Love, like everything else in this immense process of social
disorganisation in which we live, is a thing adrift, a fruitless thing
broken away from its connexions. I tell of this love affair here
because of its irrelevance, because it is so remarkable that it should
mean nothing, and be nothing except itself. It glows in my memory like
some bright casual flower starting up amidst the _débris_ of a
catastrophe. For nearly a fortnight we two met and made love together.
Once more this mighty passion, that our aimless civilisation has
fettered and maimed and sterilised and debased, gripped me and filled
me with passionate delights and solemn joys—that were all, you know,
futile and purposeless. Once more I had the persuasion “This matters.
Nothing else matters so much as this.” We were both infinitely grave in
such happiness as we had. I do not remember any laughter at all between
us.
Twelve days it lasted from that encounter in my chalet until our
parting.
Except at the end, they were days of supreme summer, and there was a
waxing moon. We met recklessly day by day. We were so intent upon each
other at first so intent upon expressing ourselves to each other, and
getting at each other, that we troubled very little about the
appearance of our relationship. We met almost openly.... We talked of
ten thousand things, and of ourselves. We loved. We made love. There is
no prose of mine that can tell of hours transfigured. The facts are
nothing. Everything we touched, the meanest things, became glorious.
How can I render bare tenderness and delight and mutual possession? I
sit here at my desk thinking of untellable things.
I have come to know so much of love that I know now what love might be.
We loved, scarred and stained; we parted—basely and inevitably, but at
least I met love.
I remember as we sat in a Canadian canoe, in a reedy, bush-masked
shallow we had discovered operating out of that pine-shaded Woking
canal, how she fell talking of the things that happened to her before
she met me again....
She told me things, and they so joined and welded together other things
that lay disconnected in my memory, that it seemed to me I had always
known what she told me. And yet indeed I had not known nor suspected
it, save perhaps for a luminous, transitory suspicion ever and again.
She made me see how life had shaped her. She told me of her girlhood
after I had known her. “We were poor and pretending and managing. We
hacked about on visits and things. I ought to have married. The chances
I had weren’t particularly good chances. I didn’t like ’em.”
She paused. “Then Carnaby came along.”
I remained quite still. She spoke now with downcast eyes, and one
finger just touching the water.
“One gets bored, bored beyond redemption. One does about to these huge
expensive houses I suppose—the scale’s immense. One makes one’s self
useful to the other women, and agreeable to the men. One has to
dress.... One has food and exercise and leisure, It’s the leisure, and
the space, and the blank opportunity it seems a sin not to fill.
Carnaby isn’t like the other men. He’s bigger.... They go about making
love. Everybody’s making love. I did.... And I don’t do things by
halves.”
She stopped.
“You knew?”—she asked, looking up, quite steadily. I nodded.
“Since when?”
“Those last days.... It hasn’t seemed to matter really. I was a little
surprised.”
She looked at me quietly. “Cothope knew,” she said. “By instinct. I
could feel it.”
“I suppose,” I began, “once, this would have mattered immensely. Now—”
“Nothing matters,” she said, completing me. “I felt I had to tell you.
I wanted you to understand why I didn’t marry you—with both hands. I
have loved you”—she paused—“have loved you ever since the day I kissed
you in the bracken. Only—I forgot.”
And suddenly she dropped her face upon her hands, and sobbed
passionately—
“I forgot—I forgot,” she cried, and became still....
I dabbled my paddle in the water. “Look here!” I said; “forget again!
Here am I—a ruined man. Marry me.”
She shook her head without looking up.
We were still for a long time. “Marry me!” I whispered.
She looked up, twined back a whisp of hair, and answered
dispassionately—
“I wish I could. Anyhow, we have had this time. It has been a fine
time—has it been—for you also? I haven’t nudged you all I had to give.
It’s a poor gift—except for what it means and might have been. But we
are near the end of it now.”
“Why?” I asked. “Marry me! Why should we two—”
“You think,” she said, “I could take courage and come to you and be
your everyday wife—while you work and are poor?”
“Why not?” said I.
She looked at me gravely, with extended finger. “Do you really think
that—of me? Haven’t you seen me—all?”