When Viola left Jim Barton she saw that every one was pouring into
Calvary, and she let herself go with the stream. The service seemed
interminable; it had nothing to do with hymns and prayers. All Viola’s
feelings struggled in it and became part of it.
She could scarcely wait for the preceding prayer to finish and Jim to
move with that careless forgetfulness of cassock and surplice to his
place in the new pulpit, so that she could hear again what he felt about
life.
He stood there with a look of something withheld and yet near, a power
that he was waiting for but which would surely come.
Then he leaned over the pulpit with that absurd, untidy lock of
tow-coloured hair spreading down to his eyes and talked urgently and
honestly to his people.
He spoke as if pleasing God was vital, and all other qualities, Sunday
clothes and the power of opinion, as insignificant as last year’s
newspaper. The look on people’s faces changed; they forgot their dinner
and their debts and even whether they had been properly noticed, faded
out of their minds.
For half an hour second-hand things were second-hand, and only primary
things mattered. The question of breaking her engagement became
curiously simple to Viola. It would hurt just as much as she had thought
it was going to hurt, perhaps more, but it was no longer confusing. No
one but Reggie mattered. Even her mother and her formidable resentment
dwindled; as for that dreadful ring of people, the outer world, she saw
them for what they were—as irrelevant as faces in a dream.
She owed Reggie mercy and truth, and though they seemed conflicting, it
was only because mercy is not usually associated with pain, and truth is
too frequently considered an unkindness. She saw that unless she hurt
Reggie a good deal now, she would hurt him continuously and much more
seriously later. She felt the same rush of strength and refreshment that
she had known on the top of Beachy Head. It had seemed then as if the
little mixed up life of London had blown over the edge of the cliff.
Wedding presents and cardboard boxes had become trifles light as air,
and she had been one with the serene and unchangeable life of nature.
She felt the same sense of exultation now as if there was a Law which,
the moment you came into actual contact with it, set you free. It didn’t
let you off the consequences of your acts, but it didn’t let you be
suffocated by all sorts of extras that couldn’t really be called
consequences at all.
Viola saw that she had been careless and cowardly, and she knew that she
must take the consequences and see the person involved take them.
Unfortunately carelessness and cowardice always mean pain and effort for
somebody else, and no very kind person with feelings for others, can
afford to be either careless or cowardly. Viola was very kind, and her
heart ached miserably; but at least she could prevent worse happening,
she needn’t for an instant more stand her own cowardice. She went away
from Poplar feeling like a murderer, but like a murderer who has
resolved to face his punishment. She wasn’t being hunted any more.
It was a wet, interminable Sunday; her father had stayed in to lunch on
purpose to cheer Viola up, but he was full of the gloomiest forebodings.
England was already effete, democracy had destroyed it. There were no
master minds, and the person who was responsible for the present
iniquitous Budget was a fiend. The House of Commons was just a mob of
uncultured, insolent people whom one couldn’t invite to meet one’s
family.
Did Viola know where Harry was? No! No one ever did, except Jews and
scoundrels off the turf. Harry was unfilial and extravagant. Why didn’t
he tell his father what he was up to? He expected him to pay for it,
whatever it was, and never gave him his confidence.
Viola smoothed Mr. Egerton down. She said quite truly that Harry never
confided in anybody, because he had usually forgotten what there was to
confide; but on the whole he never did anything very silly either, did
he? Something formed and automatic in him stopped him several yards from
precipices. Harry merely wanted, like all young creatures, to look over
the top.
She diverted Mr. Egerton with descriptions of their friends at
Eastbourne. Her father took a curiously narrow interest in his friends,
but he let himself be diverted.
He liked to be reminded whom his friends had married, the size of their
families, and the probable extent of their incomes. All the curiosities
and expectations of Viola’s youthful mind went off him as if his mind
was covered with an impenetrable spiritual waterproof.
He remembered, while they were drinking coffee, to ask where Viola had
been to church. Viola said ‘Calvary’ and waited for the first of her
explosions.
But nothing exploded at all. Mr. Egerton said he’d never heard of it,
and had always thought churches were called after saints, or you
remembered them by the squares they were in.
Viola kissed the top of his head and went upstairs to wait for her
ordeal. She wondered if middle-aged people closely related to you were
ever very much help.
Women usually have to wait for their ordeals and it is not a reassuring
process.
Viola sat on a most comfortable sofa with her heart in her mouth. She
had every magazine she could possibly want on her lap, and at the end of
two hours and a half she couldn’t have said if she’d been reading the
record of the world’s greatest criminal or the Study of the Differential
Calculus.
Then Reggie came in. He looked triumphantly well and happy.
He was at the height of human prosperity. Life had denied him very
little, and never shaken him at all. He had done brilliantly in business
and seen the dreams of his early youth fulfilled. His father and Mr.
Egerton, both solid and successful men, relied on his judgment. He was
socially the most popular young man of his circle, and engaged to be
married at twenty-four to the most lovely girl he knew.
He had just bought a new motor and had never done anything at all
discreditable.
Reggie’s love for Viola was as real as his self-esteem.
He never looked at a shop window or let his eye rest carelessly on
another woman without wondering if what he saw in the window or on the
woman might not suit Viola. If she had a finger ache he would have
ransacked London to allay it. But he knew nothing at all about her, and
her opinions when he listened to them, annoyed him.
Reggie had no wish to be arrogant, and he was generally good-natured,
but he couldn’t help feeling that most people’s misfortunes could be
helped, and that if a fellow was too down on his luck, it was almost
certain to be his own fault.
He had been ill once, but not painfully, and he had forgotten all about
it.
When Viola said, ‘Please don’t kiss me, Reggie,’ he thought she must
have a cold, but he had sense enough not to kiss her.
He remembered in time that Mrs. Egerton had said girls must be humoured
before marriage and managed afterwards. Viola got up as he entered and
sat down on a chair at some little distance from him.
‘Reggie,’ she said quickly. ‘I want to tell you something horrid. Please
sit down quietly and let me get through with it.’
Reggie sat down with his legs crossed and his foot shaking impatiently.
He thought that Viola looked a little white and ‘nervy’ and perhaps
needed a tonic, but she flushed as she met the firm apprising look of
his bright, hard eyes.
‘It’s not very easy to say, Reggie,’ she began apologetically, ‘and I
want you to believe how sorry and ashamed I am—horribly ashamed—but
I’ve made a great mistake—I can’t marry you, I don’t love you enough.’
So that was what Mrs. Egerton had meant by having to humour Viola and
carting her off to Eastbourne! Reggie had never believed in the
Eastbourne plan, and he had always thought that there was something at
the bottom of the Wardrobe! Now he would have to use tact.
‘But, my dear good child,’ he said with his eyes a perceptible shade
harder. ‘You needn’t be in the least sorry. If there is any mistake I’ll
shoulder it. You simply don’t understand. Girls—the sort of girl at
least that you are—never feel much in love until they’re married.’
‘Oh, I’m not a sort!’ cried Viola, with flaming cheeks, ‘I’m just like
any other girl, and I _must_ be in love before I marry!’
Reggie didn’t answer her for a moment; his eyes had a curious look as if
he was both very pleased and very angry at the same time. Then he got up
and took Viola out of her chair. She felt his arms around her, hard and
inescapable, and his kisses on her lips and face like fire.
‘You little fool! You little fool!’ he murmured softly. ‘Do you suppose
I can’t make you love me?’
He really thought violence would make any woman love him.
Viola made no attempt to escape; she left herself passive in his
constraining arms, but her mind felt curiously cold and free. There was
no response to his passion in her. He let her go at last and walked up
and down the room without speaking. She was conscious that something she
neither understood nor wanted to understand was taking place in Reggie.
Her coldness had put no barrier between them. He wanted her as much as
if she wanted him. He could not understand a covenant.
She was vaguely relived when John came in with the tea-table. She waited
for him to go out again, and then she said gently, ‘It isn’t the least
use, Reggie—on the contrary, you simply make me see how much I dislike
your making love to me.’
She was astonished at herself for being so rude, and she saw that Reggie
was astonished too—he was also shocked.
It seemed rather funny to Viola that she should shock Reggie. But she
saw in a flash that probably she would have to go on shocking him or
else what she said would make no impression on him at all.
‘But this is all nonsense,’ he said, pulling himself together and
standing in front of her. ‘You can’t mean what you say. Who the devil
did you meet down at Eastbourne?’
Viola shook her head; there wouldn’t be much use telling Reggie that
she’d seen seagulls blown about by the wind and remembered what some one
had said in a sermon.
‘Oh, no one,’ she said wearily.
‘Are you telling me the truth?’ asked Reggie brutally.
‘If I had met any one else at Eastbourne,’ said Viola, ‘I should have
stayed down there. What I felt, I felt before I went down—but not so
clearly.’
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘that’s it, is it—sheer bad temper about that cursed
wardrobe?’
A gleam of laughter passed over Viola’s face.
‘No,’ she said, ‘it isn’t the wardrobe, Reggie, though it did rather
crush me. It’s what made the wardrobe so curiously terrible.’
‘Do talk sense,’ said Reggie irritably; ‘I gave way about it, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, but you liked it,’ said Viola.
‘I’m damned if I know what you mean!’ grumbled Reggie.
Viola made the tea in silence, then she said, ‘It’s no use, Reggie. We
aren’t suited. You like one kind of thing and I like another; and it
would be just the same all through.’
‘Fortunately,’ said Reggie, ‘we can afford a large house to suit both
our tastes. We can have two houses if we like.’
‘If we had a hundred,’ said Viola inexorably, ‘it would be the same
thing.’
Viola’s heart was still beating uncomfortably fast, but she
congratulated herself that the worst was over. Reggie would have to
understand now, and if he really understood he wouldn’t mind.
When Reggie raised his head and spoke again, the solid ground seemed to
fall away from her and she saw that the real struggle had only just
begun.
‘If you really mean this, Viola,’ he said in a queer, desperate tone, ‘I
shall go to pieces—I can’t stand it. Can’t you see I’m mad for you? I
don’t care what you say. I’ll give you anything you like—but for God’s
sake don’t turn me down.’
This was the real Reggie. He did not attempt to drink his tea. Viola saw
with rising pity and horror that his hands were shaking too much to hold
a cup.
Nothing that she said had made any difference. Blows cannot be softened.
People can only strike and then shut their eyes so as not to see what
they have done, and nothing in Viola helped her to shut her eyes.
‘Oh, Reggie!’ she cried, ‘I’m so frightfully sorry!’
‘Don’t!’ he muttered, ‘don’t—I can’t stand it. Give me a chance. If you
turn me out of this room, away from you, I’m done.’
‘But I’ve got to!’ Viola cried. ‘Don’t you see, if it’s bad now, how
much worse it would be?’
‘I don’t see anything but you,’ said Reggie doggedly.
He sat before her with his trembling hands like a creature mortally
bereft.
Only half an hour ago he had come into the room as if the world belonged
to him and as if he owed his mastery of it to his own skill. But with
his possession menaced, his powers had abruptly left him. He had not got
the kind of power which is independent of possession.
‘I can’t do anything to make it easier!’ moaned Viola. ‘You’d better go,
Reggie. Oh, do be angry with me!’
‘I am angry with you,’ said Reggie in a low voice, ‘angry enough to kill
you.’
‘Well, kill me, then!’ said Viola desperately. ‘You see, if it was only
being dead—I wouldn’t mind; but I can’t go on being alive with you!’
‘I am not ugly! I’m not deformed!’ Reggie burst out suddenly. ‘I haven’t
any bad habits—and I’m not, I should suppose, common or unclean. What
the devil have you got against me?’
‘I don’t love you,’ said Viola steadily. ‘You aren’t what I thought and
I’m not what you think, Reggie——’
‘Oh, think!’ sneered Reggie. ‘Do you suppose I care what you think, or
what I think either for that matter? You’re you, aren’t you? What you
think won’t alter the colour of your eyes or prevent those damned
provocative lips of yours from haunting me! Oh, my God!’
He sprang up quickly and began walking up and down the room again. It
seemed to Viola as if passion was a cage, and you never got any farther
in it than walking up and down a narrow space between iron bars.
Mr. Egerton came in for his tea, and Reggie turned his white, tortured
face towards him.
‘Your daughter’s just been refusing to marry me,’ he said. ‘Do you know
what she means by it?’
Mr. Egerton had seen a good deal of annoyance in his life, but nothing
like torture, and he had been more or less comfortable for thirty years.
He said, ‘Oh nonsense! My dear fellow, nonsense!’ because torture really
seemed like nonsense to him, and then he looked angrily at Viola.
Both of them looked at Viola. On her lay the full burden of their
feelings and their way of escape.
Viola had always longed for a great moment of decision—and now that it
had occurred to her, she felt that nothing in the world could be as
terrible as to feel your own power and have to use it. If only she could
say, ‘Oh, no! I don’t mean it, really! I was only upset.’ They’d believe
that, and believing it, they would forgive her. Men can always forgive a
woman’s weakness. What they can never forgive her is the moment of her
strength, and of her truthfulness. She had to answer them, and in order
to do it she had to violate every decency she possessed. She had to
deliberately smash her world before she could get off (if she could get
off then!) with her own soul.
‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated stubbornly, ‘but I can’t marry you, Reggie.
It’s no use father—I can’t do it.’
The room went round with her, and she was conscious of their floating
faces, but it steadied again. She wasn’t going to do anything so easy as
to faint.
Reggie swore under his breath and moved towards the door. She heard her
father say soothingly that she wasn’t quite herself. It was curious that
he should say that of her, when for the first time in her life, that
which was herself, had risen up in her and acted.
It had hurt her more than she had dreamed that what you did could hurt
you, but she knew that if she had to do it all over again, now, with no
breath, and the bitter memory of Reggie’s stricken eyes acute in
her—she would somehow or other find strength to do it.