A certain grave, curt manner and lengthening of face had always been
half unconsciously displayed by Nicholas when perturbed or out of
temper.
Lily, latterly sharply critical, had interpreted such signs into a
desire to be questioned. She half expected to see them now, and at the
anticipation a most inappropriately trivial irritation possessed her.
Instead, Nicholas faced her with pitiful, tired eyes and a haggard face.
"Do you know, Lily, or have I got to tell you?" he asked her instantly.
And, also instantly, she replied:
"I know already."
"Thank God for that. I thought perhaps you did, when I got your
telegram asking me to come."
"Should you have told me?"
"Yes. I couldn't have met you again and not told you. It was only a
question of when." He looked at her piteously. "But, Lily, are you sure
you understand? How do you know--what is it you've heard?"
"Kenneth saw her--Doris--let herself into the house, and he saw you at
one of the windows. He told me almost by chance--without understanding.
Father was there. But it wasn't so much what he said--that didn't
amount to much. It was just that I knew it was true--I wasn't exactly
surprised."
"But it all happened within the last week. Darling, I've been a hound,
and God knows how I hate myself, but I've not been deceiving you. It's
over, already--was over before your telegram ever reached me."
"It was a sort of passing madness, I suppose," Lily said, using the
words that she had used to Philip.
Nicholas seized upon them eagerly.
"That's exactly what it was. And look here, Lily--at the cost of
sounding like a cad, I'm going to tell you straight; it hasn't hurt
Doris. You're not to think of her as a girl that I've betrayed. I've
been a brute--but it's to you, not to her. Doris is--well, I wasn't the
first--not by a long way."
"I didn't know--I didn't like her--but I didn't think she was that
sort."
Nicholas shrugged his shoulders.
"Then you aren't in love with her?"
"Good God, no!"
He came and knelt beside her.
"Lily, it's you I love, my darling, my little wife. I don't know if
a woman can understand how these things happen.... We haven't been
happy together lately and I was lonely and down on my luck. I met her
by chance, and she asked me to take her to tea somewhere, and she's
attractive, you know, in her way. I took her to a theatre the same
night--but I swear to you that I never thought of anything but having a
cheery evening at a deadly dull time of year in London. But then--well,
then I suppose I saw that she was for it, and I lost my head. I drove
her home in a taxi, and when we got to her place she--she didn't want
to get out. She said she'd see me to the Club, instead--I suppose I
knew what she was up to, then. She's living at some Mansions or other,
and she knew our place was more or less shut up. Anyway, we went there,
and not to the Club. The old woman had left the drinks and things out,
as she did every night before going off home, and the house was empty.
It seemed safe enough, from the point of view of discovery. Heaven
knows how she got the latch-key--I suppose she took it. She telephoned
me next day at the Club that she was coming to bring it back to me--she
hadn't the wit to know that I hated her like hell by that time and
never wanted to go near her again. Though it was myself I ought to have
hated--and did, too. Well, I thought if she was bent on coming, I'd let
her come, and show her that it was all over, and that I knew I'd been
a cad. I never thought of the little fool letting herself in like that
with the wretched key--though I'd have laid a thousand to one against
the chance of anyone spotting her who knew either of us. It was the
most extraordinary chance----"
"You didn't see Kenneth?"
"No."
"What made you ask if I knew?"
"I'd a sort of feeling you must know. In fact, I rather felt as if
everybody must know--sort of branded. I couldn't write to you, or do
anything. I knew I should have to tell you. Lily, do you think you can
ever forgive me?"
"Oh, yes," said Lily, surprised.
"You angel! You little saint!" With an exuberant gesture he put his arm
round her, and she made an instinctive movement of recoil.
"But Nicholas, wait. I never thought of forgiving or not forgiving,
because I don't feel angry, but you know, we--we could----"
He stared at her incredulously.
"Father said that I could divorce you, and I suppose it's true. It
could be arranged somehow."
"Your father! But this is a matter that concerns only our two selves.
Besides, Lily, you don't know what you're saying. Divorce is not a
thing to be spoken of like that--lightly. It's a frightful thing to
think of."
For a moment the old inclination to accept the values of another beset
her. Then she spoke steadily.
"Divorce would set us free to begin again. You've given me adequate
grounds, Nicholas, after all. Tell me honestly--would a divorce,
undefended--I suppose you wouldn't defend the case?--would it hurt your
career?"
Nicholas stood up again and looked down at her very grimly.
"It would do you quite as much harm as it would me, my dear. A woman
who's been through the Divorce Court, even if she's perfectly innocent,
is looked upon askance by many people. But I don't believe you know
what you're talking about. It's an insane suggestion. It could be done,
no doubt with a certain amount of collusion, but you've no idea of all
that it would entail."
"Perhaps," Lily said slowly, "perhaps, Nicholas, I think that it would
be worth while, if it would give us both a chance of beginning again."
Nicholas looked at her with eyes that, from incredulous, became slowly
agonized.
"We can," he said, "I suppose it would be possible. But I--I thought
you loved me."
Quite suddenly, he was crying like a child that is forced to realize
the infliction of some bitter, almost incredible disappointment.
"Don't you care for me at all, Lily? Has it made you hate me? Don't
you realize that I was mad and wicked and a fool; but it was you I
cared for, all the time? I thought you understood."
"Nicholas!"
She was touched by him as she had never been before. "Don't--don't! I
do understand, I think."
"You were away--and things between us haven't been very happy lately.
I don't want to make excuses, Lily, but can't you see a little how it
happened?"
"Yes. Oh, Nicholas, the way these things happen--the way everything
happens--always out of something else----"
She stopped, unable to express the fullness of her crowding thoughts.
"This--in itself," she said at last timidly, "is only an episode.
But all the things that have been leading up to it, Nicholas--the
disappointment I've been to you----"
"Never, my darling."
Confronted by his loyally-meant denial of fact, Lily felt helpless.
"Nicholas," she said at last. "If I spoke just now of a desperate
remedy, it's because I've been feeling desperate. I really mean it,
quite literally. It's not just a word."
His mouth twitched a little.
"My dearest child, you've only known that there was anything to
be desperate _about_ for the last twenty-four hours. Heaven knows
I don't want to minimize the unspeakable thing I've done, but
still--desperation--when you say yourself that it's an episode,
merely----"
"You don't understand, Nicholas. I've been in despair for longer than
I can tell you. This affair is nothing--a sin of the body. If it's a
wrong done to me, and I suppose in a way it is--then I forgive you--of
course I do. Honestly, it doesn't seem to me to matter much--and as
you said just now, I'd left you alone, and we hadn't been of much use
to one another. I think it was partly my fault, that it happened at
all."
"My darling child, you can talk generously and frankly like that, and
yet you speak of divorce!"
There was the impatience in his voice that had so often led her hastily
to disavow her own views.
"Don't you see how utterly illogical you're being?"
She shook her head.
"You haven't understood. You think I just used the word divorce as a
sort of threat, to show that I knew what a serious wrong you'd done
me--that I didn't mean it, or didn't understand what such a step really
means. But Nicholas, I'll be honest with you--at last, I'll be honest.
I've thought of divorce before--I've thought of death--of running
away--of _anything_ that would enable us to begin again. This thing
that's happened may provide the means."
"But then you've hated me?"
His voice held utter bewilderment and incredulity.
"No!" cried Lily passionately.
She found that she was crying.
"I don't hate you, Nicholas. How could I? I'm fond of you, that's
just it. I ought never to have married you--it wasn't fair. But oh,
Nicholas, I _am_ fond of you!"
The hard lucidity of utterance with which she had confronted him a
moment earlier had deserted her. She was crying uncontrollably.
"Whichever way we turn, it all seems hopeless. I can't help making
you unhappy--I _am_ fond of you, Nicholas; oh, Nicholas--can't you
understand?"
They clung together, and both were weeping.
"Forgive me, my poor darling," he reiterated helplessly.
"No, no--it's for you to forgive me, Nicholas. This thing--this little
thing that's happened between you and Doris--it's nothing, I don't care
what anybody says--it's not a real thing, and it doesn't matter. It's
only pretence if I say it does."
"Lily, don't leave me. I can't do without you. Forgive me! Don't--don't
fail me!"
Her pity and affection tore at her. She wanted to cry to him that she
would never fail him, that no forgiveness was needed between them,
that they would begin life together again. The impulse of reckless
generosity rose to blot out the relentless unalterability of truth.
Every carefully inculcated falsity of upbringing strove against her,
every easy sentimentality sought to stifle sincerity of thought.
"Let me wait--don't make me say anything now," she besought him. "I
ought to think--I want to think, before we settle anything. Give me
time, Nicholas."
He was obviously puzzled and she knew that he thought her forgiveness
of him to be still in the balance.
"But you'll tell me soon, Lily?" he said wistfully. "Of course you have
a right morally to claim this--this terrible penalty, and I would make
it as easy as I could for you, dear--you know I'd do that. But you
won't--you couldn't. Talk to your father, darling. He'll help you."
But Lily talked to no one.
She had taken advice once before. This time, she sought to confront her
own issues alone.
Freedom. This might mean freedom.
She had longed, with the frantic desire of hopelessness, to begin
again. And Nicholas himself had provided her with a door of escape. A
legitimate exit.
Her thoughts roamed free and disconnected.
Freedom to begin again! Who knew what life might yet hold, with the
gain of bitter and profound experience behind her, and the potent,
incalculable fact of a freed spirit before her?
She had learnt honesty at last, and at last the gaze of her soul was
steady.
"The very beginning of it all, when they made me believe myself in love
with Nicholas, and I hadn't the courage to own to myself that I wasn't!
Or perhaps it goes further back even than that, back to the time when
Vonnie and I were little. Vonnie, my Vonnie, shall I ever love anyone
again? Vonnie knew the truth about values; she knew what mattered to
her and what didn't. Perhaps I did too--I think I did when we were
little, but afterwards I took my values ready-made. One can't do that.
Humbug brings its own penalty--my life since I've grown up here has
been just that--_Humbug_. Yes, and long before I was grown-up, too."
Wandering from the bewilderment of her own life, Lily thought of the
problem of education.
Wherein lay the failure of one generation to render enduring help to
another?
"It isn't love--the lack of it. They do love--so do we. Is it the
old, possessive idea? Children belonging to their parents? They don't
belong. Each soul belongs to itself--I'm certain of that. The parents
have responsibility, at first, yes--they brought one into the world for
their own pleasure, or because they thought it right, or because they
couldn't help it. They have to keep their children alive--to do the
best they can for them--to tell them the truth as far as they know it.
And that's what they don't do. They tell the children what they think
is good for them to know.... They arrogate to themselves the right of
claiming infallibility. And they're not infallible--they know they're
not. But they won't let the children know it. And so they evade, and
deceive, and suppress, and the children grow up and find that there
is no infallibility--but by that time they have learnt to evade, and
deceive, and suppress, themselves."
Her heart smote her.
"Even now, it hurts me to think what I know is true. My instinct is
to take refuge in the old idea of loyalty. Yet I know that it's only
another word for sentimentality--for a wilful obscuring of facts."
Words came unsought into her mind.
"The truth shall make you free." Truth leading to Freedom. The two
gifts that were withheld.
Loving their children, sacrificing often and much for them, yearning
over them, parents, fearing loss to themselves, barred the road to
freedom.
They wanted the children to belong to them.
"And one can't. The gulf is always there, between the generations.
To own its existence might be to bridge it. But they won't own to
it--they try and teach us not to own to it. They call it by other
names--disloyalty, and ingratitude, and the arrogance of youth. And
it's none of those things, until we're taught to consider it so."
"Honour thy father and mother." Yes, but they want one to do more than
that--to go on belonging, to take on trust the vital things that
matter most, that only personal experience can teach. That old idea
that parents can choose the religion of their children--it's wrong,
wrong all along the line. They ought to be free.
Will it ever come to that? Is it an impossibility that parents should
exist who will one day say to a child: 'We profess such-and-such a
faith. We hold it to be true, we hope that you, in time to come, will
hold it to be true. But you are free. You are bound by no promises made
on your behalf in your babyhood, you are at liberty to exercise the
gift of free-will of which we have never robbed you.'
"Would a child, so taught, trust the more fully for the lack of all
claim to blind obedience?"
"Obedience." She stopped upon the word. Not obedience--"because I am
the dispenser of rewards and punishments. Not 'because I am I, and to
be obeyed.' Not the appeal to the emotions: 'To please me--because
it will grieve and disappoint me if you disobey----' Least of all,
'because I say it is right to obey, and pleasing to God, and wrong to
disobey, and displeasing to Him.' But perhaps, 'because the logical
consequences of disobedience will lead to harm. Let reason and
experience, so far as you have either, help you to understand.'"
That was not the old way. Was it a better one? The difficulty of
it--the incalculable importance of it! She thought of the many who had
striven, and of the far greater number who saw no need to strive, and
held unthinkingly to the old shibboleths.
A faint echo of Miss Melody's kind, complacent tones came to her from
the past.
"Lily, Lily, what are all these fancies? Are children never to learn
obedience without question, pray? According to you, dearie, then, must
a baby cut himself with a sharp knife so as to learn by experience why
he was forbidden to touch it? Come, come--that would never do."
Ghost of Miss Melody's laugh, floating on the air! Lily smiled,
herself, very faintly.
The _reductio ad absurdum_ is not an argument.
"Should I have the courage, if I had children? The courage never to
grudge them the experience of suffering, to let them say 'Yes' to Life?
To realize, and let them realize, from the very beginning, that no
created soul belongs to another--that each must stand alone?"
She dropped her face into her hands, shuddering--realizing something of
that ultimate abnegation that imposes nothing, but holds all in reserve.
Would Nicholas have helped her?
She knew that he would not. Their ideals, again and again, differed.
All, all irrelevant. There were no children of his and hers, thank God!
Other thoughts of Nicholas crowded to her mind. His love for her, his
uncritical enjoyment of life, a certain child-like spirit of joviality
that had harmonized with her own youth.
"But I ought never to have married him."
She was putting hard facts into hard words at last.
"I knew just enough, even then, to know that nothing but the best of
all would satisfy me--and for me Nicholas could never be anything
but the second-best. Everything--except the one thing needful. Even
then, if I'd been honest with myself, and admitted that it _was_ a
second-best.... But I wasn't--all this time I've tried to put into our
relationship a value that it hasn't got. This infidelity of his...."
She remembered it with a shock of surprise. "It doesn't matter, in
itself. But it can set me free--free to begin again, to possess myself,
to eliminate pretenses. My life with Nicholas is all held together by
pretenses."
There came another thought and for an instant she was tempted to sheer
away, with a tag on her lips of conventional optimism, "What's the use
of thinking about what may never happen?"
Then she faced it, and deliberately recalled words spoken to her by
Giulio della Torre, wise in his own generation.
"What you need--what you must have, if you are ever to fulfil
yourself--it is romance.... You will learn not to be afraid of life,
some day." And at the end, when he had spoken of all that she had need
to be taught:
"_C'est le ton qui fait la musique._"
It was the teacher, not the teaching, that mattered.
"Some day, I shall love," thought Lily.
And she reflected coldly: "It is at least possible, if not probable.
Am I to pretend to myself that such a thing is out of the question,
because I am married? Why, I don't even know what I should do--whether
I might not leave Nicholas altogether. And break his heart--oh,
_Nicholas_!"
She was fond of him, she knew that she would always be fond of him. It
would be impossible to her to be ruthless where Nicholas was concerned,
she thought, and next moment she told herself fiercely that her
opportunity had come, that she would divorce him, and find herself
free to begin life again, alone.
It was just. Nicholas had given her just cause.
For a little while Lily thought that the conflict lay, as so often,
between sincerity and sentiment.
Then illumination came to her, searing and vivid.
Was the freedom for which she looked to be based upon yet another
artificial value? Was she to exact from Nicholas a supreme penalty for
that which had been powerless to hurt her?
Philip Stellenthorpe might say that there was one reason for which
the tie of marriage might be set aside. Nicholas himself, piteously
bewildered, might admit technical justification for such penalization,
the world might condemn Nicholas and be right in so doing by the letter
of the law, but the wife of Nicholas knew that in the spirit he had not
sinned against her, and that she had no right to turn against himself
his sin of the body for her own ends.
"If I loved him I should forgive him. Not loving him, there is no real
question of forgiveness at all. It's the old test--the applying of a
general law to a particular case--taking one's values ready-made--the
old, old humbug."
The last, comforting falsity fell from her, and she saw the ultimate
presentment of all the truth that she would ever know, in stark
finality.
She could build for herself no freedom upon a foundation of pretence.