1
To-day the familiar handwriting brought no relief. This letter must be
the final explanation. She opened it, standing by the hall table. "Dear
Miss Henderson--you are very persistent." She folded the letter up and
walked rapidly out into the sunshine. The way down to the Euston Road
was very long and sunlit. It was radiant with all the months and weeks
and days. She thought of going on with the unread letter and carrying it
into the surgery, tearing it up into the waste paper basket and saying I
have not read this. It is all right. We will not talk any more. One
thing would have gone. But there would be a tremendous cheerfulness and
independence and the memory of the things in the other letters. The
letter once read two things would have gone, everything. She paused at
the corner of the gardens looking down at the pavement. There was in
some way that would not come quite clear so much more at stake than
personal feelings about the insulting moment. It was something that
stuck into everything, made everything intolerable until it was admitted
and cancelled. As long as he went on hedging and pretending it was not
there there could be no truth anywhere. It was something that must go
out of the world, no matter what it cost. It would be smiling and
cattish and behaving to drop it. Explained, it would be wiped away, and
everything else with it. To accept his assertions would be to admit lack
of insight. That would be treachery. The continued spontaneity of manner
which it would ensure would be the false spontaneity that sat everywhere
... all over that woman getting into the 'bus; brisk cheerful falsity.
She glanced through to the end of the letter ... "foolish gossip which
might end by making your position untenable." _Idiot._ Charming
chivalrous gentleman.
* * * * *
I want to have it both ways. To keep the consideration and flout the
necessity for it. No one shall dare to protect me from gossip. To prove
myself independent and truth-demanding I would break up anything. That's
damned folly. Never mind. Why didn't he admit it at once? He hated being
questioned and challenged. He may have thought that manner was "the
kindest way." It is not for him to choose ways of treating me. This
cancels the past. But it admits it. Not to admit the past would be to go
on for ever in a false position. He still hides. But he knows that I
know he is hiding. Where we have been we have been. It may have been
through a false estimate of me to begin with. That does not matter.
Where we have been we have been. That is not imagination. One day he
will know it is not imagination. There is something that is making me
very glad. A painful relief. Something forcing me back upon something.
There is something that I have smashed, for some reason I do not know.
It's something in my temper, that flares out about things. Life allows
no chance of getting at the bottom of things....
2
I have nothing now but my pained self again, having violently rushed at
things and torn them to bits. It's all my fault from the very beginning.
But I stand for something. I would dash my head against a wall rather
than deny it. I make people hate me by _knowing_ them and dashing my
head against the wall of their behaviour. I should never make a good
chess-player. Is God a chess-player? I shan't leave until I have proved
that no one can put me in a false position. There is something that is
untouched by positions....
* * * * *
I did not know what I had.... Friendship is fine fine porcelain. I have
sent a crack right through it....
Mrs. Bailey ... numbers of people I never think of would like to have me
always there....
The sky fitting down on the irregular brown vista bore an untouched
life.... There were always mornings; at work. I am free to work
zealously and generously with and for him.
At _least_ I have broken up his confounded complacency.
He will be embarrassed. _I_ shan't.