THE RUPTURE
I
During the whole of the next day George waited for a letter from
Marguerite. There was nothing at the club by the first post; he went to
the office, hoping that as he had addressed his telegram from Russell
Square she might have written to Russell Square; there was nothing at
Russell Square. At lunch-time no word had arrived at the club; when the
office closed no word had arrived at the office; the last post brought
nothing to the club. He might have sent another telegram to Alexandra
Grove, but he was too proud to do so. He dined alone and most miserably
at the club. Inspired by unhappiness and resentment, he resolved to go
to bed; in bed he might read himself to sleep. But in the hall of the
club his feet faltered. Perhaps it was the sight of hats and sticks that
made him vacillate, or a glimpse of reluctantly dying silver in the
firmament over Candle Court. He wavered; he stood still at the foot of
the stairs. The next moment he was in the street. He had decided to call
on Agg at the studio. Agg might have the clue to Marguerite's astounding
conduct, though he had it not. He took a hansom, after saying he would
walk; he was too impatient for walking. Possibly Marguerite would be at
the studio; possibly a letter of hers had miscarried; letters did
miscarry. He was in a state of peculiar excitement as he paid the
cabman--an enigma to himself.
The studio was quite dark. Other studios showed lights, but not Agg's.
From one studio came the sound of a mandolin--he thought it was a
mandolin--and the sound seemed pathetic, tragic, to his ears. Agg was
perhaps in bed; he might safely arouse her; she would not object. But
no! He would not do that. Pride again! It would be too humiliating for
him, the affianced, to have to ask Agg: "I say, do you know anything
about Marguerite?" The affianced ought to be the leading authority as to
the doings of Marguerite. He turned away, walked a little, and perceived
the cabman swinging himself cautiously down from his perch in order to
enter a public-house. He turned back. Marguerite too might be in bed at
the studio. Or the girls might be sitting in the dark, talking--a habit
of theirs.... Fanciful suppositions! At any rate he would not knock at
the door of the studio, would not even enter the alley again. What
carried him into the Fulham Road and westwards as far as the Workhouse
tower and the corner of Alexandra Grove? Feet! But surely the feet of
another person, over which he had no control! He went in the lamplit
dimness of Alexandra Grove like a thief; he crept into it. The silver
had not yet died out of the sky; he could see it across the spaces
between the dark houses; it was sad in exactly the same way as the sound
of the mandolin had been sad.
What did he mean to do in the Grove? Nothing! He was just walking in it
by chance. He could indeed do nothing. For if he rang at No. 8 old Haim
would again confront him in the portico. He passed by No. 8 on the
opposite side of the road. No light showed, except a very dim glow
through the blind of the basement window to the left of the front door.
Those feet beneath him strolled across the road. The basement window was
wide open. The blind being narrower than the window-frame, he could see,
through the railings, into the room within. He saw Marguerite. She was
sitting, in an uncomfortable posture, in the rather high-seated
arm-chair in which formerly, when the room was her studio, she used to
sit at her work. Her head had dropped, on one shoulder. She was asleep.
On the table a candle burned. His heart behaved strangely. He flushed.
All his flesh tingled. The gate creaked horribly as he tiptoed into the
patch of garden. He leaned over the little chasm between the level of
the garden and the window, and supported himself with a hand on the
lower sash. He pushed the blind sideways with the other hand.
"Marguerite!" in a whisper. Then louder: "Marguerite!"
She did not stir. She was in a deep sleep. Her hands hung limp. Her face
was very pale and very fatigued. She liberated the same sadness as the
sound of the mandolin and the gleam of silver in the June sky, but it
was far more poignant. At the spectacle of those weary and unconscious
features and of the soft, bodily form, George's resentment was
annihilated. He wondered at his resentment. He was aware of nothing in
himself but warm, protective love. Tenderness surged out from the
impenetrable secrecy of his heart, filled him, overflowed, and floated
in waves towards the sleeper. In the intense sadness, and in the
uncertainty of events, he was happy.
An older man might have paused, but without hesitancy George put his
foot on the window-sill, pushed down the window farther, and clambered
into the room in which he had first seen Marguerite. His hat, pressing
backward the blind, fell off and bounced its hard felt on the floor,
which at the edges was uncarpeted. The noise of the hat and the general
stir of George's infraction disturbed Marguerite, who awoke and looked
up. The melancholy which she was exhaling suddenly vanished. Her steady
composure in the alarm delighted George.
"Couldn't wake you," he murmured lightly. It was part of his Five Towns
upbringing to conceal excitement. "Saw you through the window."
"Oh! George! Was I asleep?"
Pleasure shone on her face. He deposited his stick and sprang to her. He
sat on the arm of the chair. He bent her head back and examined her
face. He sat on her knee and held her. She did not kiss; she was kissed;
he liked that. Her fatigue was adorable.
"I came here for something, and I just sat down for a second because I
was so tired, and I must have gone right off.... No! No!"
The admonishing negative was to stop him from getting up off her knee.
She was exhausted, yet she had vast resources of strength to bear him on
her knee. She was wearing her oldest frock. It was shabby. But it
exquisitely suited her then. It was the frock of her capability, of her
great labours, of her vigil, of her fatigue. It covered, but did not
hide, her beautiful contours. He thought she was marvellously
beautiful--and very young, far younger than himself. As for him, he was
the dandy, in striking contrast to her. His dandyism as he sat on her
knee pleased both of them. He looked older than his years, his shoulders
had broadened, his dark moustache thickened. In his own view he was
utterly adult, as she was in hers. But their young faces so close
together, so confident, were touchingly immature. As he observed her
grave satisfaction at his presence, the comfort which he gave her, he
felt sure of her, and the memory of his just resentment came to him, and
he was tenderly reproachful.
"I expected to hear from you," he said. The male in him relished the
delicate accusation of his tone.
Marguerite answered with a little startled intake of breath:
"She's dead!"
"Dead?"
"She died this afternoon. The layer-out left about half an hour ago."
Death parted them. He rose from her knee, and Marguerite did not try to
prevent him. He was profoundly shocked. With desolating vividness he
recalled the Sunday afternoon when he had carried upstairs the plump,
living woman now dead. He had always liked Mrs. Lob--it was as Mrs. Lob
that he thought of her. He had seen not much of her. Only on that Sunday
afternoon had he and she reached a sort of intimacy--unspoken but real.
He had liked her. He had even admired her. She was no ordinary being.
And he had sympathized with her for Marguerite's quite explicable
defection. He had often wished that those two, the charwoman and his
beloved, could somehow have been brought together. The menaces of death
had brought them together. Mrs. Lob was laid out in the bedroom which he
had once entered. Mrs. Lob had been dying while he dined richly with
Miss Wheeler and Laurencine, and while he talked cynically with Everard
Lucas. And while he had been resenting Marguerite's neglect Marguerite
was watching by the dying bed. Oh! The despicable superficialities of
restaurants and clubs! He was ashamed. The mere receding shadow of death
shamed him.
"The baby's dead too, of course," Marguerite added. "She ought never to
have had a baby. It seems she had had two miscarriages."
There were tears in Marguerite's eyes and in her voice. Nevertheless her
tone was rather matter-of-fact as she related these recondite and
sinister things. George thought that women were very strange. Imagine
Marguerite quietly talking to him in this strain! Then the sense of the
formidable secrets that lie hidden in the history of families, and the
sense of the continuity of individual destinies, overwhelmed him. There
was silence.
"And your exam. begins to-morrow," whispered the astonishing Marguerite.
"Where's the old gentleman?"
"He's sitting in the parlour in the dark."
It was a terrible house: they two intimidated and mournful in the
basement; the widower solitary on the ground floor; the dead bodies, the
wastage and futility of conception and long bearing, up in the bedroom.
And in all the house the light of one candle! George suddenly noticed,
then, that Marguerite was not wearing the thin, delicate ring which he
had long ago given her. Had she removed it because of her manual duties?
He wanted to ask the question, but, even unspoken, it seemed too trivial
for the hour....
There was a shuffling sound beyond the door, and a groping on the outer
face of the door. Marguerite jumped up. Mr. Haim stumbled into the room.
He had incredibly aged; he looked incredibly feeble. But as he pointed a
finger at George he was in a fury of anger, and his anger was senile,
ridiculous, awful.
"I thought I heard voices," he said, half squeaking. "How did you get
in? You didn't come in by the door. Out of my house! My wife lying dead
upstairs, and you choose this night to break in!" He was implacable
against George, absolutely; and George recoiled.
The opening of the door had created a draught in which the candle-flame
trembled, and the shadow of the old man trembled on the door.
"You'd better go. I'll write. I'll write," Marguerite murmured to George
very calmly, very gently, very persuasively. She stood between the two
men. Her manner was perfect. It eternally impressed itself on George.
"Father, come and sit down."
The old man obeyed her. So did George. He snatched his hat and stick. By
the familiar stone steps of the basement, and along the familiar hall,
he felt his way to the door, turned the familiar knob, and departed.
II
The examination began the next day. Despite his preoccupation about
Marguerite, George's performances during the first days were quite
satisfactory to himself. Indeed, after a few minutes in the
examination-room, after the preliminary critical assessing of the
difficulty of the problems in design, and the questions, and of his
ability to deal with them, George successfully forgot everything except
the great seven-day duel between the self-constituted autocratic
authorities backed by prestige and force, and the aspirants who had
naught but their wits to help them. He was neither a son, nor a friend,
nor a lover; he ceased to have human ties; he had become an examinee.
Marguerite wrote him two short letters which were perfect, save that he
always regarded her handwriting as a little too clerical, too like her
father's. She made no reference whatever to the scene in the basement
room. She said that she could not easily arrange to see him immediately,
and that for the sake of his exam. he ought not to be distracted. She
would have seen him on the Saturday, but on Saturday George learnt that
her father was a little unwell and required, even if he did not need,
constant attention. The funeral, unduly late, occurred by Mr. Haim's
special desire on the Sunday, most of which day George spent with
Everard Lucas. On the Monday he had a rendezvous at eight o'clock with
Marguerite at the studio.
She opened the door herself; and her welcome was divine. Her gestures
spoke, delicate, and yet robust in their candour. But she was in deep
mourning.
"Oh!" he said, holding her. "You're wearing black, then."
"Of course!" she answered sweetly. "You see, I had to be there all
through the funeral. And father would have been frightfully shocked if I
hadn't been in black--naturally."
"Of course!" he agreed. It was ridiculous that he should be surprised
and somewhat aggrieved to find her in mourning; still, he was surprised
and somewhat aggrieved.
"Besides----" she added vaguely.
And that 'besides' disquieted him, and confirmed his grievance. Why
should she wear mourning for a woman to whom she was not related, whom
she had known simply as a charwoman, and who had forced her to leave her
father's house? There was no tie between Marguerite and her stepmother.
George, for his part, had liked the dead woman, but Marguerite had not
even liked her. No, she was not wearing black in honour of the dead, but
to humour the living. And why should her father be humoured? George
privately admitted the unreasonableness, the unsoundness, of these
considerations--obviously mourning wear was imperative for
Marguerite--nevertheless they were present in his mind.
"That frock's a bit tight, but it suits you," he said, advancing with
her into the studio.
"It's an old one," she smiled.
"An old one?"
"It's one I had for mother."
He had forgotten that she had had a mother, that she had known what
grief was, only a very few years earlier. He resented these bereavements
and the atmosphere which they disengaged. He wanted a different
atmosphere.
"Is the exam. really all right?" she appealed to him, taking both his
hands and leaning against him and looking up into his face.
"What did I tell you in my letter?"
"Yes, I know."
"The exam. is as right as rain."
"I knew it would be."
"You didn't," he laughed. He imitated her: "'Is the exam. really all
right?'" She just smiled. He went on confidently: "Of course you never
know your luck, you know. There's the viva to-morrow.... Where's old
Agg?"
"She's gone home."
"Thoughtful child! How soon will she be back?"
"About nine," said Marguerite, apparently unaware that George was being
funny.
"Nine!"
"Oh, George!" Marguerite exclaimed, breaking away from him. "I'm awfully
sorry, but I must get on with my packing."
"What packing?"
"I have to take my things home."
"What home?"
"Father's, I mean."
She was going to live with her father, who would not willingly allow
him, George, to enter the house! How astounding girls were! She had
written to him twice without giving the least hint of her resolve. He
had to learn it as it were incidentally, through the urgency of packing.
She did not tell him she was going--she said she must get on with her
packing! And there, lying on the floor, was an open trunk; and two of
her drawing-boards already had string round them.
George inquired:
"How is the old man--to-day?"
"He's very nervy," said Marguerite briefly and significantly. "I'd
better light the lamp; I shall see better." She seemed to be speaking to
herself. She stood on a chair and lifted the chimney off the central
lamp. George absently passed her his box of matches.
As she, was replacing the chimney, he said suddenly in a very resolute
tone:
"This is all very well, Marguerite. But it's going to be jolly awkward
for me."
She jumped lightly down from the chair, like a little girl.
"Oh! George! I know!" she cried. "It will be awkward for both of us. But
we shall arrange something." She might have resented his tone. She might
have impulsively defended herself. But she did not. She accepted his
attitude with unreserved benevolence. Her gaze was marvellously
sympathetic.
"I can't make out what your father's got against me," said George
angrily, building his vexation on her benevolence. "What have I done, I
should like to know."
"It's simply because you lived there all that time without him knowing
we were engaged. He says if he'd known he would never have let you stay
there a day." She smiled, mournfully, forgivingly, excusingly.
"But it's preposterous!"
"Oh! It is."
"And how does he behave to _you_? Is he treating you decently?"
"Oh! Fairly. You see, he's got a lot to get over. And he's most
frightfully upset about--his wife. Well, you saw him yourself, didn't
you?"
"That's no reason why he should treat you badly."
"But he doesn't, George!"
"Oh! I know! I know! Do you think I don't know? He's not even decent to
you. I can hear it in your voice. Why should you go back and live with
him if he isn't prepared to appreciate it?"
"But he expects it, George. And what am I to do? He's all alone. I can't
leave him all alone, can I?"
George burst out:
"I tell you what it is. Marguerite. You're too good-natured. That's what
it is. You're too good-natured. And it's a very bad thing."
Tears came into her eyes; she could not control them. She was grieved by
his remark.
"I'm not, George, truly. You must remember father's been through a lot
this last week. So have I."
"I know! I know! I admit all that. But you're too good-natured, and
I'll stick to it."
She was smiling again.
"You only think that because you're fond of me. Nobody else would say
it, and I'm not. Help me to lift this trunk on to the chest."
While the daylight withdrew, and the smell of the lamp strengthened and
then faded, and the shadows cast by the lamp-rays grew blacker, she went
on rapidly with her packing, he serving her at intervals. They said
little. His lower lip fell lower and lower. The evening was immensely,
horribly different from what he had expected and hoped for. He felt once
more the inescapable grip of destiny fastening upon him.
"Why are you in such a hurry?" he asked, after a long time.
"I told father I should be back at a quarter-past nine."
This statement threw George into a condition of total dark disgust. He
made no remark. But what remarks he could have made--sarcastic, bitter,
unanswerable! Why indeed in the name of heaven should she promise her
father to be back at a quarter-past nine, or at a quarter-past anything?
Was she a servant? Had she no rights? Had he himself, George, no rights?
A little before nine Agg arrived. Marguerite was fastening the trunk.
"Now be sure, Agg," said Marguerite. "Don't forget to hang out the
Carter Paterson card at the end of the alley to-morrow morning. I must
have these things at home to-morrow night for certain. The labels are
on. And here's twopence for the man."
"Do I forget?" retorted Agg cheerfully. "By the way, George, I want to
talk to you." She turned to Marguerite and repeated in quite a different
voice: "I want to talk to him, dear, to-night. Do, let him stay. Will
you?"
Marguerite gave a puzzled assent.
"I'll call after I've taken Marguerite to Alexandra Grove, Agg--on my
way back to the club."
"Oh no, you won't!" said Agg. "I shall be gone to bed then. Look at that
portrait and see how I've worked. My family's concerned about me. It
wants me to go away for a holiday."
George had not till then noticed the portrait at all.
"But I must take Marguerite along to the Grove," he insisted. "She can't
go alone."
"And why can't she go alone? What sort of a conventional world do you
think you live in? Don't girls go home alone? Don't they come in alone?
Don't I? Anybody would think, to listen to some people, that the purdah
flourished in Chelsea. But it's all pretence. I don't ask for the honour
of a private interview with you every night. You've both of you got all
your lives before you. And for once in a way Marguerite's going out
alone. At least, you can take her to the street, I don't mind that. But
don't be outside more than a minute."
Agg, who had sat down, rose and slowly removed her small hat. With pins
in her mouth she said something about the luggage to Marguerite.
"All right! All right!" George surrendered gloomily. In truth he was not
sorry to let Marguerite depart solitary. And Agg's demeanour was very
peculiar; he would have been almost afraid to be too obstinate in
denying her request. He had never seen her hysterical, but a suspicion
took him that she might be capable of hysteria.... You never knew, with
that kind of girl, he thought sagaciously.
In the darkness of the alley George said to Marguerite, feigning
irritation:
"What on earth does she want?"
"Agg? Oh! It's probably nothing. She does get excited sometimes, you
know."
The two girls had parted with strange, hard demonstrations of affection
from Agg.
"I suppose you'll write," said George coldly.
"To-morrow, darling," she replied quite simply and gravely.
Her kiss was warm, complete, faithful, very loving, very sympathetic.
Nothing in her demeanour as she left him showed that George had received
it in a non-committal manner. Yet she must have noticed his wounded
reserve. He did not like such duplicity. He would have preferred her to
be less miraculously angelic.
When he re-entered the studio, Agg, who very seldom smoked, was puffing
violently at a cigarette. She reclined on one elbow on the settee, her
eyes fixed on the portrait of herself. George was really perturbed by
the baffling queerness of the scenes through which he was passing.
"Look here, infant-in-arms," she began immediately. "I only wanted to
say two words to you about Marguerite. Can you stand it?"
There was a pause. George walked in front of her, hiding the easel.
"Yes," he said gruffly.
"Well, Marguerite's a magnificent girl. She's extraordinarily capable.
You'd think she could look after herself as well as anyone. But she
can't. I know her far better than you do. She needs looking after.
She'll make a fool of herself if she isn't handled."
"How do you mean?"
"You know how I mean."
"D'you mean about the old man?"
"I mean about the perfectly horrid old man.... Ah! If I was in your
place, if I was a man," she said passionately, "do you know what I
should do with Marguerite? I should carry her off. I should run away
with her. I should drag her out of the house, and she should know what a
real man was. I'm not going to discuss her with you. I'm not going to
say any more at all. I'm off to bed. But before you go, I do think you
might tell me my portrait's a pretty good thing."
And she did not say any more.
III
The written part of the examination lasted four days; and then there was
an interval of one day in which the harassed and harried aspirants might
restore themselves for the two days' ordeal of the viva voce. George had
continued to be well satisfied with his work up to the interval. He
considered that he had perfectly succeeded in separating the lover and
the examinee, and that nothing foreign to the examination could vitiate
his activity therein. It was on the day of repose, a Wednesday, that a
doubt suddenly occurred to him as to the correctness of his answer, in
the "Construction" paper, to a question which began with the following
formidable words: "A girder, freely supported at each end and forty feet
long, carries a load of six tons at a distance of six feet from one end
and another load of ten tons----" Thus it went on for ten lines. He had
always been impatient of detail, and he hated every kind of calculation.
Nevertheless he held that calculations were relatively easy, and that he
could do them as well as the driest duffer in the profession when he set
his mind to them. But the doubt as to the correctness of his answer
developed into a certainty. Facing the question in private again, he
obtained four different solutions in an hour; it was John Orgreave who
ultimately set him right, convicting him of a most elementary
misconception. Forthwith his faith in his whole "Construction" paper
vanished. He grumbled that it was monstrous to give candidates an
unbroken stretch of four hours' work at the end of a four-day effort.
Yet earlier he had been boasting that he had not felt the slightest
fatigue. He had expected to see Marguerite on the day of repose. He did
not see her. She had offered no appointment, and he said to himself
that he had not the slightest intention of running after her. Such had
become the attitude of the lover to the beloved.
On the Thursday morning, however, he felt fit enough to face a dozen
oral examiners, and he performed his morning exercises in the club
bedroom with a positive ferocity of vigour. And then he was gradually
overtaken by a black moodiness which he could not explain. He had passed
through similar though less acute moods as a boy; but this was the first
of the inexplicable sombre humours which at moments darkened his
manhood. He had not the least suspicion that prolonged nervous tension
due to two distinct causes had nearly worn him out. He was melancholy,
and his melancholy increased. But he was proud; he was defiant. His
self-confidence, as he looked back at the years of genuine hard study
behind him, was complete. He disdained examiners. He knew that with all
their damnable ingenuity they could not floor him.
The crisis arrived in the afternoon of the first of the two days. His
brain was quite clear. Thousands of details about drainage, ventilation,
shoring, architectural practice, lighting, subsoils, specifications,
iron and steel construction, under-pinning, the properties of building
materials, strains, thrusts, water-supply; thousands of details about
his designs--the designs in his 'testimonies of study,' the design for
his Thesis, and the designs produced during the examination itself--all
these peopled his brain; but they were in order; they were under
control; they were his slaves. For four and a half hours, off and on, he
had admirably displayed the reality of his knowledge, and then he was
sent into a fresh room to meet a fresh examiner. There he stood in the
room alone with his designs for a small provincial town hall--a
key-plan, several one-eighth scale-plans, a piece of half-inch detail,
and two rough perspective sketches which he knew were brilliant. The
room was hot; through the open window came the distant sound of the
traffic of Regent Street. The strange melancholy of a city in summer
floated towards him from the outside and reinforced his own.
The examiner, who had been snatching tea, entered briskly and sternly.
He was a small, dapper, fair man of about fifty, with wonderfully tended
finger-nails. George despised him because Mr. Enwright despised him, but
he had met him once in the way of the firm's business and found him
urbane.
"Good afternoon," said George politely.
The examiner replied, trotting along the length of the desk with quick,
short steps:
"Now about this work of yours. I've looked at it with some care----" His
speech was like his demeanour and his finger-nails.
"Boor!" thought George. But he could not actively resent the slight. He
glanced round at the walls; he was in a prison. He was at the mercy of a
tyrant invested with omnipotence.
The little tyrant, however, was superficially affable. Only now and then
in his prim, courteous voice was there a hint of hostility and cruelty.
He put a number of questions, the answers to which had to be George's
justification. He said "H'm!" and "Ah!" and "Really?" He came to the
matter of spouting.
"Now, I object to hopper-heads," he said. "I regard them as unhygienic."
And he looked coldly at George with eyebrows lifted. George returned the
gaze.
"I know you do, sir," George replied.
Indeed it was notorious that hopper-heads to vertical spouting were a
special antipathy of the examiner's; he was a famous faddist. But the
reply was a mistake. The examiner, secure in his attributes, ignored the
sally. A little later, taking up the general plan of the town hall, he
said:
"The fact is, I do--not--care for this kind of thing. The whole
tendency----"
"Excuse me, sir," George interrupted, with conscious and elaborate
respectfulness. "But surely the question isn't one of personal
preferences. Is the design good or is it bad?"
"Well, I call it bad," said the examiner, showing testiness. The
examiner too could be impulsive, was indeed apt to be short-tempered.
The next instant he seized one of the brilliant perspective sketches,
and by his mere manner of holding it between his thumb and finger he
sneered at it and condemned it.
He snapped out, not angrily--rather pityingly:
"And what the devil's this?"
George, furious, retorted:
"What the hell do you think it is?"
He had not foreseen that he was going to say such a thing. The traffic
in Regent Street, which had been inaudible to both of them, was loud in
their ears.
The examiner had committed a peccadillo, George a terrible crime. The
next morning the episode, in various forms, was somehow common knowledge
and a source of immense diversion. George went through the second day,
but lifelessly. He was sure he had failed. Apart from the significance
of the fact that the viva voce counted for 550 marks out of a total of
1200, he felt that the Royal Institute of British Architects would know
how to defend its dignity. On the Saturday morning John Orgreave had
positive secret information that George would be plucked.
IV
On that same Saturday afternoon George and Marguerite went out together.
She had given him a rendezvous in Brompton Cemetery, choosing this spot
partly because it was conveniently near and partly in unconscious
obedience to the traditional instinct of lovers for the society of the
undisturbing dead. Each of them had a roofed habitation, but neither
could employ it for the ends of love. No. 8 was barred to George as much
by his own dignity as by the invisible sword of the old man; and of
course he could not break the immemorial savage taboo of a club by
introducing a girl into it. The Duke of Wellington himself, though
Candle Court was his purdah, could never have broken the taboo of even
so modest a club as Pickering's. Owing to the absence of Agg, who had
gone to Wales with part of her family, the studio in Manresa Road was
equally closed to the pair.
Marguerite was first at the rendezvous. George saw her walking sedately
near the entrance. Despite her sedateness she had unmistakably the air
of waiting at a tryst. Anybody at a glance would have said that she was
expecting a man. She had the classical demure innocency of her
situation. George did not care for that. Why? She in fact was expecting
a man, and in expecting him she had nothing to be ashamed of. Well, he
did not care for it. He did not care for her being like other girls of
her class. In his pocket he had an invitation from Miss Wheeler for the
next evening. Would Miss Wheeler wait for a man in a public place,
especially a cemetery? Would Lois Ingram? Would Laurencine? He could not
picture them so waiting. Oh, simpleton, unlearned in the world! A snob
too, no doubt! (He actually thought that Hyde Park would have been
'better' than the cemetery for their rendezvous.) And illogical! If No.
8 had been open to them, and the studio, and the club, he would have
accepted with gusto the idea of an open-air rendezvous. But since there
was no alternative to an open-air rendezvous the idea of it humiliated
and repelled him.
Further, in addition to her culpable demure innocency, Marguerite was
wearing black. Of course she was. She had no choice. Still, he hated her
mourning. Moreover, she was too modest; she did not impose herself. Some
girls wore mourning with splendid defiance. Marguerite seemed to
apologize; seemed to turn the other cheek to death.... He arrived
critical, and naturally he found matter to criticize.
Her greeting showed quite candidly the pleasure she had in the sight of
him. Her heart was in the hand she gave him; he felt its mystic
throbbings there.
"How are things?" he began. "I rather thought I should have been hearing
from you." He softened his voice to match the tenderness of her smile,
but he did it consciously.
She replied:
"I thought you'd have enough to worry about with the exam. without me."
It was not a wise speech, because it implied that he was capable of
being worried, of being disturbed in the effort of absorption necessary
for the examination. He laughed a little harshly.
"Well, you see the result!"
He had written to tell her of the disastrous incident and that failure
was a certainty; a sort of shame had made him recoil from telling her to
her face; it was easier to be casual in writing than in talking; the
letter had at any rate tempered for both of them the shock of
communication. Now, he was out of humour with her because he had played
the ass with an ass of an examiner--not because she was directly or
indirectly responsible for his doing so; simply because he had done so.
She was the woman. It was true that she in part was indirectly
responsible for the calamity, but he did not believe it, and anyhow
would never have admitted it.
"Oh! George! What a shame it was!" As usual, not a trace of reproach
from her: an absolute conviction that he was entirely blameless. "What
shall you do? You'll have to sit again."
"Sit again? Me?" he exclaimed haughtily. "I never shall! I've done with
exams." He meant it.
"But--shall you give up architecture, then?"
"Certainly not! My dear girl, what are you thinking of? Of course I
shan't give up architecture. But you needn't pass any exams, to be an
architect. Anybody can call himself an architect, and be an architect,
without passing exams. Exams. are optional. That's what makes old
Enwright so cross with our beautiful profession."
He laughed again harshly. All the time, beneath his quite genuine
defiance, he was thinking what an idiot he had been to cheek the
examiner, and how staggeringly simple it was to ruin years of industry
by one impulsive moment's folly, and how iniquitous was a world in which
such injustice could be.
Marguerite was puzzled. In her ignorance she had imagined that
professions were inseparably connected with examinations. However, she
had to find faith to accept his dictum, and she found it.
"Now about this afternoon," he said. "I vote we take a steamboat down
the river. I've made up my mind I must have a look at Greenwich again
from the water. And we both need a blow."
"But won't it take a long time?" she mildly objected.
He turned on her violently, and spoke as he had never spoken:
"What if it does?"
He knew that she was thinking of her infernal father, and he would not
have it. He remembered all that Agg had said. Assuredly Agg had shown
nerve, too much nerve, to tackle him in the way she did, and the more he
reflected upon Agg's interference the more he resented it as
impertinent. Still, Agg had happened to talk sense.
"Oh, nothing!" Marguerite agreed quickly, fearfully. "I should like to
go. I've never been. Do we go to Chelsea Pier? Down Fernshaw Road will
be the nearest."
"We'll go down Beaufort Street," he decided. He divined that she had
suggested Fernshaw Road in order to avoid passing the end of the Grove,
where her father might conceivably see them. Well, he was not going out
of his way to avoid her father. Nay, he was going slightly out of his
way in order to give her father every chance of beholding them
together.
Although the day was Saturday there was no stir on Chelsea Pier. The
pier-keeper, indeed, was alone on the pier, which rose high on the
urgent flood-tide, so that the gangway to it sloped unusually upwards.
No steamer was in sight, and it seemed impossible that any steamer
should ever call at that forlorn and decrepit platform that trembled
under the straining of the water. Nevertheless, a steamer did after a
little while appear round the bend, in Battersea Reach; she dropped her
funnel, aimed her sharp nose at an arch of Battersea Bridge, and
finally, poising herself against the strong stream, bumped very gently
and neatly into contact with the pier. The pier-keeper went through all
the classic motions of mooring, unbarring, barring, and casting off, and
in a few seconds the throbbing steamer, which was named with the name of
a great Londoner, left the pier again with George and Marguerite on
board. Nobody had disembarked. The shallow and handsome craft, flying
its gay flags, crossed and recrossed the river, calling at three piers
in the space of a few minutes; but all the piers were like Chelsea Pier;
all the pier-keepers had the air of castaways upon shaking islets. The
passengers on the steamer would not have filled a motor-bus, and they
carried themselves like melancholy adventurers who have begun to doubt
the authenticity of the inspiration which sent them on a mysterious
quest. Such was travel on the Thames in the years immediately before
Londoners came to a final decision that the Thames was meet to be
ignored by the genteel town which it had begotten.
George and Marguerite sat close together near the prow, saying little,
the one waiting to spring, the other to suffer onslaught. It was in
Lambeth Reach that the broad, brimming river challenged and seized
George's imagination. A gusty, warm, south-west wind met the rushing
tide and blew it up into foamy waves. The wind was powerful, but the
tide was irresistible. Far away, Land's End having divided the Atlantic
surge, that same wind was furiously driving vast waters up the English
Channel and round the Forelands, and also vast waters up the west coast
of Britain. The twin surges had met again in the outer estuary of the
Thames and joined their terrific impulses to defy the very wind which
had given them strength, and the mighty flux swept with unregarding
power through the mushroom city whose existence on its banks was a
transient episode in the everlasting life of the river.
The river seemed to threaten the city that had confined it in stone. And
George, in the background of his mind, which was obsessed by the
tormenting enigma of the girl by his side, also threatened the city.
With the uncompromising arrogance of the student who has newly acquired
critical ideas, he estimated and judged it. He cursed the Tate Gallery
and utterly damned Doulton's works. He sternly approved Lambeth Palace,
the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Somerset House, Waterloo
Bridge, and St. Paul's. He cursed St. Thomas's Hospital and the hotels.
He patronized New Scotland Yard. The "Isambard Brunel" penetrated more
and more into the heart of the city, fighting for every yard of her
progress. Flags stood out straight in the blue sky traversed by swift
white clouds. Huge rudder-less barges, each with a dwarf in the stern
struggling at a giant's oar, were borne westwards broadside on like
straws upon the surface of a hurrying brook. A launch with an orchestra
on board flew gaily past. Tugs with a serpentine tail of craft threaded
perilously through the increasing traffic. Railway trains, cabs,
coloured omnibuses, cyclists, and footfarers mingled in and complicated
the scene. Then the first ocean-going steamer appeared, belittling all
else. And then the calm, pale beauty of the custom-house at last humbled
George, and for an instant made him think that he could never do
anything worth doing. His pride leapt up, unconquerable. The ocean-going
steamers, as they multiplied on the river, roused in him wild and
painful longings to rush to the ends of the earth and gorge himself on
the immense feast which the great romantic earth had to offer.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed passionately. "I'd give something to go to
Japan."
"Would you?" Marguerite answered with mildness. She had not the least
notion of what he was feeling. Her voice responded to him, but her
imagination did not respond. True, as he had always known, she had no
ambition! The critical quality of his mood developed. The imperious
impulse came to take her to task.
"What's the latest about your father?" he asked, with a touch of
impatient, aggrieved disdain. Both were aware that the words had opened
a crucial interview between them. She moved nervously on the seat. The
benches that ran along the deck-rails met in an acute angle at the stem
of the steamer, so that the pair sat opposite each other with their
knees almost touching. He went on: "I hear he hasn't gone back to the
office yet."
"No," said Marguerite. "But he'll start again on Monday, I think."
"But is he fit to go back? I thought he looked awful."
She flushed slightly--at the indirect reference to the episode in the
basement on the night of the death.
"It will do him good to go back," said Marguerite. "I'm sure he misses
the office dreadfully."
George gazed at her person. Under the thin glove he suddenly detected
the form of her ring. She was wearing it again, then. (He could not
remember whether she had worn it at their last meeting, in Agg's studio.
The very curious fact was that at their last meeting he had forgotten to
look for the ring.) Not only was she wearing the ring, but she carried a
stylish little handbag which he had given her. When he bought that bag,
in the Burlington Arcade, it had been a bag like any other bag. But now
it had become part of her, individualized by her personality, a
mysterious and provocative bag. Everything she wore, down to her boots
and even her bootlaces so neatly threaded and knotted, was mysterious
and provocative. He examined her face. It was marvellously beautiful; it
was ordinary; it was marvellously beautiful. He knew her to the depths;
he did not know her at all; she was a chance acquaintance; she was a
complete stranger.
"How are you getting on with him? You know you really ought to tell me."
"Oh, George!" she said, earnestly vivacious. "You're wrong in thinking
he's not nice to me. He is. He's quite forgiven me."
"Forgiven you!" George took her up. "I should like to know what he had
to forgive."
"Well," she murmured timorously. "You understand what I mean."
He drummed his elegant feet on the striated deck. Out of the corner of
his left eye he saw the mediaeval shape of the Tower rapidly
disappearing. In front were the variegated funnels and masts of fleets
gathered together in St. Katherine's Dock and London Dock. The steamer
gained speed as she headed from Cherry Gardens Pier towards the middle
of the river. She was a frail trifle compared with the big boats that
lined the wharves; but in herself she had size and irresistible force,
travelling quite smoothly over the short, riotous, sparkling waves which
her cut-water divided and spurned away on either side. Only a tremor
faintly vibrated throughout her being.
"Has he forgiven you for being engaged?" George demanded, with rough
sarcasm.
She showed no resentment of his tone, but replied gently:
"I did try to mention it once, but it was no use--he wasn't in a
condition. He made me quite afraid--not for me of course, but for him."
"Well, I give it up!" said George. "I simply give it up! It's past me.
How soon's he going to _be_ in condition? He can't keep us walking about
the streets for ever."
"No, of course not!" She smiled to placate him.
There was a pause, and then George, his eyes fixed on her hand,
remarked:
"I see you've got your ring on."
She too looked at her hand.
"My ring? Naturally. What do you mean?"
He proceeded cruelly:
"I suppose you don't wear it in the house, so that the sight of it
shan't annoy him."
She flushed once more.
"Oh, George, dear!" Her glance asked for mercy, for magnanimity.
"Do you wear it when you're in the house, or don't you?"
Her eyes fell.
"I daren't excite him. Truly, I daren't. It wouldn't do. It wouldn't be
right."
She was admitting George's haphazard charge against her. He was
astounded. But he merely flung back his head and raised his eyebrows. He
thought:
"And yet she sticks to it he's nice to her! My God!"
He said nothing aloud. The Royal Hospital, Greenwich, showed itself in
the distance like a domed island rising fabulously out of the blue-green
water. Even far off, before he could decipher the main contours of the
gigantic quadruple pile, the vision excited him. His mind, darkened by
the most dreadful apprehensions concerning Marguerite, dwelt on it
darkly, sardonically, and yet with pleasure. And he proudly compared his
own disillusions with those of his greatest forerunners. His studies,
and the example of Mr. Enwright, had inspired him with an extremely
enthusiastic worship of Inigo Jones, whom he classed, not without
reason, among the great creative artists of Europe. He snorted when he
heard the Royal Hospital referred to as the largest and finest
charitable institution in the world. For him it was the supreme English
architectural work. He snorted at the thought of that pompous and absurd
monarch James I ordering Inigo Jones to design him a palace surpassing
all palaces and choosing a sublime site therefor, and then doing
nothing. He snorted at the thought of that deluded monarch Charles I
ordering Inigo Jones to design him a palace surpassing all palaces, and
receiving from Inigo Jones the plans of a structure which would have
equalled in beauty and eclipsed in grandeur any European structure of
the Christian era--even Chambord, even the Escurial, even
Versailles--and then accomplishing nothing beyond a tiny fragment of the
sublime dream. He snorted at the thought that Inigo Jones had died at
the age of nearly eighty ere the foundations of the Greenwich palace had
begun to be dug, and without having seen more than the fragment of his
unique Whitehall--after a youth spent in arranging masques for a stupid
court, and an old age spent in disappointment. But then no English
monarch had ever begun and finished a palace. George wished, rather
venturesomely, that he had lived under Francis I!...
The largest and finest charitable institution! The ineffable William and
Mary had merely turned it into a charitable institution because they did
not know what else to do with it. The mighty halls which ought to have
resounded to the laughter of the mistresses of Charles II were diverted
to the inevitable squalor of almsgiving. The mutilated victims of the
egotism and the fatuity of kings were imprisoned there together under
the rules and regulations of charity, the cruellest of all rules and
regulations. And all was done meanly--that is, all that interested
George. Christopher Wren, who was building St. Paul's and fighting
libels and slanders at a salary of two hundred a year, came down to
Greenwich and for years worked immortally for nothing amid material
difficulties that never ceased to multiply; and he too was beaten by the
huge monster. Then Vanbrugh arrived and blithely finished in corrupt
brick and flaming manifestations of decadence that which the pure and
monumental genius of Inigo Jones had first conceived. The north
frontages were marvels of beauty; the final erections to the south
amounted to an outrage upon Jones and Wren. Still, the affair was the
largest and finest charitable institution on earth! What a country,
thought George, hugging injustice! So it had treated Jones and Wren and
many another. So it had treated Enwright. And so it would treat, was
already treating, him, George. He did not care. As the steamer
approached Greenwich, and the details of the aborted palace grew
clearer, and he could distinguish between the genius of Jones and the
genius of Wren, he felt grimly and victoriously sure that both Jones and
Wren had had the best of the struggle against indifference and
philistinism--as he too would have the best of the struggle, though he
should die obscure and in penury. He was miserable and resentful, and
yet he was triumphant. The steamer stopped at the town-pier.
"Are we there?" said Marguerite. "Already?"
"Yes," said he. "And I think we may as well go back by the same
steamer."
She concurred. However, an official insisted on them disembarking, even
if they meant to re-embark at once. They, went ashore. The facade of the
palace-hospital stretched majestically to the left of them, in sharp
perspective, a sensational spectacle.
"It's very large," Marguerite commented. Her voice was nervous.
"Yes, it's rather more than large," he said dryly.
He would not share his thoughts with her. He knew that she had some
inklings of taste, but in that moment he preferred to pretend that her
artistic perception was on a level with that of William and Mary. They
boarded the steamer again, and took their old places; and the menacing
problem of their predicament was still between them.
"We can have some tea downstairs if you like," he said, after the
steamer had turned round and started upstream.
She answered in tones imperfectly controlled:
"No, thank you. I feel as if I couldn't swallow anything." And she
looked up at him very quickly; with the embryo of a smile, and then
looked down again very quickly, because she could not bring the smile to
maturity.
George thought:
"Am I going to have a scene with her--on the steamer?" It would not
matter much if a scene did occur. There was nobody else on deck forward
of the bridge. They were alone--they were more solitary than they might
have been in the studio, or in any room at No. 8. The steamer was now
nearly heading the wind, but she travelled more smoothly, for she had
the last of the flood-tide under her.
George said kindly and persuasively:
"Upon my soul, I don't know what the old gentleman's got against me."
She eagerly accepted his advance, which seemed to give her courage.
"But there's nothing to know, dear. We both know that. There's nothing
at all. And yet of course I can understand it. So can you. In fact it
was you who first explained it to me. If you'd left No. 8 when I did and
he'd heard of our engagement afterwards, he wouldn't have thought
anything of it. But it was you staying on in the house that did it, and
him not knowing of the engagement. He thought you used to come to see me
at nights at the studio, me and Agg, and make fun of everything at No.
8--especially of his wife. He's evidently got some such idea in his
head, and there's no getting it out again."
"But it's childish."
"I know. However, we've said all this before, haven't we?"
"But the idea's _got_ to be got out of his head again!" said George
vigorously--more dictatorially and less persuasively than before.
Marguerite offered no remark.
"And after all," George continued, "he couldn't have been so desperately
keen on--your stepmother. When he married her your mother hadn't been
dead so very long, had she?"
"No. But he never cared for mother anything like so much as he cared for
Mrs. Lobley--at least not as far back as I can remember. It was a
different sort of thing altogether. I think he was perfectly mad about
Mrs. Lobley. Oh! He stood mother's death much--much better than hers!
You've no idea--"
"Oh yes, I have. We know all about that sort of thing," said George the
man of the world impatiently.
Marguerite said tenderly:
"It's broken him."
"Nonsense!"
"It has, George." Her voice was very soft.
But George would not listen to the softness of her voice.
"Well," he objected firmly and strongly, "supposing it has! What then?
We're sorry for him. What then? That affair has nothing to do with our
affair. Is all that reason why I shouldn't see you in your own home? Or
are we to depend on Agg--when she happens to be at her studio? Or are we
always to see each other in the street, or in museums and things--or
steamers--just as if you were a shop-girl? We may just as well look
facts in the face, you know."
She flushed. Her features changed under emotion.
"Oh! George! I don't know what to do."
"Then you think he's determined not to have anything to do with me?"
She was silent.
"You think he's determined not to have anything to do with me, I say?"
"He may change," Marguerite murmured.
"'May change' be dashed! We've got to know where we stand."
He most surprisingly stood up, staring at her. She did not speak, but
she lifted her eyes to his with timid courage. They were wet. George
abruptly walked away along the deck. The steamer was passing the
custom-house again. The tide had now almost slacked. Fresh and heavier
clouds had overcast the sky. All the varied thoughts of the afternoon
were active in George's head at once: architecture, architects, beauty,
professional injustices, girls--his girl. Each affected the others, for
they were deeply entangled. It is a fact that he could not put Inigo
Jones and Christopher Wren out of his head; he wondered what had been
their experiences with women, histories and textbooks of architecture
did not treat of this surely important aspect of architecture! He
glanced at Marguerite from the distance. He remembered what Agg had said
to him about her; but what Agg had said did not appear to help him
practically.... Why had he left Marguerite? Why was he standing thirty
feet from her and observing her inimically? He walked back to her, sat
down, and said calmly:
"Listen to me, darling. Suppose we arrange now, definitely, to get
married in two years' time. How will that do for you?"
"But, George, can you be sure that you'll be able to marry in two
years?"
He put his chin forward.
"You needn't worry about that," said he. "You needn't think because I've
failed in an exam. I don't know what I'm about. You leave all that to
me. In two years I shall be able enough to keep a wife--_and_ well! Now,
shall we arrange to get married in two years' time?"
"It might be a fearful drag for you," she said. "Because, you know, I
don't really earn very much."
"That's not the point. I don't care what you earn. I shan't want you to
earn anything--so far as that goes. Any earning that's wanted I shall be
prepared to do. I'll put it like this: Supposing I'm in a position to
keep you, shall we arrange to get married in two years' time?" He found
a fierce pleasure in reiterating the phrase. "So long as that's
understood, I don't mind the rest. If we have to depend on Agg, or meet
in the streets--never mind. It'll be an infernal nuisance, but I expect
I can stand it as well as you can. Moreover, I quite see your
difficulty--quite. And let's hope the old gentleman will begin to have a
little sense."
"Oh, George! If he only would!"
He did not like her habit of "Oh, George! Oh! George!"
"Well?" He waited, ignoring her pious aspiration.
"I don't know what to say, George."
He restrained himself.
"We're engaged, aren't we?" She gave no answer, and he repeated: "We're
engaged, aren't we?"
"Yes."
"That's all right. Well, will you give me your absolute promise to marry
me in two years' time--if I'm in a position to keep you? It's quite
simple. You say you don't know what to say. But you've got to know what
to say." As he looked at her averted face, his calmness began to leave
him.
"Oh, George! I can't promise that!" she burst out, showing at length her
emotion. The observant skipper on the bridge noted that there were a boy
and a girl forward having a bit of a tiff.
George trembled. All that Agg had said recurred to him once more. But
what could he do to act on it? Anger was gaining, on him.
"Why not?" he menaced.
"It would have to depend on how father was. Surely you must see that!"
"Indeed I don't see it. I see quite the contrary. We're engaged. You've
got the first call on me, and I've got the first call on you--not your
father." The skin over his nose was tight, owing to the sudden swelling
of two points, one on either side of the bone.
"George, I couldn't leave him--again. I think now I may have been wrong
to leave him before. However, that's over. I couldn't leave him again.
It would be very wrong. He'd be all alone."
"Well, then, let him be friends with me."
"I do wish he would."
"Yes. Well, wishing won't do much good. If there's any trouble it's
entirely your father's fault. And what I want to know is--will you give
me your absolute promise to marry me in two years' time?"
"I can't, George. It wouldn't be honest. I can't! I can't! How can you
ask me to throw over my duty to father?"
He rose and walked away again. She was profoundly moved, but no sympathy
for her mitigated his resentment. He considered that her attitude was
utterly monstrous--monstrous! He could not find a word adequate for it.
He was furious; his fury increased with each moment. He returned to the
prow, but did not sit down.
"Don't you think, then, you ought to choose between your father and me?"
he said in a low, hard voice, standing over her.
"What do you mean?" she faltered.
"What do I mean? It's plain enough what I mean, isn't it? Your father
may live twenty years yet. Nobody knows. The older he gets the more
obstinate he'll be. We may be kept hanging about for years and years and
years. Indefinitely. What's the sense of it? You say you've got your
duty, but what's the object of being engaged?"
"Do you want to break it off, George?"
"Now don't put it like that. You know I don't want to break it off. You
know I want to marry you. Only you won't, and I'm not going to be made a
fool of. I'm absolutely innocent."
"Of course you are!" she agreed eagerly.
"Well, I'm not going to be made a fool of by your father. If we're
engaged, you know what it means. Marriage. If it doesn't mean that, then
I say we've no right to be engaged."
Marguerite seemed to recoil at the last words, but she recovered
herself. And then, heedless of being in a public place, she drew off her
glove, and drew the engagement ring from her finger, and held it out to
George. She could not speak. The gesture was her language. George was
extremely staggered. He was stupefied for an instant. Then he took the
ring, and under an uncontrollable savage impulse he threw it into the
river. He did not move for a considerable time, staring at the river in
front. Neither did she move. At length he said in a cold voice, without
moving his head:
"Here's Chelsea Pier."
She got up and walked to the rail amidships. He followed. The steamer
moored. A section of rail slid aside. The pier-keeper gave a hand to
Marguerite, who jumped on to the pier. George hesitated. The pier-keeper
challenged him testily:
"Now then, are ye coming ashore or aren't ye?"
George could not move. The pier-keeper banged the rail to close the gap,
and cast off the ropes, and the steamer resumed her voyage.
A minute later George saw Marguerite slowly crossing the gangway from
the pier to the embankment. There she went! She was about to be
swallowed up in the waste of human dwellings, in the measureless and
tragic expanse of the indifferent town.... She was gone. Curse her, with
her reliability! She was too reliable. He knew that. Her father could
rely on her. Curse her, with her outrageous, incredibly cruel, and
unjust sense of duty! She had held him once. Once the sight of her had
made him turn hot and cold. Once the prospect of life without her had
seemed unbearable. He had loved her instinctively and intensely. He now
judged and condemned her. Her beauty, her sweetness, her belief in him,
her reliability--these qualities were neutralized by her sense of duty,
awful, uncompromising, blind to fundamental justice. The affair was
over. If he knew her, he knew also himself. The affair was over. He was
in despair. His mind went round and round like a life-prisoner
exercising in an enclosed yard. No escape! Till then, he had always
believed in his luck. Infantile delusion! He was now aware that destiny
had struck him a blow once for all. But of course he did not perceive
that he was too young, not ripe, for such a blow. The mark of destiny
was on his features, and it was out of place there.... He had lost
Marguerite. And what had he lost? What was there in her? She was not
brilliant; she had no position; she had neither learning nor wit. He
could remember nothing remarkable that they had ever said to each other.
Indeed, their conversations had generally been rather banal. But he
could remember how they had felt, how he had felt, in their hours
together.... The sensation communicated to him by her hand when he had
drawn off her glove in the tremendous silence of the hansom! Marvellous,
exquisite, magical sensation that no words of his could render! And
there had been others as rare. These scenes were love; they were
Marguerite; they were what he had lost.... Strange, that he should throw
the ring into the river! Nevertheless it was a right gesture. She
deserved it. She was absolutely wrong; he was absolutely right--she had
admitted it. Towards him she had no excuse. Logically her attitude was
absurd. Yet no argument would change it. Stupid--that was what she was!
Stupid! And ruthless! She would be capable of martyrizing the whole
world to her sense of duty, her damnable, insane sense of duty.... She
was gone. He was ruined; she had ruined him. But he respected her. He
hated to respect her, but he respected her.
A thought leapt up in his mind--and who could have guessed it? It was
the thought that the secrecy of the engagement would save him from a
great deal of public humiliation. He would have loathed saying: "We've
broken it off."