answered in a muffled voice as though her face lay against the
pillow. 'No.'
"'You said, no?'
"She stirred, and her voice came clearer.
"'I said no. Oh Husbind-boy I wish I was dead! I wish to God I was
dead.'
"I sat still and she said no more. We remained like two
fear-stricken creatures in the jungle, motionless, in an immense
silence and darkness.
"At last she moved. Her hand crept out towards me, seeking me, and
at that advance I recoiled. I seemed to hang for a moment between
two courses of action, and then I gave myself over to rage. 'You'd
touch me!' I cried, and got out of bed and began to walk about the
room.
"'I knew it!' I shouted. 'I knew it! I felt it! And I have loved
you! You cheat! You foul thing! You lying cheat!'"
§ 6
"I think I described to you earlier in the story how my family
behaved when Fanny left us, how we all seemed to be acting and
keeping up a noise of indignation as if we were afraid of some
different and disturbing realisations coming through to us should
that barrage of make-believe morality fail. And just as my father
and my mother behaved in that downstairs kitchen in Cherry Gardens so
now I behaved in that desolating crisis between myself and Hetty. I
stormed about the room, I hurled insults at her. I would not let the
facts that she was a beaten and weeping thing, that she certainly
loved me, and that her pain tortured me, prevail against my hard duty
to my outraged pride.
"I lit the gas, I don't remember when, and the scene went on in that
watery Victorian light. I began dressing, for never more was I to
lie in bed with Hetty. I meant to dress and, having said my say, to
go out of the house. So I had to be scornful and loudly indignant,
but also I had to find my various garments, pull my shirt over my
head and lace up my boots. So that there were interludes in the
storm, when Hetty could say something that I had to hear.
"'It all happened in an evening,' she said. 'It isn't as though I
had planned to betray you. It was his last day before he left and he
was wretched. It was the thought of you made me go with him. It was
just kindness. There were two of our girls going to have dinner with
their boys and they asked me to come and that was how I met him.
Officers they were all three, and schoolfellows. Londoners. Three
boys who were going over--just as you were. It seemed rotten not to
make a party for them.'
"I was struggling with my collar and stud but I tried to achieve
sarcasm. 'I see,' I said, 'under the circumstances mere politeness
dictated--what you did.... Oh, my God!'
"'Listen how it happened, Harry. Don't shout at me again for a
minute. Afterwards he asked me to come to his rooms. He said the
others were coming on. He seemed such a harmless sort!'
"'Very!'
"'He seemed the sort who'd surely get killed. And I was sorry for
him. He was fair like you. Fairer. And it seemed all different
that night. And then he got hold of me and kissed me and I
struggled, but I didn't seem to have the strength to resist. I
didn't realise somehow.'
"'That's pretty evident. That I can believe.'
"'You've got no pity, Harry. Perhaps it's just. I suppose I ought
to have seen the risk. But we aren't all strong like you. Some of
us are pulled this way and that. Some of us do the thing we hate. I
did what I could. It was like waking-up to realise what had
happened. He wanted me to stay with him. I ran out from his rooms.
I've never seen him since. He's written but I haven't answered.'
"'He knew you were a soldier's wife.'
"'He's rotten. He knew it. He planned it while we were at dinner.
He prayed and promised and lied. He said he wanted just a kiss, just
one kiss for kindness. He began with that kiss. I'd been drinking
wine, and I'm not used to wine. Oh, Harry! Husbind-boy, if I could
have died! But I'd kissed and played about with boys before I met
you. It seemed so little--until it was too late.'
"'And here we are!' said I.
"I came and sat down on the bed and stared at Hetty's dishevelled
distress. She was suddenly pitiful and pretty. 'I suppose I ought
to go and kill this swine,' I said. 'I feel more like killing you.'
"'Kill me,' she said. 'I wish you would.'
"'What's his name? Where is he now?'
"'_He_ doesn't matter a rap,' said Hetty. 'You may hang for me if
you like, but you shan't hang for a thing like that. I tell you he
doesn't matter. He's a dirty accident. He happened.'
"'You're shielding him.'
"'_Him!_' she said. 'I'm shielding you.'
"I stared at her. Again came a moment when I seemed to hang
undecided at the parting of two courses, and again I decided to
explode into rage. 'My _God_!' I cried, and then louder and standing
up, 'My _God_!' Then I ranted at her. 'I suppose I've only got
myself to blame for all this. What did I know of what you were
before I met you? I guess I wasn't the first and I guess _he_ won't
be the last. What do names matter? I guess you thanked Heaven for a
green dud when you met me.' And so on. I paced about the room as I
raved.
"She sat up on the bed, her hair disordered and her eyes tearful,
regarding me with a still and mournful face. 'Oh, Harry!' she would
say ever and again, or 'Oh, Boy!' while I let my clumsy fancy rove
through a wilderness of coarse reproaches. Ever and again I would
come up to her and stand over her. 'Tell me his name,' I would shout
and she would shake her head.
"At last I was dressed. I looked at my watch. 'Five.'
"'What are you going to do?' she asked.
"'I don't know. Go, I suppose. I can't stay here. I should be
sick. I shall get most of my things together and go. I'll find a
lodging somewhere. It's nearly dawn. I'll go before you need get
up. Meanwhile I'll sit in the other room. I can lie on the sofa for
a bit.'
"'But the fire's not lit!' she said, 'and it's cold. It's not even
laid. And you'll need some coffee!'
"She stared at me with eyes full of solicitude.
"And forthwith she shuffled out of bed and slipped her feet into her
bedroom slippers and put on a gay dressing-gown that had been a great
delight to us--ten days ago. She went meekly by me, moving her poor
heavy body rather wearily, and found some fire-lighters in a cupboard
and knelt by the fireplace and began to rake out the ashes of the
overnight fire. I made no movement to prevent her. I began to
collect together various books and small possessions I intended to
take with me.
"She was only apprehending the situation very slowly. She turned to
me in the middle of her fire-lighting. 'I suppose you'll leave me a
little money to go on with?' she said.
"That gave me a base opportunity. 'I'll leave you money all right,'
I sneered. 'I suppose I've got to keep you until we're free. Then
it will be his job. Or the next man's.'
"She occupied herself with the fire. She filled a kettle and put it
ready. Then she sat down in an arm-chair by the hearth. Her face
was white and drawn but she shed no tears. I went to the window and
pulled up the blind and stared at the street outside with its street
lamps still alight; everything was gaunt and bleak in the colourless
cold horror of the earliest dawn.
"'I shall go to mother,' she said, shivering and pulling her
dressing-gown about her shoulders. 'It will be dreadful for her to
know what has happened. But she's kind. She'll be kinder than
anyone.... I shall go to her.'
"'You can do what you like,' I said.
"'Harry!' she said. 'I've never loved any man but you. If I could
kill this child---- If it would please you if I killed this
child----'
"She spoke with white lips. 'Yes. I tried all I knew. Some things
I couldn't bring myself to do. And now it's a thing that's alive....'
"We stared at one another in silence for some moments.
"'No!' I said at last. 'I can't stand it. I can't endure it.
Nothing can alter it now. You tell a tale. How do I know? You've
cheated once and you can cheat again. You gave yourself to that
swine. If I live to a hundred I'll never forgive that. You gave
yourself. How do I know you didn't tempt him? You gave. You can
go. Go where you gave yourself! They're things no decent man can
forgive. Things that are dirty to forgive. He stole you and you let
him steal you and he can have you. I wish---- If you'd had the
beginnings of a sense of honour you'd never have let me come back to
you. To think of these last days here. And you--you with this
secret next your heart! The filthiness of it! You--you, whom I've
loved.'
"I was weeping."
Sarnac paused and stared into the fire. "Yes," he said, "I was
weeping. And the tears I shed--it is wonderful--the tears I shed
were tears of the purest self-pity.
"And all the time I saw the thing from my own standpoint alone, blind
to the answering tragedy in Hetty's heart. And the most grotesque
thing is that all the time she was getting me coffee and that when it
was ready I drank her coffee! At the end she wanted to kiss me, to
kiss me 'good-bye,' she said, and I rebuffed her and struck her when
she came near me. I meant only to thrust her back but my hand
clenched at the opportunity. '_Harry!_' she whispered. She stood
like a stunned thing watching me go, and then turned suddenly and
swiftly and ran back to the bedroom.
"I slammed the outer door and went downstairs into the empty morning
Richmond streets; altogether empty of traffic they were, under the
flush of dawn.
"I carried my bag towards the railway station that would take me to
London; my bag was heavy with the things I had brought away, and it
dragged upon my arms, and I felt myself a tragically ill-used but
honourably self-vindicated young man."
§ 7
"Oh, poor little things!" cried Starlight. "Oh! poor, little,
pitiful pitiless creatures! This story hurts me. I couldn't endure
it, if it were anything more than a dream. Why were they all so hard
upon each other and so deaf to the sorrow in each other?"
"We knew no better. This world now has a tempered air. In this
world we breathe mercy with our first fluttering gasp. We are so
taught and trained to think of others that their pain is ours. But
two thousand years ago men and women were half-way back to crude
Nature. Our motives took us unawares. We breathed infections. Our
food was poisoned. Our passions were fevers. We were only beginning
to learn the art of being human."
"But didn't Fanny----?" began Firefly.
"Yes," said Willow; "didn't Fanny, who was naturally so wise about
love, didn't she take you in hand and send you back to forgive and
help your wretched Hetty?"
"Fanny heard my version of our story first," said Sarnac. "She never
realised the true values of the business until it was too late to
stop the divorce. When I told her that Hetty had lived a life of
depravity in London while I was in the trenches, she heard me with
amazement but never doubted my word.
"'And she seemed such a dear,' said Fanny. 'She seemed so in love
with you. It's wonderful how different women are! There's women who
seem to change into something else directly they get out of sight of
you round a corner. I _liked_ your Hetty, Harry. There was
something sweet about her, be what she may. I never dreamt she'd
deceive you and let you down. Fancy!--going about London picking up
men! It's just as though she'd done it to me.
"Matilda Good too was wonderfully sympathetic. 'No woman goes wrong
only just once,' said Matilda. 'You're right to end it.' The
Miltons were giving up her drawing-room floor, I could have it, if I
cared to take it. I was only too glad to take it and return to my
old home.
"Hetty, I suppose, packed up her own belongings as well as she could.
She went down from Richmond to her mother's farm at Payton Links, and
there it was her child was born.
"Now I want to tell you," said Sarnac, "what is, I believe, the most
remarkable thing in all this story I am telling you. I do not
remember in all that time right up to and including our divorce, that
I felt any impulse of pity or kindliness, much less of love, towards
Hetty. And yet in my dream I was very much the same sort of man as I
am to-day. I was a man of the same type. But I was driven by a
storm of amazed and outraged pride and sexual jealousy of the most
frantic sort towards acts of spite that are almost inconceivable here
and now. I was doing all I could to divorce Hetty in such a way as
to force her into marriage with Sumner--for that was the man's
name--because I had learnt that he was a hopelessly bad character and
because I believed he would make her miserable and mar her life
altogether. I wanted to do that to punish her, to fill her with
bitter regrets for her treatment of me. But at the same time it
drove me to the verge of madness to think that he should ever possess
her again. If my wishes could have been given creative force, Hetty
would have gone to Sumner disfigured and diseased. They would have
come together again amidst circumstances of horrible cruelty!"
"Sarnac!" cried Sunray, "that you should even _dream_ such things!"
"Dream! It is as men were. It is as they are, except for the
education and the free happiness that release us. For we are not
fourscore generations from the Age of Confusion, and that was but a
few thousands more from the hairy ape-men who bayed the moon in the
primeval forests of Europe. Then it was the Old Man in lust and
anger ruled his herd of women and children and begot us all. And in
the Age of Confusion after the Great Wars man was, and he still is,
the child of that hairy Old Ape-Man. Don't I shave myself daily?
And don't we educate and legislate with our utmost skill and science
to keep the old beast within bounds? But our schools in the days of
Harry Mortimer Smith were still half-way back to the cave; our
science was only beginning. We had no sexual education at all, only
concealments and repressions. Our code was still the code of
jealousy--thinly disguised. The pride and self-respect of a man was
still bound up with the animal possession of women--the pride and
self-respect of most women was by a sort of reflection bound up with
the animal possession of a man. We felt that this possession was the
keystone of life. Any failure in this central business involved a
monstrous abasement, and against that our poor souls sought blindly
for the most extravagant consolations. We hid things, we perverted
and misrepresented things, we evaded the issue. Man is a creature
which under nearly every sort of stress releases hate and malign
action, and we were then still subjected to the extremest stresses.
"But I will not go on apologising for Harry Mortimer Smith. He was
what the world made him and so are we. And in my dream I went about
that old world, doing my work, controlling my outward behaviour and
spending all the force of my wounded love for Hetty in scheming for
her misery.
"And one thing in particular was of immense importance to my
tormented being. It was that I should get another lover quickly,
that I should dispel the magic of Hetty's embraces, lay the haunting
ghost of my desire for her. I had to persuade myself that I had
never really loved her and replace her in my heart by someone I could
persuade myself was my own true love.
"So I sought the company of Milly Kimpton again. We had been close
companions before the War, and it was not difficult to persuade
myself that I had always been a little in love with her. Always she
had been more than a little in love with me. I told her my story of
my marriage and she was hurt for my sake and indignant beyond means
with the Hetty I presented to her.
"She married me within a week of the completion of my divorce."
§ 8
"Milly was faithful and Milly was kind; she was a cooling refuge from
the heat and distresses of my passion. She had a broad, candid face
that never looked either angry or miserable; she held her countenance
high, smiling towards heaven with a pleasant confidence and
self-satisfaction; she was very fair and she was broad-shouldered for
a woman. She was tender but not passionate; she was intelligently
interested in things but without much whim or humour. She was nearly
a year and a half older than I. She had, as people used to say,
'taken a great fancy' to me when first I came into the firm, a crude
and inexperienced youngster. She had seen me rise very rapidly to
Mr. Cheeseman's position on the editorial staff--he had been
transferred to the printing side--and at times she had helped me
greatly. We were both popular in Thunderstone House, and when we
married there was a farewell dinner to Milly, who gave up her
position then in the counting-house; there were speeches and a
wonderful wedding-present of dinner-knives and silver forks and
spoons in a brass-bound chest of oak with a flattering inscription on
a silver plate. There had been a good deal of sympathy with Milly in
Thunderstone House, especially among the girls, and a good deal of
indignation at me when my first marriage occurred, and my belated
recognition of my true destiny was considered a very romantic and
satisfactory end to the story.
"We secured a convenient little house in a row of stucco houses all
built together to have one architectural effect, called Chester
Terrace, close to one of the inner parks of London known as Regent's
Park. Milly, I discovered, had a little fortune of nearly two
thousand pounds, and so she was able to furnish this house very
prettily according to current taste, and in this house in due course
she bore me a son. I rejoiced very greatly and conspicuously over
this youngster's arrival. I think you will understand how essential
it was to my obsession for defeating and obliterating Hetty that
Milly should bear me a child.
"I worked very hard during that first year of married life and on the
whole I was happy. But it was not a very rich nor a very deep sort
of happiness. It was a happiness made up of rather hard and rather
superficial satisfactions. In a sense I loved Milly very dearly; her
value was above rubies, she was honest and sweet and complaisant.
She liked me enormously, she was made happy by my attentions; she
helped me, watched for my comfort, rejoiced at the freshness and
vigour of my work. Yet we did not talk very freely and easily
together. I could not let my mind run on before her; I had to shape
what I said to her feelings and standards, and they were very
different feelings and standards from my own. She was everything a
wife should be except in one matter; she was not for me that
particular dear companion for whom the heart of every human being
craves, that dear companion with whom you are happy and free and
safe. That dear companionship I had met--and I had thrust it from
me. Does it come twice in a life to anyone?"
"How should I know?" said Sunray.
"We know better than to reject it," said Radiant.
"Perhaps after many years," said Willow, answering Sarnac's question,
"after one has healed and grown and changed."
"Milly and I were close friends indeed, but we were never dear
companions. I had told Hetty about my sister Fanny on the evening of
our first day together when we walked over the hills, she was
instantly sure that she would love Fanny, Fanny had seemed very brave
and romantic to Hetty's imagination; but I did not tell Milly of
Fanny until close upon our marriage. You will say that it was not
Milly's fault that I was shy with her on Fanny's account, but
assuredly it was a fault in our relationship. And it was clear that
Milly accepted Fanny on my account and refrained from too searching a
commentary because of me. Milly believed profoundly in the
institution of marriage and in the obligation of an unlimited
chastity upon women. 'It is a pity she cannot marry this man,' said
Milly, anticipating perplexities. 'It must make everything so
inconvenient for her--and everyone who knows her. It must be so
difficult to introduce her to people.'
"'You needn't do that,' I said.
"'My people are old-fashioned.'
"'They needn't know,' I said.
"'That would be the easier way for me, Harry.'
"I found my own declarations of affection for Fanny considerably
chilled by the effort Milly made to be generous in the matter.
"I found it still more difficult to tell her that Fanny's lover was
Newberry.
"'Then is that how you got into Thunderstone House?' asked Milly when
at last I got to that revelation.
"'It's how I got my chance there,' I admitted.
"'I didn't think it was like that. I thought you'd made your way in.'
"'I've made my way up. I've never been favoured.'
"'Yes--but---- Do you think people know, Harry? They'd say all
sorts of things.'
"You perceive that Milly was not a very clever woman and also that
she was very jealous of my honour. 'I don't think anyone knows who
matters,' I said. 'Neither I nor Fanny advertise.'
"But it was clear Milly did not like the situation. She would have
much preferred a world without sister Fanny. She had no curiosity to
see this sister that I loved so dearly or to find any good in her.
On various small but quite valid scores she put off going to see her
for a whole week. And always I had to remind her of Fanny and speak
of Fanny first before Fanny could be talked about. In all other
matters Milly was charming and delightful to me, but as far as she
could contrive it she banished Fanny from our world. She could not
see how much of my affection went also into banishment.
"Their meeting when at last it came about was bright rather than
warm. An invisible athermanous screen had fallen not only between
Milly and Fanny but between Fanny and myself. Milly had come,
resolved to be generous and agreeable in spite of Fanny's
disadvantageous status, and I think she was a little disconcerted by
Fanny's dress and furniture, for Milly was always very sensitive to
furniture and her sensitiveness had been enhanced by our own efforts
to equip a delightful home on a sufficient but not too extravagant
expenditure. I had always thought Fanny's furnishings very pretty,
but it had never occurred to me that they were, as Milly put it,
'dreadfully good.' But there was a red lacquer cabinet that Milly
said afterwards might be worth as much as a hundred pounds, and she
added one of those sentences that came upon one like an unexpected
thread of gossamer upon the face: 'It doesn't seem right somehow.'
"Fanny's simple dress I gathered was far too good also. Simple
dresses were the costliest in those days of abundant material and
insufficient skill.
"But these were subsequent revelations, and at the time I did not
understand why there should be an obscure undertone of resentment in
Milly's manner, nor why Fanny was displaying a sort of stiff
sweetness quite foreign to my impression of her.
"'It's wonderful to meet you at last,' said Fanny. 'He's talked
about you for years. I can remember once long before--long before
the War--and everything--at Hampton Court. I can remember sitting on
those seats by the river and his talking about you.'
"'I remember that,' I said, though it wasn't the part about Milly
that had stuck in my memory.
"'We used to go about together no end in those days,' said Fanny.
'He was the dearest of brothers.'
"'I hope he'll still be,' said Milly very kindly.
"'A son's a son till he gets a wife,' said Fanny, quoting an
old-woman's proverb.
"'You mustn't say that,' said Milly. 'I hope you'll come to see
us--quite often.'
"'I'd love to come,' said Fanny. 'You're lucky to get a house so
easily, these days.'
"'It isn't quite ready yet,' said Milly. 'But as soon as ever it is
we must find some day when you are free.'
"'I'm often free,' said Fanny.
"'We'll fix a day,' said Milly, obviously quite resolute to ensure
that we had no unexpected calls from Fanny when other people might be
about.
"'It's nice you have been in the counting-house and understanding all
about his work,' said Fanny.
"'My people didn't like my going into business at all,' said Milly.
'But it's lucky I did.'
"'Lucky for Harry,' said Fanny. 'Are your--people London people?'
"'Dorset,' said Milly. 'They didn't like my coming to London.
They're just a little bit churchy and old-fashioned, you know. But
it's college or business, I said, and you don't find me staying at
home to dust and put out the flowers. One has to take a firm line
with one's people at times. Didn't you find that so? There was a
convenient aunt in Bedford Park to secure the proprieties and head
off the otherwise inevitable latch-key, and it was business instead
of college because my best uncle, Uncle Hereward--he's the Vicar of
Peddlebourne--objects to the higher education of women. And there
was also a question of finance.'
"'It must be interesting for Harry to meet your people,' said Fanny.