'You have knocked me out. I never thought any one would do that. I
never thought I should meet any one as strong as myself.... Love's a
terrible thing. The impact of two personalities. It breaks everything
else, leaves no room for anything else.'
'I hoped it would make you happy,' said Clara, accepting as entirely
natural that they should sweep aside everything that stood between them
and their desire to be together and to share thoughts, emotions, all
the deep qualities in them that could be revealed to no one else. She
could no more deny him than she could deny the sun rising in the
morning, and for the moment she was content to forget every other
element in her life.... It was so inevitably right that, having met in
the heart of London, they should turn their backs on it and put
themselves to the test of earth, sunshine, blue sky, and trees in their
summer green, and water smiling in the sun. The furious energy in
their hearts made the hot August day, the suburban scene, and the
indolent suburban people seem toy-like and unreal, as though they were
looking down upon it from another world, and so they were, for they had
plunged to the very beginnings of Creation, and their new world was in
the making. So great is the power of love that, extracting all the
truth from the world as men have made it, it sweeps the rest away and
begins again, discarding, destroying, but most tenderly preserving all
that is vital and of worth. Love takes its chosen two, and weaves a
spell about them, to preserve them from the fretting contact of the
world, that they may have the power to withstand the agony of creation
which sweeps through them, and never rests until they are forged into
one soul, one world, or parted, broken and cast down.
Of these two it was Rodd who suffered most. The fierce will that had
maintained him in his long labours for the art he worshipped would not
yield. He wanted both, his work and this sudden, surprising girl who
had walked into his life, and he wanted both upon his own terms. At
the same time the conflict set up in him made him only the more
sensitive to beauty and to the simple delights of the gardens and
fields through which they passed.... This was new for him. He had
enjoyed such things before only with a remote aesthetic detachment.
This, too, he was loath to renounce, but the swift joy in the girl was
too strong for him. To such beauty the sternest will must bend. No
bird's song, no sudden light upon a cloud, no trembling flower in its
ecstacy, no tree in full burst of blossom could tell of so high a
beauty as this joy that flashed from the very depths of her soul into
her eyes, upon her lips, softening her throat, liquefying her every
movement, and into her voice bringing such music as no poet has ever
sung, no musician's brain conceived, music sent from regions deeper
than the human soul can know to go soaring far beyond the limits set to
human perception.
Rodd was dazed and dizzy with it, and longed every now and then to
touch her, to hold her, to make sure that in the swiftness of her joy
she would not fly away.... He talked gravely and solemnly, with an
intent concentration, about the persons in his life who compared so
sorrily with her. He was obviously composing them into a drama, which,
however, he dared not carry to any conclusion. That there could ever
be such another day as this was beyond his hopes, that he could ever
return to what he was beggared his endurance....
'A queer thing happened to me the other day,' he said. 'I live among
strange people, hangers-on of the theatre and the newspaper press.
There is a woman----'
Clara caught her breath and looked tigerish. He did not notice the
change and went on.
'There is a woman. She lives immediately below me. She has two
children and God knows how she lives. She used to wait for me on the
stairs in the evening to watch me go up. But I never spoke to her----'
Clara smiled happily.
'She used to do me little services. She would darn my socks, and
sometimes cook me some dainty and lay it outside my door. This went on
for months, I never spoke to her, because she has a terrible mother who
lives with her.... A week or two ago, she met me as I came upstairs in
the evening, and told me one of her children was ill, and asked me to
go for the doctor.... I did so, and she looked so exhausted that I
went in and helped her. The mother was no use at all; a fat, lazy
beast of a woman who drinks, swears, eats, and sleeps.... We wrestled
with death for the life of the child, but we were beaten.... It died.
She waits for me now, and tries to talk to me, but I will not do it.
She is frenzied in her attentions. She wants sympathy. She has it,
but wants more than that. A word from me, and I should never be able
to shake her off. She would cling to me, and because she clung she
would believe that she loved me, but she would have nothing but my
weakness.... It has happened before. They seem to find some bitter
triumph in a man's weakness.'
The humility of his confession touched Clara deeply. It was the
humility of the man's feeling, in contrast with his ferocious,
intellectual arrogance, that moved her to a compassion which steadied
her in her swift joy. His story revealed his life to her so vividly
that she felt that without more she knew him through and through.
Everything else was detail with which she had no particular concern.
They walked along in silence for some time, he brooding, she smiling
happily, and she pictured the two sides of his life, the rich and
powerful imaginative activity, and the simple tenderness of his
solitude.
It seemed to be her turn to confess, but she could not. The day's
perfection would be marred for them, and that she would not have. He
would understand. Yes, he would understand, but men have illusions
which are very dear to them. She must protect them, and let him keep
them until the dear reality made it necessary for him to discard them.
At Hampstead they came on a holiday throng and mingled with them, glad
once again to be in contact with simple people taking the pleasures for
which they lived. There were swing-boats, merry-go-rounds, cocoa-nut
shies, penny-in-the-slot machines.... The proprietor of the
merry-go-round was rather like Sir Henry Butcher in appearance, and
Clara realised with a start that the Imperium and this gaily painted
machine were both parts of the same trade. The people paid their
twopence or their half-guineas and were given a certain excitement, a
share in a game, a pleasure which without effort on their part broke
the monotony of existence.... Of the two on this August day she
preferred the merry-go-round. It was in the open air, and it was
simple and unpretentious; and it was surely better that the people
should be amused with wooden horses than with human beings as
mechanical and as miserably driven by machinery.... She was annoyed
with Rodd because he was exasperated by the silly giggling of the
servant-girls and the raffish capers of the young man.
'I hate the pleasures of the people,' he said. 'They give the measure
of the quality of their work--lazy, slovenly, monotonous repetition,
producing nothing splendid but machines, wonderful engines, marvellous
ships, miraculous motor-cars, but dull, listless, sodden people--inert.
It is the inertia of London that is so appalling.'
Clara made him take her on the wooden horses, and they went round three
times. He admitted reluctantly that he had enjoyed it.
'But only because you did.'
To try him still further she made him have tea in the yard of an inn,
at a long table with a number of East Enders, whole families, courting
couples, and young men and maidens who had selected each other out of
the crowd. They stared at the remarkable pair, the elegant young woman
and the moody, handsome man, but they made no impertinent comment
except that when they left a girl shrieked,--
'My! look at her shoes.'