At the same time, in his attic, Rodd was pacing up and down his empty
room, surveying the impotence to which he had reduced both his life and
his work by his refusal to accept the social system of his time. His
work was consciously subversive, and therefore unprofitable: his life
was nothing. He was a solitary in London, as though he spoke a
language which no one understood. So indeed he did. His words had
meanings for him to which no one else had the smallest clue, for they
referred rather to his imagined world than to any actuality.
Hitherto that had troubled him not at all. Spinoza, Kant, Galileo had
all talked a language unintelligible to their contemporaries, and with
how many had Nietzsche been able to converse? The stories had it that
there was one butcher and he was mad.
Groping with his imagination into the vitals of the society into which
he had been born, Rodd had consoled himself with the assurance that a
cataclysm would come to smash the odious system by which the old
enslaved the young, and that then there would be a cleaner atmosphere
in which his ideas could live, and his words would be intelligible to
all, because in it that deeper consciousness which was released in his
imagined world would come into play to sweep away all falsehoods and
stale ideas.... But now the cataclysm had come within himself, and he
was brought to doubt and self-examination. Had he not denied too much?
Had he not carried abnegation too far? Had he not thwarted powers in
himself which were essential even to his impersonal purpose? Was it
paradoxically true that a man must be a person before he can be
impersonal? His empty room, his books, his pile of manuscript! What a
life! Had he after all been only a coward? Had he only shrunk into
this silence to avoid the pain and boredom of reiteration?
At first his concern was all with the havoc wrought in his work from
the moment when Clara swept into his imagination, but he was soon
compelled to brush that aside and to grapple with the more serious fact
that she had crept into his heart, which for the first time was active
and demanding its share in his being. Then arose the horror that it
was repelled by what it found in his imagination, cold, solitary,
tortured souls, creatures who should be left to eke out their misery in
private solitude, who had nothing to justify their exhibition to the
world, who shamelessly reproached their fellows for the results of
their own weakness, wretched clinging women, men hard as iron in their
egoism.... His heart could not endure it, but until his heart had
flooded his vision with its warmth he could not move, could come to no
decision, except that he must leave the marvellous girl unmolested.
The furious will that had animated him through all his solitary years
resented this intrusion, and was in revolt against the reason and the
logic of his heart. That will in him had reduced the social system to
its logical end, the destruction of the young by the old, and would
allow his creative faculty no other material. It must have nothing but
a bleak world of bitterness, and this it had imposed upon both his
happy temperament and his generous heart, so that even in life he had
been able to exercise nothing but a rather feeble kindness. His will
had been to hold up to the world a picture of the end to which it must
come, since splendour wrung from desolation must end in desolation.
And suddenly his will was defied by this amazing girl, all youth, all
joy, revealing the eternal loveliness of the human spirit that endures
though Empires fade away and societies come to chaos.
Very, very slowly, his will, which drew its force from the hypnotic
influence of horror, was thrust back, and light crept into his imagined
world, flowers blossomed in it, trees swayed in the wind, larks went
soaring above green hills blazing with yellow gorse, birds hopped to
their nests and sang, dogs barked and gambolled with delight--all his
frozen memories slowly melted, and sweet and simple pleasures came to
view to make a setting meet for Clara Day. And he remembered simple
people with a steady kindness, people like the little bookseller who
knew their world but believed in its redeeming goodness, people like a
woman who had once nursed him through a terrible illness and had never
ceased to pray for him, families where in his lonely youth in London he
had been welcome--all these he remembered and grouped round Clara to
make a better and a simpler world.
When his agony had run its course, and his old hypnotic will was
broken, he told himself that he must be content that Clara should be
the mistress of his imagination, since he had wrecked his own life and
had nothing to offer her. Obviously she had found the world good.
Nothing in her was theatrical, nothing baffled. He must reconcile
himself to the acceptance of those two days with her as in themselves
perfect, sufficient, and fruitful. Indeed, what need was there of
more? They had met as profoundly as they could ever hope to meet. She
would marry her lord, and gather about herself all the good and
pleasant things of the earth, and he could return to his work and build
it up anew.
With his rather absurd tendency to generalise from his personal
experience he told himself that as youth and joy had been liberated
from his imagined world, so also would they be in the world of
actuality. His drooping hopes revived and a new ambition was kindled
in him. He paced less rapidly to and fro in his empty room, slowed
down day by day until he stopped, sat at his table and plunged once
more into work. His arrogance reasserted itself, and he told
himself--as was indeed the case--that he could extract more from a hint
of experience than the ordinary man could from an overwhelming tragedy.
As he worked, he came more and more to regard his encounter with Clara
as a holiday adventure. The Charing Cross Road was to him what Paris
or the seaside was to the ordinary worker. The episode belonged to his
holiday. It was nothing more, and must be treated as though it had
happened to some other man: it must be smiled at, treasured for its
fragrance, blessed for its fertility.... With the new weapon it had
given him he would return to tobacco and paper, the materials of his
existence.
He saw her name in the papers, her photograph here and there. Oh,
well, she belonged to that world. No doubt she would amuse herself
with theatrical success before she fell back upon the title and wealth
which were laid at her feet.
However, convinced though he was of his renunciation, he could not stay
away from the bookshop and went there almost every day in the hope of
meeting her.
One evening as he returned home he met Verschoyle on the doorstep of
his house, and could not refrain from speaking to him.
'Excuse me,' he said, 'I have seen you sometimes in the bookshop in
Charing Cross Road.'
'Indeed?' replied Verschoyle, who was looking anxious and worried.
'Yes. I have seen you there with Miss Day.'
Verschoyle was alert and suspicious at once. He scanned this strange
individual but was rather puzzled.
'Do you live here?' he asked.
'On the top floor,' replied Rodd, 'on the top floor--alone--I thought
you might have been to see me.'
'No, no. I don't know you.'
'My name is Rodd.'
That conveyed nothing to Verschoyle.
'I had the pleasure of meeting Miss Day at the bookshop. I thought she
might have mentioned it.'
'No.... I have been to see a Miss Messenger on the third floor. Do
you know her?'
'Slightly.'
'You know nothing about her?'
'Nothing, except that she had a child that died.... I'm afraid I
didn't even know her name. I don't bother myself much about my
neighbours.'
'Thank you,' said Verschoyle. 'Good-night.'
Rodd let himself in, his curiosity working furiously at this strange
combination of persons. What on earth could be the link between
Verschoyle and the shabby, disreputable menage on the third floor?...
His heart answered ominously: 'Clara.'
He walked slowly up the dark, uncarpeted stairs, and, as he was at the
bend below the third floor, he heard a shrill scream--a horrid scream,
full of terror, loathing, contempt. He rushed up to the door of the
third floor flat and found it open, stood for a moment, and heard a
man's voice saying,--
'You shall, you sly cat. Give it me and you shall do as I tell you.'
'No, no, no!' screamed the woman. 'Mother!'