VII

I haven’t yet discovered what Edward Burden is doing. I have found him

a good round sum upon mortgage--the irony of the position being that

the money is actually his whilst the mortgage does not actually exist.

He says that what he is doing with the money will please me. I suppose

that means that he’s embarking upon some sort of speculation which he

imagines that I would favour. It is odd that he should think that I

find gratification in his imitating myself.

But why should I concern myself with this thing at all? Nothing in the

world can ever please or displease me any more. For I have taken my

resolve: this is my last night upon earth. When I lay down this pen

again, I shall never take up any pen more. For I have said all that I

can say to you. I am utterly tired out. To-night I shall make up into

a parcel all these letters--I must sit through the night because it is

only to-morrow morning that I shall be able to register the parcel to

you--and registering it will be my last act upon the habitable globe.

For biting through the glass in the ring will be not an action, but the

commencement of a new train of thought. Or perhaps only my final action

will come to an end when you read these words in Rome. Or will that be

only thought--the part of me that lives--pleading to you to give your

thoughts for company. I feel too tired to think the matter out!

Let me, then, finish with this earth: I told you, when I finished

writing last night, that Robert is almost cured. I would not have

told you this for the sake of arrogating to myself the position of a

saviour. But I imagine that you would like the cure to go on and, in

the case of some accident after my death, it might go all to pieces

once more. Quite simply then: I have been doing two things. In the

first place I have persuaded your chemists to reduce very gradually the

strength of chloral, so that the bottles contain nearly half water. And

Robert perceives no difference. Now of course it is very important that

he shall not know of the trick that is being so beneficently played on

him--so that, in case he should go away or for one reason or another

change his chemists, it must be carefully seen to that instead of pure

chloral he obtains the exactly diluted mixture. In this way he may be

brought gradually to drinking almost pure water.

But that alone would hardly be satisfactory: a comparatively

involuntary cure is of little value in comparison with an effort of the

will. You may, conceivably, expel nature with a fork, but nothing but

a passion will expel a passion. The only point to be proved is whether

there exists in your husband any other passion for the sake of which he

might abandon his passion for the clearness of vision which he always

says his chloral gives him. He has not, of course, the incentives usual

to men: you cannot, in fact, “get” him along ordinary lines.... But

apart from his physical craving for the drug he _has_ that passion

for clearness of intellect that he says the drug gives him--and it is

through that, that at last, I have managed to hit his pride.

For I have put it to him very strongly that one view of life is just

as good as another--no better, no worse, but just the same. And I have

put it to him that his use of chloral simply limits for him the number

of views of life that he might conceivably have. And, when you come to

think of all the rhapsodies of his that we have listened to, I think

that that piece of special pleading is sufficiently justified. I do

indeed honestly believe that, for what it is worth, he is on the road

to salvation. He means to make a struggle--to attempt the great feat of

once more seeing life with the eyes that Fate originally gave to him.

This is my legacy to _you_: if you ask me why I have presented you

with this man’s new identity--since it _will_ mean a new identity--I

must answer that I simply don’t know. Why have we kept him alive all

these years? I have done it no doubt because I had nothing to give

you. But you? If you have loved me you must have wished him--I won’t

say dead--but no more there. Yet you have tried too--and I suppose

this answer to the riddle is simply the answer to the whole riddle

of our life. We have tried to play a supremely difficult game simply

because it sanctified our love. For, after all, sanctification arises

from difficulties. Well, we have made our way very strait and we have

so narrowed the door of entrance that it has vanished altogether. We

have never had _any_ hope of a solution that could have satisfied us.

If we had cared to break the rules of the game, I suppose we could

have done it easily enough--and we could have done it the more easily

since neither you nor I ever subscribed to those rules. If we have

not it was, I think, simply because we sought the difficulty which

sanctifies.... Has it been a very imbecile proceeding? I am most

uncertain. For it is not a thing to be very proud of--to be able to say

that for a whole lifetime, one has abstained from that which one most

desired. On the other hand, we have won a curious and difficult game.

Well--there it is--and there is your legacy. I do not think that there

is anything else for me to write about. You will see that, in my will,

I have left everything I possess to--Edward Burden. This is not because

I wish to make him reparation, and it’s not because I wish to avoid

scandal: it is simply because it may show him--one very simple thing.

It will show him how very nearly I might have made things come right.

I have been balancing my accounts very carefully, and I find that,

reckoning things reasonably against myself, Edward Burden will have a

five-pound note with which to buy himself a mourning-ring.

The being forced to attend to my accounts will make him gasp a

good deal. It will certainly shake his belief in all accepted

reputations--for he will look on the faces of many men each “as

solid as the Bank of England,” and he will think: “I wonder if you

are like----?” His whole world will crumble--not because I have been

dishonest, since he is coldblooded enough to believe that all men

may be dishonest. But he will tremble because I have been able to

be so wildly dishonest and yet to be so successfully respectable.

He won’t even dare to “expose” me, since, if he did that, half of

the shares which he will inherit from me would suffer an eclipse of

disreputability, would tumble to nothingness in value--and would damage

his poor pocket. He will have to have my estate set down at a high

figure; he will have to be congratulated on his fortunate inheritance,

and he will have, sedulously, to compound my felony.

You will wonder how I can be capable of this final cruelty--the most

cruel thing that, perhaps, ever one man did to another. I will tell

you why it is: it is because I hate all the Edward Burdens of the

world--because, being the eternal Haves of the world, they have made

their idiotic rules of the game. And you and I suffer: you and I, the

eternal Have Nots. And we suffer, not because their rules bind us, but

because, being the finer spirits, we are forced to set ourselves rules

that are still more strict in order that, in all things, we may be the

truly gallant.

But why do I write: “You will wonder how I can be capable of this.” You

will have understood--you who understand everything.

_Eight in the morning._--Well: now we part. I am going to register the

parcel containing all these letters to you. We part: and it is as if

you were dropping back--the lost Eurydice of the world--into an utter

blackness. For, in a minute, you will be no more than part of my past.

Well then: good-night.