1
HE told her that night; they talked till dawn. She did understand; and
so, it seemed to him, did he—for the first time. Everything became
simple and clear again—a final proof, if the doubting mind required such
proof, that candour was a medicine for all the ills of love.
Things like this—emotional upsets—occurred in all marriages; the trouble
was that the disturbed emotions were left to fester in secret. Talking
with Rose-Ann had put the incident in its true light. Yes—of course he
and Phyllis loved each other; that was not strange. There was an element
of love in every friendship between man and woman; and that it should be
here in this friendship of his and Phyllis’s was right and natural. It
was not a thing to be afraid of, to run away from—it was something
rather to be glad about. It had been there between them all this while,
enriching their two lives, his and Phyllis’s, making their friendship
one full of tenderness and understanding; it had done them no harm,
certainly! Civilization meant the possibility of such friendships,
instead of a timid restricting of the emotions to a single person. The
world was full of men and women friends who were in this sense lovers;
only they did not usually confess it to each other. Sometimes they were
afraid to let each other know the truth; sometimes afraid to face the
truth themselves. But was there anything terrible in such a truth?
Phyllis and he had faced it, that was all. They had spoken out what was
usually left unspoken. And why should that change their lives?
It was the fault of Romance, that suave peddler of spiritual poisons;
and of Puritanism, that maniacal purveyor of chains and padlocks—it was
the fault of these two that the situation should ever for a moment have
seemed alarming. Over the scene, as he and Phyllis had stood together
telling each other a secret that any one else in the world could have
read at a glance, there had brooded these two antique and ridiculous
fantasms—Romance and Puritanism. Romance had whispered to them: “This is
a moment such as comes only once in a lifetime—a moment beautiful and
tragic! You were born for this! You cannot escape! You are Paris and
Helen, Antony and Cleopatra, Lancelot and Guenevere, Tristram and
Iseult! You are the hero and heroine of all myths, all dreams! Your love
is doomed and beautiful! Some death will run its sudden finger round
this spark and sever you from the rest.... Kiss now, and die!” And on
the other side that gibbering lunatic Puritanism had cried out: “No! no!
Put on these chains. Blindfold your eyes so that you cannot see beauty,
stop up your ears against all sweet voices! Tie your hands together lest
they touch what is not yours, and put a chain upon your feet lest they
stray from the accustomed path. Padlock your lips, lest they say what is
in your heart, and seal up your heart so that no tenderness, no generous
faith, no natural affection may escape! Be blind and deaf and dumb,
become as one dead, for only in this is safety!” And between these two
fantastic ghosts they had stood and trembled, finding it hard to
discover of themselves the obvious and simple thing to do, but reading
it at last in each other’s eyes—to go on being in love with each other
and behave exactly as before!
So it seemed to Felix as he lay and talked with Rose-Ann till dawn....
He felt that he was something of a simpleton, but that life itself was
easy enough to live if one could only learn to deal with it directly and
see it as it was.
2
It was strange that after that beautiful discovery Felix should have
waked to a sense of dull unhappiness, of loss, of grief.... He tried to
conceal these feelings from Rose-Ann. It was as if he had not been
sincere in giving up the possibility of happiness with Phyllis—that
possibility which had seemed to exist so long as he left his secret
untold, but which he had killed with his confession. Was it so simple a
matter, after all? He sometimes suspected that he would be content with
nothing less than the impossible....
The first afternoon that he had not had to work at the office, an
afternoon when ordinarily he would have gone to his work-room, and met
Phyllis there when she came home from her work, and stopped writing to
talk with her—that afternoon he stayed in his studio. And he asked
himself—was it because he did not believe that things were as he and
Rose-Ann had told each other? Was it because he would feel conscious of
a chain of duty, and preferred to wear it, if at all, here at home? Yes,
what was the use of being hypocritical about the situation? Why pretend
that love was so docile, so manageable and good-natured, so tame a
beast? It was a creature of the jungle—or was it, really? Perhaps the
reason he did not trust himself with Phyllis was that he feared to
discover that they were merely good friends after all!
He stayed at home and was restless and discontented. If he could really
believe—his incorrigible utopianism demanded that—in his freedom, he
could be content. He loved Rose-Ann. But why this sham, this lie—that he
could love Phyllis, too, and no harm done? Of course he wanted
Phyllis—and was willing to give her up, if it were understood that that
was what he was doing. But it was intolerable, this pretence that he
could do as he pleased. Could he? Yes, suppose it had pleased him to
say—
Rose-Ann interrupted his thoughts, the fifth evening. She was sitting at
her desk, and Felix at his. Suddenly she rose.
“Felix,” she said. Her voice had a ring of painful resolution in it. He
turned, with a feeling of fear. She stood leaning back against her desk,
resting her hands on it.
“Felix! I have made up my mind.... Don’t talk, I want to say what I have
to say.... I’m not mistaken this time. I’ve seen you. You’re unhappy....
I know you don’t believe I meant what I said—that you could have your
freedom. But it’s true.... You love Phyllis. Don’t you?”
It was a challenge. This thing had to be settled now. Did he love
Phyllis? The devil only knew. But for the purposes of this damned
argument—
“Yes!” he said defiantly. “I do!”
His mind went back to the time when they had innocently rehearsed this
scene in farce.... Now it was happening in deadly earnest. Yes—in deadly
earnest.
“The thing I can’t stand,” he said, between clenched teeth, “is hearing
you say such things and not believing you mean them....”
“You can believe me, Felix.... I want you to be happy, more than
anything else in the world. I don’t care.... You’ve been wanting her all
week. Go to her.... And—don’t worry about me, Felix. Everything will
come out all right.”
They stared solemnly at each other, trying to realize what was
happening—bracing themselves to meet a moment which they had lightly
envisaged in theory, in discussion, but which in reality had an air of
terribleness about it. That conversation should have taken place against
a background of thunders and lightnings. It was as if with these words
they had pushed aside the dear, familiar walls of everyday reality, and
were face to face with naked, elemental forces—as if they were suddenly
alone and helpless in the midst of a huge, impersonal, indifferent and
awful universe.
3
“Go to her,” Rose-Ann repeated softly; and with the feeling of one
strangely doomed, one who rested under the burden of a frightful duty
not to be flinched from, Felix went quietly out of the studio.
He could still see Rose-Ann’s eyes in his imagination: those eyes, not
tearful now, but grave and brooding, full of courage.... Yes, at last he
believed her.
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