The perplexing thing about life is the irresolvable complexity of
reality, of things and relations alike. Nothing is simple. Every wrong
done has a certain justice in it, and every good deed has dregs of
evil. As for us, young still, and still without self-knowledge,
resounded a hundred discordant notes in the harsh angle of that shock.
We were furiously angry with each other, tender with each other,
callously selfish, generously self-sacrificing.
I remember Marion saying innumerable detached things that didn’t hang
together one with another, that contradicted one another, that were,
nevertheless, all in their places profoundly true and sincere. I see
them now as so many vain experiments in her effort to apprehend the
crumpled confusions of our complex moral landslide. Some I found
irritating beyond measure. I answered her—sometimes quite abominably.
“Of course,” she would say again and again, “my life has been a
failure.”
“I’ve besieged you for three years,” I would retort “asking it not to
be. You’ve done as you pleased. If I’ve turned away at last—”
Or again she would revive all the stresses before our marriage.
“How you must hate me! I made you wait. Well now—I suppose you have
your revenge.”
“_Revenge!_” I echoed.
Then she would try over the aspects of our new separated lives.
“I ought to earn my own living,” she would insist.
“I want to be quite independent. I’ve always hated London. Perhaps I
shall try a poultry farm and bees. You won’t mind at first my being a
burden. Afterwards—”
“We’ve settled all that,” I said.
“I suppose you will hate me anyhow...”
There were times when she seemed to regard our separation with absolute
complacency, when she would plan all sorts of freedoms and
characteristic interests.
“I shall go out a lot with Smithie,” she said.
And once she said an ugly thing that I did indeed hate her for that I
cannot even now quite forgive her.
“Your aunt will rejoice at all this. She never cared for me...”
Into my memory of these pains and stresses comes the figure of Smithie,
full-charged with emotion, so breathless in the presence of the horrid
villain of the piece that she could make no articulate sounds. She had
long tearful confidences with Marion, I know, sympathetic close
clingings. There were moments when only absolute speechlessness
prevented her giving me a stupendous “talking-to”—I could see it in her
eye. The wrong things she would have said! And I recall, too, Mrs.
Ramboat’s slow awakening to something in, the air, the growing
expression of solicitude in her eye, only her well-trained fear of
Marion keeping her from speech.
And at last through all this welter, like a thing fated and altogether
beyond our control, parting came to Marion and me.
I hardened my heart, or I could not have gone. For at the last it came
to Marion that she was parting from me for ever. That overbore all
other things, had turned our last hour to anguish. She forgot for a
time the prospect of moving into a new house, she forgot the outrage on
her proprietorship and pride. For the first time in her life she really
showed strong emotions in regard to me, for the first time, perhaps,
they really came to her. She began to weep slow, reluctant tears. I
came into her room, and found her asprawl on the bed, weeping.
“I didn’t know,” she cried. “Oh! I didn’t understand!”
“I’ve been a fool. All my life is a wreck!
“I shall be alone!..._Mutney!_ Mutney, don’t leave me! Oh! Mutney! I
didn’t understand.”
I had to harden my heart indeed, for it seemed to me at moments in
those last hours together that at last, too late, the longed-for thing
had happened and Marion had come alive. A new-born hunger for me lit
her eyes.
“Don’t leave me!” she said, “don’t leave me!” She clung to me; she
kissed me with tear-salt lips.
I was promised now and pledged, and I hardened my heart against this
impossible dawn. Yet it seems to me that there were moments when it
needed but a cry, but one word to have united us again for all our
lives. Could we have united again? Would that passage have enlightened
us for ever or should we have fallen back in a week or so into the old
estrangement, the old temperamental opposition?
Of that there is now no telling. Our own resolve carried us on our
predestined way. We behaved more and more like separating lovers,
parting inexorably, but all the preparations we had set going worked on
like a machine, and we made no attempt to stop them. My trunks and
boxes went to the station. I packed my bag with Marion standing before
me. We were like children who had hurt each other horribly in sheer
stupidity, who didn’t know now how to remedy it. We belonged to each
other immensely—immensely. The cab came to the little iron gate.
“Good-bye!” I said.
“Good-bye.”
For a moment we held one another in each other’s arms and
kissed—incredibly without malice. We heard our little servant in the
passage going to open the door. For the last time we pressed ourselves
to one another. We were not lovers nor enemies, but two human souls in
a frank community of pain. I tore myself from her.
“Go away,” I said to the servant, seeing that Marion had followed me
down.