintest shadow to intimate +what crept close upon us both. She repeated her strangely thwarting +refusal to come away and live with me. She seemed indignant that we had +been discovered--as though Justin had indulged in an excess of existence +by discovering us. I completed and despatched to her a long letter I had +already been writing overnight in which I made clear the hopeless +impossibility of her attitude, vowed all my life and strength to her, +tried to make some picture of the happiness that was possible for us +together, sketched as definitely as I could when and where we might meet +and whither we might go. It must have made an extraordinary jumble of +protest, persuasion and practicality. It never reached her; it was +intercepted by Justin. + +I have gathered since that after I left Martens he sent telegrams to Guy +and Philip and her cousin Lord Tarvrille. He was I think amazed beyond +measure at this revelation of the possibilities of his cold and distant +wife, with a vast passion of jealousy awaking in him, and absolutely +incapable of forming any plan to meet the demands of his extraordinary +situation. Guy and Philip got to him that night, Tarvrille came down +next morning, and Martens became a debate. Justin did not so much +express views and intentions as have them extracted from him; it was +manifest he was prepared for the amplest forgiveness of his wife if only +I could be obliterated from their world. Confronted with her brothers, +the two men in the world who could be frankly brutal to her, Mary's +dignity suffered; she persisted she meant to go on seeing me, but she +was reduced to passionate tears. + +Into some such state of affairs I came that morning on the heels of my +letter, demanding Lady Mary of a scared evasive butler. + +Maxton and Tarvrille appeared: "Hullo, Stratton!" said Tarvrille, with a +fine flavor of an agreeable chance meeting. Philip had doubts about his +greeting me, and then extended his reluctant hand with a nervous grin to +excuse the delay. + +"I want to see Lady Mary," said I, stiffly. + +"She's not up yet," said Tarvrille, with a hand on my shoulder. "Come +and have a talk in the garden." + +We went out with Tarvrille expanding the topic of the seasons. "It's a +damned good month, November, say what you like about it." Philip walked +grimly silent on my other hand. + +"And it's a damned awkward situation you've got us into, Stratton," said +Tarvrille, "say what you like about it." + +"It isn't as though old Justin was any sort of beast," he reflected, +"or anything like that, you know. He's a most astonishing decent chap, +clean as they make them." + +"This isn't a beastly intrigue," I said. + +"It never is," said Tarvrille genially. + +"We've loved each other a long time. It's just flared out here." + +"No doubt of that," said Tarvrille. "It's been like a beacon to all +Surrey." + +"It's one of those cases where things have to be readjusted. The best +thing to do is for Mary and me to go abroad----" + +"Yes, but does Mary think so?" + +"Look here!" said Philip in a voice thick with rage. "I won't have Mary +divorced. I won't. See? I won't." + +"What the devil's it got to do with _you_?" I asked with an answering +flash of fury. + +Tarvrille's arm ran through mine. "Nobody's going to divorce Mary," he +said reassuringly. "Not even Justin. He doesn't want to, and nobody else +can, and there you are!" + +"But we two----" + +"You two have had a tremendously good time. You've got found out--and +there you are!" + +"This thing has got to stop absolutely now," said Philip and echoed with +a note of satisfaction in his own phrasing, "absolutely _now_." + +"You see, Stratton," said Tarvrille as if he were expanding Philip's +assertion, "there's been too many divorces in society. It's demoralizing +people. It's discrediting us. It's setting class against class. +Everybody is saying why don't these big people either set about +respecting the law or altering it. Common people are getting too +infernally clear-headed. Hitherto it's mattered so little.... But we +can't stand any more of it, Stratton, now. It's something more than a +private issue; it's a question of public policy. We can't stand any more +divorces." + +He reflected. "We have to consider something more than our own personal +inclinations. We've got no business to be here at all if we're not a +responsible class. We owe something--to ourselves." + +It was as if Tarvrille was as concerned as I was for this particular +divorce, as if he struggled with a lively desire to see me and Mary +happily married after the shortest possible interval. And indeed he +manifestly wasn't unsympathetic; he had the strongest proclivity for the +romantic and picturesque, and it was largely the romantic +picturesqueness of renunciation that he urged upon me. Philip for the +most part maintained a resentful silence; he was a clenched anger +against me, against Mary, against the flaming possibilities that +threatened the sister of Lord Maxton, that most promising and +distinguished young man. + +Of course their plans must have been definitely made before this talk, +probably they had made them overnight, and probably it was Tarvrille had +given them a practicable shape, but he threw over the whole of our talk +so satisfying a suggestion of arrest and prolonged discussion that it +never occurred to me that I should not be able to come again on the +morrow and renew my demand to see Mary. Even when next day I turned my +face to Martens and saw the flag had vanished from the flagstaff, it +seemed merely a token of that household's perturbation. I thought the +house looked oddly blank and sleepy as I drew near, but I did not +perceive that this was because all the blinds were drawn. The door upon +the lawn was closed, and presently the butler came to open it. He was in +an old white jacket, and collarless. "Lady Mary!" he said. "Lady Mary +has gone, sir. She and Mr. Justin went yesterday after you called." + +"Gone!" said I. "But where?" + +"I _think_ abroad, sir." + +"Abroad!" + +"I _think_ abroad." + +"But---- They've left an address?" + +"Only to Mr. Justin's office," said the man. "Any letters will be +forwarded from there." + +I paused upon the step. He remained stiffly deferential, but with an air +of having disposed of me. He reproved me tacitly for forgetting that I +ought to conceal my astonishment at this disappearance. He was indeed an +admirable man-servant. "Thank you," said I, and dropped away defeated +from the door. + +I went down the broad steps, walked out up the lawn, and surveyed house +and trees and garden and sky. To the heights and the depths and the +uttermost, I knew now what it was to be amazed.... + + +Sec. 12 + +I had felt myself an actor in a drama, and now I had very much the +feeling an actor would have who answers to a cue and finds himself in +mid-stage with the scenery and the rest of the cast suddenly vanished +behind him. By that mixture of force and persuasion which avails itself +of a woman's instinctive and cultivated dread of disputes and raised +voices and the betrayal of contention to strangers, by the sheer tiring +down of nerves and of sleepless body and by threats of an immediate +divorce and a campaign of ruin against me, these three men had obliged +Mary to leave Martens and go with them to Southampton, and thence they +took her in Justin's yacht, the _Water-Witch_, to Waterford, and thence +by train to a hired house, an adapted old castle at Mirk near Crogham in +Mayo. There for all practical purposes she was a prisoner. They took +away her purse, and she was four miles from a pillar-box and ten from a +telegraph office. This house they had taken furnished without seeing it +on the recommendation of a London agent, and in the name of Justin's +solicitor. Thither presently went Lady Ladislaw, and an announcement +appeared in the _Times_ that Justin and Lady Mary had gone abroad for a +time and that no letters would be forwarded. + +I have never learnt the particulars of that abduction, but I imagine +Mary astonished, her pride outraged, humiliated, helpless, perplexed and +maintaining a certain outward dignity. Moreover, as I was presently to +be told, she was ill. Guy and Philip were, I believe, the moving spirits +in the affair; Tarvrille was their apologetic accomplice, Justin took +the responsibility for what they did and bore the cost, he was bitterly +ashamed to have these compulsions applied to his wife, but full now of a +gusty fury against myself. He loved Mary still with a love that was +shamed and torn and bleeding, but his ruling passion was that infinitely +stronger passion than love in our poor human hearts, jealousy. He was +prepared to fight for her now as men fight for a flag, tearing it to +pieces in the struggle. He meant now to keep Mary. That settled, he was +prepared to consider whether he still loved her or she him.... + +Now here it may seem to you that we are on the very verge of romance. +Here is a beautiful lady carried off and held prisoner in a wild old +place, standing out half cut off from the mainland among the wintry +breakers of the west coast of Ireland. Here is the lover, baffled but +insistent. Here are the fierce brothers and the stern dragon husband, +and you have but to make out that the marriage was compulsory, irregular +and, on the ground of that irregularity, finally dissoluble, to furnish +forth a theme for Marriott Watson in his most admirable and adventurous +vein. You can imagine the happy chances that would have guided me to the +hiding-place, the trusty friend who would have come with me and told the +story, the grim siege of the place--all as it were _sotto voce_ for fear +of scandal--the fight with Guy in the little cave, my attempted +assassination, the secret passage. Would to heaven life had those rich +simplicities, and one could meet one's man at the end of a sword! My +siege of Mirk makes a very different story from that. + +In the first place I had no trusted friend of so extravagant a +friendship as such aid would demand. I had no one whom it seemed +permissible to tell of our relations. I was not one man against three or +four men in a romantic struggle for a woman. I was one man against +something infinitely greater than that, I was one man against nearly all +men, one man against laws, traditions, instincts, institutions, social +order. Whatever my position had been before, my continuing pursuit of +Mary was open social rebellion. And I was in a state of extreme +uncertainty how far Mary was a willing agent in this abrupt +disappearance. I was disposed to think she had consented far more than +she had done to this astonishing step. Carrying off an unwilling woman +was outside my imaginative range. It was luminously clear in my mind +that so far she had never countenanced the idea of flight with me, and +until she did I was absolutely bound to silence about her. I felt that +until I saw her face to face again, and was sure she wanted me to +release her, that prohibition held. Yet how was I to get at her and hear +what she had to say? Clearly it was possible that she was under +restraint, but I did not know; I was not certain, I could not prove it. +At Guildford station I gathered, after ignominious enquiries, that the +Justins had booked to London. I had two days of nearly frantic +inactivity at home, and then pretended business that took me to London, +for fear that I should break out to my father. I came up revolving a +dozen impossible projects of action in my mind. I had to get into touch +with Mary, at that my mind hung and stopped. All through the twenty-four +hours my nerves jumped at every knock upon my door; this might be the +letter, this might be the telegram, this might be herself escaped and +come to me. The days passed like days upon a painful sick-bed, grey or +foggy London days of an appalling length and emptiness. If I sat at home +my imagination tortured me; if I went out I wanted to be back and see if +any communication had come. I tried repeatedly to see Tarvrille. I had +an idea of obtaining a complete outfit for an elopement, but I was +restrained by my entire ignorance of what a woman may need. I tried to +equip myself for a sudden crisis by the completest preparation of every +possible aspect. I did some absurd and ill-advised things. I astonished +a respectable solicitor in a grimy little office behind a queer little +court with trees near Cornhill, by asking him to give advice to an +anonymous client and then putting my anonymous case before him. +"Suppose," said I, "it was for the plot of a play." He nodded gravely. + +My case as I stated it struck me as an unattractive one. + +"Application for a Writ of Habeas Corpus," he considered with eyes that +tried to remain severely impartial, "by a Wife's Lover, who wants to +find out where she is.... It's unusual. You will be requiring the +husband to produce her Corpus.... I don't think--speaking in the same +general terms as those in which you put the circumstances, it would be +likely to succeed.... No." + +Then I overcame a profound repugnance and went to a firm of private +detectives. It had occurred to me that if I could have Justin, +Tarvrille, Guy or Philip traced I might get a clue to Mary's +hiding-place. I remember a queer little office, a blusterous, +frock-coated creature with a pock-marked face, iron-grey hair, an +eyeglass and a strained tenor voice, who told me twice that he was a +gentleman and several times that he would prefer not to do business than +to do it in an ungentlemanly manner, and who was quite obviously ready +and eager to blackmail either side in any scandal into which spite or +weakness admitted his gesticulating fingers. He alluded vaguely to his +staff, to his woman helpers, "some personally attached to me," to his +remarkable underground knowledge of social life--"the illicit side." +What could he do for me? There was nothing, I said, illicit about me. +His interest waned a little. I told him that I was interested in +certain financial matters, no matter what they were, and that I wanted +to have a report of the movements of Justin and his brothers-in-law for +the past few weeks and for a little time to come. "You want them +watched?" said my private enquiry agent, leaning over the desk towards +me and betraying a slight squint. "Exactly," said I. "I want to know +what sort of things they are looking at just at present." + +"Have you any inkling----?" + +"None." + +"If our agents have to travel----" + +I expressed a reasonable generosity in the matter of expenses, and left +him at last with a vague discomfort in my mind. How far mightn't this +undesirable unearth the whole business in the course of his +investigations? And then what could he do? Suppose I went back forthwith +and stopped his enquiries before they began! I had a disagreeable +feeling of meanness that I couldn't shake off; I felt I was taking up a +weapon that Justin didn't deserve. Yet I argued with myself that the +abduction of Mary justified any such course. + +As I was still debating this I saw Philip. He was perhaps twenty yards +ahead of me, he was paying off a hansom which had just put him down +outside Blake's. "Philip," I cried, following him up the steps and +overtaking him and seizing his arm as the commissionaire opened the door +for him. "Philip! What have you people done with Mary? Where is Mary?" + +He turned a white face to me. "How dare you," he said with a catch of +the breath, "mention my sister?" + +I spoke in an undertone, and stepped a little between him and the man at +the door in order that the latter might not hear what I said. "I want +to see her," I expostulated. "I _must_ see her. What you are doing is +not playing the game. I've _got_ to see her." + +"Let go of my arm, sir!" cried he, and suddenly I felt a whirlwind of +rage answering the rage in his eyes. The pent-up exasperation of three +weeks rushed to its violent release. He struck me in the face with the +hand that was gripped about his umbrella. He meant to strike me in the +face and then escape into his club, but before he could get away from me +after his blow I had flung out at him, and had hit him under the +jawbone. My blow followed his before guard or counter was possible. I +hit with all my being. It was an amazing flare up of animal passion; +from the moment that I perceived he was striking at me to the moment +when both of us came staggering across the door-mat into the dignified +and spacious hall-way of Blake's, we were back at the ancestral ape, and +we did exactly what the ancestral ape would have done. The arms of the +commissionaire about my waist, the rush of the astonished porter from +his little glass box, two incredibly startled and delighted pages, and +an intervening member bawling out "Sir! Sir!" converged to remind us +that we were a million years or so beyond those purely arboreal days.... + +We seemed for a time to be confronted before an audience that hesitated +to interfere. "How dare you name my sister to me?" he shouted at me, and +brought to my mind the amazing folly of which he was capable. I +perceived Mary's name flung to the four winds of heaven. + +"You idiot, Philip!" I cried. "I don't _know_ your sister. I've not seen +her--scarcely seen her for years. I ask you--I ask you for a match-box +or something and you hit me." + +"If you dare to speak to her----!" + +"You fool!" I cried, going nearer to him and trying to make him +understand. But he winced and recoiled defensively. "I'm sorry," I said +to the commissionaire who was intervening. "Lord Maxton has made a +mistake." + +"Is he a member?" said someone in the background, and somebody else +suggested calling a policeman. I perceived that only a prompt retreat +would save the whole story of our quarrel from the newspapers. So far as +I could see nobody knew me there except Philip. I had to take the risks +of his behavior; manifestly I couldn't control it. I made no further +attempt to explain anything to anybody. Everyone was a little too +perplexed for prompt action, and so the advantage in that matter lay +with me. I walked through the door, and with what I imagined to be an +appearance of the utmost serenity down the steps. I noted an ascending +member glance at me with an expression of exceptional interest, but it +was only after I had traversed the length of Pall Mall that I realized +that my lip and the corner of my nostril were both bleeding profusely. I +called a cab when I discovered my handkerchief scarlet, and retreated to +my flat and cold ablutions. Then I sat down to write a letter to +Tarvrille, with a clamorous "Urgent, Please forward if away" above the +address, and tell him at least to suppress Philip. But within the club +that blockhead, thinking of nothing but the appearances of our fight and +his own credit, was varying his assertion that he had thrashed me, with +denunciations of me as a "blackguard," and giving half a dozen men a +highly colored, improvised, and altogether improbable account of my +relentless pursuit and persecution of Lady Mary Justin, and how she had +left London to avoid me. They listened, no doubt, with extreme avidity. +The matrimonial relations of the Justins had long been a matter for +speculative minds. + +And while Philip was doing this, Guy, away in Mayo still, was writing a +tender, trusting, and all too explicit letter to a well-known and +extremely impatient lady in London to account for his continued absence +from her house. "So that is it!" said the lady, reading, and was at +least in the enviable position of one who had confirmatory facts to +impart.... + +And so quite suddenly the masks were off our situation and we were open +to an impertinent world. For some days I did not realize what had +happened, and lived in hope that Philip had been willing and able to +cover his lapse. I went about with my preoccupation still, as I +imagined, concealed, and with an increasing number of typed letters from +my private enquiry agent in my pocket containing inaccurate and +worthless information about the movements of Justin, which appeared to +have been culled for the most part from a communicative young policeman +stationed at the corner nearest to the Justins' house, or expanded from +_Who's Who_ and other kindred works of reference. The second letter, I +remember, gave some particulars about the financial position of the +younger men, and added that Justin's credit with the west-end tradesmen +was "limitless," points upon which I had no sort of curiosity +whatever.... + +I suppose a couple of hundred people in London knew before I did that +Lady Mary Justin had been carried off to Ireland and practically +imprisoned there by her husband because I was her lover. The thing +reached me at last through little Fred Riddling, who came to my rooms in +the morning while I was sitting over my breakfast. "Stratton!" said he, +"what is all this story of your shaking Justin by the collar, and +threatening to kill him if he didn't give up his wife to you? And why do +you want to fight a duel with Maxton? What's it all about? Fire-eater +you must be! I stood up for you as well as I could, but I heard you +abused for a solid hour last night, and there was a chap there simply +squirting out facts and dates and names. Got it all.... What have you +been up to?" + +He stood on my hearthrug with an air of having called for an explanation +to which he was entitled, and he very nearly got one. But I just had +some scraps of reserve left, and they saved me. "Tell me first," I said, +delaying myself with the lighting of a cigarette, "the particulars ... +as you heard them." + +Riddling embarked upon a descriptive sketch, and I got a minute or so to +think. + +"Go on," I said with a note of irony, when he paused. "Go on. Tell me +some more. Where did you say they have taken her; let us have it right." + +By the time his little store had run out I knew exactly what to do with +him. "Riddling," said I, and stood up beside him suddenly and dropped my +hand with a little added weight upon his shoulder, "Riddling, do you +know the only right and proper thing to do when you hear scandal about a +friend?" + +"Come straight to him," said Riddling virtuously, "as I have done." + +"No. Say you don't believe it. Ask the scandal-monger how he knows and +insist on his telling you--insist. And if he won't--be very, very rude +to him. Insist up to the quarrelling point. Now who were those people?" + +"Well--that's a bit stiff.... One chap I didn't know at all." + +"You should have pulled him up and insisted upon knowing who he was, and +what right he had to lie about me. For it's lying, Riddling. Listen! It +isn't true that I'm besieging Lady Mary Justin. So far from besieging +her I didn't even know where she was until you told me. Justin is a +neighbor of my father's and a friend of mine. I had tea with him and his +wife not a month ago. I had tea with them together. I knew they were +going away, but it was a matter of such slight importance to me, such +slight importance"--I impressed this on his collarbone--"that I was left +with the idea that they were going to the south of France. I believe +they are in the south of France. And there you are. I'm sorry to spoil +sport, but that's the bleak unromantic truth of the matter." + +"You mean to say that there is nothing in it all?" + +"Nothing." + +He was atrociously disappointed. "But everybody," he said, "everybody +has got something." + +"Somebody will get a slander case if this goes on. I don't care what +they've got." + +"Good Lord!" he said, and stared at the rug. "You'll take your oath----" +He glanced up and met my eye. "Oh, of course it's all right what you +say." He was profoundly perplexed. He reflected. "But then, I say +Stratton, why did you go for Maxton at Blake's? _That_ I had from an +eye-witness. You can't deny a scrap like that--in broad daylight. Why +did you do that?" + +"Oh _that's_ it," said I. "I begin to have glimmerings. There's a little +matter between myself and Maxton...." I found it a little difficult to +improvise a plausible story. + +"But he said it was his sister," persisted Riddling. "He said so +afterwards, in the club." + +"Maxton," said I, losing my temper, "is a fool and a knave and a liar. +His sister indeed! Lady Mary! If he can't leave his sister out of this +business I'll break every bone of his body." ... I perceived my temper +was undoing me. I invented rapidly but thinly. "As a matter of fact, +Riddling, it's quite another sort of lady has set us by the ears." + +Riddling stuck his chin out, tucked in the corners of his mouth, made +round eyes at the breakfast things and, hands in pockets, rocked from +heels to toes and from toes to heels. "I see Stratton, yes, I see. Yes, +all this makes it very plain, of course. Very plain.... Stupid thing, +scandal is.... Thanks! no, I won't have a cigarette." + +And he left me presently with an uncomfortable sense that he did see, +and didn't for one moment intend to restrain his considerable histrionic +skill in handing on his vision to others. For some moments I stood +savoring this all too manifest possibility, and then my thoughts went +swirling into another channel. At last the curtain was pierced. I was no +longer helplessly in the dark. I got out my Bradshaw, and sat with the +map spread out over the breakfast things studying the routes to Mayo. +Then I rang for Williams, the man I shared with the two adjacent +flat-holders, and told him to pack my kit-bag because I was suddenly +called away. + + +Sec. 13 + +Many of the particulars of my journey to Ireland have faded out of my +mind altogether. I remember most distinctly my mood of grim elation that +at last I had to deal with accessible persons again.... + +The weather was windy and violent, and I was sea-sick for most of the +crossing, and very tired and exhausted when I landed. Williams had +thought of my thick over-coat and loaded me with wraps and rugs, and I +sat in the corner of a compartment in that state of mental and bodily +fatigue that presses on the brows like a painless headache. I got to +some little junction at last where I had to wait an hour for a +branch-line train. I tasted all the bitterness of Irish hospitality, and +such coffee as Ireland alone can produce. Then I went on to a station +called Clumber or Clumboye, or some such name, and thence after some +difficulty I got a car for my destination. It was a wretched car in +which hens had been roosting, and it was drawn by a steaming horse that +had sores under its mended harness. + +An immense wet wind was blowing as we came over the big hill that lies +to the south of Mirk. Everything was wet, the hillside above me was +either intensely green sodden turf or great streaming slabs of +limestone, seaward was a rocky headland, a ruin of a beehive shape, and +beyond a vast waste of tumbling waters unlit by any sun. Not a tree +broke that melancholy wilderness, nor any living thing but ourselves. +The horse went stumblingly under the incessant stimulation of the +driver's lash and tongue.... + +"Yonder it is," said my man, pointing with his whip, and I twisted +round to see over his shoulder, not the Rhine-like castle I had +expected, but a long low house of stone upon a headland, backed by a +distant mountain that vanished in a wild driven storm of rain as I +looked. But at the sight of Mirk my lassitude passed, my nerves +tightened, and my will began to march again. Now, thought I, we bring +things to an issue. Now we come to something personal and definite. The +vagueness is at an end. I kept my eyes upon the place, and thought it +more and more like a prison as we drew nearer. Perhaps from that window +Mary was looking for me now. Had she wondered why I did not come to her +before? Now at any rate I had found her. I sprang off the car, found a +bell-handle, and set the house jangling. + +The door opened, and a little old man appeared with his fingers thrust +inside his collar as though he were struggling against strangulation. He +regarded me for a second, and spoke before I could speak. + +"What might you be wanting?" said he, as if he had an answer ready. + +"I want to see Lady Mary Justin," I said. + +"You can't," he said. "She's gone." + +"Gone!" + +"The day before yesterday she went to London. You'll have to be getting +back there." + +"She's gone to London." + +"No less." + +"Willingly?" + +The little old man struggled with his collar. "Anyone would go +willingly," he said, and seemed to await my further commands. He eyed me +obliquely with a shadow of malice in his eyes. + +It was then my heart failed, and I knew that we lovers were beaten. I +turned from the door without another word to the janitor. "Back," said I +to my driver, and got up behind him. + +But it is one thing to decide to go back, and another to do it. At the +little station I studied time-tables, and I could not get to England +again without a delay of half a day. Somewhere I must wait. I did not +want to wait where there was any concourse of people. I decided to stay +in the inn by the station for the intervening six hours, and get some +sleep before I started upon my return, but when I saw the bedroom I +changed my plan and went down out of the village by a steep road towards +the shore. I wandered down through the rain and spindrift to the very +edge of the sea, and there found a corner among the rocks a little +sheltered from the wind, and sat, inert and wretched; my lips salt, my +hair stiff with salt, and my body wet and cold; a miserable defeated +man. For I had now an irrational and entirely overwhelming conviction of +defeat. I saw as if I ought always to have seen that I had been pursuing +a phantom of hopeless happiness, that my dream of ever possessing Mary +again was fantastic and foolish, and that I had expended all my strength +in vain. Over me triumphed a law and tradition more towering than those +cliffs and stronger than those waves. I was overwhelmed by a sense of +human weakness, of the infinite feebleness of the individual man against +wind and wave and the stress of tradition and the ancient usages of +mankind. "We must submit," I whispered, crouching close, "we must +submit." ... + +Far as the eye could reach the waves followed one another in long +unhurrying lines, an inexhaustible succession, rolling, hissing, +breaking, and tossing white manes of foam, to gather at last for a +crowning effort and break thunderously, squirting foam two hundred feet +up the streaming faces of the cliffs. The wind tore and tugged at me, +and wind and water made together a clamor as though all the evil voices +in the world, all the violent passions and all the hasty judgments were +seeking a hearing above the more elemental uproar.... + + +Sec. 14 + +And while I was in this phase of fatigue and despair in Mayo, the scene +was laid and all the other actors were waiting for the last act of my +defeat in London. I came back to find two letters from Mary and a little +accumulation of telegrams and notes, one written in my flat, from +Tarvrille. + +Mary's letters were neither of them very long, and full of a new-born +despair. She had not realized how great were the forces against her and +against us both. She let fall a phrase that suggested she was ill. She +had given in, she said, to save herself and myself and others from the +shame and ruin of a divorce, and I must give in too. We had to agree not +to meet or communicate for three years, and I was to go out of England. +She prayed me to accept this. She knew, she said, she seemed to desert +me, but I did not know everything,--I did not know everything,--I must +agree; she could not come with me; it was impossible. _Now_ certainly it +was impossible. She had been weak, but I did not know all. If I knew all +I should be the readier to understand and forgive her, but it was part +of the conditions that I could not know all. Justin had been generous, +in his way.... Justin had everything in his hands, the whole world was +behind him against us, and I must give in. Those letters had a quality I +had never before met in her, they were broken-spirited. I could not +understand them fully, and they left me perplexed, with a strong desire +to see her, to question her, to learn more fully what this change in her +might mean. + +Tarvrille's notes recorded his repeated attempts to see me, I felt that +he alone was capable of clearing up things for me, and I went out again +at once and telegraphed to him for an appointment. + +He wired to me from that same house in Mayfair in which I had first met +Mary after my return. He asked me to come to him in the afternoon, and +thither I went through a November fog, and found him in the drawing-room +that had the plate glass above the fireplace. But now he was vacating +the house, and everything was already covered up, the pictures and their +frames were under holland, the fine furniture all in covers of faded +stuff, the chandeliers and statues wrapped up, the carpets rolled out of +the way. Even the window-curtains were tucked into wrappers, and the +blinds, except one he had raised, drawn down. He greeted me and +apologized for the cold inhospitality of the house. "It was convenient +here," he said. "I came here to clear out my papers and boxes. And +there's no chance of interruptions." + +He went and stood before the empty fireplace, and plunged into the +middle of the matter. + +"You know, my dear Stratton, in this confounded business my heart's with +you. It has been all along. If I could have seen a clear chance before +you--for you and Mary to get away--and make any kind of life of +it--though she's my cousin--I'd have helped you. Indeed I would. But +there's no sort of chance--not the ghost of a chance...." + +He began to explain very fully, quite incontrovertibly, that entire +absence of any chance for Mary and myself together. He argued to the +converted. "You know as well as I do what that romantic flight abroad, +that Ouidaesque casa in some secluded valley, comes to in reality. All +round Florence there's no end of such scandalous people, I've been among +them, the nine circles of the repenting scandalous, all cutting one +another." + +"I agree," I said. "And yet----" + +"What?" + +"We could have come back." + +Tarvrille paused, and then leant forward. "No." + +"But people have done so. It would have been a clean sort of divorce." + +"You don't understand Justin. Justin would ruin you. If you were to take +Mary away.... He's a queer little man. Everything is in his hands. +Everything always is in the husband's hands in these affairs. If he +chooses. And keeps himself in the right. For an injured husband the law +sanctifies revenge.... + +"And you see, you've got to take Justin's terms. He's changed. He didn't +at first fully realize. He feels--cheated. We've had to persuade him. +There's a case for Justin, you know. He's had to stand--a lot. I don't +wonder at his going stiff at last. No doubt it's hard for you to see +that. But you have to see it. You've got to go away as he +requires--three years out of England, you've got to promise not to +correspond, not to meet afterwards----" + +"It's so extravagant a separation." + +"The alternative is--not for you to have Mary, but for you two to be +flung into the ditch together--that's what it comes to, Stratton. +Justin's got his case. He's set like--steel. You're up against the law, +up against social tradition, up against money--any one of those a man +may fight, but not all three. And she's ill, Stratton. You owe her +consideration. You of all people. That's no got-up story; she's truly +ill and broken. She can no longer fly with you and fight with you, +travel in uncomfortable trains, stay in horrible little inns. You don't +understand. The edge is off her pluck, Stratton." + +"What do you mean?" I asked, and questioned his face. + +"Just exactly what I say." + +A gleam of understanding came to me.... + +"Why can't I see her?" I broke in, with my voice full of misery and +anger. "Why can't I see her? As if seeing her once more could matter so +very greatly now!" + +He appeared to weigh something in his mind. "You can't," he said. + +"How do I know that she's not being told some story of my abandonment of +her? How do I know she isn't being led to believe I no longer want her +to come to me?" + +"She isn't," said Tarvrille, still with that arrested judicial note in +his voice. "You had her letters?" he said. + +"Two." + +"Yes. Didn't they speak?" + +"I want to see her. Damn it, Tarvrille!" I cried with sudden tears in +my smarting eyes. "Let _her_ send me away. This isn't---- Not treating +us like human beings." + +"Women," said Tarvrille and looked at his boot toes, "are different from +men. You see, Stratton----" + +He paused. "You always strike me, Stratton, as not realizing that women +are weak things. We've got to take _care_ of them. You don't seem to +feel that as I do. Their moods--fluctuate--more than ours do. If you +hold 'em to what they say in the same way you hold a man--it isn't +fair...." + +He halted as though he awaited my assent to that proposition. + +"If you were to meet Mary now, you see, and if you were to say to her, +come--come and we'll jump down Etna together, and you said it in the +proper voice and with the proper force, she'd do it, Stratton. You know +that. Any man knows a thing like that. And she wouldn't _want_ to do +it...." + +"You mean that's why I can't see her." + +"That's why you can't see her." + +"Because we'd become--dramatic." + +"Because you'd become--romantic and uncivilized." + +"Well," I said sullenly, realizing the bargain we were making, "I +won't." + +"You won't make any appeal?" + +"No." + +He made no answer, and I looked up to discover him glancing over his +shoulder through the great glass window into the other room. I stood up +very quickly, and there in the further apartment were Guy and Mary, +standing side by side. Our eyes met, and she came forward towards the +window impulsively, and paused, with that unpitying pane between us.... + +Then Guy was opening the door for her and she stood in the doorway. She +was in dark furs wrapped about her, but in the instant I could see how +ill she was and how broken. She came a step or so towards me and then +stopped short, and so we stood, shyly and awkwardly under Guy and +Tarvrille's eyes, two yards apart. "You see," she said, and stopped +lamely. + +"You and I," I said, "have to part, Mary. We---- We are beaten. Is that +so?" + +"Stephen, there is nothing for us to do. We've offended. We broke the +rules. We have to pay." + +"By parting?" + +"What else is there to do?" + +"No," I said. "There's nothing else." ... + +"I tried," she said, "that you shouldn't be sent from England." + +"That's a detail," I answered. + +"But your politics--your work?" + +"That does not matter. The great thing is that you are ill and +unhappy--that I can't help you. I can't do anything.... I'd go anywhere +... to save you.... All I can do, I suppose, is to part like this and +go." + +"I shan't be--altogether unhappy. And I shall think of you----" + +She paused, and we stood facing one another, tongue-tied. There was only +one word more to say, and neither of us would say it for a moment. + +"Good-bye," she whispered at last, and then, "Don't think I deserted +you, Stephen my dear. Don't think ill of me. I couldn't come--I couldn't +come to you," and suddenly her face changed slowly and she began to +weep, my fearless playmate whom I had never seen weeping before; she +began to weep as an unhappy child might weep. + +"Oh my Mary!" I cried, weeping also, and held out my arms, and we clung +together and kissed with tear-wet faces. + +"No," cried Guy belatedly, "we promised Justin!" + +But Tarvrille restrained his forbidding arm, and then after a second's +interval put a hand on my shoulder. "Come," he said.... + +And so it was Mary and I parted from one another. + + + + +CHAPTER THE SEVENTH + +BEGINNING AGAIN + + +Sec. 1 + +In operas and romances one goes from such a parting in a splendid +dignity of gloom. But I am no hero, and I went down the big staircase of +Tarvrille's house the empty shuck of an abandoned desire. I was acutely +ashamed of my recent tears. In the centre of the hall was a marble +figure swathed about with yellow muslin. "On account of the flies," I +said, breaking our silence. + +My words were far too unexpected for Tarvrille to understand. "The +flies," I repeated with an air of explanation. + +"You're sure she'll be all right?" I said abruptly. + +"You've done the best thing you can for her." + +"I suppose I have. I have to go." And then I saw ahead of me a world +full of the tiresome need of decisions and arrangements and empty of all +interest. "Where the _devil_ am I to go, Tarvrille? I can't even get out +of things altogether...." + +And then with a fresh realization of painful difficulties ahead: "I have +to tell this to my father. I've got to explain---- And he thought--he +expected----" + +Tarvrille opened the half of the heavy front door for me, hesitated, +and came down the broad steps into the chilly grey street and a few +yards along the pavement with me. He wanted to say something that he +found difficult to say. When at last he did find words they were quite +ridiculous in substance, and yet at the time I took them as gravely as +he intended them. "It's no good quoting Marcus Aurelius," said +Tarvrille, "to a chap with his finger in the crack of a door." + +"I suppose it isn't," I said. + +"One doesn't want to be a flatulent ass of course," said Tarvrille, +"still----" + +He resumed with an air of plunging. "It will sound just rot to you now, +Stratton, but after all it comes to this. Behind us is +a--situation--with half-a-dozen particular persons. Out here--I mean +here round the world--before you've done with them--there's a thousand +million people--men and women." + +"Oh! what does that matter to me?" said I. + +"Everything," said Tarvrille. "At least--it ought to." + +He stopped and held out his hand. "Good-bye, Stratton--good luck to you! +Good-bye." + +"Yes," I said. "Good-bye." + +I turned away from him. The image of Mary crying as a child cries +suddenly blinded me and blotted out the world. + + +Sec. 2 + +I want to give you as clearly as I can some impression of the mental +states that followed this passion and this collapse. It seems to me one +of the most extraordinary aspects of all that literature of speculative +attack which is called psychology, that there is no name and no +description at all of most of the mental states that make up life. +Psychology, like sociology, is still largely in the scholastic stage, it +is ignorant and intellectual, a happy refuge for the lazy industry of +pedants; instead of experience and accurate description and analysis it +begins with the rash assumption of elements and starts out upon +ridiculous syntheses. Who with a sick soul would dream of going to a +psychologist?... + +Now here was I with a mind sore and inflamed. I did not clearly +understand what had happened to me. I had blundered, offended, entangled +myself; and I had no more conception than a beast in a bog what it was +had got me, or the method or even the need of escape. The desires and +passionate excitements, the anger and stress and strain and suspicion of +the last few months had worn deep grooves in my brain, channels without +end or issue, out of which it seemed impossible to keep my thoughts. I +had done dishonorable things, told lies, abused the confidence of a +friend. I kept wrestling with these intolerable facts. If some momentary +distraction released me for a time, back I would fall presently before I +knew what was happening, and find myself scheming once more to reverse +the accomplished, or eloquently restating things already intolerably +overdiscussed in my mind, justifying the unjustifiable or avenging +defeat. I would dream again and again of some tremendous appeal to Mary, +some violent return and attack upon the situation.... + +One very great factor in my mental and moral distress was the uncertain +values of nearly every aspect of the case. There is an invincible sense +of wild rightness about passionate love that no reasoning and no +training will ever altogether repudiate; I had a persuasion that out of +that I would presently extract a magic to excuse my deceits and +treacheries and assuage my smarting shame. And round these deep central +preoccupations were others of acute exasperation and hatred towards +secondary people. There had been interventions, judgments upon +insufficient evidence, comments, and often quite justifiable comments, +that had filled me with an extraordinary savagery of resentment. + +I had a persuasion, illogical but invincible, that I was still entitled +to all the respect due to a man of unblemished honor. I clung fiercely +to the idea that to do dishonorable things isn't necessarily to be +dishonorable.... This state of mind I am describing is, I am convinced, +the state of every man who has involved himself in any affair at once +questionable and passionate. He seems free, but he is not free; he is +the slave of the relentless paradox of his position. + +And we were all of us more or less in deep grooves we had made for +ourselves, Philip, Guy, Justin, the friends involved, and all in the +measure of our grooves incapable of tolerance or sympathetic +realization. Even when we slept, the clenched fist of the attitudes we +had assumed gave a direction to our dreams. + +You see the same string of events that had produced all this system of +intense preoccupations had also severed me from the possible resumption +of those wider interests out of which our intrigue had taken me. I had +had to leave England and all the political beginnings I had been +planning, and to return to those projects now, those now impossible +projects, was to fall back promptly into hopeless exasperation.... + +And then the longing, the longing that is like a physical pain, that +hunger of the heart for some one intolerably dear! The desire for a +voice! The arrested habit of phrasing one's thoughts for a hearer who +will listen in peace no more! From that lonely distress even rage, even +the concoction of insult and conflict, was a refuge. From that pitiless +travail of emptiness I was ready to turn desperately to any offer of +excitement and distraction. + +From all those things I was to escape at last unhelped, but I want you +to understand particularly these phases through which I passed; it falls +to many and it may fall to you to pass through such a period of darkness +and malign obsession. Make the groove only a little deeper, a little +more unclimbable, make the temperament a little less sanguine, and +suicide stares you in the face. And things worse than suicide, that +suicide of self-respect which turns men to drugs and inflammatory vices +and the utmost outrageous defiance of the dreaming noble self that has +been so despitefully used. Into these same inky pools I have dipped my +feet, where other men have drowned. I understand why they drown. And my +taste of misdeed and resentment has given me just an inkling of what men +must feel who go to prison. I know what it is to quarrel with a world. + + +Sec. 3 + +My first plan when I went abroad was to change my Harbury French, which +was poor stuff and pedantic, into a more colloquial article, and then go +into Germany to do the same thing with my German, and then perhaps to +remain in Germany studying German social conditions--and the quality of +the German army. It seemed to me that when the term of my exile was over +I might return to England and re-enter the army. But all these were very +anaemic plans conceived by a tired mind, and I set about carrying them +out in a mood of slack lassitude. I got to Paris, and in Paris I threw +them all overboard and went to Switzerland. + +I remember very clearly how I reached Paris. I arrived about sunset--I +suppose at St. Lazare or the Gare du Nord--sent my luggage to the little +hotel in the Rue d'Antin where I had taken rooms, and dreading their +loneliness decided to go direct to a restaurant and dine. I remember +walking out into the streets just as shops and windows and street lamps +were beginning to light up, and strolling circuitously through the clear +bright stir of the Parisian streets to find a dinner at the Cafe de la +Paix. Some day you will know that peculiar sharp definite excitement of +Paris. All cities are exciting, and each I think in a different way. And +as I walked down along some boulevard towards the centre of things I saw +a woman coming along a side street towards me, a woman with something in +her body and something in her carriage that reminded me acutely of Mary. +Her face was downcast, and then as we converged she looked up at me, not +with the meretricious smile of her class but with a steadfast, friendly +look. Her face seemed to me sane and strong. I passed and hesitated. An +extraordinary impulse took me. I turned back. I followed this woman +across the road and a little way along the opposite pavement. I remember +I did that, but I do not remember clearly what was in my mind at the +time; I think it was a vague rush towards the flash of companionship in +her eyes. There I had seemed to see the glimmer of a refuge from my +desolation. Then came amazement and reaction. I turned about and went on +my way, and saw her no more. + +But afterwards, later, I went out into the streets of Paris bent upon +finding that woman. She had become a hope, a desire. + +I looked for her for what seemed a long time, half an hour perhaps or +two hours. I went along, peering at the women's faces, through the +blazing various lights, the pools of shadowy darkness, the flickering +reflections and transient glitter, one of a vast stream of slow-moving +adventurous human beings. I crossed streams of traffic, paused at +luminous kiosks, became aware of dim rows of faces looking down upon me +from above the shining enamel of the omnibuses.... My first intentness +upon one person, so that I disregarded any distracting intervention, +gave place by insensible degrees to a more general apprehension of the +things about me. That original woman became as it were diffused. I began +to look at the men and women sitting at the little tables behind the +panes of the cafes, and even on the terraces--for the weather was still +dry and open. I scrutinized the faces I passed, faces for the most part +animated by a sort of shallow eagerness. Many were ugly, many vile with +an intense vulgarity, but some in that throng were pretty, some almost +gracious. There was something pathetic and appealing for me in this +great sweeping together of people into a little light, into a weak +community of desire for joy and eventfulness. There came to me a sense +of tolerance, of fellowship, of participation. From an outer darkness +of unhappiness or at least of joylessness, they had all come hither--as +I had come. + +I was like a creature that slips back again towards some deep waters out +of which long since it came, into the light and air. It was as if old +forgotten things, prenatal experiences, some magic of ancestral +memories, urged me to mingle again with this unsatisfied passion for +life about me.... + +Then suddenly a wave of feeling between self-disgust and fear poured +over me. This vortex was drawing me into deep and unknown things.... I +hailed a passing _fiacre_, went straight to my little hotel, settled my +account with the proprietor, and caught a night train for Switzerland. + +All night long my head ached, and I lay awake swaying and jolting and +listening to the rhythms of the wheels, Paris clean forgotten so soon as +it was left, and my thoughts circling continually about Justin and +Philip and Mary and the things I might have said and done. + + +Sec. 4 + +One day late in February I found myself in Vevey. I had come down with +the break-up of the weather from Montana, where I had met some Oxford +men I knew and had learned to ski. I had made a few of those vague +acquaintances one makes in a winter-sport hotel, but now all these +people were going back to England and I was thrown back upon myself once +more. I was dull and angry and unhappy still, full of self-reproaches +and dreary indignations, and then very much as the sky will sometimes +break surprisingly through storm clouds there began in me a new series +of moods. They came to me by surprise. One clear bright afternoon I sat +upon the wall that runs along under the limes by the lake shore, envying +all these people who were going back to England and work and usefulness. +I thought of myself, of my career spoilt, my honor tarnished, my +character tested and found wanting. So far as English politics went my +prospects had closed for ever. Even after three years it was improbable +that I should be considered by the party managers again. And besides, it +seemed to me I was a man crippled. My other self, the mate and +confirmation of my mind, had gone from me. I was no more than a +mutilated man. My life was a thing condemned; I had joined the ranks of +loafing, morally-limping, English exiles. + +I looked up. The sun was setting, a warm glow fell upon the dissolving +mountains of Savoy and upon the shining mirror of the lake. The +luminous, tranquil breadth of it caught me and held me. "I am done for." +The light upon the lake and upon the mountains, the downward swoop of a +bird over the water and something in my heart, gave me the lie. + +"What nonsense!" I said, and felt as if some dark cloud that had +overshadowed me had been thrust back. + +I stared across at Savoy as though that land had spoken. Why should I +let all my life be ruled by the blunders and adventures of one short +year of adventure? Why should I become the votary of a train of +consequences? What had I been dreaming of all this time? Over there were +gigantic uplands I had never seen and trodden; and beyond were great +plains and cities, and beyond that the sea, and so on, great spaces and +multitudinous things all round about the world. What did the things I +had done, the things I had failed to do, the hopes crushed out of me, +the tears and the anger, matter to _that_? And in some amazing way this +thought so took possession of me that the question seemed also to carry +with it the still more startling collateral, what then did they matter +to me? "Come out of yourself," said the mountains and all the beauty of +the world. "Whatever you have done or suffered is nothing to the +inexhaustible offer life makes you. We are you, just as much as the past +is you." + +It was as though I had forgotten and now remembered how infinitely +multitudinous life can be. It was as if Tarvrille's neglected words to +me had sprouted in the obscurity of my mind and borne fruit.... + +I cannot explain how that mood came, I am doing my best to describe it, +and it is not easy even to describe. And I fear that to you who will +have had I hope no experience of such shadows as I had passed through, +it is impossible to convey its immense elation.... I remember once I +came in a boat out of the caves of Han after two hours in the darkness, +and there was the common daylight that is nothing wonderful at all, and +its brightness ahead there seemed like trumpets and cheering, like +waving flags and like the sunrise. And so it was with this mood of my +release. + +There is a phrase of Peter E. Noyes', that queer echo of Emerson whom +people are always rediscovering and forgetting again, a phrase that +sticks in my mind,--"Every living soul is heir to an empire and has +fallen into a pit." It's an image wonderfully apt to describe my change +of mental attitude, and render the contrast between those intensely +passionate personal entanglements that had held me tight and that wide +estate of life that spreads about us all, open to all of us in just the +measure that we can scramble out of our individual selves--to a more +general self. I seemed to be hanging there at the brim of my stale and +painful den, staring at the unthought-of greatness of the world, with an +unhoped-for wind out of heaven blowing upon my face. + +I suppose the intention of the phrase "finding salvation," as religious +people use it, is very much this experience. If it is not the same thing +it is something very closely akin. It is as if someone were scrambling +out of a pit into a largeness--a largeness that is attainable by every +man just in the measure that he realizes it is there. + +I leave these fine discriminations to the theologian. I know that I went +back to my hotel in Vevey with my mind healed, with my will restored to +me, and my ideas running together into plans. And I know that I had come +out that day a broken and apathetic man. + + +Sec. 5 + +The next day my mood declined again; it was as if that light, that sense +of release that had shone so clear and strong in my mind, had escaped +me. I sought earnestly to recover it. But I could not do so, and I found +my old narrow preoccupations calling urgently to me again. + +I thought that perhaps I might get back those intimations of outlook and +relief if I clambered alone into some high solitude and thought. I had +a crude attractive vision of myself far above the heat and noise, +communing with the sky. It was the worst season for climbing, and on the +spur of the moment I could do nothing but get up the Rochers de Naye on +the wrong side, and try and find some eyrie that was neither slippery +nor wet. I did not succeed. In one place I slipped down a wet bank for +some yards and held at last by a root; if I had slipped much further I +should not be writing here now; and I came back a very weary and bruised +climber, without any meditation.... + +Three nights after when I was in bed I became very lucidly awake--it +must have been about two or three in the morning--and the vision of life +returned to me, with that same effect of enlargement and illumination. +It was as if the great stillness that is behind and above and around the +world of sense did in some way communicate with me. It bade me rouse my +spirit and go on with the thoughts and purposes that had been stirring +and proliferating in my mind when I had returned to England from the +Cape. "Dismiss your passion." But I urged that that I could not do; +there was the thought of Mary subjugated and weeping, the smarting +memory of injury and defeat, the stains of subterfuge and discovery, the +aching separation. No matter, the stillness answered, in the end all +that is just to temper you for your greater uses.... I cannot forget, I +insisted. Do not forget, but for the present this leads you no whither; +this chapter has ended; dismiss it and turn to those other things. You +are not only Stephen Stratton who fell into adultery; in these silences +he is a little thing and far away; here and with me you are +Man--Everyman--in this round world in which your lot has fallen. But +Mary, I urged, to forget Mary is a treason, an ingratitude, seeing that +she loved me. But the stillness did not command me to forget her, but +only to turn my face now to the great work that lies before mankind. And +that work? That work, so far as your share goes, is first to understand, +to solve, and then to achieve, to work out in the measure of yourself +that torment of pity and that desire for order and justice which +together saturate your soul. Go about the world, embrue yourself with +life, make use of that confusedly striving brain that I have lifted so +painfully out of the deadness of matter.... + +"But who are you?" I cried out suddenly to the night. "Who are you?" + +I sat up on the side of my bed. The dawn was just beginning to break up +the featureless blackness of the small hours. "This is just some odd +corner of my brain," I said.... + +Yet---- How did I come to have this odd corner in my brain? What _is_ +this lucid stillness?... + + +Sec. 6 + +Let me tell you rather of my thoughts than of my moods, for there at +least one comes to something with a form that may be drawn and a +substance that is measurable; one ceases to struggle with things +indefinable and the effort to convey by metaphors and imaginary voices +things that are at once bodiless and soundless and lightless and yet +infinitely close and real. And moreover with that mysterious and subtle +change of heart in me there came also a change in the quality and range +of my ideas. I seemed to rise out of a tangle of immediacies and +misconceptions, to see more largely and more freely than I had ever done +before. + +I have told how in my muddled and wounded phase I had snatched at the +dull project of improving my languages, and under the cloak of that +spying a little upon German military arrangements. Now my mind set such +petty romanticism on one side. It had recovered the strength to look on +the whole of life and on my place in it. It could resume the ideas that +our storm of passion had for a time thrust into the background of my +thoughts. I took up again all those broad generalizations that had +arisen out of my experiences in South Africa, and which I had been not +so much fitting into as forcing into the formulae of English politics; I +recalled my disillusionment with British Imperialism, my vague but +elaborating apprehension of a profound conflict between enterprise and +labor, a profound conflict between the life of the farm and the life of +trade and finance and wholesale production, as being something far truer +to realities than any of the issues of party and patriotism upon which +men were spending their lives. So far as this rivalry between England +and Germany, which so obsessed the imagination of Europe, went, I found +that any faith I may have had in its importance had simply fallen out of +my mind. As a danger to civilization, as a conceivable source of +destruction and delay, it was a monstrous business enough, but that in +the long run it mattered how or when they fought and which won I did not +believe. In the development of mankind the thing was of far less +importance than the struggle for Flanders or the wars of France and +Burgundy. I was already coming to see Europe as no more than the +dog's-eared corner of the page of history,--like most Europeans I had +thought it the page--and my recovering mind was eager and open to see +the world beyond and form some conception of the greater forces that lay +outside our insularities. What is humanity as a whole doing? What is the +nature of the world process of which I am a part? Why should I drift +from cradle to grave wearing the blinkers of my time and nationality, a +mere denizen of Christendom, accepting its beliefs, its stale +antagonisms, its unreal purposes? That perhaps had been tolerable while +I was still an accepted member of the little world into which my lot had +fallen, but now that I was thrust out its absurdity glared. For me the +alternative was to be a world-man or no man. I had seemed sinking +towards the latter: now I faced about and began to make myself what I +still seek to make myself to-day, a son of mankind, a conscious part of +that web of effort and perplexity which wraps about our globe.... + +All this I say came into my mind as if it were a part of that recovery +of my mind from its first passionate abjection. And it seemed a simple +and obvious part of the same conversion to realize that I was ignorant +and narrow, and that, too, in a world which is suffering like a beast in +a slime pit by reason of ignorance and narrowness of outlook, and that +it was my manifest work and purpose to make myself less ignorant and to +see and learn with all my being. It came to me as a clear duty that I +should get out of the land of hotels and leisure and go seeking the +facts and clues to human inter-relationship nearer the earthy roots of +things, and I turned my thoughts to India and China, those vast enigmas +of human accumulation, in a spirit extraordinarily like that of some +mystic who receives a call. I felt I must go to Asia and from Asia +perhaps round the world. But it was the greatness of Asia commanded me. +I wanted to see the East not as a spectacle but as the simmering vat in +which the greater destiny of man brews and brews.... + + +Sec. 7 + +It was necessary to tell my father of my intentions. I made numerous +beginnings. I tore up several letters and quarrelled bitterly with the +hotel pens. At first I tried to describe the change that had happened to +my mind, to give him some impression of the new light, the release that +had come to me. But how difficult this present world is with its tainted +and poisoned phrases and its tangled misunderstandings! Here was I +writing for the first time in my life of something essentially religious +and writing it to him whose profession was religion, and I could find no +words to convey my meaning to him that did not seem to me fraught with +the possibilities of misinterpretation. One evening I made a desperate +resolve to let myself go, and scrawled my heart out to him as it seemed +that night, a strange, long letter. It was one of the profoundest +regrets that came to me when I saw him dead last winter that I did not +risk his misunderstanding and post that letter. But when I re-read it in +the next morning's daylight it seemed to me so rhetorical, so full +of--what shall I call it?--spiritual bombast, it so caricatured and +reflected upon the deep feelings sustaining me, that I could not post it +for shamefacedness, and I tore it up into little pieces and sent +instead the briefest of notes. + +"I am doing no good here in Switzerland," I wrote. "Would you mind if I +went east? I want to see something of the world outside Europe. I have a +fancy I may find something to do beyond there. Of course, it will cost +rather more than my present allowance. I will do my best to economize. +Don't bother if it bothers you--I've been bother enough to you...." + +He replied still more compactly. "By all means. I will send you some +circular notes, Poste Restante, Rome. That will be on your way. Good +wishes to you, Stephen. I'm glad you want to go east instead of just +staying in Switzerland." + +I sit here now and wonder, little son, what he thought, what he +supposed, what he understood. + +I loved my father, and I began to perceive he loved me wonderfully. I +can imagine no man I would have sooner had for a priest than him; all +priestcraft lays hands if it can, and with an excellent wisdom, upon the +titles and dignity of fatherhood; and yet here am I left to guessing--I +do not know whether my father ever worshipped, whether he ever prayed +with his heart bared to God. There are times when the inexpressiveness +of life comes near to overwhelming me, when it seems to me we are all +asleep or entranced, and but a little way above the still cows who stand +munching slowly in a field. Why couldn't we and why didn't we talk +together?... We fear bathos too much, are shyly decent to the pitch of +mania. We have neither the courage of our bodies nor of our souls.... + +I went almost immediately to Rome. I stayed in Rome some days, getting +together an outfit, and incidentally seeing that greater city of the +dead in whose embrace the modern city lies. I was now becoming +interested in things outside my grooves, though my grooves were still +there, deep and receptive, and I went about the place at last almost +eagerly, tracing the outlines of that great departed city on whose +colossal bones the churches and palaces of the middle ages cluster like +weeds in the spaces and ruins of a magnificent garden. I found myself +one day in the Forum, thinking of that imperialism that had built the +Basilica of Julius Caesar, and comparing its cramped vestiges with that +vaster second administrative effort which has left the world the +monstrous arches of Constantine. I sat down over against these last +among the ruins of the Vestals' House, and mused on that later +reconstruction when the Empire, with its science aborted and its +literature and philosophy shrivelled to nothing, its social fabric +ruined by the extravagances of financial adventure and its honor and +patriotism altogether dead, united itself, in a desperate effort to +continue, with all that was most bickeringly intolerant and destructive +in Christianity--only to achieve one common vast decay. All Europe to +this day is little more than the sequel to that failure. It is the Roman +Empire in disintegration. The very churches whose domes rise to the +northward of the ancient remains are built of looted stones and look +like parasitic and fungoid growths, and the tourists stream through +those spaces day by day, stare at the marble fragments, the arches, the +fallen carvings and rich capitals, with nothing greater in their minds +and nothing clearer.... + +I discovered I was putting all this into the form of a letter to Mary. +I was writing to her in my mind, as many people talk to themselves. And +I remember that I wandered upon the Palatine Hill musing over the idea +of writing a long letter to her, a long continuous letter to her, a sort +of diary of impressions and ideas, that somewhen, years ahead, I might +be able to put into her hands. + +One does not carry out such an idea into reality; it is so much easier +to leave the letter imagined and unwritten if there lives but little +hope of its delivery; yet for many years I kept up an impalpable +correspondence in my thoughts, a stream of expression to which no answer +came--until at last the habits of public writing and the gathering +interests of a new role in life diverted it to other ends. + + +Sec. 8 + +One morning on the way from Brindisi to Egypt I came up on deck at dawn +because my mind was restless and I could not sleep. Another solitary +passenger was already up, so intently watching a pink-lit rocky +coast-line away to the north of us that for a time he did not observe +me. + +"That's Crete," he said, when at last he became aware of me close at +hand. + +"Crete!" said I. + +"Yes," he said, "Crete." + +He came nearer to me. "That, sir," he said with a challenging emphasis, +"is the most wonderful island I've ever yet set eyes on,--quite the most +wonderful." + +"Five thousand years ago," he remarked after a pause that seemed to me +to be calculated, "they were building palaces there, better than the +best we can build to-day. And things--like modern things. They had +bathrooms there, beautifully fitted bathrooms--and admirable +sanitation--admirable. Practically--American. They had better artists to +serve them than your King Edward has, why! Minos would have laughed or +screamed at all that Windsor furniture. And the things they made of +gold, sir--you couldn't get them done anywhere to-day. Not for any +money. There was a Go about them.... They had a kind of writing, +too--before the Phoenicians. No man can read it now, and there it is. +Fifty centuries ago it was; and to-day--They grow oranges and lemons. +And they riot.... Everything else gone.... It's as if men struggled up +to a certain pitch and then--grew tired.... All this Mediterranean; it's +a tired sea...." + +That was the beginning of a curious conversation. He was an American, a +year or so younger than myself, going, he said, "to look at Egypt." + +"In our country," he explained, "we're apt to forget all these +worked-out regions. Too apt. We don't get our perspectives. We think the +whole blessed world is one everlasting boom. It hit me first down in +Yucatan that that wasn't so. Why! the world's littered with the remains +of booms and swaggering beginnings. Americanism!--there's always been +Americanism. This Mediterranean is just a Museum of old Americas. I +guess Tyre and Sidon thought they were licking creation all the time. +It's set me thinking. What's _really_ going on? Why--anywhere,--you're +running about among ruins--anywhere. And ruins of something just as good +as anything we're doing to-day. Better--in some ways. It takes the heart +out of you...." + +It was Gidding, who is now my close friend and ally. I remember very +vividly the flavor of morning freshness as we watched Crete pass away +northward and I listened to his talk. + +"I was coming out of New York Harbor a month ago and looking back at the +skyscrapers," he said, "and suddenly it hit me in the mind;--'That's +just the next ruin,' I thought." + +I remember that much of our first talk, but the rest of it now is +indistinct. + +We had however struck up an acquaintance, we were both alone, and until +he left me on his way to Abydos we seem now to have been conversing all +the time. And almost all the time we were discussing human destiny and +the causes of effort and decay, and whether the last few ascendant +centuries the world has seen have in them anything more persistent than +the countless beginnings that have gone before. + +"There's Science," said I a little doubtfully. + +"At Cnossus there they had Daedalus, sir, fifty centuries ago. Daedalus! +He was an F.R.S. all right. I haven't a doubt he flew. If they hadn't +steel they had brass. We're too conceited about our little modern +things." + + +Sec. 9 + +I found something very striking and dramatic in the passage from Europe +to Asia. One steams slowly through a desert that comes up close to the +ship; the sand stretches away, hillock and mound beyond hillock and +mound; one sees camels in the offing stringing out to some ancient +destination; one is manifestly passing across a barrier,--the canal has +changed nothing of that. Suez is a first dab of tumultuous Orientalism, +noisy and vivid. And then, after that gleam of turmoil, one opens out +into the lonely dark blue waters of the Red Sea. Right and left the +shore is a bitter, sun-scorched desolation; eastward frowns a great +rampart of lowering purple mountains towering up to Sinai. It is like no +European landscape. The boat goes slowly as if uncharted dangers lurked +ahead. It is a new world with a new atmosphere. Then comes wave upon +wave of ever more sultry air, and the punkahs begin to swing and the +white clothes appear. Everyone casts off Europe, assumes an Asiatic +livery. The very sun, rushing up angrily and abruptly after a heated +night, is unfamiliar, an Asiatic sun. + +And so one goes down that reef-fringed waterway to Aden; it is studded +with lonely-looking lighthouses that burn, it seems, untended, and +sometimes in their melancholy isolation swing great rhythmic arms of +light. And then, land and the last lateen sails of Aden vanishing +together, one stands out into the hot thundery monotonies of the Indian +Ocean; into imprisonment in a blue horizon across whose Titan ring the +engines seem to throb in vain. How one paces the ship day by day, and +eats and dozes and eats again, and gossips inanely and thanks Heaven +even for a flight of flying fish or a trail of smoke from over the +horizon to take one's mind a little out of one's oily quivering +prison!... A hot portentous delay; a sinister significant pause; that is +the voyage from Europe to India still. + +I suppose by the time that you will go to India all this prelude will +have vanished, you will rattle through in a train-de-luxe from Calais, +by way of Baku or Constantinople; you will have none of this effect of +a deliberate sullen approach across limitless miles of sea. But that is +how I went to India. Everything seemed to expand; I was coming out of +the frequent landfalls, the neighborly intimacies and neighborly +conflicts of the Mediterranean into something remoter; into larger seas +and greater lands, rarer communications and a vaster future.... + +To go from Europe to Asia is like going from Norway to Russia, from +something slight and "advanced" to something massive and portentous. I +felt that nearly nine years ago; to-day all Asia seems moving forward to +justify my feelings.... + +And I remember too that as I went down the Red Sea and again in the +Indian Ocean I had a nearly intolerable passion of loneliness. A wound +may heal and still leave pain. I was coming out of Europe as one comes +out of a familiar house into something larger and stranger, I seemed but +a little speck of life, and behind me, far away and silent and receding, +was the one other being to whom my thoughts were open. It seemed very +cruel to me that I could not write to her. + +Such moods were to come to me again and again, and particularly during +the inactivities of voyages and in large empty spaces and at night when +I was weary. At other times I could banish and overcome them by forcing +myself to be busy and by going to see novel and moving things. + + + + +CHAPTER THE EIGHTH + +THIS SWARMING BUSINESS OF MANKIND + + +Sec. 1 + +I do not think I could now arrange into a consecutive history my +travellings, my goings and returnings in my wandering effort to see and +comprehend the world. And certainly even if I could arrange my facts I +should still be at a loss to tell of the growth of ideas that is so much +more important than any facts, to trace the increasing light to its +innumerable sources, to a chink here, to a glowing reflection there, to +a leap of burning light from some long inert darkness close at hand. But +steadily the light grew, and this vast world of man, in which our world, +little son, is the world of a limited class in a small island, began to +take on definite forms, to betray broad universal movements; what seemed +at first chaotic, a drift and tangle of passions, traditions, foolish +ideas, blundering hostilities, careless tolerances, became confusedly +systematic, showed something persistent and generalized at work among +its multitudinous perplexity. + +I wonder now if I can put before you very briefly the main +generalizations that were growing up in my mind during my exile, the +simplified picture into which I translated the billions of sights and +sounds and--smells, for every part of the world has its distinctive +olfactory palette as much as its palette of colors--that rained daily +and nightly upon my mind. + +Before, my eyes again as I sit here in this quiet walled French garden, +the great space before the Jumna Musjid at Delhi reappears, as I saw it +in the evening stillness against a glowing sky of gold, and the memory +of countless worshippers within, praying with a devotion no European +displays. And then comes a memory of that long reef of staircases and +temples and buildings, the ghats of Benares, in the blazing morning sun, +swarming with a vast multitude of multicolored people and the water also +swarming with brown bodies. It has the colors of a bed of extravagantly +splendid flowers and the light that is Indian alone. Even as I sit here +these places are alive with happening. It is just past midday here; at +this moment the sun sinks in the skies of India, the Jumna Musjid +flushes again with the glow of sunset, the smoke of evening fires +streams heavenward against its subtle lines, and upon those steps at +Benares that come down the hillside between the conquering mosque of +Aurangzeb and the shining mirror of the Ganges a thousand silent seated +figures fall into meditation. And other memories recur and struggle with +one another; the crowded river-streets of Canton, the rafts and +houseboats and junks innumerable, riding over inky water, begin now to +twinkle with a thousand lights. They are ablaze in Osaka and Yokohama +and Tokio, and the swarming staircase streets of Hong Kong glitter with +a wicked activity now that night has come. I flash a glimpse of Burmese +temples, of villages in Java, of the sombre purple masses of the walls +of the Tartar city at Pekin with squat pagoda-guarded gates. How those +great outlines lowered at me in the twilight, full of fresh memories and +grim anticipations of baseness and violence and bloodshed! I sit here +recalling it--feeling it all out beyond the trellised vine-clad wall +that bounds my physical vision.... Vast crowded world that I have seen! +going from point to point seeking for clues, for generalities, until at +last it seems to me that there emerges--something understandable. + +I think I have got something understandable out of it all. + +What a fantastically courageous thing is this mind of ours! My thoughts +seem to me at once presumptuous and inevitable. I do not know why it is +that I should dare, that any of us should dream of this attempt to +comprehend. But we who think are everyone impelled to this amazing +effort to get it all together into some simple generality. It is not +reason but a deep-seated instinct that draws our intelligence towards +explanations, that sets us perpetually seeking laws, seeking statements +that will fit into infinite, incessantly interweaving complexities, and +be true of them all! There is I perceive a valiant and magnificent +stupidity about the human mind, a disregard of disproportion and +insufficiency--like the ferret which will turn from the leveret it has +seized to attack even man if he should interfere. By these desperate +feats of thinking it is that our species has achieved its victories. By +them it survives. By them it must stand the test of ultimate survival. +Some forgotten man in our ancestry--for every begetting man alive was in +my individual ancestry and yours three thousand years ago--first dared +to think of the world as round,--an astounding temerity. He rolled up +the rivers and mountains, the forests and plains and broad horizons +that stretched beyond his ken, that seemed to commonsense to go on +certainly for ever, into a ball, into a little ball "like an orange." +Magnificent feat of the imagination, outdoing Thor's deep draught of the +sea! And once he had done it, all do it and no one falters at the deed. +You are not yet seven as I write and already you are serenely aware that +you live upon a sphere. And in much the same manner it is that we, who +are sociologists and economists, publicists and philosophers and what +not, are attempting now to roll up the vast world of facts which concern +human intercourse, the whole indeed of history and archaeology, into some +similar imaginable and manageable shape, that presently everyone will be +able to grasp. + +I suppose there was a time when nobody bothered at all about the shape +of the earth, when nobody had even had the idea that the earth could be +conceived as having a shape, and similarly it is true that it is only in +recent centuries that people have been able to suppose that there was a +shape to human history. It is indeed not much more than a century since +there was any real emergence from theological assumptions and pure +romanticism and accidentalism in these matters. Old Adam Smith it was, +probing away at the roots of economics, who set going the construction +of ampler propositions. From him spring all those new interpretations +which have changed the writing of history from a record of dramatic +reigns and wars and crises to an analysis of economic forces. How +impossible it would be for anyone now to write that great chapter of +Gibbon's in which he sweeps together into one contempt the history of +sixty Emperors and six hundred years of time. His note of weariness and +futility vanishes directly one's vision penetrates the immediate +surface. Those Heraclians and Isaurians and Comneni were not history, a +schoolboy nowadays knows that their record is not history, knows them +for the mere scum upon the stream. + +And still to-day we have our great interpretations to make. Ours is a +time of guesses, theories and provisional generalizations. Our phase +corresponds to the cosmography that was still a little divided between +discs and domes and spheres and cosmic eggs; that was still a thousand +years from measuring and weighing a planet. For a long time my mind +hovered about the stimulating theories of Socialism and particularly +about those more systematic forms of Socialist teaching that centre +about Karl Marx. He rose quite naturally out of those early economists +who saw all the world in terms of production and saving. He was a +necessary step for me at least, on the way to understanding. For a time +I did so shape the world in my mind that it seemed to me no more than a +vast enterprise for the organization and exploitation of labor. For a +time I thought human life was essentially a labor problem, that working +and controlling work and lending and selling and "speculating" made the +essential substance of human life, over which the forms of politics ran +as the stripes of a tiger's skin run and bend over its living muscles. I +followed my period in thinking that. You will find in Ferrero's "Roman +Decline," which was published early in this century, and which waits for +you in the library, almost exactly the method of interpretation that was +recommending itself to me in 1904 and 1905. + +Well, the labor problem concerns a great--_substantial_, shall I +say?--in human society. It is only I think the basis and matter of +society, not its shape and life and reality, but it had to be +apprehended before I could get on to more actual things. Insensibly the +idea that contemporary political forms mattered very fundamentally to +men, was fading out of my mind. The British Empire and the German +Empire, the Unity of Italy, and Anglo-Saxon ascendency, the Yellow Peril +and all the other vast phantoms of the World-politician's mythology were +fading out of my mind in those years, as the Olympic cosmogony must have +faded from the mind of some inquiring Greek philosopher in the days of +Heraclitus. And I revised my history altogether in the new light. The +world had ceased to be chaotic in my mind; it had become a vast if as +yet a quite inconclusive drama between employer and employed. + +It makes a wonderful history, this history of mankind as a history of +Labor, as a history of the perpetual attempts of an intelligent minority +to get things done by other people. It does not explain how that +aggression of the minority arose nor does it give any conception of a +primordial society which corresponds with our knowledge of the realities +of primitive communities. One begins rather in the air with a human +society that sells and barters and sustains contracts and permits land +to be privately owned, and having as hastily as possible got away from +that difficulty of beginnings, having ignored the large areas of the +world which remain under a pacific and unprogressive agriculture to this +day, the rest of the story becomes extremely convincing and +illuminating. It does indeed give a sustaining explanation to a large +part of recorded history, this generalization about the proclivity of +able and energetic people to make other people do things. One ignores +what is being done as if that mattered nothing, and concentrates upon +the use and enslavement of men. + +One sees that enslavement to labor progressing from crude directness to +the most subtly indirect methods. The first expedient of enterprise was +the sword and then the whip, and still there are remote and ugly corners +of the world, in the Mexican Valle Nazionale or in Portuguese South +Africa, where the whip whistles still and the threat of great suffering +and death follows hard upon the reluctant toiler. But the larger part of +our modern slavery is past the stage of brand and whip. We have fallen +into methods at once more subtle and more effective. We stand +benevolently in front of our fellow man, offering, almost as if it were +food and drink and shelter and love, the work we want him to do; and +behind him, we are acutely aware, is necessity, sometimes quite of our +making, as when we drive him to work by a hut-tax or a poll tax or a +rent, that obliges him to earn money, and sometimes not so obviously of +our making, sometimes so little of our making that it is easy to believe +we have no power to remove it. Instead of flicking the whip, we groan at +last with Harriet Martineau at the inexorable laws of political economy +that condemn us to comfort and direction, and those others to toil and +hardship and indignity.... + +And through the consideration of these latter later aspects it was that +I came at last to those subtler problems of tacit self-deception, of +imperfect and unwilling apprehension, of innocently assumed advantages, +of wilfully disregarded unfairness; and also to all those other problems +of motive, those forgotten questions of why we make others work for us +long after our personal needs are satisfied, why men aggrandize and +undertake, which gradually have become in my mind the essential problems +of human relationship, replacing the crude problems of labor altogether +in that position, making _them_ at last only questions of contrivance +and management on the way to greater ends. + +I have come to believe now that labor problems are problems merely by +the way. They have played their part in a greater scheme. This phase of +expropriation and enslavement, this half designed and half unconscious +driving of the duller by the clever, of the pacific by the bolder, of +those with weak appetites and imaginations by those with stronger +appetites and imaginations, has been a necessary phase in human +development. With my innate passionate desire to find the whole world +purposeful, I cannot but believe that. But however necessary it has +been, it is necessary no longer. Strangest of saviors, there rises over +the conflicts of mankind the glittering angular promise of the machine. +There is no longer any need for slavery, open or disguised. We do not +need slaves nor toilers nor mere laborers any more; they are no longer +essential to a civilization. Man has ridden on his brother man out of +the need of servitude. He struggles through to a new phase, a phase of +release, a phase when leisure and an unexampled freedom is possible to +every human being. Is possible. And it is there one halts seeing that +splendid possibility of aspiration and creation before mankind--and +seeing mankind for the most part still downcast, quite unaware or +incredulous, following the old rounds, the grooves of ancient and +superseded assumptions and subjections.... + +But here I will not trace in any detail the growth of my conviction +that the ancient and heavy obligation to work hard and continually +throughout life has already slipped from man's shoulders. Suffice it +that now I conceive of the task before mankind as a task essentially of +rearrangement, as a problem in relationships, extremely complex and +difficult indeed, but credibly solvable. During my Indian and Chinese +journey I was still at the Marxist stage. I went about the east looking +at labor, watching its organization and direction, seeing great +interests and enterprises replace the diffused life of an earlier phase; +the disputes and discussions in the Transvaal which had first opened my +mind to these questions came back to me, and steadily I lost my interest +in those mere political and national issues with their paraphernalia of +kings and flags and governments and parties that had hitherto blinded me +to these more fundamental interactions. + + +Sec. 2 + +It happened that in Bombay circumstances conspired to bring the crude +facts of labor enslavement vividly before me. I found a vigorous +agitation raging in the English press against the horrible sweating that +was going on in the cotton mills, I met the journalist most intimately +concerned in the business on my second day in India, and before a week +was out I was hard at work getting up the question and preparing a +memorandum with him on the possibility of immediate legislative +intervention. The very name of Bombay, which for most people recalls a +spacious and dignified landfall, lateen sails, green islands and +jutting precipices, a long city of trees and buildings like a bright and +various breakwater between the great harbor and the sea, and then +exquisite little temples, painted bullock carriages, Towers of Silence, +Parsis, and an amazingly kaleidoscopic population,--is for me a reminder +of narrow, foetid, plague-stricken streets and tall insanitary +tenement-houses packed and dripping with humanity, and of terrible +throbbing factories working far into the night, blazing with electric +light against the velvet-black night-sky of India, damp with the +steam-clouds that are maintained to moisten the thread, and swarming +with emaciated overworked brown children--for even the adults, spare and +small, in those mills seem children to a western eye. + +I plunged into this heated dreadful business with a passionate interest +and went back to the Yacht Club only when the craving for air and a good +bath and clean clothes and space and respect became unendurable. I waded +deep in labor, in this process of consuming humanity for gain, chasing +my facts through throbbing quivering sheds reeking of sweat and +excrement under the tall black-smoking chimneys,--chasing them in very +truth, because when we came prying into the mills after the hour when +child-labor should cease, there would be a shrill whistle, a patter of +feet and a cuffing and hiding of the naked little creatures we were +trying to rescue. They would be hidden under rugs, in boxes, in the most +impossible places, and we dragged them out scared and lying. Many of +them were perhaps seven years old at most; and the adults--men and women +of fourteen that is to say--we could not touch at all, and they worked +in that Indian heat, in a noisome air drenched with steam for fourteen +and fifteen hours a day. And essential to that general impression is a +memory of a slim Parsi mill-manager luminously explaining the inherited +passion for toil in the Indian weaver, and a certain bulky Hindu with a +lemon-yellow turban and a strip of plump brown stomach showing between +his clothes, who was doing very well, he said, with two wives and five +children in the mills. + +That is my Bombay, that and the columns of crossed circles marking +plague cases upon the corners of houses and a peculiar acrid smell, and +the polychromatic stir of crowded narrow streets between cliffs of +architecture with carved timbers and heavy ornamentations, into which +the sun strikes obliquely and lights a thousand vivid hues.... + +Bombay, the gateway of what silly people were still calling in those +days "the immemorial East," Bombay, which is newer than Boston or New +York, Bombay which has grown beneath the Englishman's shadow out of a +Portuguese fort in the last two hundred years.... + + +Sec. 3 + +I came out of these dark corners presently into the sunblaze of India. I +was now intensely interested in the whole question of employment and +engaged in preparing matter for my first book, "Enterprise and India," +and therein you may read how I went first to Assam and then down to +Ceylon following up this perplexing and complicated business of human +enslavement to toil, exercised by this great spectacle of human labor, +and at once attracted by and stimulated by and dissatisfied with those +socialist generalizations that would make all this vast harsh spectacle +of productive enterprise a kind of wickedness and outrage upon humanity. +And behind and about the things I was looking for were other things for +which I was not looking, that slowly came into and qualified the +problem. It dawned upon me by degrees that India is not so much one +country as a vast spectacle of human development at every stage, in +infinite variety. One ranges between naked savages and the most +sophisticated of human beings. I pursued my enquiries about great modern +enterprises, about railway labor, canal labor, tea-planting, across vast +stretches of country where men still lived, illiterate, agricultural, +unprogressive and simple, as men lived before the first stirrings of +recorded history. One sees by the tanks of those mud-built villages +groups of women with brass vessels who are identical in pose and figure +and quality with the women modelled in Tanagra figures, and the droning +wall-wheel is the same that irrigated the fields of ancient Greece, and +the crops and beasts and all the life is as it was in Greece and Italy, +Phoenicia and Judea before the very dawn of history. + +By imperceptible degrees I came to realize that this matter of +expropriation and enslavement and control, which bulks so vastly upon +the modern consciousness, which the Socialists treat as though it was +the comprehensive present process of mankind, is no more than one aspect +of an overlife that struggles out of a massive ancient and traditional +common way of living, struggles out again and again--blindly and always +so far with a disorderly insuccess.... + +I began to see in their proper proportion the vast enduring normal human +existence, the peasant's agricultural life, unlettered, laborious and +essentially unchanging on the one hand, and on the other those +excrescences of multitudinous city aggregation, those stormy excesses of +productive energy that flare up out of that life, establish for a time +great unstable strangenesses of human living, palaces, cities, roads, +empires, literatures, and then totter and fall back again into ruin. In +India even more than about the Mediterranean all this is spectacular. +There the peasant goes about his work according to the usage of fifty +thousand years. He has a primitive version of religion, a moral +tradition, a social usage, closely adapted by countless years of trial +and survival to his needs, and the whole land is littered with the +vestiges and abandoned material of those newer, bolder, more +experimental beginnings, beginnings that merely began. + +It was when I was going through the panther-haunted palaces of Akbar at +Fatehpur Sikri that I first felt how tremendously the ruins of the past +may face towards the future; the thing there is like a frozen wave that +rose and never broke; and once I had caught that light upon things, I +found the same quality in all the ruins I saw, in Amber and Vijayanagar +and Chitor, and in all that I have seen or heard of, in ancient Rome and +ancient Verona, in Paestum and Cnossus and ancient Athens. None of these +places was ever really finished and done with; the Basilicas of Caesar +and Constantine just as much as the baths and galleries and halls of +audience at Fatehpur Sikri express not ends achieved but thwarted +intentions of permanence. They embody repulse and rejection. They are +trials, abandoned trials, towards ends vaguely apprehended, ends felt +rather than known. Even so was I moved by the Bruges-like emptinesses of +Pekin, in the vast pretensions of its Forbidden City, which are like a +cry, long sustained, that at last dies away in a wail. I saw the place +in 1905 in that slack interval after the European looting and before the +great awakening that followed the Russo-Japanese war. Pekin in a century +or so may be added in its turn to the list of abandoned endeavors. +Insensibly the sceptre passes.... Nearer home than any of these places +have I imagined the same thing; in Paris it seemed to me I felt the +first chill shadow of that same arrest, that impalpable ebb and +cessation at the very crest of things, that voice which opposes to all +the hasty ambitions and gathering eagerness of men: "It is not here, it +is not yet." + +Only the other day as I came back from Paris to this quiet place and +walked across the fields from the railway station to this house, I saw +an old woman, a grandmother, a bent old crone with two children playing +about her as she cut grass by the wayside, and she cut it, except that +her sickle was steel, exactly as old women were cutting grass before +there was writing, before the dawn of history, before men laid the first +stones one upon the other of the first city that ever became a ruin.... + +You see Civilization has never yet existed, it has only continually and +obstinately attempted to be. Our Civilization is but the indistinct +twilight before the dawn. It is still only a confused attempt, a +flourish out of barbarism, and the normal life of men, the toiling +earthy life of the field and the byre, goes on still like a stream that +at once supports and carries to destruction the experimental ships of +some still imperfect inventor. India gives it all from first to last, +and now the modern movement, the latest half-conscious struggle of the +New Thing in mankind, throws up Bombay and Calcutta, vast feverish +pustules upon the face of the peninsula, bridges the sacred rivers with +hideous iron lattice-work and smears the sky of the dusty ruin-girdled +city of Delhi,--each ruin is the vestige of an empire,--with the black +smoke of factory chimneys. + +Altogether scattered over that sun-burnt plain there are the remains of +five or six extinguished Delhis, that played their dramas of frustration +before the Delhi of the Great Mogul. This present phase of human +living--its symbol at Delhi is now, I suppose, a scaffold-bristling pile +of neo-Georgian building--is the latest of the constructive synthetic +efforts to make a newer and fuller life for mankind. Who dares call it +the last? I question myself constantly whether this life we live to-day, +whether that too, is more than a trial of these blind constructive +forces, more universal perhaps, more powerful perhaps than any +predecessor but still a trial, to litter the world with rusting material +when the phase of recession recurs. + +But yet I can never quite think that is so. This time, surely, it is +different. This time may indeed be the beginning of a permanent change; +this time there are new elements, new methods and a new spirit at work +upon construction that the world has never known before. Mankind may be +now in the dawn of a fresh phase of living altogether. It is possible. +The forces of construction are proportionally gigantic. There was never +so much clear and critical thought in the world as there is now, never +so large a body of generally accessible knowledge and suggestion, never +anything like the same breadth of outlook, the same universality of +imaginative freedom. That is so in spite of infinite turmoil and +confusion. Moreover the effort now is less concentrated, less dramatic. +There is no one vital center to the modern movement which disaster can +strike or decay undermine. If Paris or New York slacken and grow dull +and materialist, if Berlin and London conspire for a mutual destruction, +Tokio or Baku or Valparaiso or Christiania or Smyrna or Delhi will +shelter and continue the onward impetus. + +And this time too it is not any one person, any one dynasty, any one +cult or race which carries our destiny. Human thought has begun to free +itself from individual entanglements and dramatic necessities and +accidental standards. It becomes a collective mind, a collective will +towards achievement, greater than individuals or cities or kingdoms or +peoples, a mind and will to which we all contribute and which none of us +may command nor compromise by our private errors. It ceases to be +aristocratic; it detaches itself from persons and takes possession of us +all. We are involved as it grows free and dominant, we find ourselves, +in spite of ourselves, in spite of quarrels and jealousies and +conflicts, helping and serving in the making of a new world-city, a new +greater State above our legal States, in which all human life becomes a +splendid enterprise, free and beautiful, whose aptest symbol in all our +world is a huge Gothic Cathedral lit to flame by the sun, whose scheme +is the towering conquest of the universe, whose every little detail is +the wrought-out effort of a human soul.... + +Such were the ideas that grew together in my mind as I went about India +and the East, across those vast sunlit plains, where men and women still +toil in their dusty fields for a harsh living and live in doorless +hovels on floors of trampled cow-dung, persecuted by a hundred hostile +beasts and parasites, caught and eaten by tigers and panthers as cats +eat mice, and grievously afflicted by periodic famine and pestilence, +even as men and women lived before the dawn of history, for untold +centuries, for hundreds of thousands of years. + + +Sec. 4 + +How strange we English seem in India, a little scattered garrison. Are +we anything more than accidental, anything more than the messenger-boy +who has brought the impetus of the new effort towards civilization +through the gates of the East? Are we makers or just a means, casually +taken up and used by the great forces of God? + +I do not know, I have never been able to tell. I have never been able to +decide whether we are the greatest or the dullest of peoples. + +I think we are an imaginative people with an imagination at once +gigantic, heroic and shy, and also we are a strangely restrained and +disciplined people who are yet neither subdued nor subordinated.... +These are flat contradictions to state, and yet how else can one render +the paradox of the English character and this spectacle of a handful of +mute, snobbish, not obviously clever and quite obviously ill-educated +men, holding together kingdoms, tongues and races, three hundred +millions of them, in a restless fermenting peace? Again and again in +India I would find myself in little circles of the official +English,-supercilious, pretentious, conventional, carefully "turned out" +people, living gawkily, thinking gawkily, talking nothing but sport and +gossip, relaxing at rare intervals into sentimentality and levity as +mean as a banjo tune, and a kind of despairful disgust would engulf me. +And then in some man's work, in some huge irrigation scheme, some feat +of strategic foresight, some simple, penetrating realization of +deep-lying things, I would find an effect, as if out of a thickly rusted +sheath one had pulled a sword and found it--flame.... + +I recall one evening I spent at a little station in Bengal, between +Lucknow and Delhi, an evening given over to private theatricals. The +theatre was a huge tent, and the little roughly improvised stage was lit +by a row of oil footlights and so small as barely to give a foothold for +the actors and actresses in the more crowded scenes. About me were the +great people, the colonel's wife, a touring young man of family, +officers and the wife of the manager of the big sugar refinery close at +hand. Behind were English of a more dubious social position, also +connected with the sugar refinery, a Eurasian family or so, very dressy +and aggressive and terribly snubbed, and then I think various Portuguese +and other nondescripts and groups of non-commissioned officers and men, +some with their wives. The play, admirably chosen, was that +crystallization of liberal Victorian snobbery, _Caste_, and I remember +there was a sub-current of amusement because the young officer who +played--what _is_ the name of the hero's friend? I forget--had in the +haste of his superficiality adopted a moustache that would not keep on +and an eyeglass that would not keep in. + +Everybody was acting very badly, nobody was word-perfect and a rasping +prompter would not keep ahead as he ought to have done; the scenery and +the make-ups were daubs, and I was filled with amazement that having +quite wantonly undertaken to do this thing these people could then do it +so slackly. Then a certain sudden warmth in the applause about me +quickened my attention, and I realized the satirical purport of drunken +old father Eccles, and the moral intention of his son-in-law, the +plumber. Between them they expressed the whole duty of the workingman as +the prosperous Victorians conceived it. He was to work hard always at +any job he could find for any wages he could get, and if he didn't he +was a "drunken shirker" and the dupe of "paid agitators." A comforting +but misleading doctrine. And here were these people a decade on in the +twentieth century, with Time, Death, and Judgment close upon them, still +eagerly applauding, eager to excuse their minds with this one-sided, +ungracious, old-fashioned nonsense, that has done so much to intensify +the deepening class antagonisms that strain us now at home almost to the +breaking point! + +How amazingly, it seemed, those people didn't understand and wouldn't +understand any class but their own, any race but their own, any usage +other than their use! Covertly I surveyed the colonel's profile. It +expressed nothing but entire satisfaction with these disastrous +interpretations. What a weather-worn thought-free face that grizzled +veteran showed the world! + +I was seized with a sudden curiosity to see how the private soldiers +behind me were taking old Eccles. I turned round to discover cropped +heads and faces as expressionless as masks, and behind them dusky faces +watching very alertly, and then other dusky faces, Eurasians, inferiors, +servants, natives. + +Then at a sharp edge the glare of our lighting ceased and the canvas +walls of our narrow world of illusion opened into a vast blue twilight. +At the opening stood two white-clad Sikhs, very, very still and +attentive, watching the performance, and beyond them was a great space +of sky over a dim profile of trees and roofs and a minaret, a sky +darkling down to the flushed red memory--such a short memory it is in +India--of a day that had gone for ever. + +I remained staring at that for some time. + +"Isn't old Eccles _good_?" whispered the colonel's wife beside me, and +recalled me to the play.... + +Somehow that picture of a narrow canvas tent in the midst of immensities +has become my symbol for the whole life of the governing English, the +English of India and Switzerland and the Riviera and the West End and +the public services.... + +But they are not England, they are not the English reality, which is a +thing at once bright and illuminating and fitful, a thing humorous and +wise and adventurous--Shakespeare, Dickens, Newton, Darwin, Nelson, +Bacon, Shelley--English names every one--like the piercing light of +lanterns swinging and swaying among the branches of dark trees at night. + + +Sec. 5 + +I went again to Ceylon to look into the conditions of Coolie +importation, and then I was going back into Assam once more, still in +the wake of indentured labor, when I chanced upon a misadventure. I had +my first and only experience of big game shooting in the Garo Hills, I +was clawed out of a tree by a wounded panther, he missed his hold and I +got back to my branch, but my shoulder was put out, my thigh was badly +torn, and my blood was poisoned by the wound. I had an evil +uncomfortable time. My injury hampered me greatly, and for a while it +seemed likely I should be permanently lamed. I had to keep to vehicles +and reasonably good roads. I wound up my convalescence with a voyage to +Singapore, and from thence I went on rather disconnectedly to a number +of exploratory journeys--excursions rather than journeys--into China. I +got to Pekin and then suddenly faced back to Europe, returning overland +through Russia. + +I wanted now to study the conditions of modern industrialism at its +sources, and my disablement did but a little accelerate a return already +decided upon. I had got my conception of the East as a whole and of the +shape of the historical process. I no longer felt adrift in a formless +chaos of forces. I perceived now very clearly that human life is +essentially a creative struggle out of the usage of immemorial years, +that the synthesis of our contemporary civilization is this creative +impulse rising again in its latest and greatest effort, the creative +impulse rising again, as a wave rises from the trough of its +predecessors, out of the ruins of our parent system, imperial Rome. But +this time, and for the first time, the effort is world-wide, and China +and Iceland, Patagonia and Central Africa all swing together with us to +make--or into another catastrophic failure to make--the Great State of +mankind. All this I had now distinctly in my mind. The new process I +perceive had gone further in the west; was most developed in the west. +The lighter end lifts first. So back I came away from the great body of +mankind, which is Asia, to its head. And since I was still held by my +promise from returning to England I betook myself first to the Pas de +Calais and then to Belgium and thence into industrial Germany, to study +the socialistic movement at its sources. + +And I was beginning to see too very clearly by the time of my return +that what is confusedly called the labor problem is really not one +problem at all, but two. There is the old problem, the problem as old as +Zimbabwe and the pyramids, the declining problem, the problem of +organizing masses of unskilled labor to the constructive ends of a Great +State, and there is the new modification due to machinery, which has +rendered unskilled labor and labor of a low grade of skill almost +unnecessary to mankind, added coal, oil, wind and water, the elementary +school and the printing-press to our sources of power, and superseded +the ancient shepherding and driving of men by the possibility of their +intelligent and willing co-operation. The two are still mixed in every +discussion, even as they are mixed in the practice of life, but +inevitably they will be disentangled. We break free from slavery, open +or disguised, just as we illuminate and develop this disentanglement.... + +I have long since ceased to trouble about the economics of human +society. Ours are not economic but psychological difficulties. There is +enough for everyone, and only a fool can be found to deny it. But our +methods of getting and making are still ruled by legal and social +traditions from the time before we had tapped these new sources of +power, before there was more than enough for everyone, and when a bare +supply was only secured by jealous possession and unremitting toil. We +have no longer to secure enough by a stern insistence. We have come to a +plenty. The problem now is to make that plenty go round, and _keep it +enough_ while we do. + +Our real perplexities are altogether psychological. There are no valid +arguments against a great-spirited Socialism but this, that people will +not. Indolence, greed, meanness of spirit, the aggressiveness of +authority, and above all jealousy, jealousy for our pride and vanity, +jealousy for what we esteem our possessions, jealousy for those upon +whom we have set the heavy fetters of our love, a jealousy of criticism +and association, these are the real obstacles to those brave large +reconstructions, those profitable abnegations and brotherly feats of +generosity that will yet turn human life--of which our individual lives +are but the momentary parts--into a glad, beautiful and triumphant +co-operation all round this sunlit world. + +If but humanity could have its imagination touched---- + +I was already beginning to see the great problem of mankind as indeed +nothing other than a magnification of the little problem of myself, as a +problem in escape from grooves, from preoccupations and suspicions, +precautions and ancient angers, a problem of escape from these spiritual +beasts that prowl and claw, to a new generosity and a new breadth of +view. + +For all of us, little son, as for each of us, salvation is that. We have +to get away from ourselves to a greater thing, to a giant's desire and +an unending life, ours and yet not our own. + + +Sec. 6 + +It is a queer experience to be even for a moment in the grip of a great +beast. I had been put into the fork of a tree, so that I could shoot +with the big stem behind my back. The fork wasn't, I suppose, more than +a score of feet from the ground. It was a safe enough place from a +tiger, and that is what we expected. We had been misled by our tracker, +who had mistaken the pugs of a big leopard for a tiger's,--they were +over rocky ground for the most part and he had only the spoor of a +chance patch of half-dried mud to go upon. The beast had killed a goat +and was beaten out of a thicket near by me in which he had been lying +up. The probability had seemed that he would go away along a tempting +ravine to where Captain Crosby, who was my host, awaited him; I, as the +amateur, was intended to be little more than a spectator. But he broke +back towards the wing of the line of beaters and came across the sunlit +rocks within thirty yards of my post. + +Seen going along in that way, flattened almost to the ground, he wasn't +a particularly impressive beast, and I shot at his shoulder as one might +blaze away at a rabbit,--perhaps just a little more carefully, feeling +as a Lord of Creation should who dispenses a merited death. I expected +him either to roll over or bolt. + +Then instantly he was coming in huge bounds towards me.... + +He came so rapidly that he was covered by the big limb of the tree on +which I was standing until he was quite beneath me, and my second shot, +which I thought in the instant must have missed him, was taken rapidly +as he crouched to spring up the trunk. + +Then you know came a sort of astonishment, and I think,--because +afterwards Crosby picked up a dropped cartridge at the foot of the +tree--that I tried to reload. I believe I was completely incredulous +that the beast was going to have me until he actually got me. The thing +was too completely out of my imaginative picture. I don't believe I +thought at all while he was coming up the tree. I merely noted how +astonishingly he resembled an angry cat. Then he'd got my leg, he was +hanging on to it first by two claws and then by one claw, and the whole +weight of him was pulling me down. It didn't seem to be my leg. I wasn't +frightened, I felt absolutely nothing, I was amazed. I slipped, tried to +get a hold on the tree trunk, felt myself being hauled down, and then +got my arm about the branch. I still clung to my unloaded gun as an +impoverished aristocrat might cling to his patent of nobility. That was, +I felt, my answer for him yet. + +I suppose the situation lasted a fraction of a second, though it seemed +to me to last an interminable time. Then I could feel my leggings rip +and his claw go scoring deeply down my calf. That hurt in a kind of +painless, impersonal interesting way. Was my leg coming off? Boot? The +weight had gone, that enormous weight! + +He'd missed his hold altogether! I heard his claws tear down the bark of +the tree and then his heavy, soft fall upon the ground. + +I achieved a cat-like celerity. In another second I was back in my fork +reloading, my legs tucked up as tightly as possible. + +I peered down through the branches ready for him. He wasn't there. Not +up the tree again?... Then I saw him making off, with a halting gait, +across the scorching rocks some thirty yards away, but I could not get +my gun into a comfortable position before he was out of sight behind a +ridge.... I wondered why the sunlight seemed to be flickering like an +electric light that fails, was somehow aware of blood streaming from my +leg down the tree-stem; it seemed a torrent of blood, and there was a +long, loose ribbon of flesh very sickening to see; and then I fainted +and fell out of the tree, bruising my arm and cheek badly and +dislocating my shoulder in the fall.... Some of the beaters saw me fall, +and brought Crosby in sufficient time to improvise a _torniquet_ and +save my life. + + + + +CHAPTER THE NINTH + +THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW WORLD + + +Sec. 1 + +I met Rachel again in Germany through the devices of my cousin the +Fuerstin Letzlingen. I had finished seeing what I wanted to see in +Westphalia and I was preparing to go to the United States. There I +thought I should be able to complete and round off that large view of +the human process I had been developing in my mind. But my departure was +delayed by an attack of influenza that I picked up at a Socialist +Congress in Munich, and the dear Durchlaucht, hearing of this and having +her own views of my destiny, descended upon me while I was still in bed +there, made me get up and carried me off in her car, to take care of me +herself at her villa at Boppard, telling me nothing of any fellow-guests +I might encounter. + +She had a villa upon the Rhine under a hill of vineyards, where she +devoted herself--she was a widow--to matchmaking and belated regrets for +the childlessness that necessitated a perpetual borrowing of material +for her pursuit. She had a motor-car, a steam-launch, several rowing +boats and canoes, a tennis-lawn, a rambling garden, a devious house and +a rapid mind, and in fact everything that was necessary for throwing +young people together. She made her surprise seem easy and natural, and +with returning health I found myself already back upon my old footing of +friendly intimacy with Rachel. + +I found her a new and yet a familiar Rachel. She had grown up, she was +no longer a schoolgirl, crystalline clear with gleams of emotion and +understanding, and what she had lost in transparency she had gained in +depth. And she had become well-informed, she had been reading very +widely and well, I could see, and not simply reading but talking and +listening and thinking. She showed a vivid interest in the current of +home politics,--at that time the last government of Mr. Balfour was +ebbing to its end and my old Transvaal friends, the Chinese coolies, +were to avenge themselves on their importers. The Tariff Reformers my +father detested were still struggling to unseat the Premier from his +leadership of Conservatism.... + +It was queer to hear once more, after my Asiatic wanderings and +dreamings, those West-End dinner-table politics, those speculations +about "Winston's" future and the possibility of Lloyd George or Ramsay +Macdonald or Macnamara taking office with the Liberals and whether there +might not ultimately be a middle party in which Haldane and Balfour, +Grey and the Cecils could meet upon common ground. It seemed now not +only very small but very far off. She told me too of the huge popularity +of King Edward. He had proved to be interested, curious, understanding +and clever, an unexpectedly successful King. She described how he was +breaking out of the narrow official limits that had kept his mother in a +kind of social bandbox, extending his solvent informality of +friendliness to all sorts of men. He had won the heart of Will Crooks, +the labor member for Poplar, for example, made John Burns a social +success and warmed all France for England. + +I surveyed this novel picture of the English throne diffusing +amiability. + +"I suppose it's what the throne ought to do," said Rachel. "If it can't +be inspiration, at any rate it can tolerate and reconcile and take the +ill-bred bitterness out of politics." + +"My father might have said that." + +"I got that from your father," she said; and added after a momentary +pause, "I go over and talk to him." + +"You talk to my father!" + +"I like to. Or rather I listen and take it in. I go over in the +afternoon. I go sometimes twice or three times a week." + +"That's kind of you." + +"Not at all. You see---- It sounds impudent, I know, for a girl to say +so, but we've so many interests in common." + + +Sec. 2 + +I was more and more interested by Rachel as the days went on. A man must +be stupid who does not know that a woman is happy in his presence, and +for two years now and more I had met no one with a very strong personal +feeling for me. And quite apart from that, her mind was extraordinarily +interesting to me because it was at once so active and so clear and so +limited by her entirely English circumstances. She had the prosperous +English outlook. She didn't so much see the wide world as get glimpses +of it through the tangle of Westminster and of West End and week-end +limitations. She wasn't even aware of that greater unprosperous England, +already sulking and darkling outside her political world, that greater +England which was presently to make its first audible intimations of +discontent in that remarkable anti-climax to King George's Coronation, +the Railway Strike. India for her was the land of people's cousins, +Germany and the German Dreadnoughts bulked far larger, and all the +tremendous gathering forces of the East were beyond the range of her +imagination. I set myself to widen her horizons. + +I told her something of the intention and range of my travels, and +something of the views that were growing out of their experiences. + +I have a clear little picture in my mind of an excursion we made to that +huge national Denkmal which rears its head out of the amiable vineyards +of Assmannshausen and Rudesheim over against Bingen. We landed at the +former place, went up its little funicular to eat our lunch and drink +its red wine at the pleasant inn above, and then strolled along through +the woods to the monument. + +The Fuerstin fell behind with her unwilling escort, a newly arrived +medical student from England, a very pleasant youngster named Berwick, +who was all too obviously anxious to change places with me. She devised +delays, and meanwhile I, as yet unaware of the state of affairs, went on +with Rachel to that towering florid monument with its vast gesticulating +Germania, which triumphs over the conquered provinces. + +We fell talking of war and the passions and delusions that lead to war. +Rachel's thoughts were strongly colored by those ideas of a natural +rivalry between Germany and England and of a necessary revenge for +France which have for nearly forty years diverted the bulk of European +thought and energy to the mere waste of military preparations. I jarred +with an edifice of preconceptions when I scoffed and scolded at these +assumptions. + +"Our two great peoples are disputing for the leadership of the world," I +said, "and meanwhile the whole world sweeps past us. We're drifting into +a quarrelsome backwater." + +I began to tell of the fermentation and new beginnings that were +everywhere perceptible throughout the East, of the vast masses of human +ability and energy that were coming into action in China and India, of +the unlimited future of both North and South America, of the mere +accidentalness of the European advantage. "History," I said, "is already +shifting the significance out of Western Europe altogether, and we +English cannot see it; we can see no further than Berlin, and these +Germans can think of nothing better than to taunt the French with such +tawdry effigies as _this_! Europe goes on to-day as India went on in the +eighteenth century, making aimless history. And the sands of opportunity +run and run...." + +I shrugged my shoulders and we stood for a little while looking down on +the shining crescent of the Rhine. + +"Suppose," said Rachel, "that someone were to say that--in the House." + +"The House," I said, "doesn't hear things at my pitch. Bat outcries. Too +shrill altogether." + +"It might. If _you_----" + +She halted, hesitated for a moment on the question and asked abruptly: + +"When are you coming back to England, Mr. Stratton?" + +"Certainly not for six months," I said. + +A movement of her eyes made me aware of the Fuerstin and Berwick emerging +from the trees. "And then?" asked Rachel. + +I didn't want to answer that question, in which the personal note +sounded so clearly. "I am going to America to see America," I said, "and +America may be rather a big thing to see." + +"You must see it?" + +"I want to be sure of it--as something comprehensive. I want to get a +general effect of it...." + +Rachel hesitated, looked back to measure the distance of the Fuerstin and +her companion and put her question again, but this time with a +significance that did not seem even to want to hide itself. "_Then_ will +you come back?" she said. + +Her face flamed scarlet, but her eyes met mine boldly. Between us there +was a flash of complete understanding. + +My answer, if it was lame and ungallant to such a challenge, was at +least perfectly honest. "I can't make up my mind," I said. "I've been +near making plans--taking steps.... Something holds me back...." + +I had no time for an explanation. + +"I can't make up my mind," I repeated. + +She stood for a moment rather stiffly, staring away towards the blue +hills of Alsace. + +Then she turned with a smiling and undisturbed countenance to the +Fuerstin. Her crimson had given place to white. "The triumph of it," she +said with a slight gesture to the flamboyant Teutonism that towered +over us, and boldly repeating words I had used scarcely five minutes +before, "makes me angry. They conquered--ungraciously...." + +She had overlooked something in her effort to seem entirely +self-possessed. She collapsed. "My dear!" she cried,--"I forgot!" + +"Oh! I'm only a German by marriage!" cried the Fuerstin. "And I can +assure you I quite understand--about the triumph of it...." She surveyed +the achievement of her countrymen. "It is--ungracious. But indeed it's +only a sort of artlessness if you see the thing properly.... It's not +vulgarity--it's childishness.... They've hardly got over it yet--their +intense astonishment at being any good at war.... That large throaty +Victory! She's not so militant as she seems. She's too plump.... Of +course what a German really appreciates is nutrition. But I quite agree +with you both.... I'm beginning to want my tea, Mr. Stratton.... +Rachel!" + +Her eyes had been on Rachel as she chattered. The girl had turned to the +distant hills again, and had forgotten even to pretend to listen to the +answer she had evoked. Now she came back sharply to the sound of her +name. + +"Tea?" said the Fuerstin. + +"Oh!" cried Rachel. "Yes. Yes, certainly. Rather. Tea." + + +Sec. 3 + +It was clear to me that after that I must as people say "have things +out" with Rachel. But before I could do anything of the sort the +Fuerstin pounced upon me. She made me sit up that night after her other +guests had gone to their rooms, in the cosy little turret apartment she +called her study and devoted to the reading of whatever was most +notorious in contemporary British fiction. "Sit down," said she, "by the +fire in that chair there and tell me all about it. It's no good your +pretending you don't know what I mean. What are you up to with her, and +why don't you go straight to your manifest destiny as a decent man +should?" + +"Because manifestly it isn't my destiny," I said. + +"Stuff," said the Fuerstin. + +"You know perfectly well why I am out of England." + +"Everybody knows--except of course quite young persons who are being +carefully brought up." + +"Does _she_ know?" + +"She doesn't seem to." + +"Well, that's what I want to know." + +"Need she know?" + +"Well, it does seem rather essential----" + +"I suppose if you think so----" + +"Will you tell her?" + +"Tell her yourself, if she must be told. Down there in Surrey, she +_must_ have seen things and heard things. But I don't see that she wants +a lot of ancient history." + +"If it is ancient history!" + +"Oh! two years and a half,--it's an Era." + +I made no answer to that, but sat staring into the fire while my cousin +watched my face. At length I made my confession. "I don't think it is +ancient history at all," I said. "I think if I met Mary again now----" + +"You mean Lady Mary Justin?" + +"Of course." + +"It would be good for your mind if you remembered to call her by her +proper name.... You think if you met her again you two would begin to +carry on. But you see,--you aren't going to meet her. Everybody will see +that doesn't happen." + +"I mean that I---- Well----" + +"You'd better not say it. Besides, it's nonsense. I doubt if you've +given her a thought for weeks and weeks." + +"Until I came here perhaps that was almost nearly true. But you've +stirred me up, sweet cousin, and old things, old memories and habits +have come to the surface again. Mary wrote herself over my life--in all +sorts of places.... I can't tell you. I've never talked of her to +anyone. I'm not able, very well, to talk about my feelings.... Perhaps a +man of my sort--doesn't love twice over." + +I disregarded a note of dissent from my cousin. "That was all so magic, +all my youth, all my hope, all the splendid adventure of it. Why should +one pretend?... I'm giving none of that to Rachel. It isn't there any +more to give...." + +"One would think," remarked the Fuerstin, "there was no gift of healing." + +She waited for me to speak, and then irritated by my silence struck at +me sharply with that wicked little tongue of hers. + +"Do you think that Lady Mary Justin thinks of you--as you think of her? +Do you think she hasn't settled down?" + +I looked up at her quickly. + +"She's just going to have a second child," the Fuerstin flung out. + +Yes, that did astonish me. I suppose my face showed it. + +"That girl," said the Fuerstin, "that clean girl would have sooner +died--ten thousand deaths.... And she's never--never been anything to +you." + +I think that for an instant she had been frightened at her own words. +She was now quite angry and short of breath. She had contrived a rapid +indignation against Mary and myself. + +"I didn't know Mary had had any child at all," I said. + +"This makes two," said the Fuerstin, and held up a brace of fingers, +"with scarcely a year and a half between them. Not much more anyhow.... +It was natural, I suppose. A natural female indecency. I don't blame +her. When a woman gives in she ought to do it thoroughly. But I don't +see that it leaves _you_ much scope for philandering, Stephen, does +it?... And there you are, and here is Rachel. And why don't you make a +clean job of your life?..." + +"I didn't understand." + +"I wonder what you imagined." + +I reflected. "I wonder what I did. I suppose I thought of Mary--just as +I had left her--always." + +I remained with my mind filled with confused images of Mary, memories, +astonishment.... + +I perceived the Fuerstin was talking. + +"Maundering about," she was saying, "like a huntsman without a horse.... +You've got work to do--blood in your veins. I'm not one of your ignorant +women, Stephen. You ought to have a wife...." + +"Rachel's too good," I said, at the end of a pause and perceiving I had +to say something, "to be that sort of wife." + +"No woman's too good for a man," said the Fuerstin von Letzlingen with +conviction. "It's what God made her for." + + +Sec. 4 + +My visit to Boppard was drawing to an end before I had a clear +opportunity to have things out with Rachel. It was in a little garden, +under the very shadow of that gracious cathedral at Worms, the sort of +little garden to which one is admitted by ringing a bell and tipping a +custodian. I think Worms is in many respects one of the most beautiful +cathedrals I have ever seen, so perfectly proportioned, so delicately +faded, so aloof, so free from pride or presumption, and it rises over +this green and flowery peace, a towering, lithe, light brown, sunlit, +easy thing, as unconsciously and irrelevantly splendid as a tall ship in +the evening glow under a press of canvas. We looked up at it for a time +and then went on with the talk to which we had been coming slowly since +the Fuerstin had packed us off for it, while she went into the town with +Berwick to buy toys for her gatekeeper's children. I had talked about +myself, and the gradual replacement of my ambition to play a part in +imperial politics by wider intentions. "You know," I asked abruptly, +"why I left England?" + +She thought through the briefest of pauses. "No," she decided at last. + +"I made love," I said, "to Lady Mary Justin, and we were found out. We +couldn't go away together----" + +"Why not?" she interjected. + +"It was impossible." + +For some moments neither of us spoke. "Something," she said, and then, +"Some vague report," and left these fragments to be her reply. + +"We were old playmates; we were children together. We +have--something--that draws us to each other. She--she made a mistake in +marrying. We were both very young and the situation was difficult. And +then afterwards we were thrown together.... But you see that has made a +great difference to my life; it's turned me off the rails on which men +of my sort usually run. I've had to look to these other things.... +They've become more to me than to most people if only because of +that...." + +"You mean these ideas of yours--learning as much as you can about the +world, and then doing what you can to help other people to a better +understanding." + +"Yes," I said. + +"And that--will fill your life." + +"It ought to." + +"I suppose it ought. I suppose--you find--it does." + +"Don't you think it ought to fill my life?" + +"I wondered if it did." + +"But why shouldn't it?" + +"It's so--so cold." + +My questioning silence made her attempt to explain. + +"One wants life more beautiful than that," she said. "One wants---- +There are things one needs, things nearer one." + +We became aware of a jangling at the janitor's bell. Our opportunity for +talk was slipping away. And we were both still undecided, both +blunderingly nervous and insecure. We were hurried into clumsy phrases +that afterwards we would have given much to recall. + +"But how could life be more beautiful," I said, "than when it serves big +human ends?" + +Her brows were knit. She seemed to be listening for the sound of the +unlocking gate. + +"But," she said, and plunged, "one wants to be loved. Surely one needs +that." + +"You see, for me--that's gone." + +"Why should it be gone?" + +"It is. One doesn't begin again. I mean--myself. _You_--can. You've +never begun. Not when you've loved--loved really." I forced that on her. +I over emphasized. "It was real love, you know; the real thing.... I +don't mean the mere imaginative love, blindfold love, but love that +sees.... I want you to understand that. I loved--altogether...." + +Across the lawn under its trim flowering-trees appeared Berwick loaded +with little parcels, and manifestly eager to separate us, and the +Fuerstin as manifestly putting on the drag. + +"There's a sort of love," I hurried, "that doesn't renew itself ever. +Don't let yourself believe it does. Something else may come in its +place, but that is different. It's youth,--a wonderful newness.... Look +at that youngster. _He_ can love you like that. I've watched him. He +does. You know he does...." + +"Yes," she said, as hurriedly; "but then, you see, I don't love him." + +"You don't?" + +"I can't." + +"But he's such a fresh clean human being----" + +"That's not all," said Rachel. "That's not all.... You don't +understand." + +The two drew near. "It is so hard to explain," she said. "Things that +one hardly sees for oneself. Sometimes it seems one cannot help oneself. +You can't choose. You are taken...." She seemed about to say something +more, and stopped and bit her lip. + +In another moment I was standing up, and the Fuerstin was calling to us +across ten feet of space. "Such amoosin' little toyshops. We've got a +heap of things. Just look at him!" + +He smiled over his load with anxious eyes upon our faces. + +"Ten separate parcels," he said, appealing for Rachel's sympathy. "I'm +doing my best not to complain." + +And rather adroitly he contrived to let two of them slip, and captured +Rachel to assist him. + +He didn't relinquish her again. + + +Sec. 5 + +The Fuerstin and I followed them along the broad, pleasant, tree-lined +street towards the railway station. + +"A boy of that age ought not to marry a girl of that age," said the +Fuerstin, breaking a silence. + +I didn't answer. + +"Well?" she said, domineering. + +"My dear cousin," I said, "I know all that you have in your mind. I +admit--I covet her. You can't make me more jealous than I am. She's +clean and sweet--it is marvellous how the God of the rest of the world +can have made a thing so brave and honest and wonderful. She's better +than flowers. But I think I'm going away to-night, nevertheless." + +"You don't mean you're going to carry chivalry to the point of giving +that boy a chance--for he hasn't one while you're about." + +"No. You see--I want to give Rachel a chance. You know as well as I +do--the things in my mind." + +"That you've got to forget." + +"That I don't forget." + +"That you're bound in honor to forget. And who could help you better?" + +"I'm going," I said and then, wrathfully, "If you think I want to use +Rachel as a sort of dressing--for my old sores----" + +I left the sentence unfinished. + +"Oh _nonsense_!" cried the Fuerstin, and wouldn't speak to me again until +we got to that entirely Teutonic "art" station that is not the least +among the sights of Worms. + +"Sores, indeed!" said the Fuerstin presently, as we walked up the end of +the platform. + +"There's nothing," said the Fuerstin, with an unusual note of petulance, +"she'd like better." + +"I can't think what men are coming to," she went on. "You're in love +with her, or you wouldn't be so generous. And she's head over heels with +you. And here you are! I'll give you one more chance----" + +"I won't take it," I interrupted. "It isn't fair. I tell you I won't +take it. I'll go two days earlier to prevent you. Unless you promise +me---- Of course I see how things are with her. She's not a sphinx. But +it isn't fair. It isn't. Not to her, or to him--or myself. _He's_ got +some claims. He's got more right to her than I...." + +"A boy like that! No man has any rights about women--until he's thirty. +And as for me and all the pains _I've_ taken---- Oh! I _hate_ Worms. +Dust and ashes! Well here thank heaven! comes the train. If nothing else +could stir you, Stephen, at least I could have imagined some decent +impulse of gratitude to me. Stephen, you're disgusting. You've +absolutely spoilt this trip for me--absolutely. When only a little +reasonableness on your part---- Oh!" + +She left her sentence unfinished. + +Berwick and I had to make any conversation that was needed on the way +back to Boppard. Rachel did not talk and the Fuerstin did not want to. + + +Sec. 6 + +Directly I had parted from Rachel's questioning eyes I wanted to go back +to them. It seems to me now that all the way across to America, in that +magnificent German liner I joined at Hamburg, I was thinking in confused +alternations of her and of Mary. There are turns of thought that still +bring back inseparably with them the faint echo of the airs of the +excellent but industrious band that glorified our crossing. + +I had been extraordinarily shocked and concerned at the thought of Mary +bearing children. It is a grotesque thing to confess but I had never let +myself imagine the possibility of such a thing for her who had been so +immensely mine.... + +We are the oddest creatures, little son, beasts and barbarians and +brains, neither one nor the other but all confusedly, and here was I who +had given up Mary and resigned her and freed myself from her as I +thought altogether, cast back again into my old pit by the most obvious +and necessary consequence of her surrender and mine. And it's just there +and in that relation that we men and women are so elaborately insecure. +We try to love as equals and behave as equals and concede a level +freedom, and then comes a crisis,--our laboriously contrived edifice of +liberty collapses and we perceive that so far as sex goes the woman +remains to the man no more than a possession--capable of loyalty or +treachery. + +There, still at that barbaric stage, the situation stands. You see I had +always wanted to own Mary, and always she had disputed that. That is our +whole story, the story of an instinctive subjugation struggling against +a passionate desire for fellowship. She had denied herself to me, taken +herself away; that much I could endure; but now came this blazing fact +that showed her as it seemed in the most material and conclusive +way--overcome. I had storms of retrospective passion at the thoroughness +of her surrender.... Yes, and that's in everyone of us,--in everyone. I +wonder if in all decent law-abiding London there lives a single healthy +adult man who has not at times longed to trample and kill.... + +For once I think the Fuerstin miscalculated consequences. I think I +should have engaged myself to Rachel before I went to America if it had +not been for the Fuerstin's revelation, but this so tore me that I could +no longer go on falling in love again, naturally and sweetly. No man +falls in love if he has just been flayed.... I could no longer think of +Rachel except as a foil to Mary. I was moved to marry her by a new set +of motives; to fling her so to speak in Mary's face, and from the fierce +vulgarity of that at least I recoiled--and let her go as I have told +you. + + +Sec. 7 + +I had thought all that was over. + +I remember my struggles to recover my peace. + +I remember how very late one night I went up to the promenade deck to +smoke a cigar before turning in. It was a warm moonlight night. The +broad low waves of ebony water that went seething past below, foamed +luminous and were streaked and starred with phosphorescence. The +recumbent moon, past its full and sinking westward, seemed bigger than I +had ever seen it before, and the roundness of the watery globe was +manifest about the edge of the sky. One had that sense so rare on land, +so common in the night at sea, of the world as a conceivable sphere, and +of interstellar space as of something clear and close at hand. + +There came back to me again that feeling I had lost for a time in +Germany of being not myself but Man consciously on his little planet +communing with God. + +But my spirit was saying all the time, "I am still in my pit, in my pit. +After all I am still in my pit." + +And then there broke the answer on my mind, that all our lives we must +struggle out of our pits, that to struggle out of our pit is this life, +there is no individual life but that, and that there comes no escape +here, no end to that effort, until the release of death. Continually or +frequently we may taste salvation, but never may we achieve it while we +are things of substance. Each moment in our lives we come to the test +and are lost again or saved again. To be assured of one's security is to +forget and fall away. + +And standing at the rail with these thoughts in my mind, suddenly I +prayed.... + +I remember how the engine-throbs beat through me like the beating of a +heart, and that far below, among the dim lights that came up from the +emigrants in the steerage, there was a tinkling music as I prayed and a +man's voice singing a plaintive air in some strange Slavonic tongue. + +That voice of the invisible singer and the spirit of the unknown +song-maker and the serenity of the sky, they were all, I perceived, no +more and no less than things in myself that I did not understand. They +were out beyond the range of understanding. And yet they fell into the +completest harmony that night with all that I seemed to understand.... + + +Sec. 8 + +The onset of New York was extraordinarily stimulating to me. I write +onset. It is indeed that. New York rides up out of the waters, a cliff +of man's making; its great buildings at a distance seem like long +Chinese banners held up against the sky. From Sandy Hook to the great +landing stages and the swirling hooting traffic of the Hudson River +there fails nothing in that magnificent crescendo of approach. + +And New York keeps the promise of its first appearance. There is no +such fulness of life elsewhere in all the world. The common man in the +streets is a bigger common man than any Old World city can show, +physically bigger; there is hope in his eyes and a braced defiance. New +York may be harsh and blusterous and violent, but there is a breeze from +the sea and a breeze of fraternity in the streets, and the Americans of +all peoples in the world are a nation of still unbroken men. + +I went to America curious, balancing between hope and scepticism. The +European world is full of the criticism of America, and for the matter +of that America too is full of it; hostility and depreciation +prevail,--overmuch, for in spite of rawness and vehemence and a scum of +blatant, oh! quite asinine folly, the United States of America remains +the greatest country in the world and the living hope of mankind. It is +the supreme break with the old tradition; it is the freshest and most +valiant beginning that has ever been made in human life. + +Here was the antithesis of India; here were no peasants whatever, no +traditional culture, no castes, no established differences (except for +the one schism of color); this amazing place had never had a famine, +never a plague; here were no temples and no priesthoods dominating the +lives of the people,--old Trinity church embedded amidst towering +sky-scrapers was a symbol for as much as they had of all that; and here +too there was no crown, no affectations of an ancient loyalty, no +visible army, no traditions of hostility, for the old defiance of +Britain is a thing now ridiculous and dead; and everyone I met had an +air as if he knew that to-morrow must be different from to-day and +different and novel and remarkable by virtue of himself and such as +himself. + +I went about New York, with the incredulous satisfaction of a man who +has long doubted, to find that after all America was coming true. The +very clatter pleased me, the crowds, the camp-like slovenliness, a +disorder so entirely different from the established and accepted +untidiness of China or India. Here was something the old world had never +shown me, a new enterprise, a fresh vigor. In the old world there is +Change, a mighty wave now of Change, but it drives men before it as if +it were a power outside them and not in them; they do not know, they do +not believe; but here the change is in the very blood and spirit of +mankind. They breathe it in even before the launch has brought their +feet to Ellis Island soil. In six months they are Americanized. Does it +matter that a thing so gigantic should be a little coarse and blundering +in detail, if this stumbling giant of the new time breaks a gracious +relic or so in his eager clutch and treads a little on the flowers? + + +Sec. 9 + +And in this setting of energy and activity, towering city life and +bracing sea breezes, I met Gidding again, whom I had last seen departing +into Egypt to look more particularly at the prehistoric remains and the +temples of the first and second dynasty at Abydos. It was at a +dinner-party, one of those large gatherings that welcome interesting +visitors. It wasn't, of course, I who was the centre of interest, but a +distinguished French portrait painter; I was there as just any guest. I +hadn't even perceived Gidding until he came round to me in that +precious gap of masculine intercourse that ensues upon the departure of +the ladies. That gap is one of the rare opportunities for conversation +men get in America. + +"I don't know whether you will remember me," he said, "but perhaps you +remember Crete--in the sunrise." + +"And no end of talk afterwards," I said, grasping his hand, "no end--for +we didn't half finish. Did you have a good time in Egypt?" + +"I'm not going to talk to you about Egypt," said Gidding. "I'm through +with ruins. I'm going to ask you--you know what I'm going to ask you." + +"What I think of America. It's the same inevitable question. I think +everything of it. It's the stepping-off place. I've come here at last, +because it matters most." + +"That's what we all want to believe," said Gidding. "That's what we want +you to tell us." + +He reflected. "It's immense, isn't it, perfectly immense? But---- I am +afraid at times we're too disposed to forget just what it's all about. +We've got to be reminded. That, you know, is why we keep on asking." + +He went on to question me where I had been, what I had done, what I made +of things. He'd never, he said, forgotten our two days' gossip in the +Levant, and all the wide questions about the world and ourselves that we +had broached then and left so open. I soon found myself talking very +freely to him. I am not a ready or abundant talker, but Gidding has the +knack of precipitating my ideas. He is America to my Europe, and at his +touch all that has been hanging in concentrated solution in my mind +comes crystallizing out. He has to a peculiar degree that directness +and simplicity which is the distinctive American quality. I tried to +explain to his solemnly nodding head and entirely intelligent eyes just +exactly what I was making of things, of the world, of humanity, of +myself.... + +It was an odd theme for two men to attempt after dinner, servants +hovering about them, their two faces a little flushed by wine and good +eating, their keen interest masked from the others around them by a +gossiping affectation, their hands going out as they talked for matches +or cigarette, and before we had gone further than to fling out a few +intimations to each other our colloquy was interrupted by our host +standing up and by the general stir that preluded our return to feminine +society. "We've got more to say than this," said Gidding. "We've got to +_talk_." He brought out a little engagement book that at once drew out +mine in response. And a couple of days after, we spent a morning and +afternoon together and got down to some very intimate conversation. We +motored out to lunch at a place called Nyack, above the Palisades, we +crossed on a ferry to reach it, and we visited the house of Washington +Irving near Yonkers on our way. + +I've still a vivid picture in my mind of the little lawn at Irvington +that looks out upon the rushing steel of Hudson River, where Gidding +opened his heart to me. I can see him now as he leant a little forward +over the table, with his wrists resting upon it, his long clean-shaven +face very solemn and earnest and grey against the hard American sunlight +in the greenery about us, while he told me in that deliberate American +voice of his and with the deliberate American solemnity, of his desire +to "do some decent thing with life." + +He was very anxious to set himself completely before me, I remember, on +that occasion. There was a peculiar mental kinship between us that even +the profound differences of our English and American trainings could not +mask. And now he told me almost everything material about his life. For +the first time I learnt how enormously rich he was, not only by reason +of his father's acquisitions, but also because of his own almost +instinctive aptitude for business. "I've got," he said, "to begin with, +what almost all men spend their whole lives in trying to get. And it +amounts to nothing. It leaves me with life like a blank sheet of paper, +and nothing in particular to write on it." + +"You know," he said, "it's--exasperating. I'm already half-way to +three-score and ten, and I'm still wandering about wondering what to do +with this piece of life God has given me...." + +He had "lived" as people say, he had been in scrapes and scandals, +tasted to the full the bitter intensities of the personal life; he had +come by a different route to the same conclusions as myself, was as +anxious as I to escape from memories and associations and feuds and that +excessive vividness of individual feeling which blinds us to the common +humanity, the common interest, the gentler, larger reality, which lies +behind each tawdrily emphatic self.... + +"It's a sort of inverted homoeopathy I want," he said. "The big thing to +cure the little thing...." + +But I will say no more of that side of our friendship, because the ideas +of it are spread all through this book from the first page to the +last.... What concerns me now is not our sympathy and agreement, but +that other aspect of our relations in which Gidding becomes impulse and +urgency. "Seeing we have these ideas," said he,--"and mind you there +must be others who have them or are getting to them, for nobody thinks +all alone in this world,--seeing we have these ideas what are we going +to _do_?" + + +Sec. 10 + +That meeting was followed by another before I left New York, and +presently Gidding joined me at Denver, where I was trying to measure the +true significance of a labor paper called _The Appeal to Reason_ that, +in spite of a rigid boycott by the ordinary agencies for news +distribution went out in the middle west to nearly half a million +subscribers, and was filled with such a fierceness of insurrection +against labor conditions, such a hatred, blind and impassioned, as I had +never known before. Gidding remained with me there and came back with me +to Chicago, where I wanted to see something of the Americanization of +the immigrant, and my survey of America, the social and economic problem +of America, resolved itself more and more into a conference with him. + +There is no more fruitless thing in the world than to speculate how life +would have gone if this thing or that had not happened. Yet I cannot +help but wonder how far I might have travelled along the lines of my +present work if I had gone to America and not met Gidding, or if I had +met him without visiting America. The man and his country are +inextricably interwoven in my mind. Yet I do think that his simplicity +and directness, his force of initiative that turned me from a mere +enquirer into an active writer and organizer, are qualities less his in +particular than America's in general. There is in America a splendid +crudity, a directness that cleared my spirit as a bracing wind will +sweep the clouds from mountain scenery. Compared with our older +continents America is mankind stripped for achievement. So many things +are not there at all, need not be considered; no institutional +aristocracy, no Kaisers, Czars, nor King-Emperors to maintain a +litigious sequel to the Empire of Rome; it has no uneducated immovable +peasantry rooted to the soil, indeed it has no rooting to the soil at +all; it is, from the Forty-ninth Parallel to the tip of Cape Horn, one +triumphant embodiment of freedom and deliberate agreement. For I mean +all America, Spanish-speaking as well as English-speaking; they have +this detachment from tradition in common. See how the United States, for +example, stands flatly on that bare piece of eighteenth-century +intellectualism the Constitution, and is by virtue of that a structure +either wilful and intellectual or absurd. That sense of incurable +servitude to fate and past traditions, that encumbrance with ruins, +pledges, laws and ancient institutions, that perpetual complication of +considerations and those haunting memories of preceding human failures +which dwarf the courage of destiny in Europe and Asia, vanish from the +mind within a week of one's arrival in the New World. Naturally one +begins to do things. One is inspired to do things. One feels that one +has escaped, one feels that the time is _now_. All America, North and +South alike, is one tremendous escape from ancient obsessions into +activity and making. + +And by the time I had reached America I had already come to see that +just as the issues of party politics at home and international politics +abroad are mere superficialities above the greater struggle of an +energetic minority to organize and exploit the labor of the masses of +mankind, so that struggle also is only a huge incident in the still more +than half unconscious impulse to replace the ancient way of human living +by a more highly organized world-wide social order, by a world +civilization embodying itself in a World State. And I saw now how that +impulse could neither cease nor could it on the other hand realize +itself until it became conscious and deliberate and merciful, free from +haste and tyranny, persuasive and sustained by a nearly universal +sympathy and understanding. For until that arrives the creative forces +must inevitably spend themselves very largely in blind alleys, futile +rushes and destructive conflicts. Upon that our two minds were agreed. + +"We have," said Gidding, "to understand and make understanding. That is +the real work for us to do, Stratton, that is our job. The world, as you +say, has been floundering about, half making civilization and never +achieving it. Now _we_, I don't mean just you and me, Stratton, +particularly, but every intelligent man among us, have got to set to and +make it thorough. There is no other sane policy for a man outside his +private passions but that. So let's get at it----" + +I find it now impossible to trace the phases by which I reached these +broad ideas upon which I rest all my work, but certainly they were +present very early in my discussions with Gidding. We two men had been +thinking independently but very similarly, and it is hard to say just +what completing touches either of us gave to the other's propositions. +We found ourselves rather than arrived at the conception of ourselves +as the citizens neither of the United States nor of England but of a +state that had still to come into being, a World State, a great unity +behind and embracing the ostensible political fabrics of to-day--a unity +to be reached by weakening antagonisms, by developing understandings and +toleration, by fostering the sense of brotherhood across the ancient +bounds. + +We believed and we believe that such a creative conception of a human +commonweal can be fostered in exactly the same way that the idea of +German unity was fostered behind the dukedoms, the free cities and +kingdoms of Germany, a conception so creative that it can dissolve +traditional hatreds, incorporate narrower loyalties and replace a +thousand suspicions and hostilities by a common passion for collective +achievement, so creative that at last the national boundaries of to-day +may become obstacles as trivial to the amplifying good-will of men as +the imaginary line that severs Normandy from Brittany, or Berwick from +Northumberland. + +And it is not only a great peace about the earth that this idea of a +World State means for us, but social justice also. We are both convinced +altogether that there survives no reason for lives of toil, for +hardship, poverty, famine, infectious disease, for the continuing +cruelties of wild beasts and the greater multitude of crimes, but +mismanagement and waste, and that mismanagement and waste spring from no +other source than ignorance and from stupid divisions and jealousies, +base patriotisms, fanaticisms, prejudices and suspicions that are all no +more than ignorance a little mingled with viciousness. We have looked +closely into this servitude of modern labor, we have seen its injustice +fester towards syndicalism and revolutionary socialism, and we know +these things for the mere aimless, ignorant resentments they are; +punishments, not remedies. We have looked into the portentous threat of +modern war, and it is ignorant vanity and ignorant suspicion, the +bargaining aggression of the British prosperous and the swaggering +vulgarity of the German junker that make and sustain that monstrous +European devotion to arms. And we are convinced there is nothing in +these evils and conflicts that light may not dispel. We believe that +these things can be dispelled, that the great universals, Science which +has limitations neither of race nor class, Art which speaks to its own +in every rank and nation, Philosophy and Literature which broaden +sympathy and banish prejudice, can flood and submerge and will yet flow +over and submerge every one of these separations between man and man. + +I will not say that this Great State, this World Republic of civilized +men, is our dream, because it is not a dream, it is a manifestly +reasonable possibility. It is our intention. It is what we are +deliberately making and what in a little while very many men and women +will be making. We are secessionists from all contemporary nationalities +and loyalties. We have set ourselves with all the capacity and energy at +our disposal to create a world-wide common fund of ideas and knowledge, +and to evoke a world-wide sense of human solidarity in which the +existing limitations of political structure must inevitably melt away. + +It was Gidding and his Americanism, his inborn predisposition to +innovation and the large freedom of his wealth that turned these ideas +into immediate concrete undertakings. I see more and more that it is +here that we of the old European stocks, who still grow upon the old +wood, differ most from those vigorous grafts of our race in America and +Africa and Australia on the one hand and from the renascent peoples of +the East on the other: that we have lost the courage of youth and have +not yet gained the courage of desperate humiliations, in taking hold of +things. To Gidding it was neither preposterous nor insufferably +magnificent that we should set about a propaganda of all science, all +knowledge, all philosophical and political ideas, round about the +habitable globe. His mind began producing concrete projects as a +fire-work being lit produces sparks, and soon he was "figuring out" the +most colossal of printing and publishing projects, as a man might work +out the particulars for an alteration to his bathroom. It was so +entirely natural to him, it was so entirely novel to me, to go on from +the proposition that understanding was the primary need of humanity to +the systematic organization of free publishing, exhaustive discussion, +intellectual stimulation. He set about it as a company of pharmacists +might organize the distribution of some beneficial cure. + +"Say, Stratton," he said, after a conversation that had seemed to me +half fantasy; "Let's _do_ it." + +There are moments still when it seems to me that this life of mine has +become the most preposterous of adventures. We two absurd human beings +are spending our days and nights in a sustained and growing attempt to +do what? To destroy certain obsessions and to give the universal human +mind a form and a desire for expression. We have put into the shape of +one comprehensive project that force of released wealth that has already +dotted America with universities, libraries, institutions for research +and enquiry. Already there are others at work with us, and presently +there will be a great number. We have started an avalanche above the old +politics and it gathers mass and pace.... + +And there never was an impulse towards endeavor in a human heart that +wasn't preposterous. Man is a preposterous animal. Thereby he ceases to +be a creature and becomes a creator, he turns upon the powers that made +him and subdues them to his service; by his sheer impudence he +establishes his claim to possess a soul.... + +But I need not write at all fully of my work here. This book is not +about that but about my coming to that. Long before this manuscript +reaches your hands--if ultimately I decide that it shall reach your +hands--you will be taking your share, I hope, in this open conspiracy +against potentates and prejudices and all the separating powers of +darkness. + + +Sec. 11 + +I would if I could omit one thing that I must tell you here, because it +goes so close to the very core of all this book has to convey. I wish I +could leave it out altogether. I wish I could simplify my story by +smoothing out this wrinkle at least and obliterating a thing that was at +once very real and very ugly. You see I had at last struggled up to a +sustaining idea, to a conception of work and duty to which I could +surely give my life. I had escaped from my pit so far. And it was +natural that now with something to give I should turn not merely for +consolation and service but for help and fellowship to that dear human +being across the seas who had offered them to me so straightly and +sweetly. All that is brave and good and as you would have me, is it not? +Only, dear son, that is not all the truth. + +There was still in my mind, for long it remained in my mind, a +bitterness against Mary. I had left her, I had lost her, we had parted; +but from Germany to America and all through America and home again to my +marriage and with me after my marriage, it rankled that she could still +go on living a life independent of mine. I had not yet lost my desire to +possess her, to pervade and dominate her existence; my resentment that +though she loved me she had first not married me and afterwards not +consented to come away with me was smouldering under the closed hatches +of my mind. And so while the better part of me was laying hold of this +work because it gave me the hope of a complete distraction and escape +from my narrow and jealous self, that lower being of the pit was also +rejoicing in the great enterprises before me and in the marriage upon +which I had now determined, because it was a last trampling upon my +devotion to Mary, because it defied and denied some lurking claims to +empire I could suspect in her. I want to tell you that particularly +because so I am made, so you are made, so most of us are made. There is +scarcely a high purpose in all the world that has no dwarfish footman at +its stirrup, no base intention over which there does not ride at least +the phantom of an angel. + +Constantly in those days, it seems to me now, I was haunted by my own +imagination of Mary amiably reconciled to Justin, bearing him children, +forgetful of or repudiating all the sweetness, all the wonder and beauty +we had shared.... It was an unjust and ungenerous conception, I knew it +for a caricature even as I entertained it, and yet it tormented me. It +stung me like a spur. It kept me at work, and if I strayed into +indolence brought me back to work with a mind galled and bleeding.... + + +Sec. 12 + +And I suppose it is mixed up with all this that I could not make love +easily and naturally to Rachel. I could not write love-letters to her. +There is a burlesque quality in these scruples, I know, seeing that I +was now resolved to marry her, but that is the quality, that is the +mixed texture of life. We overcome the greater things and are +conscience-stricken by the details. + +I wouldn't, even at the price of losing her--and I was now passionately +anxious not to lose her--use a single phrase of endearment that did not +come out of me almost in spite of myself. At any rate I would not cheat +her. And my offer of marriage when at last I sent it to her from Chicago +was, as I remember it, almost business-like. I atoned soon enough for +that arid letter in ten thousand sweet words that came of themselves to +my lips. And she paid me at any rate in my own coin when she sent me her +answer by cable, the one word "Yes." + +And indeed I was already in love with her long before I wrote. It was +only a dread of giving her a single undeserved cheapness that had held +me back so long. It was that and the perplexity that Mary still gripped +my feelings; my old love for her was there in my heart in spite of my +new passion for Rachel, it was blackened perhaps and ruined and changed +but it was there. It was as if a new crater burnt now in the ampler +circumference of an old volcano, which showed all the more desolate and +sorrowful and obsolete for the warm light of the new flames.... + +How impatiently I came home! Thoughts of England I had not dared to +think for three long years might now do what they would in me. I dreamt +of the Surrey Hills and the great woods of Burnmore Park, of the +changing skies and stirring soft winds of our grey green Motherland. +There was fog in the Irish Sea, and we lost the better part of a day +hooting our way towards Liverpool while I fretted about the ship with +all my luggage packed, staring at the grey waters that weltered under +the mist. It was the longest day in my life. My heart was full of +desire, my eyes ached for the little fields and golden October skies of +England, England that was waiting to welcome me back from my exile with +such open arms. I was coming home,--home. + +I hurried through London into Surrey and in my father's study, warned by +a telegram, I found a bright-eyed, resolute young woman awaiting me, +with the quality about her of one who embarks upon a long premeditated +adventure. And I found too a family her sisters and her brother all +gladly ready for me, my father too was a happy man, and on the eighth of +November in 1906 Rachel and I were married in the little church at +Shere. We stayed for a week or so in Hampshire near Ringwood, the season +was late that year and the trees still very beautiful; and then we went +to Portofino on the Ligurian coast. + +There presently Gidding joined us and we began to work out the schemes +we had made in America, the schemes that now fill my life. + + + + +CHAPTER THE TENTH + +MARY WRITES + + +Sec. 1 + +It was in the early spring of 1909 that I had a letter from Mary. + +By that time my life was set fully upon its present courses, Gidding and +I had passed from the stage of talking and scheming to definite +undertakings. Indeed by 1909 things were already organized upon their +present lines. We had developed a huge publishing establishment with one +big printing plant in Barcelona and another in Manchester, and we were +studying the peculiar difficulties that might attend the establishment +of a third plant in America. Our company was an English company under +the name of Alphabet and Mollentrave, and we were rapidly making it the +broadest and steadiest flow of publication the world had ever seen. Its +streams already reached further and carried more than any single firm +had ever managed to do before. We were reprinting, in as carefully +edited and revised editions as we could, the whole of the English, +Spanish and French literature, and we were only waiting for the release +of machinery to attack German, Russian and Italian, and were giving each +language not only its own but a very complete series of good +translations of the classical writers in every other tongue. We had a +little band of editors and translators permanently in our service at +each important literary centre. We had, for example, more than a score +of men at work translating Bengali fiction and verse into English,--a +lot of that new literature is wonderfully illuminating to an intelligent +Englishman--and we had a couple of men hunting about for new work in +Arabic. We meant to give so good and cheap a book, and to be so +comprehensive in our choice of books, excluding nothing if only it was +real and living, on account of any inferiority of quality, obscurity of +subject or narrowness of demand, that in the long run anybody, anywhere, +desiring to read anything would turn naturally and inevitably to our +lists. + +Ours was to be in the first place a world literature. Then afterwards +upon its broad currents of distribution and in the same forms we meant +to publish new work and new thought. We were also planning an +encyclopaedia. Behind our enterprise of translations and reprints we were +getting together and putting out a series of guide-books, gazetteers, +dictionaries, text-books and books of reference, and we were organizing +a revising staff for these, a staff that should be constantly keeping +them up to date. It was our intention to make every copy we printed bear +the date of its last revision in a conspicuous place, and we hoped to +get the whole line of these books ultimately upon an annual basis, and +to sell them upon repurchasing terms that would enable us to issue a new +copy and take back and send the old one to the pulping mill at a narrow +margin of profit. Then we meant to spread our arms wider, and +consolidate and offer our whole line of text-books, guide-books and +gazetteers, bibliographies, atlases, dictionaries and directories as a +new World Encyclopaedia, that should also annually or at longest +biennially renew its youth. + +So far we had gone in the creation of a huge international organ of +information, and of a kind of gigantic modern Bible of world literature, +and in the process of its distribution we were rapidly acquiring an +immense detailed knowledge of the book and publishing trade, finding +congestions here, neglected opportunities there, and devising and +drawing up a hundred schemes for relief, assistance, amalgamation and +rearrangement. We had branches in China, Japan, Peru, Iceland and a +thousand remote places that would have sounded as far off as the moon to +an English or American bookseller in the seventies. China in particular +was a growing market. We had a subsidiary company running a flourishing +line of book shops in the east-end of London, and others in New Jersey, +Chicago, Buenos Ayres, the South of France, and Ireland. Incidentally we +had bought up some thousands of miles of Labrador forest to ensure our +paper supply, and we could believe that before we died there would not +be a corner of the world in which any book of interest or value whatever +would not be easily attainable by any intelligent person who wanted to +read it. And already we were taking up the more difficult and ambitious +phase of our self-appointed task, and considering the problem of using +these channels we were mastering and deepening and supplementing for the +stimulation and wide diffusion of contemporary thought. + +There we went outside the province of Alphabet and Mollentrave and into +an infinitely subtler system of interests. We wanted to give sincere and +clear-thinking writers encouragement and opportunity, to improve the +critical tribunal and make it independent of advertising interests, so +that there would be a readier welcome for luminous thinking and writing +and a quicker explosion of intellectual imposture. We sought to provide +guides and intelligencers to contemporary thought. We had already set up +or subsidized or otherwise aided a certain number of magazines and +periodicals that seemed to us independent-spirited, out-spoken and well +handled, but we had still to devise our present scheme of financing +groups of men to create magazines and newspapers, which became their own +separate but inalienable property after so many years of success. + +But all this I hope you will already have become more or less familiar +with when this story reaches your hands, and I hope by the time it does +so we shall be far beyond our present stage of experiment and that you +will have come naturally to play your part in this most fascinating +business of maintaining an onward intellectual movement in the world, a +movement not simply independent of but often running counter to all +sorts of political and financial interests. I tell you this much here +for you to understand that already in 1909 and considering the business +side of my activities alone, I was a hard worker and very strenuously +employed. And in addition to all this huge network of enterprises I had +developed with Gidding, I was still pretty actively a student. I +wasn't--I never shall be--absolutely satisfied with my general ideas. I +was enquiring keenly and closely into those problems of group and crowd +psychology from which all this big publishing work has arisen, and +giving particular attention to the war-panics and outbreaks of +international hostility that were then passing in deepening waves +across Europe. I had already accumulated a mass of notes for the book +upon "Group Jealousy in Religious Persecution, Racial Conflicts and War" +which I hope to publish the year after next, and which therefore I hope +you will have read long before this present book can possibly come to +you. And moreover Rachel and I had established our home in London--in +the house we now occupy during the winter and spring--and both you and +your little sister had begun your careers as inhabitants of this earth. +Your little sister had indeed but just begun. + +And then one morning at the breakfast-table I picked a square envelope +out of a heap of letters, and saw the half-forgotten and infinitely +familiar handwriting of Lady Mary Justin.... The sight of it gave me an +odd mixture of sensations. I was startled, I was disturbed, I was a +little afraid. I hadn't forgiven her yet; it needed but this touch to +tell me how little I had forgotten.... + + +Sec. 2 + +I sat with it in my hand for a moment or so before I opened it, +hesitating as one hesitates before a door that may reveal a dramatic +situation. Then I pushed my chair a little back from the table and +ripped the envelope. + +It was a far longer letter than Mary had ever written me in the old +days, and in a handwriting as fine as ever but now rather smaller. I +have it still, and here I open its worn folds and, except for a few +trifling omissions, copy it out for you.... A few trifling omissions, I +say,--just one there is that is not trifling, but that I must needs +make.... + +You will never see any of these letters because I shall destroy them so +soon as this copy is made. It has been difficult--or I should have +destroyed them before. But some things can be too hard for us.... + +This first letter is on the Martens note-paper; its very heading was +familiar to me. The handwriting of the earlier sentences is a little +stiff and disjointed, and there are one or two scribbled obliterations; +it is like someone embarrassed in speaking; and then it passes into her +usual and characteristic ease.... + +And as I read, slowly my long-cherished anger evaporated, and the real +Mary, outspoken and simple, whom I had obscured by a cloud of fancied +infidelities, returned to me.... + +"My dear Stephen," she begins, "About six weeks ago I saw in the _Times_ +that you have a little daughter. It set me thinking, picturing you with +a mite of a baby in your arms--what _little_ things they are, +Stephen!--and your old face bent over it, so that presently I went to my +room and cried. It set me thinking about you so that I have at last +written you this letter.... I love to think of you with wife and +children about you Stephen,--I heard of your son for the first time +about a year ago, but--don't mistake me,--something wrings me too.... + +"Well, I too have children. Have you ever thought of me as a mother? I +am. I wonder how much you know about me now. I have two children and the +youngest is just two years old. And somehow it seems to me that now that +you and I have both given such earnests of our good behavior, such +evidence that _that_ side of life anyhow is effectually settled for us, +there is no reason remaining why we shouldn't correspond. You are my +brother, Stephen, and my friend and my twin and the core of my +imagination, fifty babies cannot alter that, we can live but once and +then die, and, promise or no promise, I will not be dead any longer in +your world when I'm not dead, nor will I have you, if I can help it, a +cold unanswering corpse in mine.... + +"Too much of my life and being, Stephen, has been buried, and I am in +rebellion. This is a breach of the tomb if you like, an irregular +private premature resurrection from an interment in error. Out of my +alleged grave I poke my head and say Hello! to you. Stephen, old friend! +dear friend! how are you getting on? What is it like to you? How do you +feel? I want to know about you.... I'm not doing this at all furtively, +and you can write back to me, Stephen, as openly as your heart desires. +I have told Justin I should do this. I rise, you see, blowing my own +Trump. Let the other graves do as they please.... + +"Your letters will be respected, Stephen.... If you choose to rise also +and write me a letter. + +"Stephen, I've been wanting to do this for--for all the time. If there +was thought-reading you would have had a thousand letters. But formerly +I was content to submit, and latterly I've chafed more. I think that as +what they call passion has faded, the immense friendliness has become +more evident, and made the bar less and less justifiable. You and I have +had so much between us beyond what somebody the other day--it was in a +report in the _Times_, I think--was calling _Materia Matrimoniala_. And +of course I hear about you from all sorts of people, and in all sorts +of ways--whatever you have done about me I've had a woman's sense of +honor about you and I've managed to learn a great deal without asking +forbidden questions. I've pricked up my ears at the faintest echo of +your name. + +"They say you have become a publisher with an American partner, a sort +of Harmsworth and Nelson and Times Book Club and Hooper and Jackson all +rolled into one. That seems so extraordinary to me that for that alone I +should have had to write to you. I want to know the truth of that. I +never see any advertisement of Stratton & Co. or get any inkling of what +it is you publish. Are you the power behind the respectable Murgatroyd +and the honest Milvain? I know them both and neither has the slightest +appearance of being animated by you. And equally perplexing is your +being mixed up with an American like that man Gidding in Peace +Conferences and Social Reform Congresses and so forth. It's +so--Carnegieish. There I'm surer because I've seen your name in reports +of meetings and I've read your last two papers in the _Fortnightly_. I +can't imagine you of all people, with your touch of reserve, launching +into movements and rubbing shoulders with faddists. What does it mean, +Stephen? I had expected to find you coming back into English +politics--speaking and writing on the lines of your old beginning, +taking up that work you dropped--it's six years now ago. I've been +accumulating disappointment for two years. Mr. Arthur, you see, on our +side,"--this you will remember was in 1909--"still steers our devious +party courses, and the Tariff Reformers have still to capture us. Weston +Massinghay was comparing them the other night, at a dinner at the +Clynes', to a crowded piratical galley trying to get alongside a good +seaman in rough weather. He was very funny about Leo Maxse in the poop, +white and shrieking with passion and the motion, and all the capitalists +armed to the teeth and hiding snug in the hold until the grappling-irons +were fixed.... Why haven't you come into the game? I'd hoped it if only +for the sake of meeting you again. What are you doing out beyond there? + +"We are in it so far as I can contrive. But I contrive very little. We +are pillars of the Conservative party--on that Justin's mind is firmly +settled--and every now and then I clamor urgently that we must do more +for it. But Justin's ideas go no further than writing cheques--doing +more for the party means writing a bigger cheque--and there are moments +when I feel we shall simply bring down a peerage upon our heads and bury +my ancient courtesy title under the ignominy of a new creation. He would +certainly accept it. He writes his cheque and turns back at the earliest +opportunity to his miniature gardens and the odd little freaks of +collecting that attract him. Have you ever heard of chintz oil jars? +'No,' you will say. Nor has anyone else yet except our immediate circle +of friends and a few dealers who are no doubt industriously increasing +the present scanty supply. We possess three. They are matronly shaped +jars about two feet or a yard high, of a kind of terra-cotta with wooden +tops surmounted by gilt acorns, and they have been covered with white +paint and on this flowers and birds and figures from some very rich old +chintz have been stuck very cunningly, and then everything has been +varnished--and there you are. Our first and best was bought for +seven-and-sixpence, brought home in the car, put upon a console table +on the second landing and worshipped. It's really a very pleasant mellow +thing to see. Nobody had ever seen the like. Guests, sycophantic people +of all sorts were taken to consider it. It was looked at with heads at +every angle, one man even kept his head erect and one went a little +upstairs and looked at it under his arm. Also the most powerful lenses +have been used for a minute examination, and one expert licked the +varnish and looked extremely thoughtful and wise at me as he turned the +booty over his gifted tongue. And now, God being with us, we mean to +possess every specimen in existence--before the Americans get hold of +the idea. Yesterday Justin got up and motored sixty miles to look at an +alleged fourth.... + +"Oh my dear! I am writing chatter. You perceive I've reached the +chattering stage. It is the fated end of the clever woman in a good +social position nowadays, her mind beats against her conditions for the +last time and breaks up into this carping talk, this spume of +observation and comment, this anecdotal natural history of the +restraining husband, as waves burst out their hearts in a foam upon a +reef. But it isn't chatter I want to write to you. + +"Stephen, I'm intolerably wretched. No creature has ever been gladder to +have been born than I was for the first five and twenty years of my +life. I was full of hope and I was full, I suppose, of vanity and rash +confidence. I thought I was walking on solid earth with my head reaching +up to the clouds, and that sea and sky and all mankind were mine for the +smiling. And I am nothing and worse than nothing, I am the ineffectual +mother of two children, a daughter whom I adore--but of her I may not +tell you--and a son,--a son who is too like his father for any fury of +worship, a stolid little creature.... That is all I have done in the +world, a mere blink of maternity, and my blue Persian who is scarcely +two years old, has already had nine kittens. My husband and I have never +forgiven each other the indefinable wrong of not pleasing each other; +that embitters more and more; to take it out of each other is our role; +I have done my duty to the great new line of Justin by giving it the +heir it needed, and now a polite and silent separation has fallen +between us. We hardly speak except in company. I have not been so much +married, Stephen, I find, as collected, and since our tragic +misadventure--but there were beautiful moments, Stephen, unforgettable +glimpses of beauty in that--thank God, I say impenitently for that--the +door of the expensively splendid cabinet that contains me, when it is +not locked, is very discreetly--watched. I have no men friends, no +social force, no freedom to take my line. My husband is my official +obstacle. We barb the limitations of life for one another. A little +while ago he sought to chasten me--to rouse me rather--through jealousy, +and made me aware indirectly but a little defiantly of a young person of +artistic gifts in whose dramatic career he was pretending a conspicuous +interest. I was jealous and roused, but scarcely in the way he desired. +'This,' I said quite cheerfully, 'means freedom for _me_, Justin,'--and +the young woman vanished from the visible universe with an incredible +celerity. I hope she was properly paid off and not simply made away with +by a minion, but I become more and more aware of my ignorance of a +great financier's methods as I become more and more aware of them.... + +"Stephen, my dear, my brother, I am intolerably unhappy. I do not know +what to do with myself, or what there is to hope for in life. I am like +a prisoner in a magic cage and I do not know the word that will release +me. How is it with you? Are you unhappy beyond measure or are you not; +and if you are not, what are you doing with life? Have you found any +secret that makes living tolerable and understandable? Write to me, +write to me at least and tell me that.... Please write to me. + +"Do you remember how long ago you and I sat in the old Park at Burnmore, +and how I kept pestering you and asking you what is all this _for_? And +you looked at the question as an obstinate mule looks at a narrow bridge +he could cross but doesn't want to. Well, Stephen, you've had +nearly--how many years is it now?--to get an answer ready. What _is_ it +all for? What do you make of it? Never mind my particular case, or the +case of Women with a capital _W_, tell me _your_ solution. You are +active, you keep doing things, you find life worth living. Is publishing +a way of peace for the heart? I am prepared to believe even that. But +justify yourself. Tell me what you have got there to keep your soul +alive." + + +Sec. 3 + +I read this letter to the end and looked up, and there was my home about +me, a room ruddy-brown and familiar, with the row of old pewter things +upon the dresser, the steel engravings of former Strattons that came to +me from my father, a convex mirror exaggerating my upturned face. And +Rachel just risen again sat at the other end of the table, a young +mother, fragile and tender-eyed. The clash of these two systems of +reality was amazing. It was as though I had not been parted from Mary +for a day, as though all that separation and all that cloud of bitter +jealousy had been a mere silence between two people in the same room. +Indeed it was extraordinarily like that, as if I had been sitting at a +desk, imagining myself alone, reading my present life as one reads in a +book at a shaded lamp, and then suddenly that silent other had spoken. + +And then I looked at the page of my life before me and became again a +character in the story. + +I met the enquiry in Rachel's eyes. "It's a letter from Mary Justin," I +said. + +She did not answer for a few moments. She became interested in the flame +of the little spirit lamp that kept her coffee hot. She finished what +she had to do with that and then remarked, "I thought you two were not +to correspond." + +"Yes," I said, putting the letter down; "that was the understanding." + +There was a little interval of silence, and then I got up and went to +the fireplace where the bacon and sausages stood upon a trivet. + +"I suppose," said Rachel, "she wants to hear from you again." + +"She thinks that now we have children, and that she has two, we can +consider what was past, past and closed and done with, and she wants to +hear--about me.... Apart from everything else--we were very great +friends." + +"Of course," said Rachel with lips a little awry, "of course. You must +have been great friends. And it's natural for her to write." + +"I suppose," she added, "her husband knows." + +"She's told him, she says...." + +Her eye fell on the letter in my hand for the smallest fraction of a +second, and it was as if hastily she snatched away a thought from my +observation. I had a moment of illuminating embarrassment. So far we had +contrived to do as most young people do when they marry, we had sought +to make our lives unreservedly open to one another, we had affected an +entire absence of concealments about our movements, our thoughts. If +perhaps I had been largely silent to her about Mary it was not so much +that I sought to hide things from her as that I myself sought to forget. +It is one of the things that we learn too late, the impossibility of any +such rapid and wilful coalescences of souls. But we had maintained a +convention of infinite communism since our marriage; we had shown each +other our letters as a matter of course, shared the secrets of our +friends, gone everywhere together as far as we possibly could. + +I wanted now to give her the letter in my hand to read--and to do so was +manifestly impossible. Something had arisen between us that made out of +our unity two abruptly separated figures masked and veiled. Here were +things I knew and understood completely and that I could not even +describe to Rachel. What would she make of Mary's "Write to me. Write to +me"? A mere wish to resume.... I would not risk the exposure of Mary's +mind and heart and unhappiness, to her possible misinterpretation.... + +That letter fell indeed like a pitiless searchlight into all that +region of differences ignored, over which we had built the vaulted +convention of our complete mutual understanding. In my memory it seems +to me now as though we hung silent for quite a long time over the +evasions that were there so abruptly revealed. + +Then I put the letter into my pocket with a clumsy assumption of +carelessness, and knelt down to the fender and sausages. + +"It will be curious," I said, "to write to her again.... To tell her +about things...." + +And then with immense interest, "Are these Chichester sausages you've +got here, Rachel, or some new kind?" + +Rachel roused herself to respond with an equal affectation, and we made +an eager conversation about bacon and sausages--for after that startling +gleam of divergence we were both anxious to get back to the +superficialities of life again. + + +Sec. 4 + +I did not answer Mary's letter for seven or eight days. + +During that period my mind was full of her to the exclusion of every +other interest. I re-read all that she had to say many times, and with +each reading the effect of her personality deepened. It was all so +intensely familiar, the flashes of insight, the blazing frankness, the +quick turns of thought, and her absurd confidence in a sort of sane +stupidity that she had always insisted upon my possessing. And her +unembarrassed affectionateness. Her quick irregular writing seemed to +bring back with it the changing light in her eyes, the intonations of +her voice, something of her gesture.... + +I didn't go on discussing with myself whether we two ought to +correspond; that problem disappeared from my thoughts. Her challenge to +me to justify myself took possession of my mind. That thrust towards +self-examination was the very essence of her ancient influence. How did +I justify myself? I was under a peculiar compulsion to answer that to +her satisfaction. She had picked me up out of my work and accumulating +routines with that demand, made me look at myself and my world again as +a whole.... I had a case. I have a case. It is a case of passionate +faith triumphing over every doubt and impossibility, a case real enough +to understand for those who understand, but very difficult to state. I +tried to convey it to her. + +I do not remember at all clearly what I wrote to her. It has disappeared +from existence. But it was certainly a long letter. Throughout this book +I have been trying to tell you the growth of my views of life and its +purpose, from my childish dreams and Harbury attitudes to those ideas of +human development that have made me undertake the work I do. It is not +glorious work I know, as the work of great artists and poets and leaders +is glorious, but it is what I find best suits my gifts and my want of +gifts. Greater men will come at last to build within my scaffoldings. In +some summary phrasing I must have set out the gist of this. I must have +explained my sense of the supreme importance of mental clarification in +human life. All this is manifest in her reply. And I think too I did my +best to tell her plainly the faith that was in me, and why life seemed +worth while to me.... + +Her second letter came after an interval of only a few days from the +despatch of mine. She began abruptly. + +"I won't praise your letter or your beliefs. They are fine and +large--and generous--like you. Just a little artificial (but you will +admit that), as though you had felt them _give_ here and there and had +made up your mind they shouldn't. At times it's oddly like looking at +the Alps, the real Alps, and finding that every now and then the +mountains have been eked out with a plank and canvas Earl's Court +background.... Yes, I like what you say about Faith. I believe you are +right. I wish I could--perhaps some day I shall--light up and _feel_ you +are right. But--but---- That large, _respectable_ project, the increase +of wisdom and freedom and self-knowledge in the world, the calming of +wars, the ending of economic injustice and so on and so on---- + +"When I read it first it was like looking at a man in profile and +finding him solid and satisfactory, and then afterwards when I thought +it all over and looked for the particular things that really matter to +me and tried to translate it into myself--nothing is of the slightest +importance in the world that one cannot translate into oneself--then I +began to realize just how amazingly deficient you are. It was like +walking round that person in profile and finding his left side wasn't +there--with everything perfect on the right, down to the buttons. A kind +of intellectual Lorelei--sideways. You've planned out your +understandings and tolerances and enquiries and clearings-up as if the +world were all just men--or citizens--and nothing doing but racial and +national and class prejudices and the exacting and shirking of labor, +and you seem to ignore altogether that man is a sexual animal +first--first, Stephen, first--that he has that in common with all the +animals, that it made him indeed because he has it more than they +have--and after that, a long way after that, he is the +labor-economizing, war-and feud-making creature you make him out to be. +A long way after that.... + +"Man is the most sexual of all the beasts, Stephen. Half of him, +womankind, rather more than half, isn't simply human at all, it's +specialized, specialized for the young, not only naturally and +physically as animals are, but mentally and artificially. Womankind +isn't human, it's reduced human. It's 'the sex' as the Victorians used +to say, and from the point of view of the Lex Julia and the point of +view of Mr. Malthus, and the point of view of biologists and saints and +artists and everyone who deals in feeling and emotion--and from the +point of view of all us poor specialists, smothered up in our clothes +and restrictions--the future of the sex is the centre of the whole +problem of the human future, about which you are concerned. All this +great world-state of your man's imagination is going to be wrecked by us +if you ignore us, we women are going to be the Goths and Huns of another +Decline and Fall. We are going to sit in the conspicuous places of the +world and _loot_ all your patient accumulations. We are going to abolish +your offspring and turn the princes among you into undignified slaves. +Because, you see, specialized as we are, we are not quite specialized, +we are specialized under duress, and at the first glimpse of a chance we +abandon our cradles and drop our pots and pans and go for the vast and +elegant side possibilities--of our specialization. Out we come, looking +for the fun the men are having. Dress us, feed us, play with us! We'll +pay you in excitement,--tremendous excitement. The State indeed! All +your little triumphs of science and economy, all your little +accumulations of wealth that you think will presently make the struggle +for life an old story and the millennium possible--_we spend_. And all +your dreams of brotherhood!--we will set you by the ears. We hold +ourselves up as my little Christian nephews--Philip's boys--do some +coveted object, and say _Quis?_ and the whole brotherhood shouts +'_Ego!_' to the challenge.... Back you go into Individualism at the word +and all your Brotherhood crumbles to dust again. + +"How are you going to remedy it, how are you going to protect that Great +State of your dreams from this anti-citizenship of sex? You give no +hint. + +"You are planning nothing, Stephen, nothing to meet this. You are +fighting with an army all looting and undisciplined, frantic with the +private jealousies that centre about _us_, feuds, cuts, expulsions, +revenges, and you are giving out orders for an army of saints. You treat +us as a negligible quantity, and we are about as negligible as a fire in +the woodwork of a house that is being built.... + +"I read what I have written, Stephen, and I perceive I have the makings +of a fine scold in me. Perhaps under happier conditions----... I should +certainly have scolded you, constantly, continually.... Never did a man +so need scolding.... And like any self-respecting woman I see that I use +half my words in the wrong meanings in order to emphasize my point. Of +course when I write woman in all that has gone before I don't mean +woman. It is a woman's privilege to talk or write incomprehensibly and +insist upon being understood. So that I expect you already to understand +that what I mean isn't that men are creative and unselfish and brotherly +and so forth and that women are spoiling and going to spoil the +game--although and notwithstanding that is exactly what I have +written--but that humans are creative and unselfish et cetera and so +forth, and that it is their sexual, egotistical, passionate side (which +is ever so much bigger relatively in a woman than in a man, and that is +why I wrote as I did) which is going to upset your noble and beautiful +apple-cart. But it is not only that by nature we are more largely and +gravely and importantly sexual than men but that men have shifted the +responsibility for attraction and passion upon us and made us pay in +servitude and restriction and blame for the common defect of the +species. So that you see really I was right all along in writing of this +as though it was women when it wasn't, and I hope now it is unnecessary +for me to make my meaning clearer than it is now and always has been in +this matter. And so, resuming our discourse, Stephen, which only my +sense of your invincible literalness would ever have interrupted, what +are you going to do with us? + +"I gather from a hint rather than accept as a statement that you propose +to give us votes. + +"Stephen!--do you really think that we are going to bring anything to +bear upon public affairs worth having? I know something of the +contemporary feminine intelligence. Justin makes no serious objection to +a large and various circle of women friends, and over my little +sitting-room fire in the winter and in my corners of our various gardens +in the summer and in walks over the heather at Martens and in Scotland +there are great talks and confessions of love, of mental freedom, of +ambitions, and belief and unbelief--more particularly of unbelief. I +have sometimes thought of compiling a dictionary of unbelief, a great +list of the things that a number of sweet, submissive, +value-above-rubies wives have told me they did not believe in. It would +amaze their husbands beyond measure. The state of mind of women about +these things, Stephen, is dreadful--I mean about all these +questions--you know what I mean. The bold striving spirits do air their +views a little, and always in a way that makes one realize how badly +they need airing--but most of the nicer women are very chary of talk, +they have to be drawn out, a hint of opposition makes them start back or +prevaricate, and I see them afterwards with their husbands, pretty +silken furry feathery jewelled _silences_. All their suppression doesn't +keep them orthodox, it only makes them furtive and crumpled and creased +in their minds--in just the way that things get crumpled and creased if +they are always being shoved back into a drawer. You have only to rout +about in their minds for a bit. They pretend at first to be quite +correct, and then out comes the nasty little courage of the darkness. +Sometimes there is even an apologetic titter. They are quite +emancipated, they say; I have misunderstood them. Their emancipation is +like those horrid white lizards that grow in the Kentucky caves out of +the sunlight. They tell you they don't see why they shouldn't do this or +that--mean things, underhand things, cheap, vicious, sensual things.... +Are there, I wonder, the same dreadful little caverns in men? I doubt +it. And then comes a situation that really tries their quality.... Think +of the quandary I got into with you, Stephen. And for my sex I'm rather +a daring person. The way in which I went so far--and then ran away. I +had a kind of excuse--in my illness. That illness! Such a queer untimely +feminine illness.... + +"We're all to pieces, Stephen. That's what brought down Rome. The women +went to pieces then, and the women are going to pieces to-day. What's +the good of having your legions in the Grampians and marching up to +Philae, while the wives are talking treason in your houses? It's no good +telling us to go back to the Ancient Virtues. The Ancient Virtues +haven't _kept_. The Ancient Virtues in an advanced state of decay is +what was the matter with Rome and what is the matter with us. You can't +tell a woman to go back to the spinning-wheel and the kitchen and the +cradle, when you have power-looms, French cooks, hotels, restaurants and +modern nurseries. We've overflowed. We've got to go on to a lot of New +Virtues. And in all the prospect before me--I can't descry one clear +simple thing to do.... + +"But I'm running on. I want to know, Stephen, why you've got nothing to +say about all this. It must have been staring you in the face ever since +I spent my very considerable superfluous energies in wrecking your +career. Because you know I wrecked it, Stephen. I _knew_ I was wrecking +it and I wrecked it. I knew exactly what I was doing all the time. I had +meant to be so fine a thing for you, a mothering friend, to have that +dear consecutive kindly mind of yours steadying mine, to have seen you +grow to power over men, me helping, me admiring. It was to have been so +fine. So fine! Didn't I urge you to marry Rachel, make you talk of her. +Don't you remember that? And one day when I saw you thinking of Rachel, +saw a kind of pride in your eyes!--suddenly I couldn't stand it. I went +to my room after you had gone and thought of you and her until I wanted +to scream. I couldn't bear it. It was intolerable. I was violent to my +toilet things. I broke a hand-glass. Your dignified, selfish, +self-controlled Mary _smashed_ a silver hand-mirror. I never told you +that. You know what followed. I pounced on you and took you. Wasn't I--a +soft and scented hawk? Was either of us better than some creature of +instinct that does what it does because it must? It was like a gust of +madness--and I cared, I found, no more for your career than I cared for +any other little thing, for honor, for Rachel, for Justin, that stood +between us.... + +"My dear, wasn't all that time, all that heat and hunger of desire, all +that secret futility of passion, the very essence of the situation +between men and women now? We are all trying most desperately to be +human beings, to walk erect, to work together--what was your +phrase?--'in a multitudinous unity,' to share what you call a common +collective thought that shall rule mankind, and this tremendous force +which seizes us and says to us: 'Make that other being yours, bodily +yours, mentally yours, wholly yours--at any price, no matter the price,' +bars all our unifications. It splits the whole world into couples +watching each other. Until all our laws, all our customs seem the +servants of that. It is the passion of the body swamping the brain; it's +an ape that has seized a gun, a beautiful modern gun. Here am I, +Justin's captive, and he mine, he mine because at the first escapade of +his I get my liberty. Here are we two, I and you, barred for ever from +the sight of one another, and I and you writing--I at any rate--in spite +of the ill-concealed resentment of my partner. We're just two, peeping +through our bars, of a universal multitude. Everywhere this prison of +sex. Have you ever thought just all that it means when every woman in +the world goes dressed in a costume to indicate her sex, her cardinal +fact, so that she dare not even mount a bicycle in knickerbockers, she +has her hair grown long to its longest because yours is short, and +everything conceivable is done to emphasize and remind us (and you) of +the fundamental trouble between us? As if there was need of reminding! +Stephen, is there no way out of this? Is there no way at all? Because if +there is not, then I had rather go back to the hareem than live as I do +now imprisoned in glass--with all of life in sight of me and none in +reach. I had rather Justin beat me into submission and mental +tranquillity and that I bore him an annual--probably deciduous--child. I +can understand so well now that feminine attitude that implies, 'Well, +if I must have a master, then the more master the better.' Perhaps that +is the way; that Nature will not let us poor humans get away from sex, +and I am merely--what is it?--an abnormality--with whiskers of enquiry +sprouting from my mind. Yet I don't feel like that.... + +"I'm pouring into these letters, Stephen, the concentrated venom of +years of brooding. My heart is black with rebellion against my lot and +against the lot of woman. I have been given life and a fine position in +the world, I made one fatal blunder in marrying to make these things +secure, and now I can do nothing with it all and I have nothing to do +with it. It astounds me to think of the size of our establishments, +Stephen, of the extravagant way in which whole counties and great +countries pay tribute to pile up the gigantic heap of wealth upon which +we two lead our lives of futile entanglement. In this place alone there +are fourteen gardeners and garden helps, and this is not one of our +garden places. Three weeks ago I spent a thousand pounds on clothes in +one great week of shopping, and our yearly expenditure upon personal +effect, upon our magnificence and our margins cannot be greatly less +than forty-five thousand pounds. I walk about our house and gardens, I +take one of the carriages or one of the automobiles and go to some large +pointless gathering of hundreds and thousands and thousands of pounds, +and we walk about and say empty little things, and the servants don't +laugh at us, the butlers don't laugh at us, the people in the street +tolerate us.... It has an effect of collective insanity.... You know the +story of one of those dear Barons of the Cinque Ports--a decent +plumber-body from Rye or Winchelsea--one of the six--or eight--who +claimed the privilege of carrying the canopy over the King"--she is +speaking of King Edward's coronation of course--"how that he was +discovered suddenly to be speaking quite audibly to the sacred presence +so near to him: 'It is very remarkable--we should be here, your +majesty--very remarkable.' And then he subsided--happily unheard--into +hopeless embarrassment. That is exactly how I feel, Stephen. I feel I +can't stand it much longer, that presently I shall splutter and spoil +the procession.... + +"Perhaps I don't properly estimate our position in the fabric, but I +can't get away from the feeling that everything in social life leads up +to this--to us,--the ridiculous canopy. If so, then the universe +means--_nothing_; it's blowing great forms and shapes as a swamp blows +bubbles; a little while ago it was megatheriums and plesiosauriums--if +that's the name for them--and now it is country-houses and motor-cars +and coronation festivals. And in the end--it is all nonsense, Stephen. +It is utter nonsense. + +"If it isn't nonsense, tell me what it is. For me at any rate it's +nonsense, and for every intelligent woman about me--for I talk to some +of them, we indulge in seditious whisperings and wit--and there isn't +one who seems to have been able to get to anything solider than I have +done. Each of us has had her little fling at maternity--about as much as +a washerwoman does in her odd time every two or three years--and that is +our uttermost reality. All the rest,--trimmings! We go about the world, +Stephen, dressing and meeting each other with immense ceremony, we have +our seasonal movements in relation to the ritual of politics and sport, +we travel south for the Budget and north for the grouse, we play games +to amuse the men who keep us--not a woman would play a game for its own +sake--we dabble with social reform and politics, for which few of us +care a rap except as an occupation, we 'discover' artists or musicians +or lecturers (as though we cared), we try to believe in lovers or, still +harder, try to believe in old or new religions, and most of us--I +don't--do our best to give the gratifications and exercise the +fascinations that are expected of us.... + +"Something has to be done for women, Stephen. We are the heart of life, +birth and begetting, the home where the future grows, and your schemes +ignore us and slide about over the superficialities of things. We are +spoiling the whole process of progress, we are turning all the +achievements of mankind to nothingness. Men invent, create, do miracles +with the world, and we translate it all into shopping, into a glitter of +dresses and households, into an immense parade of pride and excitement. +We excite men, we stir them to get us and keep us. Men turn from their +ideas of brotherhood to elaborate our separate cages.... + +"I am Justin's wife; not a thing in my heavens or my earth that is not +subordinated to that. + +"Something has to be done for women, Stephen, something--urgently--and +nothing is done until that is done, some release from their intolerable +subjection to sex, so that for us everything else in life, respect, +freedom, social standing, is entirely secondary to that. But what has to +be done? We women do not know. Our efforts to know are among the most +desolating of spectacles. I read the papers of those suffrage women; the +effect is more like agitated geese upon a common than anything human has +a right to be.... That's why I turn to you. Years ago I felt, and now I +know, there is about you a simplicity of mind, a foolishness of faith, +that is stronger and greater than the cleverness of any woman alive. You +are one of those strange men who take high and sweeping views--as larks +soar. It isn't that you yourself are high and sweeping.... No, but still +I turn to you. In the old days I used to turn to you and shake your mind +and make you think about things you seemed too sluggish to think about +without my clamor. Once do you remember at Martens I shook you by the +ears.... And when I made you think, you thought, as I could never do. +Think now--about women. + +"Stephen, there are moments when it seems to me that this futility of +women, this futility of men's effort _through_ women, is a fated +futility in the very nature of things. We may be saddled with it as we +are with all the animal infirmities we have, with appendixes and +suchlike things inside of us, and the passions and rages of apes and a +tail--I believe we have a tail curled away somewhere, haven't we? +Perhaps mankind is so constituted that badly as they get along now they +couldn't get along at all if they let women go free and have their own +way with life. Perhaps you can't have _two_ sexes loose together. You +must shut up one. I've a horrible suspicion that all these anti-suffrage +men like Lord Cromer and Sir Ray Lankester must know a lot about life +that I do not know. And that other man Sir Something-or-other Wright, +who said plainly that men cannot work side by side with women because +they get excited.... And yet, you know, women have had glimpses of a +freedom that was not mischievous. I could have been happy as a Lady +Abbess--I must have space and dignity, Stephen--and those women had +things in their hands as no women have things in their hands to-day. +They came to the House of Lords. But they lost all that. Was there some +sort of natural selection?... + +"Stephen, you were made to answer my mind, and if you cannot do it +nobody can. What is your outlook for women? Are we to go back to +seclusion or will it be possible to minimize sex? If you are going to +minimize sex how are you going to do it? Suppression? There is plenty of +suppression now. Increase or diminish the pains and penalties? My +nephew, Philip's boy, Philip Christian, was explaining to me the other +day that if you boil water in an open bowl it just boils away, and that +if you boil it in a corked bottle it bangs everything to pieces, and +you have, he says, 'to look out.' But I feel that's a bad image. +Boiling-water isn't frantically jealous, and men and women are. But +still suppose, suppose you trained people not to make such an awful fuss +about things. _Now_ you train them to make as much fuss as possible.... + +"Oh bother it all, Stephen! Where's your mind in these matters? Why +haven't you tackled these things? Why do you leave it to _me_ to dig +these questions into you--like opening a reluctant oyster? Aren't they +patent? You up and answer them, Stephen--or this correspondence will +become abusive...." + + +Sec. 5 + +It was true that I did ignore or minimize sexual questions as much as I +could. I was forced now to think why I did this. That carried me back to +those old days of passion, memories I had never stirred for many years. +And I wrote to Mary that there was indeed no reason but a reasonable +fear, that in fact I had dismissed them because they had been beyond my +patience and self-control, because I could not think very much about +them without an egotistical reversion to the bitterness of my own case. +And in avoiding them I was only doing what the great bulk of men in +business and men in affairs find themselves obliged to do. They train +themselves not to think of the rights and wrongs of sexual life, not to +tolerate liberties even in their private imaginations. They know it is +like carrying a torch into a powder magazine. They feel they cannot +trust their own minds beyond the experience, tested usages, and +conventions of the ages, because they know how many of those who have +ventured further have been blinded by mists and clouds of rhetoric, lost +in inexplicable puzzles and wrecked disastrously. There in those half +explored and altogether unsettled hinterlands, lurk desires that sting +like adders and hatreds cruel as hell.... + +And then I went on--I do not clearly remember now the exact line of +argument I adopted--to urge upon her that our insoluble puzzles were not +necessarily insoluble puzzles for the world at large, that no one +soldier fights anything but a partial battle, and that it wasn't an +absolute condemnation of me to declare that I went on living and working +for social construction with the cardinal riddles of social order, so +far as they affected her, unsolved. Wasn't I at any rate preparing +apparatus for that huge effort at solution that mankind must ultimately +make? Wasn't this dredging out and deepening of the channels of thought +about the best that we could hope to do at the present time, seeing that +to launch a keel of speculation prematurely was only to strand oneself +among hopeless reefs and confusions? Better prepare for a voyage +to-morrow than sail to destruction to-day. + +Whatever I put in that forgotten part of my letter was put less +strikingly than my first admissions, and anyhow it was upon these that +Mary pounced to the disregard of any other point. "There you are," she +wrote, with something like elation, "there is a tiger in the garden and +you won't talk or think about it for fear of growing excited. That is my +grievance against so much historical and political and social +discussion; its hopeless futility because of its hopeless omissions. You +plan the world's future, taking the women and children for granted, with +Egotistical Sex, as you call it, a prowling monster upsetting +everything you do...." + +But I will not give you that particular letter in its order, nor its +successors. Altogether she wrote me twenty-two letters, and I one or two +more than that number to her, and--a thing almost inevitable in a +discussion by correspondence--there is a lot of overlapping and +recapitulation. Those letters spread over a space of nearly two and a +half years. Again and again she insists upon the monstrous exaggeration +of the importance of sex in human life and of the need of some reduction +of its importance, and she makes the boldest experimental suggestions +for the achievement of that end. But she comes slowly to recognize that +there is a justification for an indirect attack, that sex and the +position of women do not constitute the primary problem in that +bristling system of riddles that lies like a hostile army across the +path of mankind. And she realized too that through art, through science +and literature and the whole enquiring and creative side of man's +nature, lies the path by which those positions are to be outflanked, and +those eternal-looking impossibles and inconceivables overcome. Here is a +fragment--saturated with the essence of her thought. Three-quarters of +her earlier letters are variations on this theme.... + +"What you call 'social order,' Stephen, all the arrangements seem to me +to be _built_ on subjection to sex even more than they are built (as you +say) on labor subjection. And this is an age of release, you say it is +an age of release for the workers and they know it. And so do the women. +Just as much. 'Wild hopes' indeed! The workers' hopes are nothing to the +women's! It is not only the workers who are saying let us go free, +manage things differently so that we may have our lives relieved from +this intolerable burthen of constant toil, but the women also are saying +let us go free. They are demanding release just as much from their +intolerable endless specialization as females. The tramp on the roads +who won't work, the swindler and the exploiter who contrive not to work, +the strikers who throw down their tools, no longer for twopences and +sixpences as you say but because their way of living is no longer +tolerable to them, and we women, who don't bear children or work or +help; we are all in one movement together. We are part of the General +Strike. I have been a striker all my life. We are doing nothing--by the +hundred thousand. Your old social machine is working without us and in +spite of us, it carries us along with it and we are sand in the +bearings. I'm not a wheel, Stephen, I'm grit. What you say about the +reactionaries and suppressionists who would stifle the complaints of +labor and crush out its struggles to be free, is exactly true about the +reactionaries and suppressionists who would stifle the discussion of the +woman's position and crush out her hopes of emancipation...." + +And here is a page of the peculiar doubt that was as characteristic of +her as the quick changes of her eyes. It gives just that pessimistic +touch that tempered her valiant adventurousness, that gave a color at +last to the tragedy of her death.... + +"Have you ever thought, Stephen, that perhaps these (repressionist) +people are righter than you are--that if the worker gets free he _won't_ +work and that if the woman gets free she won't furl her sex and stop +disturbing things? Suppose she _is_ wicked as a sex, suppose she _will_ +trade on her power of exciting imaginative men. A lot of these new +women run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, beguile some poor +innocent of a man to ruin them and then call in fathers, brother, +husbands, friends, chivalry, all the rest of it, and make the best of +both sides of a sex. Suppose we go on behaving like that. After we've +got all our emancipations. Suppose that the liberation of common people +simply means loafing, no discipline, nothing being done, an end to labor +and the beginning of nothing to replace it, and that the liberation of +women simply means the elaboration of mischief. Suppose that it is so. +Suppose you are just tumbling the contents of the grate into the middle +of the room. Then all this emancipation _is_ a decay, even as +conservative-minded people say,--it's none the less a decay because we +want it,--and the only thing to stop it is to stop it, and to have more +discipline and more suppression and say to women and the common people: +'Back to the Sterner Virtues; Back to Servitude!' I wish I hadn't these +reactionary streaks in my thoughts, but I have and there you are...." + +And then towards the second year her letters began to break away from +her preoccupation with her position as a woman and to take up new +aspects of life, more general aspects of life altogether. It had an +effect not of her having exhausted the subject but as if, despairing of +a direct solution, she turned deliberately to the relief of other +considerations. She ceased to question her own life, and taking that for +granted, wrote more largely of less tangible things. She remembered that +she had said that life, if it was no more than its present appearances, +was "utter nonsense." She went back to that. "One says things like +that," she wrote "and not for a moment does one believe it. I grumble +at my life, I seem to be always weakly and fruitlessly fighting my life, +and I love it. I would not be willingly dead--for anything. I'd rather +be an old match-woman selling matches on a freezing night in the streets +than be dead. Nothing nonsensical ever held me so tightly or kept me so +interested. I suppose really I am full of that very same formless faith +on which you rely. But with me it's not only shapeless but +intangible.... I nibble at religion. I am immensely attracted. I stand +in the doorway. Only when they come out to persuade me to come in I am +like a shy child and I go away. The temples beguile me and the music, +but not the men. I feel I want to join _it_ and they say 'join _us_.' +They are--like vergers. Such small things! Such dreadful little +_arguing_ men! They don't let you come in, they want you to say they are +right. All the really religious people seem to be outside nowadays and +all the pretending, cheating, atheistical, vain and limited people +within.... + +"But the beautiful things religion gives! The beauty! Do you know Saint +Paul's, Stephen? Latterly I have been there time after time. It is the +most beautiful interior in all the world, so great, so sombrely +dignified, so perfectly balanced--and filled with such wonderful music, +brimming with music just as crystal water brims in a bowl of crystal. +The other day I went there, up into a little gallery high up under the +dome, to hear Bach's Passion Music, the St. Matthew Passion. One hangs +high and far above the little multitudes below, the white-robed singers, +the white-robed musicians, ranks and ranks, the great organ, the rows +and rows and rows of congregation, receding this way, that way, into the +haze of the aisle and the transepts, and out of it all streams the +sound and the singing, it pours up past you like a river, a river that +rushes upward to some great sea, some unknown sea. The whole place is +music and singing.... I hang on to the railings, Stephen, and weep--I +have to weep--and I wonder and wonder.... + +"One prays then as naturally as one drinks when one is thirsty and cold +water comes to hand. I don't know whom I pray to, but I pray;--of course +I pray. Latterly, Stephen, I have been reading devotional works and +trying to catch that music again. I never do--definitely. Never. But at +times I put down the book and it seems to me that surely a moment ago I +heard it, that if I sit very still in a moment I shall hear it again. +And I can feel it is there, I know it is there, like a bat's cry, +pitched too high for my ears. I know it is there, just as I should still +know there was poetry somewhere if some poor toothless idiot with no +roof to his mouth and no knowledge of any but the commonest words tried +to read Shelley to me.... + +"I wish I could pray with you, Stephen; I wish I could kneel down +somewhere with you of all people and pray." + + +Sec. 6 + +Presently our correspondence fell away. The gaps between our letters +lengthened out. We never wrote regularly because for that there must be +a free exchange upon daily happenings, and neither of us cared to dwell +too closely on our immediate lives. We had a regard for one another that +left our backgrounds vague and shadowy. She had made her appeal across +the sundering silences to me and I had answered, and we had poured out +certain things from our minds. We could not go on discussing. I was a +very busy man now, and she did not write except on my replies. + +For a gap of nearly four months neither of us had anything to say in a +letter at all. I think that in time our correspondence might have +altogether died away. Then she wrote again in a more familiar strain to +tell me of certain definite changes of relationship and outlook. She +said that the estrangement between herself and Justin had increased +during the past year; that they were going to live practically apart; +she for the most part in the Surrey house where her two children lived +with their governesses and maids. But also she meant to snatch weeks and +seasons for travel. Upon that they had been disputing for some time. "I +know it is well with the children," she wrote; "why should I be in +perpetual attendance? I do nothing for them except an occasional kiss, +or half-an-hour's romping. Why should one pretend? Justin and I have +wrangled over this question of going away, for weeks, but at last +feminine persistence has won. I am going to travel in my own fashion and +see the world. With periodic appearances at his side in London and +Scotland. We have agreed at least on one thing, and that is upon a +companion; she is to be my secretary in title, my moral guarantor in +fact, and her name which is her crowning glory is Stella Summersley +Satchel. She is blonde, erect, huffy-mannered and thoroughly up to both +sides of her work. I partly envy her independence and rectitude--partly +only. It's odd and quite inconsistent of me that I don't envy her +altogether. In theory I insist that a woman should not have charm,--it +is our undoing. But when I meet one without it----! + +"I shall also trail a maid, but I guess that young woman will learn what +it is to be left behind in half the cities of Europe before I have done +with her. I always lose my maids. They are so much more passive and +forgettable than luggage--abroad that is. And Justin usually in the old +days used to remember about them. And his valet used to see after +them,--a most attentive man. Justin cannot, he says, have his wife +abroad with merely a companion; people would talk; maid it must be as +well. And so in a week or less I shall start, unusually tailor-made, for +South Germany and all that jolly country, companioned and maided. I +shall tramp--on the feet God has given me--in stout boots. Miss +Summersley Satchel marches, I understand, like the British infantry but +on a vegetarian 'basis,'--fancy calling your nourishment a 'basis'!--the +maid and so forth by _Eilgut_...." + + +Sec. 7 + +After the letter containing that announcement she wrote to me twice +again, once from Oban and then after a long interval from Siena. The +former was a scornfully minute description of the English at their +holidays and how the conversation went among the women after dinner. +"They are like a row of Japanese lanterns, all blown out long ago and +swinging about in a wind," she wrote--an extravagant image that yet +conveys something of the large, empty, unilluminating effect of a sort +of social intercourse very vividly. In the second letter she was +concerned chiefly with the natural beauty of Italy and how latterly she +had thrice wept at beautiful things, and what this mystery of beauty +could be that had such power over her emotions. + +"All up the hillside before the window as I write the herbage is thick +with anemones. They aren't scattered evenly and anyhow amongst the other +things but in little clusters and groups that die away and begin again, +like the repetitions of an air in some musical composition. I have been +sitting and looking at them for the better part of an hour, loving them +more and then more, and the sweet sunlight that is on them and in among +them.... How marvellous are these things, Stephen! All these little +exquisite things that are so abundant in the world, the gleaming lights +and blossoms, the drifting scents! At times these things bring me to +weeping.... I can't help it. It is as if God who is so stern and high, +so terrible to all our appeals, took pity for a moment and saw fit to +speak very softly and tenderly...." + +That was the last letter I was ever to have from her. + + + + +CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH + +THE LAST MEETING + + +Sec. 1 + +In the summer of 1911 immediately after the coronation of King George +there came one of those storms of international suspicion that ever and +again threaten Europe with war. It seems to have been brewed by some +German adepts at Welt-Politik, those privileged makers of giant bombs +who sit at the ears of foreign ministers suggesting idiotic wickedness, +and it was brewed with a sublime ignorance of nearly every reality in +the case. A German warship without a word of notice seized Agadir on the +Atlantic coast of Morocco, within the regions reserved to French +influence; an English demand for explanations was uncivilly disregarded +and England and France and presently Germany began vigorous preparations +for war. All over the world it was supposed that Germany had at last +flung down the gauntlet. In England the war party was only too eager to +grasp what it considered to be a magnificent opportunity. Heaven knows +what the Germans had hoped or intended by their remarkable coup; the +amazing thing to note is that they were not prepared to fight, they had +not even the necessary money ready and they could not get it; they had +perhaps never intended to fight, and the autumn saw the danger disperse +again into diplomatic bickerings and insincerely pacific professions. +But in the high summer the danger had not dispersed, and in common with +every reasonable man I found myself under the shadow of an impending +catastrophe that would have been none the less gigantic and tragic +because it was an imbecility. It was an occasion when everyone needs +must act, however trivially disproportionate his action may be to the +danger. I cabled Gidding who was in America to get together whatever +influences were available there upon the side of pacific intervention, +and I set such British organs as I could control or approach in the same +direction. It seemed probable that Italy would be drawn into any +conflict that might ensue; it happened that there was to be a Conference +of Peace Societies in Milan early in September, and thither I decided to +go in the not very certain hope that out of that assemblage some form of +European protest might be evolved. + +That August I was very much run down. I had been staying in London +through almost intolerably hot weather to attend a Races Congress that +had greatly disappointed me. I don't know particularly now why I had +been disappointed nor how far the feeling was due to my being generally +run down by the pressure of detailed work and the stress of thinking +about large subjects in little scraps of time. But I know that a kind of +despair came over me as I sat and looked at that multicolored assembly +and heard in succession the heavy platitudes of white men, the slick, +thin cleverness of Hindoos, the rich-toned florid rhetoric of negroes. I +lost sight of any germ of splendid possibility in all those people, and +saw all too plainly the vanity, the jealousy, the self-interests that +show up so harshly against the professions of every altruistic movement. +It seemed all such a windy business against the firm prejudices, the +vast accumulated interests that grind race against race. We had no +common purpose at all at that conference, no proposal to hold us +together. So much of it was like bleating on a hillside.... + +I wanted a holiday badly, and then came this war crisis and I felt +unable to go away for any length of time. Even bleating it seemed to me +was better than acquiescence in a crime against humanity. So to get +heart to bleat at Milan I snatched at ten days in the Swiss mountains en +route. A tour with some taciturn guide involving a few middling climbs +and glacier excursions seemed the best way of recuperating. I had never +had any time for Switzerland since my first exile there years ago. I +took the advice of a man in the club whose name I now forget--if ever I +knew it, a dark man with a scar--and went up to the Schwarzegg Hut above +Grindelwald, and over the Strahlegg to the Grimsel. I had never been up +into the central mass of the Bernese Oberland before, and I was amazed +and extraordinarily delighted by the vast lonely beauty of those +interminable uplands of ice. I wished I could have lingered up there. +But that is the tragedy of those sunlit desolations; one may not stay; +one sees and exclaims and then looks at a watch. I wonder no one has +ever taken an arctic equipment up into that wilderness, and had a good +healing spell of lonely exaltation. I found the descent from the +Strahlegg as much of a climb as I was disposed to undertake; for an hour +we were coming down frozen snow that wasn't so much a slope as a +slightly inclined precipice.... + +From the Grimsel I went over the Rhone glacier to the inn on the Furka +Pass, and then, paying off my guide and becoming frankly a pedestrian, I +made my way round by the Schoellenen gorge to Goeschenen, and over the +Susten Joch to the Susten Pass and Stein, meaning to descend to +Meiringen. + +But I still had four days before I went on to Italy, and so I decided to +take one more mountain. I slept at the Stein inn, and started in the +morning to do that agreeable first mountain of all, the Titlis, whose +shining genial head attracted me. I did not think a guide necessary, but +a boy took me up by a track near Gadmen, and left me to my Siegfried map +some way up the great ridge of rocks that overlooks the Engstlen Alp. I +a little overestimated my mountaineering, and it came about that I was +benighted while I was still high above the Joch Pass on my descent. Some +of this was steep and needed caution. I had to come down slowly with my +folding lantern, in which a reluctant candle went out at regular +intervals, and I did not reach the little inn at Engstlen Alp until long +after eleven at night. By that time I was very tired and hungry. + +They told me I was lucky to get a room, only one stood vacant; I should +certainly not have enjoyed sleeping on a billiard table after my day's +work, and I ate a hearty supper, smoked for a time, meditated emptily, +and went wearily to bed. + +But I could not sleep. Usually, I am a good sleeper, but ever and again +when I have been working too closely or over-exerting myself I have +spells of wakefulness, and that night after perhaps an hour's heavy +slumber I became thinly alert and very weary in body and spirit, and I +do not think I slept again. The pain in my leg that the panther had torn +had been revived by the day's exertion. For the greater part of my life +insomnia has not been disagreeable to me. In the night, in the +stillness, one has a kind of detachment from reality, one floats there +without light, without weight, feeling very little of one's body. One +has a certain disembodiment and one can achieve a magnanimity of +thought, forgiveness and self-forgetfulness that are impossible while +the body clamors upon one's senses. But that night, because, I suppose, +I was so profoundly fatigued, I was melancholy and despondent. I could +feel again the weight of the great beast upon me as he clawed me down +and I clung--desperately, in that interminable instant before he lost +his hold.... + +Yes, I was extraordinarily wretched that night. I was filled with +self-contempt and self-disgust. I felt that I was utterly weak and vain, +and all the pretensions and effort of my life mere florid, fruitless +pretensions and nothing more. I had lost all control over my mind. +Things that had seemed secondary before became primary, difficult things +became impossible things. I had been greatly impeded and irritated in +London by the manoeuvres of a number of people who were anxious to make +capital out of the crisis, self-advertising people who wanted at any +cost to be lifted into a position of unique protest.... You see, that +unfortunate Nobel prize has turned the advocacy of peace into a highly +speculative profession; the qualification for the winner is so vaguely +defined that a vast multitude of voluntary idealists has been created +and a still greater number diverted from the unendowed pursuit of human +welfare in other directions. Such a man as myself who is known to +command a considerable publicity is necessarily a prey to those moral +_entrepreneurs_. All sorts of ridiculous and petty incidents had forced +this side of public effort upon me, but hitherto I had been able to say, +with a laugh or sigh as the case warranted, "So much is dear old +humanity and all of us"; and to remember the great residuum of nobility +that remained. Now that last saving consideration refused to be +credible. I lay with my body and my mind in pain thinking these people +over, thinking myself over too with the rest of my associates, thinking +drearily and weakly, recalling spites, dishonesties and vanities, feuds +and absurdities, until I was near persuaded that all my dreams of wider +human understandings, of great ends beyond the immediate aims and +passions of common everyday lives, could be at best no more than the +refuge of shy and weak and ineffective people from the failure of their +personal lives.... + +We idealists are not jolly people, not honest simple people; the strain +tells upon us; even to ourselves we are unappetizing. Aren't the burly, +bellowing fellows after all righter, with their simple natural hostility +to everything foreign, their valiant hatred of everything unlike +themselves, their contempt for aspiring weakness, their beer and lush +sentiment, their here-to-day-and-gone-tomorrow conviviality and +fellowship? Good fellows! While we others, lost in filmy speculations, +in moon-and-star snaring and the chase of dreams, stumble where even +they walk upright.... + +You know I have never quite believed in myself, never quite believed in +my work or my religion. So it has always been with me and always, I +suppose, will be. I know I am purblind, I know I do not see my way +clearly nor very far; I have to do with things imperfectly apprehended. +I cannot cheat my mind away from these convictions. I have a sort of +hesitation of the soul as other men have a limp in their gait. God, I +suppose, has a need for lame men. God, I suppose, has a need for blind +men and fearful and doubting men, and does not intend life to be +altogether swallowed up in staring sight. Some things are to be reached +best by a hearing that is not distracted by any clearer senses. But so +it is with me, and this is the innermost secret I have to tell you. + +I go valiantly for the most part I know, but despair is always near to +me. In the common hours of my life it is as near as a shark may be near +a sleeper in a ship; the thin effectual plank of my deliberate faith +keeps me secure, but in these rare distresses of the darkness the plank +seems to become transparent, to be on the verge of dissolution, a sense +of life as of an abyssmal flood, full of cruelty, densely futile, +blackly aimless, penetrates my defences.... + +I don't think I can call these stumblings from conviction unbelief; the +limping man walks for all his limping, and I go on in spite of my falls. +"Though he slay me yet will I trust in him...." + +I fell into an inconsecutive review of my life under this light that +touched every endeavor with the pale tints of failure. And as that flow +of melancholy reflection went on, it was shot more and more frequently +with thoughts of Mary. It was not a discursive thinking about Mary but a +definite fixed direction of thought towards her. I had not so thought of +her for many years. I wanted her, I felt, to come to me and help me out +of this distressful pit into which my spirit had fallen. I believed she +could. I perceived our separation as an irreparable loss. She had a +harder, clearer quality than I, a more assured courage, a readier, surer +movement of the mind. Always she had "lift" for me. And then I had a +curious impression that I had heard her voice calling my name, as one +might call out in one's sleep. I dismissed it as an illusion, and then I +heard it again. So clearly that I sat up and listened--breathless.... + +Mixed up with all this was the intolerable uproar and talking of a +little cascade not fifty yards from the hotel. It is curious how +distressing that clamor of running water, which is so characteristic of +the Alpine night, can become. At last those sounds can take the likeness +of any voice whatever. The water, I decided, had called to me, and now +it mocked and laughed at me.... + +The next morning I descended at some late hour by Swiss reckoning, and +discovered two ladies in the morning sunlight awaiting breakfast at a +little green table. One rose slowly at the sight of me, and stood and +surveyed me with a glad amazement. + + +Sec. 2 + +There she stood real and solid, a little unfamiliar in her tweeds and +with her shining eyes intimate and unforgettable, as though I had never +ceased to see them for all those intervening years. And bracing us both +and holding back our emotion was, quite unmistakably, Miss Summersley +Satchel, a blonde business-like young woman with a stumpy nose very +cruelly corrugated and inflamed by a pince-nez that savagely did much +more than its duty by its name. She remained seated, tilting her chair +a little, pushing herself back from the table and regarding +me--intelligently. + +It was one of those moments in life when one is taken unawares. I think +our common realization of the need of masking the reality of our +encounter, the hasty search in our minds for some plausible face upon +this meeting, must have been very obvious to the lady who observed us. +Mary's first thought was for a pseudonym. Mine was to make it plain we +met by accident. + +"It's Mr.--Stephen!" said Mary. + +"It's you!" + +"Dropped out of the sky!" + +"From over there. I was benighted and go there late." + +"Very late?" + +"One gleam of light--and a yawning waiter. Or I should have had to break +windows.... And then I meet you!" + +Then for a moment or so we were silent, with our sense of the immense +gravity of this position growing upon us. A little tow-headed waiter-boy +appeared with their coffee and rolls on a tray poised high on his hand. + +"You'll have your coffee out here with us?" said Mary. + +"Where else?" said I, as though there was no conceivable alternative, +and told the tow-headed waiter. + +Belatedly Mary turned to introduce me to her secretary: "My friend Miss +Summersley Satchel. Mr.--Stephen." Miss Satchel and I bowed to each +other and agreed that the lake was very beautiful in the morning light. +"Mr. Stephen," said Mary, in entirely unnecessary explanation, "is an +old friend of my mother's. And I haven't seen him for years. How is +Mrs. Stephen--and the children?" + +I answered briefly and began to tell of my climb down the Titlis. I +addressed myself with unnecessary explicitness to Miss Satchel. I did +perhaps over-accentuate the extreme fortuitousness of my appearance.... +From where I stood, the whole course of the previous day after I had +come over the shoulder was visible. It seemed a soft little shining +pathway to the top, but the dangers of the descent had a romantic +intensification in the morning light. "The rule of the game," said I, +"is that one stops and waits for daylight. I wonder if anyone keeps that +rule." + +We talked for a time of mountains, I still standing a little aloof until +my coffee came. Miss Summersley Satchel produced that frequent and most +unpleasant bye-product of a British education, an intelligent interest +in etymology. "I wonder," she said, with a brow of ruffled omniscience +and eyeing me rather severely with a magnified eye, "why it is _called_ +Titlis. There must be _some_ reason...." + +Presently Miss Satchel was dismissed indoors on a transparent excuse and +Mary and I were alone together. We eyed one another gravely. Perhaps all +the more gravely because of the wild excitement that was quickening our +pulse and breathing, and thrilling through our nerves. She pushed back +the plate before her and put her dear elbows on the table and dropped +her chin between her hands in an attitude that seemed all made of little +memories. + +"I suppose," she said, "something of this kind was bound to happen." + +She turned her eyes to the mountains shining in the morning light. "I'm +glad it has happened in a beautiful place. It might have +been--anywhere." + +"Last night," I said, "I was thinking of you and wanting to hear your +voice again. I thought I did." + +"I too. I wonder--if we had some dim perception...." + +She scanned my face. "Stephen, you're not much changed. You're looking +well.... But your eyes--they're dog-tired eyes. Have you been working +too hard?" + +"A conference--what did you call them once?--a Carnegieish conference in +London. Hot weather and fussing work and endless hours of weak grey +dusty speeches, and perhaps that clamber over there yesterday was too +much. It _was_ too much. In India I damaged a leg.... I had meant to +rest here for a day." + +"Well,--rest here." + +"With you!" + +"Why not? Now you are here." + +"But---- After all, we've promised." + +"It's none of our planning, Stephen." + +"It seems to me I ought to go right on--so soon as breakfast is over." + +She weighed that with just the same still pause, the same quiet moment +of lips and eyes that I recalled so well. It was as things had always +been between us that she should make her decision first and bring me to +it. + +"It isn't natural," she decided, "with the sun rising and the day still +freshly beginning that you should go or that I should go. I've wanted to +meet you like this and talk about things,--ten thousand times. And as +for me Stephen I _won't_ go. And I won't let you go if I can help it. +Not this morning, anyhow. No. Go later in the day if you will, and let +us two take this one talk that God Himself has given us. We've not +planned it. It's His doing, not ours." + +I sat, yielding. "I am not so sure of God's participation," I said. "But +I know I am very tired, and glad to be with you. I can't tell you how +glad. So glad---- I think I should weep if I tried to say it...." + +"Three, four, five hours perhaps--even if people know. Is it so much +worse than thirty minutes? We've broken the rules already; we've been +flung together; it's not our doing, Stephen. A little while longer--adds +so little to the offence and means to us----" + +"Yes," I said, "but--if Justin knows?" + +"He won't." + +"Your companion?" + +There was the briefest moment of reflection. "She's discretion itself," +she said. + +"Still----" + +"If he's going to know the harm is done. We may as well be hung for a +sheep as a lamb. And he won't know. No one will know." + +"The people here." + +"Nobody's here. Not a soul who matters. I doubt if they know my name.... +No one ever talks to me." + +I sat in the bright sunshine, profoundly enervated and quite convinced, +but still maintaining out of mere indolence a show of hesitation.... + +"You take the good things God sends you, Stephen--as I do. You stay and +talk with me now, before the curtain falls again. We've tired of +letters. You stay and talk to me. + +"Here we are, Stephen, and it's the one chance that is ever likely to +come to us in all our lives. We'll keep the point of honor; and you +shall go to-day. But don't let's drive the point of honor into the +quick. Go easy Stephen, old friend.... My dear, my dear! What has +happened to you? Have you forgotten? Of course! Is it possible for you +to go, mute, with so much that we can say.... And these mountains and +this sunlight!..." + +I looked up to see her with her elbows on the table and her hands +clasped under her chin; that face close to mine, her dear blue eyes +watching me and her lips a little apart. + +No other human being has ever had that effect upon me, so that I seem to +feel the life and stir in that other body more than I feel my own. + + +Sec. 3 + +From the moment when I confessed my decision to stay we gave no further +thought to the rightfulness or wisdom of spending the next few hours +together. We thought only of those hours. Things lent themselves to us. +We stood up and walked out in front of the hotel and there moored to a +stake at the edge of the water was a little leaky punt, the one vessel +on the Engstlen See. We would take food with us as we decided and row +out there to where the vast cliffs came sheer from the water, out of +earshot or interference and talk for all the time we had. And I remember +now how Mary stood and called to Miss Satchel's window to tell her of +this intention, and how I discovered again that exquisite slender grace +I knew so well. + +You know the very rowing out from the shore had in it something sweet +and incredible. It was as if we were but dreaming together and might at +any moment awaken again, countless miles and a thousand things apart. I +rowed slowly with those clumsy Swiss oars that one must thrust forward, +breaking the smooth crystal of the lake, and she sat sideways looking +forward, saying very little and with much the same sense I think of +enchantment and unreality. And I saw now for the first time as I watched +her over my oars that her face was changed; she was graver and, I +thought, stronger than the Mary I had known. + +Even now I can still doubt if that boat and lake were real. And yet I +remember even minute and irrelevant details of the day's impressions +with an extraordinary and exquisite vividness. Perhaps it is that very +luminous distinctness which distinguishes these events from the common +experiences of life and puts them so above the quality of things that +are ordinarily real. + +We rowed slowly past a great headland and into the bay at the upper end +of the water. We had not realized at first that we could row beyond the +range of the hotel windows. The rock that comes out of the lake is a +clear dead white when it is dry, and very faintly tinted, but when it is +wetted it lights warmly with flashes and blotches of color, and is seen +to be full of the most exquisite and delicate veins. It splinters +vertically and goes up in cliffs, very high and sculptured, with a +quality almost of porcelain, that at a certain level suddenly become +more rude and massive and begin to overhang. Under the cliffs the water +is very deep and blue-green, and runs here and there into narrow clefts. +This place where we landed was a kind of beach left by the recession of +the ice, all the rocks immediately about us were ice-worn, and the place +was paved with ice-worn boulders. Two huge bluffs put their foreheads +together above us and hid the glacier from us, but one could feel the +near presence of ice in the air. Out between them boiled a little +torrent, and spread into a hundred intercommunicating channels amidst +the great pebbles. And those pebbles were covered by a network of +marvellously gnarled and twisted stems bearing little leaves and +blossoms, a network at once very ancient and very fresh, giving a +peculiar gentleness and richness to the Alpine severity that had dwarfed +and tangled them. It was astounding that any plant could find +nourishment among those stones. The great headland, with patches of +yellowish old snow still lingering here and there upon its upper masses, +had crept insensibly between us and the remote hotel and now hid it +altogether. There was nothing to remind us of the world that had +separated us, except that old and leaky boat we had drawn up upon the +stones at the limpid water's edge. + +"It is as if we had come out of life together," she whispered, giving a +voice to my thought. + +She sat down upon a boulder and I sat on a lower slab a yard or so away, +and we looked at one another. "It's still unreal," she said. + +I felt awkward and at a loss as I sat there before her, as a man unused +to drawing-rooms might feel in the presence of a strange hostess. + +"You are so _you_," I said; "so altogether my nearest thing--and so +strange too, so far off, that I feel--shy.... + +"I'm shy," I repeated. "I feel that if I speak loudly all this will +vanish...." + +I looked about me. "But surely this is the most beautiful place in the +whole world! Is it indeed in the world?" + +"Stephen, my dear," she began presently, "what a strange thing life is! +Strange! The disproportions! The things that will not fit together. The +little things that eat us up, and the beautiful things that might save +us and don't save us, don't seem indeed to have any meaning in regard to +ordinary sensible affairs.... This _beauty_.... + +"Do you remember, Stephen, how long ago in the old park you and I talked +about immortality and you said then you did not want to know anything of +what comes after life. Even now do you want to know? You are too busy +and I am not busy enough. I want to be sure, not only to know, but to +know that it is so, that this life--no, not _this_ life, but that life, +is only the bleak twilight of the morning. I think death--just dead +death--after the life I have had is the most impossible of ends.... You +don't want--particularly? I want to passionately. I _want_ to live +again--out of this body, Stephen, and all that it carves with it, to be +free--as beautiful things are free. To be free as this is free--an +exquisite clean freedom.... + +"I can't believe that the life of this earth is all that there is for +us--or why should we ever think it strange? Why should we still find the +ordinary matter-of-fact things of everyday strange? We do--because they +aren't--_us_.... Eating. Stuffing into ourselves thin slices of what +were queer little hot and eager beasts.... The perpetual need to do such +things. And all the mad fury of sex, Stephen!... We don't live, we +suffocate in our living bodies. They storm and rage and snatch; it isn't +_us_, Stephen, really. It can't be us. It's all so excessive--if it is +anything more than the first furious rush into existence of beings that +will go on--go on at last to quite beautiful real things. Like this +perhaps. To-day the world is beautiful indeed with the sun shining and +love shining and you, my dear, so near to me.... It's so incredible that +you and I must part to-day. It's as if--someone told me the sun was a +little mad. It's so perfectly natural to be with you again...." + +Her voice sank. She leant a little forward towards me. "Stephen, suppose +that you and I were dead to-day. Suppose that when you imagined you were +climbing yesterday, you died. Suppose that yesterday you died and that +you just thought you were still climbing as you made your way to me. +Perhaps you are dead up there on the mountain and I am lying dead in my +room in this hotel, and this is the Great Beginning.... + +"Stephen, I am talking nonsense because I am so happy to be with you +here...." + + +Sec. 4 + +For a time we said very little. Then irregularly, disconnectedly, we +began to tell each other things about ourselves. + +The substance of our lives seemed strangely objective that day; we had +as it were come to one another clean out of our common conditions. She +told me of her troubles and her secret weaknesses; we bared our spirits +and confessed. Both of us had the same tale of mean and angry and hasty +impulses, both of us could find kindred inconsistencies, both had an +exalted assurance that the other would understand completely and forgive +and love. She talked for the most part, she talked much more than I, +with a sort of wonder at the things that had happened to her, and for +long spaces we did not talk at all nor feel the need of talking, and +what seems very strange to me now, seeing that we had been impassioned +lovers, we never kissed; we never kissed at all; I do not even remember +that I thought of kissing her. We had a shyness between us that kept us +a little apart, and I cannot remember that we ever touched one another +except that for a time she took me and led me by the hand towards a +little place of starry flowers that had drawn her eyes and which she +wished me to see. Already for us two our bodies were dead and gone. We +were shy, shy of any contact, we were a little afraid of one another, +there was a kind of awe between us that we had met again. + +And in that strange and beautiful place her fancy that we were dead +together had a fitness that I cannot possibly convey to you. I cannot +give you by any writing the light and the sweet freshness of that high +desolation. You would need to go there. What was lovely in our talk, +being said in that setting, would seem but a rambling discourse were I +to write it down,--as I believe that even now I could write it +down--word for word almost, every thought of it, so fresh does it remain +with me.... + +My dear, some moments are eternal. It seems to me that as I write to +tell you of this I am telling you not of something that happened two +years ago but of a thing immortal. It is as if I and Mary were together +there holding the realities of our lives before us as though they were +little sorry tales written in books upon our knees.... + + +Sec. 5 + +It was still in the early afternoon that we came down again across the +meandering ice-water streams to our old boat, and pushed off and rowed +slowly out of that magic corner back to every-day again.... + +Little we knew to what it was we rowed. + +As we glided across the water and rounded the headland and came slowly +into view of the hotel again, Mary was reminded of our parting and for a +little while she was disposed to make me remain. "If you could stay a +little longer," she said,--"Another day? If any harm is done, it's +done." + +"It has been beautiful," I said, "this meeting. It's just as if--when I +was so jaded and discouraged that I could have put my work aside and +despaired altogether,--some power had said, 'Have you forgotten the +friendship I gave you?' ... But we shall have had our time. We've +met,--we've seen one another, we've heard one another. We've hurt no +one...." + +"You will go?" + +"To-day. Before sunset. Isn't it right that I should go?" + +"Stay," she whispered, with a light in her eyes. + +"No. I dare not." + +She did not speak for a long time. + +"Of course," she said at last, "you're right. You only said--I would +have said it for you if you had not. You're so right, Stephen.... I +suppose, poor silly little things, that if you stayed we should +certainly begin making love to each other. It would be--necessary. We +should fence about a little and then there it would be. No barrier--to +stop us. And neither of us wants it to happen. It isn't what we want. +You would become urgent, I suppose, and I should be--coquettish. In +spite of ourselves that power would make us puppets. As if already we +hadn't made love.... I could find it in my heart now.... Stephen I could +_make_ you stay.... + +"Oh! Why are we so tormented, Stephen? In the next world we shall meet, +and this will trouble us no longer. The love will be there--oh, the love +will be there, like something that has at last got itself fully born, +got itself free from some queer clinging seed-case.... + +"We shall be rid of jealousy, Stephen, that inflammation of the mind, +that bitterness, that pitiless sore, so that I shan't be tormented by +the thought of Rachel and she will be able to tolerate me. She was so +sweet and wonderful a girl--with those dark eyes. And I've never done +her justice--never. Nor she me. I snatched you from her. I snatched +you.... + +"Someday we shall be different.... All this putting oneself round +another person like a fence, against everyone else, almost against +everything else; it's so wicked, so fierce. + +"It's so possible to be different. Sometimes now, sometimes for long +parts of a day I have no base passions at all--even in this life. To be +like that always! But I can't see clearly how these things can be; one +dreams of them in a kind of luminous mist, and if one looks directly at +them, they vanish again...." + + +Sec. 6 + +And at last we came to the landing, and moored the little boat and +walked up the winding path to the hotel. The dull pain of separation was +already upon us. + +I think we had forgotten Miss Summersley Satchel altogether. But she +appeared as we sat down to tea at that same table at which we had +breakfasted, and joined us as a matter of course. Conceivably she found +the two animated friends of the morning had become rather taciturn. +Indeed there came a lapse of silence so portentous that I roused myself +to effort and told her, all over again, as I realized afterwards, the +difficulties that had benighted me upon Titlis. Then Miss Satchel +regaled Mary with some particulars of the various comings and goings of +the hotel. I became anxious to end this tension and went into the inn to +pay my bill and get my knapsack. When I came out Mary stood up. + +"I'll come just a little way with you, Stephen," she said, and I could +have fancied the glasses of the companion flashed to hear the surname of +the morning reappear a Christian name in the afternoon.... + +"Is that woman behind us safe?" I asked, breaking the silence as we went +up the mountain-side. + +Mary looked over her shoulder for a contemplative second. + +"She's always been--discretion itself." + +We thought no more of Miss Satchel. + +"This parting," said Mary, "is the worst of the price we have to +pay.... Now it comes to the end there seem a thousand things one hasn't +said...." + +And presently she came back to that. "We shan't remember this so much +perhaps. It was there we met, over there in the sunlight--among those +rocks. I suppose--perhaps--we managed to say something...." + +As the ascent grew steeper it became clear that if I was to reach the +Melch See Inn by nightfall, our moment for parting had come. And with a +"Well," and a white-lipped smile and a glance at the Argus-eyed hotel, +she held out her hand to me. "I shall live on this, brother Stephen," +she said, "for years." + +"I too," I answered.... + +It was wonderful to stand and face her there, and see her real and +living with the warm sunlight on her, and her face one glowing +tenderness. We clasped hands; all the warm life of our hands met and +clung and parted. + +I went on alone up the winding path,--it zigzags up the mountain-side in +full sight of the hotel for the better part of an hour--climbing +steadily higher and looking back and looking back until she was just a +little strip of white--that halted and seemed to wave to me. I waved +back and found myself weeping. "You fool!" I said to myself, "Go on"; +and it was by an effort that I kept on my way instead of running back to +her again. Presently the curvature of the slope came up between us and +hid her altogether, hid the hotel, hid the lakes and the cliffs.... + +It seemed to me that I could not possibly see her any more. It was as if +I knew that sun had set for ever. + + +Sec. 7 + +I lay at the Melch See Inn that night, and rose betimes and started down +that wild grey gorge in the early morning light. I walked to Sachseln, +caught an early train to Lucerne and went on in the afternoon to Como. +And there I stayed in the sunshine taking a boat and rowing alone far up +the lake and lying in it, thinking of love and friendship and the +accidents and significance of my life, and for the most part not +thinking at all but feeling, feeling the glow of our meeting and the +finality of our separation, as one feels the clear glow of a sunset when +the wind rises and the cold night draws near. Everything was pervaded by +the sense of her. Just over those mountains, I thought, is Mary. I was +alone in my boat, but her presence filled the sky. It seemed to me that +at any moment I could go to her. And the last vestige of any cloud +between us for anything we had done or failed to do in these crises of +distress and separation, had vanished and gone altogether. + +In the afternoon I wrote to Rachel. I had not written to her for three +days, and even now I told her nothing of my meeting with Mary. I had not +written partly because I could not decide whether I should tell her of +that or not; in the end I tried to hide it from her. It seemed a little +thing in regard to her, a thing that could not hurt her, a thing as +detached from her life and as inconsecutive as a dream in my head. + +Three days later I reached Milan, a day before the formal opening of the +Peace Congress. But I found a telegram had come that morning to the +Poste Restante to banish all thought of my pacific mission from my +mind. It came from Paris and its blue ribbon of text ran: + + + _"Come back at once to London. Justin has been told of our meeting + and is resolved upon divorce. Will do all in my power to explain + and avert but feel you should know at once."_ + + +There are some things so monstrously destructive to all we hold dear +that for a time it is impossible to believe them. I remember now that as +I read that amazing communication through--at the first reading it was a +little difficult to understand because the Italian operator had guessed +at one or two of the words, no real sense of its meaning came to me. +That followed sluggishly. I felt as one might feel when one opens some +offensive anonymous letter or hears some preposterous threat. + +"What _nonsense_!" I said, faint-heartedly. I stood for a time at my +bedroom window trying to shake this fact altogether off my mind. But it +stayed, and became more and more real. Suddenly with a start I perceived +it was real. I had to do things forthwith. + +I rang the bell and asked for an _Orario_. "I shan't want these rooms. I +have to go back to England," I said. "Yes,--I have had bad news." ... + + +Sec. 8 + +"We've only got to explain," I told myself a hundred times during that +long sleepless journey. The thundering wheels so close beneath my head +echoed: "Explain. Oh yes! Explain! Explain! Explain!" + +And something, a voice to which I would not listen, urged: "Suppose +they do not choose to believe what you explain." + +When I sat face to face with Maxwell Hartington, my solicitor, in his +ink-splashed, dirty, yellow-grained room with its rows of black tin +boxes, I could no longer ignore that possibility. Maxwell Hartington sat +back in his chair after his fashion, listening to my story, breathing +noisily through his open mouth, perspiring little beads and looking more +out of condition than ever. I never knew a man so wine-sodden and so +sharp-witted. + +"That's all very well, Stratton," he said, "between ourselves. Very +unfortunate and all that sort of thing. But it doesn't satisfy Justin +evidently; and we've got to put a different look on it if we can, before +we go before a jury: You see----" He seemed to be considering and +rejecting unpalatable phrases "They won't understand." + +"But," I said, "after all--, a mere chance of the same hotel. There must +be more evidence than that." + +"You spent the night in adjacent rooms," he said dryly. + +"Adjacent rooms!" I cried. + +He regarded me for a moment with something bordering on admiration. +"Didn't you know?" he said. + +"No." + +"They've routed that out. You were sleeping with your two heads within a +yard of one another anyhow. Thirty-six you had, and she had +thirty-seven." + +"But," I said and stopped. + +Maxwell Hartington's admiration gave place I think to a slight +resentment at my sustained innocence. "And Lady Mary changed rooms with +her secretary two nights before--to be near the vacant room. The +secretary went into number 12 on the floor below,--a larger room, at +thirteen francs a day, and one not exposed to the early daylight...." + +He turned over a paper on his desk. "You didn't know, of course," he +said. "But what I want to have"--and his voice grew wrathful--"is sure +evidence that you didn't know. No jury on earth is going to believe you +didn't know. No jury!---- Why,"--his mask dropped--"no man on earth is +going to believe a yarn like that! If that's all you have, Stratton----" + + +Sec. 9 + +Our London house was not shut up--two servants were there on board-wages +against the possibility of such a temporary return as I was now +making--Rachel was away with you three children at Cromingham. I had not +told her I was returning to London, and I had put up at one of my clubs. +Until I had had a second interview with Maxwell Hartington I still would +not let myself think that it was possible that Mary and I would fail +with our explanations. We had the common confidence of habitually +unchallenged people that our word would be accepted. I had hoped indeed +to get the whole affair settled and abolished without anything of it +coming to Rachel's ears. Then at my leisure I should be able to tell her +exactly how things had come about. But each day made it clearer that +things were not going to be settled, that the monstrous and the +incredible was going to happen and that Justin had set his mind +implacably upon a divorce. My sense of complete innocence had already +been shaken by Maxwell Hartington; I had come to perceive that we had +been amazingly indiscreet, I was beginning to think we had been +criminally indiscreet. + +I saw Maxwell Hartington for a second time, and it became clear to me I +must abandon any hope of keeping things further from Rachel. I took my +luggage round to my house, to the great astonishment of the two +servants,--they had supposed of course that I was in Italy--and then +went down on the heels of a telegram to Rachel. I forget the wording of +that telegram, but it was as little alarming as possible; I think I said +something about "back in London for documents; shall try to get down to +you." I did not specify any particular train or indeed state definitely +that I was coming that day. + +I had never been to Cromingham before. I went to the house you occupied +on the Esplanade and learnt that you were all upon the beach. I walked +along the sea-wall scrutinizing the various bright groups of children +and nursemaids and holiday people that were scattered over the sands. It +was a day of blazing sunshine, and, between the bright sky and the +silver drabs of the sand stretched the low levels of a sea that had its +customary green-grey touched for once with something of the sapphire +glow of the Mediterranean. Here and there were gay little umbrella tents +or canvas shelters, and a bather or so and pink and white wading +children broke the dazzling edge of foam. And I sought you with a kind +of reluctance as though finding you would bring nearer the black +irrational disaster that hung over us all. + +And when I found you at last you were all radiantly happy and healthy, +the prettiest of families, and only your mother was touched with any +gravity deeper than the joy of sunshine and sea. You and Mademoiselle +Potin--in those days her ministrations were just beginning--were busy +constructing a great sea-wall that should really and truly stop the +advancing tide. Rachel Two was a little apart, making with infinite +contentment an endless multitude of conical sand pies with her little +tin pail. Margaret, a pink inarticulate lump, scrabbled in the warm sand +under Jessica's care. Your mother sat and watched you--thoughtfully. And +before any of you knew that I was there my shadow fell across you all. + +You accepted my appearance when I ought to have been in Italy with the +unquestioning confidence with which you still take all my comings and +goings. For you, Italy, America, any place is just round the corner. I +was kissed with affection but haste, and you got back to your sand-works +as speedily as possible. I inspected Rachel Two's mounds,--she was +giving them the names of her various aunts and uncles--and patted the +crowing Margaret, who ignored me. Rachel had sprung to her feet and +kissed me and now hovered radiant over me as I caressed you youngsters. +It was all so warm, so real, that for an instant the dark threat that +hung over us all vanished from my skies, to return with the force of a +blow. + +"And what has brought you back?" said Rachel. "I had expected a month of +widowhood. What can have brought you back?" + +The dancing gladness in her eyes vanished swiftly as she waited for an +answer to her question. She caught the note of tragedy from my face. +"Why have you come back from Italy?" she asked in an altered voice. + +"Rachel," I said taking her arm, with a desolating sense of the +futility in my gesture of protection; "let us walk along the beach. I +want to tell you something---- Something rather complicated." + +"Is there going to be war, Stephen?" she asked abruptly. + +It seemed then that this question which merely concerned the welfare of +a hundred million people or so and pain, destruction and disaster beyond +measure, was the most trivial of digressions. + +"No," I said. "I haven't thought about the war." + +"But I thought--you were thinking of nothing else." + +"This has put it out of my head. It's something---- Something disastrous +to us." + +"Something has happened to our money?" + +"I wish that was all." + +"Then what is it?" Her mind flashed out. "It has something to do with +Mary Justin." + +"How did you know that?" + +"I guessed." + +"Well. It is. You see--in Switzerland we met." + +"You _met_!" + +"By accident. She had been staying at the hotel on Engstlen Alp." + +"You slept there!" cried Rachel. + +"I didn't know she was in the hotel until the next day." + +"And then you came away!" + +"That day." + +"But you talked together?" + +"Yes." + +"And for some reason---- You never told me, Stephen! You never told me. +And you met. But---- Why is this, disaster?" + +"Because Justin knows and he means to divorce her--and it may be he +will succeed...." + +Rachel's face had become white, for some time she said nothing. Then +slowly, "And if he had not known and done that--I should never have +known." + +I had no answer to make to that. It was true. Rachel's face was very +still, and her eyes stared at the situation laid bare to her. + +"When you began," she choked presently, "when she wrote--I knew--I +felt----" + +She ceased for fear she might weep, and for a time we walked in silence. + +"I suppose," she said desperately at last, "he will get his divorce." + +"I am afraid he will." + +"There's no evidence--you didn't...." + +"No." + +"And I never dreamt----!" + +Then her passion tore at her. "Stephen my dear," she wept, "you didn't? +you didn't? Stephen, indeed you didn't, did you? You kept faith with me +as a husband should. It was an accident--a real accident--and there was +no planning for you to meet together. It was as you say? I've never +doubted your word ever--I've never doubted you." + +Well, at any rate I could answer that plainly, and I did. + +"And you know, Stephen," she said, "I believe you. And I _can't_ believe +you. My heart is tormented. Why did you write to her? Why did you two +write and go on writing? And why did you tell me nothing of that +meeting? I believe you because I can't do anything but believe you. It +would kill me not to believe you in a thing that came so near to us. And +yet, there it is, like a knife being twisted in my heart--that you met. +Should I have known of your meeting, Stephen--ever? I know I'm talking +badly for you.... But this thing strikes me suddenly. Out of this clear +beautiful sky! And the children there--so happy in the sunshine! I was +so happy. So happy. With you coming.... It will mean shames and +law-courts and newspapers, losses of friends, losses of money and +freedom.... My mother and my people!... And you and all the work you +do!... People will never forget it, never forgive it. They will say you +promised.... If she had never written, if she had kept to her +bargain----" + +"We should still have met." + +"Stephen!... Stephen, you must bear with me...." + +"This is a thing," I said, "that falls as you say out of the sky. It +seemed so natural--for her to write.... And the meeting ... it is like +some tremendous disaster of nature. I do not feel I have deserved it. It +is--irrational. But there it is, little Rachel of my heart, and we have +to face it. Whatever happens we have to go on. It doesn't alter the work +we have to do. If it clips our wings--we have to hop along with clipped +wings.... For you--I wish it could spare you. And she--she too is a +victim, Rachel." + +"She need not have written," said Rachel. "She need not have written. +And then if you had met----" + +She could not go on with that. + +"It is so hard," I said, "to ask you to be just to her--and me. I wish I +could have come to you and married you--without all that legacy--of +things remembered.... I was what I was.... One can't shake off a thing +in one's blood. And besides--besides----" + +I stopped helplessly. + + +Sec. 10 + +And then Mary came herself to tell me there would be no divorce. + +She came to me unexpectedly. I had returned to town that evening, and +next morning as I was sitting down in my study to answer some +unimportant questions Maxwell Hartington had sent me, my parlormaid +appeared. "Can you speak," she asked, "to Lady Mary Justin?" + +I stood up to receive my visitor. + +She came in, a tall dark figure, and stood facing me in silence until +the door had closed behind her. Her face was white and drawn and very +grave. She stooped a little, I could see she had had no sleep, never +before had I seen her face marked by pain. And she hesitated.... "My +dear!" I said; "why have you come to me?" + +I put a chair for her and she sat down. + +For a moment she controlled herself with difficulty. She put her hand +over her eyes, she seemed on the verge of bitter weeping.... + +"I came," she said at last.... "I came. I had to come ... to see you." + +I sat down in a chair beside her. + +"It wasn't wise," I said. "But--never mind. You look so tired, my dear!" + +She sat quite still for a little while. + +Then she moved her arm as though she felt for me blindly, and I put my +arms about her and drew her head to my shoulder and she wept.... + +"I knew," she sobbed, "if I came to you...." + +Presently her weeping was over. + +"Get me a little cold water, Stephen," she said. "Let me have a little +cold water on my face. I've got my courage now again. Just then,--I was +down too low. Yes--cold water. Because I want to tell you--things you +will be glad to hear." + +"You see, Stephen," she said--and now all her self-possession had +returned; "there mustn't be a divorce. I've thought it all out. And +there needn't be a divorce." + +"Needn't be?" + +"No." + +"What do you mean?" + +"I can stop it." + +"But how?" + +"I can stop it. I can manage---- I can make a bargain.... It's very +sweet, dear Stephen, to be here talking to you again." + +She stood up. + +"Sit at your desk, my dear," she said. "I'm all right now. That water +was good. How good cold things can be! Sit down at your desk and let me +sit here. And then I will talk to you. I've had such a time, my dear. +Ah!" + +She paused and stuck her elbows on the desk and looked me in the eyes. +And suddenly that sweet, frank smile of hers swept like sunshine across +the wintry desolation of her face. "We've both been having a time," she +said. "This odd little world,--it's battered us with its fists. For such +a little. And we were both so ridiculously happy. Do you remember it, +the rocks and the sunshine and all those twisted and tangled little +plants? And how the boat leaked and you baled it out! And the parting, +and how you trudged up that winding path away from me! A grey figure +that stopped and waved--a little figure--such a virtuous figure! And +then, this storm! this _awful_ hullabaloo! Lawyers, curses, threats----. +And Stella Summersley Satchel like a Fury of denunciation. What hatred +that woman has hidden from me! It must have accumulated.... It's +terrible to think, Stephen, how much I must have tried her.... Oh! how +far away those Alps are now, Stephen! Like something in another life.... +And here we are!--among the consequences." + +"But,--you were saying we could stop the divorce." + +"Yes. We can. I can. But I wanted to see you,--before I did. Somehow I +don't feel lonely with you. I had to see you.... It's good to see you." + +She looked me in the face. Her tired eyes lit with a gleam of her former +humor. + +"Have you thought," she asked, "of all that will happen if there is a +divorce?" + +"I mean to fight every bit of it." + +"They'll beat you." + +"We'll see that." + +"But they will. And then?" + +"Why should one meet disaster half way?" + +"Stephen!" she said; "what will happen to you when I am not here to make +you look at things? Because I shan't be here. Not within reach of +you.... There are times when I feel like a mother to you. Never more +than now...." + +And then with rapid touches she began to picture the disaster before +me. She pictured the Court and our ineffectual denials, she made me +realize the storm of hostility that was bound to burst over us. "And +think of me," she said. "Stripped I shall be and outcast." + +"Not while I live!" + +"But what can you do for me? You will have Rachel. How can you stand by +me? You can't be cruel to Rachel. You know you can't be cruel to Rachel. +Look me in the face, Stephen; tell me. Yes.... Then how can you stand by +me?" + +"Somehow!" I cried foolishly and stopped. + +"They'll use me to break your back with costs and damages. There'll be +those children of yours to think of...." + +"My God!" I cried aloud. "Why do you torment me? Haven't I thought +enough of those things?... Haven't I seen the ruin and the shame, the +hopeless trap, men's trust in me gone, my work scattered and ended +again, my children growing up to hear this and that exaggeration of our +story. And you----. All the bravery of your life scattered and wasted. +The thing will pursue us all, cling to us. It will be all the rest of +our lives for us...." + +I covered my face with my hands. + +When I looked up, her face was white and still, and full of a strange +tenderness. "I wouldn't have you, Stephen--I wouldn't have you be cruel +to Rachel.... I just wanted to know--something.... But we're wandering. +We're talking nonsense. Because as I said, there need be no divorce. +There will be no divorce at all. That's what I came to tell you. I shall +have to pay--in a way, Stephen.... Not impossibly. Don't think it is +anything impossible...." + +Then she bit her lips and sat still.... + +"My dear," I whispered, "if we had taken one another at the +beginning...." + +But she went on with her own thoughts. + +"You love those little children of yours," she said. "And that trusting +girl-wife.... Of course you love them. They're yours. Oh! they're so +deeply--yours.... Yours...." + +"Oh my dear! don't torture me! I do love them. But I love you too." + +"No," she said, "not as you do them." + +I made a movement of protest. + +"No," she said, whitely radiant with a serenity I had never seen before +in her face. "You love me with your brain. With your soul if you like. I +_know_, my poor bleeding Stephen!--Aren't those tears there? Don't mind +my seeing them, Stephen.... Poor dear! Poor dear!.... You love _them_ +with your inmost heart. Why should you mind that I see you do?... All my +life I've been wrong, Stephen, and now I know too late. It's the things +we own we love, the things we buy with our lives.... Always I have been +hard, I've been a little hard.... Stephen, my dear, I loved you, always +I have loved you, and always I have tried to keep myself.... It's too +late.... I don't know why I am talking like this.... But you see I can +make a bargain now--it's not an impossible bargain--and save you and +save your wife and save your children----" + +"But how?" I said, still doubting. + +"Never mind how, Stephen. Don't ask me how now. Nothing very difficult. +Easy. But I shall write you no more letters--see you--no more. Never. +And that's why I had to come, you see, why I was able to come to you, +just to see you and say good-bye to you, and take leave of you, dear +Love that I threw away and loved too late...." + +She bit her lip and faced me there, a sweet flushed living thing, with a +tear coursing down her cheek, and her mouth now firm and steady. + +"You can stop this divorce?" I said, "But how, Mary?" + +"No, don't ask me how. At a price. It's a bargain. No, no! Don't think +that,--a bargain with Justin, but not degrading. Don't, my dear, let the +thought of it distress you. I have to give earnests.... Never, dear, +never through all the dusty rest of life again will you and I speak +together. Never! Even if we come face to face once more--no word...." + +"Mary," I said, "what is it you have to do? You speak as if---- What is +it Justin demands?" + +"No! do not ask me that.... Tell me--you see we've so much to talk +about, Stephen--tell me of all you are going to do. Everything. Because +I've got to make a great vow of renunciation--of you. Not to think +again--not even to think of you again.... No, no. I'm not even to look +for you in the papers any more. There's to be no tricks this time. And +so you see I want to fill up my mind with you. To store myself with you. +Tell me your work is worth it--that it's not like the work of everyone. +Tell me, Stephen--_that_. I want to believe that--tremendously. Don't be +modest now. That will be cruel. I want to believe that I am at last to +do something that is worth doing, something not fruitless...." + +"Are you to go into seclusion," I asked suddenly, "to be a nun----?" + +"It is something like that," she said; "very like that. But I have +promised--practically--not to tell you that. Tell me your soul, Stephen, +now. Give me something I may keep in my mind through--through all those +years of waiting...." + +"But where?" I cried. "What years of waiting?" + +"In a lonely place, my dear--among mountains. High and away. Very +beautiful, but lonely. A lake. Great rocks.... Yes,--like that place. So +odd.... I shall have so much time to think, and I shall have no +papers--no news. I mustn't talk to you of that. Don't let me talk to you +of that. I want to hear about this world, this world I am going to +leave, and how you think you are going on fighting in the hot and dusty +struggle--to make the world cool and kind and reasonable, to train minds +better, to broaden ideas ... all those things you believe in. All those +things you believe in and stick to--even when they are dull. Now I am +leaving it, I begin to see how fine it is--to fight as you want to +fight. A tiresome inglorious lifelong fight.... You really believe, +Stephen?" + + +Sec. 11 + +And then suddenly I read her purpose. + +"Mary," I cried, and stood up and laid my hand upon her arm, "Tell me +what is it you mean to do. What do you mean to do?" + +She looked up at me defensively and for a moment neither of us spoke. + +"Mary," I said, and could not say what was in my thoughts. + +"You are wrong," she lied at last.... + +She stood up too and faced me. I held her shoulder and looked into her +eyes. + +The gong of my little clock broke the silence. + +"I must go, Stephen," she said. "I did not see how the time was slipping +by." + +I began to entreat her and she to deny. "You don't understand," she +said, "you don't understand. Stephen!--I had hoped you would understand. +You see life,--not as I see it. I wanted--all sorts of splendid things +and you--begin to argue. You are shocked, you refuse to understand.... +No. No. Take your hands off me, Stephen dear, and let me go. Let me go!" + +"But," I said, stupid and persistent, "what are you going to do?" + +"I've told you. Stephen. I've told you. As much as I can tell you. And +you think--this foolish thing. As though I could do that! Stephen, if I +promise, will you let me go?..." + + +Sec. 12 + +My mind leaps from that to the moment in the afternoon, when torn by +intolerable distresses and anxiety I knocked and rang, and again knocked +at the door of the house she occupied in South Street, with the +intention of making one last appeal to her to live--if, indeed, it was +death she had in mind. I had let her go from me and instantly a hundred +neglected things had come into my head. I could go away with her, I +could threaten to die with her; it seemed to me that nothing in all the +world mattered if only I could thrust back the dark hand of death to +which she had so manifestly turned. I knew, I knew all along that her +extorted promise would not bind her. I knew and I let the faintest +shadow of uncertainty weaken and restrain me. And I went to her too +late. I saw instantly that I was too late when the door opened and +showed me the scared face of a young footman whose eyes were red with +tears. + +"Are you Doctor----?" he asked of my silence. + +"I want----" I said. "I must speak to Lady Mary." + +He was wordless for a moment. "She--she died, sir," he said. "She's died +suddenly." His face quivered, he was blubbering. He couldn't say +anything more; he stood snivelling in the doorway. + +For some moments I remained confronting him as if I would dispute his +words. Some things the mind contests in the face of invincible +conviction. One wants to thrust back time.... + + + + +CHAPTER THE TWELFTH + +THE ARRAIGNMENT OF JEALOUSY + + +Sec. 1 + +I sit here in this graciously proportioned little room which I shall +leave for ever next week, for already your mother begins to pack for +England again. I look out upon the neat French garden that I have +watched the summer round, and before me is the pile of manuscript that +has grown here, the story of my friendship and love for Mary and of its +tragic end, and of all the changes of my beliefs and purposes that have +arisen out of that. I had meant it to be the story of my life, but how +little of my life is in it! It gives, at most, certain acute points, +certain salient aspects. I begin to realize for the first time how thin +and suggestive and sketchy a thing any novel or biography must be. How +we must simplify! How little can we convey the fullness of life, the +glittering interests, the interweaving secondary aspects, the dawns and +dreams and double refractions of experience! Even Mary, of whom I have +labored to tell you, seems not so much expressed as hidden beneath these +corrected sheets. She who was so abundantly living, who could love like +a burst of sunshine and give herself as God gives the world, is she here +at all in this pile of industrious inexpert writing? + +Life is so much fuller than any book can be. All this story can be +read, I suppose, in a couple of hours or so, but I have been living and +reflecting upon and reconsidering the substance of it for over forty +years. I do not see how this book can give you any impression but that +of a career all strained upon the frame of one tragic relationship, yet +no life unless it is a very short young life can have that simplicity. +Of all the many things I have found beautiful and wonderful, Mary was +the most wonderful to me, she is in my existence like a sunlit lake seen +among mountains, of all the edges by which life has wrought me she was +the keenest. Nevertheless she was not all my life, nor the form of all +my life. For a time after her death I could endure nothing of my home, I +could not bear the presence of your mother or you, I hated the +possibility of consolation, I went away into Italy, and it was only by +an enormous effort that I could resume my interest in that scheme of +work to which my life is given. But it is manifest I still live, I live +and work and feel and share beauty.... + +It seems to me more and more as I live longer, that most poetry and most +literature and particularly the literature of the past is discordant +with the vastness and variety, the reserves and resources and +recuperations of life as we live it to-day. It is the expression of life +under cruder and more rigid conditions than ours, lived by people who +loved and hated more naively, aged sooner and died younger than we do. +Solitary persons and single events dominated them as they do not +dominate us. We range wider, last longer, and escape more and more from +intensity towards understanding. And already this astounding blow begins +to take its place among other events, as a thing strange and terrible +indeed, but related to all the strangeness and mystery of life, part of +the universal mysteries of despair and futility and death that have +troubled my consciousness since childhood. For a time the death of Mary +obscured her life for me, but now her living presence is more in my mind +again. I begin to see that it is the reality of her existence and not +the accidents of her end that matter most. It signifies less that she +should have flung out of life when it seemed that her living could only +have meant disaster to herself and to all she loved, than that all her +life should have been hampered and restricted. Through all her life this +brave and fine and beautiful being was for the most part of her +possibilities, wasted in a splendid setting, magnificently wasted if you +will, but wasted. + + +Sec. 2 + +It was that idea of waste that dominated my mind in a strange interview +I had with Justin. For it became necessary for me to see Justin in order +that we should stamp out the whispers against her that followed her +death. He had made it seem an accidental death due to an overdose of the +narcotic she employed, but he had not been able to obliterate altogether +the beginnings of his divorce proceedings. There had been talk on the +part of clerks and possible witnesses. But of all that I need not tell +you here; what matters is that Justin and I could meet without hatred or +violence. I met a Justin grey-haired and it seemed to me physically +shrunken, more than ever slow-speaking, with his habit of attentive +silences more marked and that dark scar spread beyond his brows. + +We had come to our parting, we had done our business with an +affectation of emotional aloofness, and then suddenly he gripped me by +the arm. "Stratton," he said, "we two---- We killed her. We tore her to +pieces between us...." + +I made no answer to this outbreak. + +"We tore her to pieces," he repeated. "It's so damned silly. One gets +angry--like an animal." + +I became grotesquely anxious to assure him that, indeed, she and I had +been, as they say, innocent throughout our last day together. "You were +wrong in all that," I said. "She kept her faith with you. We never +planned to meet and when we met----. If we had been brother and +sister----. Indeed there was nothing." + +"I suppose," he said, "I ought to be glad of that. But now it doesn't +seem to matter very much. We killed her.... What does that matter to me +now?" + + +Sec. 3 + +And it is upon this effect of sweet and beautiful possibilities, caught +in the net of animal jealousies and thoughtless motives and ancient +rigid institutions, that I would end this writing. In Mary, it seems to +me, I found both womanhood and fellowship, I found what many have dreamt +of, love and friendship freely given, and I could do nothing but clutch +at her to make her my possession. I would not permit her to live except +as a part of my life. I see her now and understand her better than when +she was alive, I recall things that she said and wrote and it is clear +to me, clearer perhaps than it ever was to her, that she, with her +resentment at being in any sense property, her self-reliant thought, her +independence of standard, was the very prototype of that sister-lover +who must replace the seductive and abject womanhood, owned, mastered and +deceiving, who waste the world to-day. And she was owned, she was +mastered, she was forced into concealment. What alternative was there +for her? What alternative is there for any woman? She might perhaps have +kept her freedom by some ill-paid work and at the price of every other +impulse in her swift and eager nature. She might have become one of +those poor neuters, an independent woman.... Life was made impossible +for her and she was forced to die, according to the fate of all untimely +things. She was destroyed, not merely by the unconsidered, undisciplined +passions of her husband and her lover, but by the vast tradition that +sustains and enforces the subjugation of her sex. What I had from her, +and what she was, is but a mere intimation of all that she and I might +have made of each other and the world. + +And perhaps in this story I have said enough for you to understand why +Mary has identified herself with something world-wide, has added to +herself a symbolical value, and why it is I find in the whole crowded +spectacle of mankind, a quality that is also hers, a sense of fine +things entangled and stifled and unable to free themselves from the +ancient limiting jealousies which law and custom embody. For I know that +a growing multitude of men and women outwear the ancient ways. The +blood-stained organized jealousies of religious intolerance, the +delusions of nationality and cult and race, that black hatred which +simple people and young people and common people cherish against all +that is not in the likeness of themselves, cease to be the undisputed +ruling forces of our collective life. We want to emancipate our lives +from this slavery and these stupidities, from dull hatreds and +suspicion. The ripening mind of our race tires of these boorish and +brutish and childish things. A spirit that is like hers, arises and +increases in human affairs, a spirit that demands freedom and gracious +living as our inheritance too long deferred, and I who loved her so +blindly and narrowly now love her spirit with a dawning understanding. + +I will not be content with that compromise of jealousies which is the +established life of humanity to-day. I give myself, and if I can I will +give you, to the destruction of jealousy and of the forms and shelters +and instruments of jealousy, both in my own self and in the thought and +laws and usage of the world. + + +THE END + + * * * * * + +Popular Copyright Novels + +AT MODERATE PRICES + +Ask your dealer for a complete list of A. L. Burt Company's Popular +Copyright Fiction + + +Abner Daniel _Will N. 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Southworth_ +Island of Regeneration, The _Cyrus Townsend Brady_ +Japonette _Robert W. Chambers_ +Jane Cable _George Barr McCutcheon_ +Jeanne of the Marshes _E. Phillips Oppenheim_ +Jennie Gerhardt _Theodore Dreiser_ +Joyful Heatherby _Payne Erskine_ +Judgment House, The _Sir Gilbert Parker_ + + * * * * * + +Popular Copyright Novels + +AT MODERATE PRICES + +Ask your dealer for a complete list of A. L. Burt Company's Popular +Copyright Fiction + + +Keith of the Border _Randall Parrish_ +Key to the Unknown, The _Rosa N. Carey_ +King Spruce _Holman Day_ +Knave of Diamonds, The _Ethel M. Dell_ +Lady and the Pirate, The _Emerson Hough_ +Lady Betty Across the Water _C. N. and A. M. Williamson_ +Land of Long Ago, The _Eliza Calvert Hall_ +Langford of the Three Bars _Kate and Virgil D. Boyles_ +Last Trail, The _Zane Grey_ +Last Voyage of the Donna Isabel, The _Randall Parrish_ +Leavenworth Case, The _Anna Katherine Green_ +Life Mask, The _Author of "To M. L. G."_ +Lighted Way, The _E. Phillips Oppenheim_ +Lin McLean _Owen Wister_ +Little Brown Jug at Kildare, The _Meredith Nicholson_ +Lonesome Land _B. M. Bower_ +Lord Loveland Discovers America _C. N. and A. M. Williamson_ +Lorimer of the Northwest _Harold Bindloss_ +Lorraine _Robert W. Chambers_ +Lost Ambassador, The _E. Phillips Oppenheim_ +Love Under Fire _Randall Parrish_ +Macaria (Illustrated Edition) _Augusta J. Evans_ +Maid at Arms, The _Robert W. Chambers_ +Maid of Old New York, A _Amelia E. Barr_ +Maids of Paradise, The _Robert W. Chambers_ +Maid of the Whispering Hills, The _Vingie E. Roe_ +Maid of the Forest, The _Randall Parrish_ +Making of Bobby Burnit, The _Geo. Randolph Chester_ +Mam' Linda _Will N. Harben_ +Marriage _H. G. Wells_ +Marriage a la Mode _Mrs. Humphrey Ward_ +Master Mummer, The _E. Phillips Oppenheim_ +Masters of the Wheatlands _Harold Bindloss_ +Max _Katherine Cecil Thurston_ +Mediator, The _Roy Norton_ +Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes _A. Conan Doyle_ +Missioner, The _E. Phillips Oppenheim_ +Miss Gibbie Gault _Kale Langley Bosher_ + + * * * * * + +Popular Copyright Novels + +AT MODERATE PRICES + +Ask your dealer for a complete list of A. L. Burt Company's Popular +Copyright Fiction + + +Miss Philura's Wedding Gown _Florence Morse Kingsley_ +Miss Selina Lue _Maria Thompson Daviess_ +Mollie's Prince _Rosa N. Carey_ +Molly McDonald _Randall Parrish_ +Money Moon, The _Jeffery Farnol_ +Motor Maid, The _C. N. and A. M. Williamson_ +Moth, The _William Dana Orcutt_ +Mountain Girl, The _Payne Erskine_ +Mr. Pratt _Joseph C. Lincoln_ +Mr. Pratt's Patients _Joseph C. Lincoln_ +Mrs. Red Pepper _Grace S. Richmond_ +My Friend the Chauffeur _C. N. and A. M. Williamson_ +My Lady Caprice _Jeffery Farnol_ +My Lady of Doubt _Randall Parrish_ +My Lady of the North _Randall Parrish_ +My Lady of the South _Randall Parrish_ +Mystery Tales _Edgar Allen Poe_ +Mystery of the Boule Cabinet, The _Burton E. Stevenson_ +Nancy Stair _Elinor Macartney Lane_ +Ne'er-Do-Well, The _Rex Beach_ +Net, The _Rex Beach_ +Night Riders, The _Ridgwell Cullum_ +No Friend Like a Sister _Rosa N. Carey_ +Officer 666 _Barton W. Currie and Augustin McHugh_ +Once Upon a Time _Richard Harding Davis_ +One Braver Thing _Richard Dehan_ +One Way Trail, The _Ridgwell Cullum_ +Orphan, The _Clarence E. Mulford_ +Out of the Primitive _Robert Ames Bennet_ +Pam _Bettina Von Hutten_ +Pam Decides _Bettina Von Hutten_ +Pardners _Rex Beach_ +Parrot & Co _Harold McGrath_ +Partners of the Tide _Joseph C. Lincoln_ +Passage Perilous, The _Rosa N. Carey_ +Passionate Friends, The _H. G. Wells_ +Paul Anthony, Christian _Hiram W. Hays_ +Peter Ruff _E. Phillips Oppenheim_ +Phillip Steele _James Oliver Curwood_ + + * * * * * + +Popular Copyright Novels + +AT MODERATE PRICES + +Ask your dealer for a complete list of A. L. Burt Company's Popular +Copyright Fiction + + +Phra the Phoenician _Edwin Lester Arnold_ +Pidgin Island _Harold MacGrath_ +Place of Honeymoons, The _Harold MacGrath_ +Pleasures and Palaces _Juliet Wilbor Tompkins_ +Plunderer, The _Roy Norton_ +Pole Baker _Will N. Harben_ +Pool of Flame, The _Louis Joseph Vance_ +Polly of the Circus _Margaret Mayo_ +Poppy _Cynthia Stockley_ +Port of Adventure, The _C. N. and A. M. Williamson_ +Postmaster, The _Joseph C. Lincoln_ +Power and the Glory, The _Grace McGowan Cooke_ +Price of the Prairie, The _Margaret Hill McCarter_ +Prince of Sinners, A _E. Phillips Oppenheim_ +Prince or Chauffeur _Lawrence Perry_ +Princess Passes, The _C. N. and A. M. Williamson_ +Princess Virginia, The _C. N. and A. M. Williamson_ +Prisoners of Chance _Randall Parrish_ +Prodigal Son, The _Hall Caine_ +Purple Parasol, The _George Barr McCutcheon_ +R. J.'s Mother _Margaret Deland_ +Ranching for Sylvia _Harold Bindloss_ +Reason Why, The _Elinor Glyn_ +Redemption of Kenneth Galt, The _Will N. Harben_ +Red Cross Girl, The _Richard Harding Davis_ +Red Lane, The _Holman Day_ +Red Pepper Burns _Grace S. Richmond_ +Red Republic, The _Robert W. Chambers_ +Refugees, The _A. Conan Doyle_ +Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary, The _Anne Warner_ +Rise of Roscoe Paine, The _Joseph C. Lincoln_ +Road to Providence, The _Maria Thompson Daviess_ +Robinetta _Kate Douglas Wiggin_ +Rose in the Ring, The _George Barr McCutcheon_ +Rose of the World _Agnes and Egerton Castle_ +Rose of Old Harpeth, The _Maria Thompson Daviess_ +Round the Corner in Gay Street _Grace S. Richmond_ +Routledge Rides Alone _Will Levington Comfort_ +Rue: With a Difference _Rosa N. Carey_ +St. Elmo (Illustrated Edition) _Augusta J. Evans_ +Seats of the Mighty, The _Gilbert Parker_ + + * * * * * + +Popular Copyright Novels + +AT MODERATE PRICES + +Ask your dealer for a complete list of A. L. Burt Company's Popular +Copyright Fiction + + +Second Violin, The _Grace S. Richmond_ +Self-Raised (Illustrated) _Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth_ +Septimus _William J. Locke_ +Set in Silver _C. N. and A. M. Williamson_ +Sharrow _Bettina Von Hutten_ +Shepherd of the Hills, The _Harold Bell Wright_ +Sheriff of Dyke Hole, The _Ridgwell Cullum_ +Ship's Company _W. W. Jacobs_ +Sidney Carteret, Rancher _Harold Bindloss_ +Sign at Six, The _Stewart Edward White_ +Silver Horde, The _Rex Beach_ +Simon the Jester _William J. Locke_ +Sir Nigel _A. Conan Doyle_ +Sir Richard Calmady _Lucas Malet_ +Sixty-First Second, The _Owen Johnson_ +Slim Princess, The _George Ade_ +Speckled Bird, A _Augusta Evans Wilson_ +Spirit in Prison, A _Robert Hichens_ +Spirit of the Border, The _Zane Grey_ +Spoilers, The _Rex Beach_ +Strawberry Acres _Grace S. Richmond_ +Strawberry Handkerchief, The _Amelia E. Barr_ +Streets of Ascalon, The _Robert W. Chambers_ +Sunnyside of the Hill, The _Rosa N. Carey_ +Sunset Trail, The _Alfred Henry Lewis_ +Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop _Anne Warner_ +Sword of the Old Frontier, A _Randall Parrish_ +Tales of Sherlock Holmes _A. Conan Doyle_ +Tarzan of the Apes _Edgar Rice Burroughs_ +Taste of Apples, The _Jennette Lee_ +Tennessee Shad, The _Owen Johnson_ +Tess of the D'Urbervilles _Thomas Hardy_ +Texican, The _Dane Coolidge_ +That Affair Next Door _Anna Katharine Green_ +That Printer of Udell's _Harold Bell Wright_ +Their Yesterdays _Harold Bell Wright_ +Throwback, The _Alfred Henry Lewis_ +Thurston of Orchard Valley _Harold Blindloss_ +To M. L. G.; Or, He Who Passed _Anonymous_ +To Him That Hath _Leroy Scott_ + + * * * * * + +Popular Copyright Novels + +AT MODERATE PRICES + +Ask your dealer for a complete list of A. L. Burt Company's Popular +Copyright Fiction + + +Torn Sails _Allen Raine_ +Trail of the Axe, The _Ridgwell Cullum_ +Trail to Yesterday, The _Charles Alden Seltzer_ +Treasure of Heaven, The _Marie Corelli_ +Truth Dexter _Sidney McCall_ +T. Tembarom _Frances Hodgson Burnett_ +Turnstile, The _A. E. W. Mason_ +Two-Gun Man, The _Charles Alden Seltzer_ +Uncle William _Jeanette Lee_ +Under the Red Robe _Stanley J. Weyman_ +Up From Slavery _Booker T. Washington_ +Valiants of Virginia, The _Hallie Erminie Rives_ +Vanity Box, The _C. N. Williamson_ +Vane of the Timberlands _Harold Blindloss_ +Varmint, The _Owen Johnson_ +Vashti _Augusta Evans Wilson_ +Wall of Men, A _Margaret Hill McCarter_ +Watchers of the Plains, The _Ridgwell Cullum_ +Way Home, The _Basil King_ +Way of An Eagle, The _E. M. Dell_ +Weavers, The _Gilbert Parker_ +West Wind, The _Cyrus Townsend Brady_ +Wheel of Life, The _Ellen Glasgow_ +When Wilderness Was King _Randall Parrish_ +Where the Trail Divides _Will Lillibridge_ +Where There's A Will _Mary Roberts Rinehart_ +White Sister, The _Marion Crawford_ +Wind Before the Dawn, The _Dell H. Munger_ +Window at the White Cat, The _Mary Roberts Rinehart_ +Winning of Barbara Worth, The _Harold Bell Wright_ +With Juliet in England _Grace S. Richmond_ +With the Best Intentions _Bruno Lessing_ +Woman in the Alcove, The _Anna Katharine Green_ +Woman Haters, The _Joseph C. Lincoln_ +Woodcarver of 'Lympus, The _Mary E. Waller_ +Woodfire in No. 3, The _F. Hopkinson Smith_ +Wrecker, The _Robert Louis Stevenson_ +Younger Set, The _Robert W. Chambers_ +You Never Know Your Luck _Gilbert Parker_ + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Passionate Friends, by Herbert George Wells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS *** + +***** This file should be named 30340.txt or 30340.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/0/3/4/30340/ + +Produced by Carl Hudkins, Martin Pettit and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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