The house was full of anger. A cloud had hung over it ever since Viola’s
retreat from Reggie, though life had gone on the same, but since her
return from Warren Manor it was as if Viola had literally broken up her
home.
She hadn’t been able to have it out. Her first words had the shattering
effect of an explosion; her father couldn’t listen to her, his
heartiness turned into ejaculatory anger. His face crimsoned, his voice
rose, his fist shook. They had to keep saying to him, ‘Hush! The
servants are coming in.’
Viola couldn’t make him sit down quietly and let her explain; it would
have been like asking a gale to stop blowing.
Mr. Egerton repudiated reason. He behaved as if Viola were struggling
for her life in the surf, and the only sane thing to do was to knock her
into unconsciousness, and drag her out by the hair.
Mrs. Egerton was more composed, but she was equally terrible. She shut
her eyes and winced when Viola spoke Jim’s name, and she looked suddenly
old. Viola had never seen her mother cry before, but Mrs. Egerton cried
now, pathetically tremulously, as if she couldn’t help it, her eyelids
were always red.
Viola had loved her better than any one in the world for twenty-one
years, and her mother’s tears shook her as nothing else could have
shaken her. Viola despised their prejudices, and she could easily
demolish all their reasons, but she couldn’t do anything with the look
on their faces. She—their child—was making them old and helpless. They
fled like quarries pursued by the fierceness of her will. She had been
afraid of their anger, but their anger was nothing when she was face to
face with it. It was their pain that pierced her to the heart.
Their trouble drew her parents mysteriously together. They were to be
met at any hour talking in dry, accusatory voices. They said the same
things over and over again, beating out the accumulated differences of
the years, but without anger. Their anger was concentrated on
Viola—they had none of it left for each other. The situation was
bewilderingly cruel, like the simple French opera of _Louise_.
Louise had to make her choice between her parents and her lover. Viola
had always thought that the whole problem was forced. Surely a
compromise was always possible? Louise had thought so, too, but her
parents hadn’t. Their daughter’s choice disintegrated and ruined
them—they insisted on being ruined and disintegrated by it, just as Mr.
and Mrs. Egerton insisted on being ruined and disintegrated by Viola’s
choice.
It wasn’t Louise who wouldn’t come to them when they were ill and dying,
it was they who wouldn’t be nursed by her unless she gave her lover up.
Viola would be just the same to her parents whether she married Jim or
Reggie, but they wouldn’t see it. It was she they cared for, not
Reggie’s houses and motors and steam yachts, and yet they behaved as if
she was depriving them personally of all Reggie’s possessions, as well
as becoming a perfectly different person.
They seemed to believe that having failed to convince her themselves she
would be more likely to listen to Harry.
When Harry had failed the family was turned on to her. Aunts and uncles
who lived in big houses and had sent her silver inkpots and leather
prayer books on great occasions, too took advantage of these unsolicited
gifts to become flatly intimate with Viola.
They insisted on discussing all her private feelings and telling her
that she must have got them from the Egertons or the Mannerings.
It seemed to Viola as if she had no private feeling left, but she saw
they could have been private if only they’d been like everybody else’s.
They had been private when it was a question of Reggie. People had
respected then the modesty of her youth; and she was only three months
older now, but Jim’s commonness untied their tongues. It set loose
vulgarities and humiliations. Viola heard things she had never heard
before. Base facts in the lives of people she loved and respected were
thrust at her like weapons. She was even told that the governess she
liked best, who had one day mysteriously left her, had turned out to be
the footman’s mistress.
They did not turn her from her purpose, but all their weapons had left
wounds. She was sure of nothing now. She was not sure of her love, that
great fact receded as if it had nothing to do with incomes (soap, that
was one of their arguments), and anger. It went literally out of her
head. She fought on all day, but love would have nothing to do with her.
It wouldn’t be used as a weapon.
They made one mistake. Nothing could be much more horrible than having
to hear the things they said—they forgot that.
The disgrace was the sin, and the sin was the disgrace, there was
nothing deeper in it. They wanted to tear her heart out by the roots, so
that no member of their family should deviate from the normal. But it
made her father and mother cry—she couldn’t get away from that. It was
irrelevant and important and absurd. There was no grandness in the
situation, and it couldn’t be stopped.
Even if Viola changed her mind, how could she give her parents happiness
again? They would always be afraid of what she would do next, and no one
could give happiness to suspicious parents out of a starved heart.
The person to whom Viola could still give happiness was Jim, and that
was why she still held on to him.
She had felt only for a moment how much joy she could give him, but the
sense of it had blotted out time. She could not remember what it had
felt like now, but she knew that she had felt it, and might feel it
again. The wrangle heaved, and broke, and collected itself like rain
clouds shepherded by wind, to break out afresh. Everybody was worn out
by it and nobody had any fresh ideas. They were reduced to the simple,
sodden phrases of repetition.
At the end of three weeks Mr. Egerton announced that he would see Jim.
‘If you see him I must see him,’ said Viola. She believed now that her
parents would not scruple to play tricks upon her. Human beings were not
as sacred to them as proper marriages.
The storm broke out afresh. Mr. and Mrs. Egerton realised now that their
only chance was Jim. They had believed Viola to be the weakest link, and
they had isolated her in order to attack her; but Viola knew them. They
could not take her by surprise. She had the same defences as theirs. Jim
might be more vulnerable if he could be kept by himself. Lovers united
are never vulnerable; they have alive in them the principle which
created the world.
You cannot part lovers unless you separate them.
Mr. and Mrs. Egerton dimly suspected this truth, but they thought they
could get out of it somehow—probably by giving in.
Jim saw Mr. Egerton first.
There was no geniality left in Mr. Egerton. He sat in his leather-lined,
deep-cushioned library chair, holding himself in hand. His mind was full
of Elizabethean images, and resented law.
Jim came in and sat down clumsily. He did not know what to say, nor how
to take what was going to be said to him. Half of his conscience was on
Mr. Egerton’s side. He had nothing but pity for the man before him, and
it is very difficult to make points out of an uneasy conscience in the
face of pity. Mr. Egerton looked a very great deal older and very red.
He did not offer to shake hands with Jim; he held the arms of his chair
as if he was having a tooth out. He spoke pompously at first, in a
controlled voice, but as the interview went on he raised it.
‘I have sent for you,’ he said slowly and coldly, ‘on a most unpleasant
matter. It is difficult for me to express what I feel about it to you in
civil terms, though I shall endeavour to be civil.’
Jim interrupted him.
‘You needn’t be civil,’ he said eagerly, ‘just say what you mean—I can
stand it.’ He was anxious to make things as easy for Mr. Egerton as
possible. Mr. Egerton glared at him. He did not wish Jim to be able to
stand what he had to say to him, and he considered his tone of sympathy
a horrible piece of impertinence.
‘I propose to say what I mean,’ he said stiffly, ‘if you will be good
enough to allow me to speak without interruption.
‘I hear from my daughter that in some clandestine and irregular manner
there have been meetings between you, leading to a most unfortunate
attachment.
‘You had an invitation to my house, it is true, but I should have
thought that such an incident put you under an obligation to us, and was
not (as it appears to have been taken by you) an incentive to an
unscrupulous pursuit.’
‘As far as I am concerned,’ said Jim, who began to feel a little more at
his ease under the studied insolence of Mr. Egerton’s manner, ‘there was
nothing clandestine in my meetings with your daughter.’
‘You prefer to imply,’ said Mr. Egerton, ‘that my daughter is solely to
blame?’
Jim flushed.
‘If I saw any blame,’ he said, ‘I’d take it; but I don’t. We aren’t
living in mediæval times; if your daughter is not a free agent in
choosing her friends, the fault lies at your door. She merely violates a
consent she ought to be able to take for granted.’
Mr. Egerton held himself together as if it was only by a violent effort
he could prevent himself from flying into small pieces. His anger ran in
him like a flame.
‘In our class of life,’ he said with controlled fury, ‘we feel ourselves
at liberty to deny our daughters the right of associating with bargees
who have murdered their fathers.’
‘Then you shouldn’t have invited me to dinner to meet her,’ said Jim
inexorably.
Mr. Egerton swallowed his passion as if it was a bad taste.
‘I made a mistake,’ he said more quietly, ‘and it is no doubt free to
you to comment on it. I believed you to be a man I could, at any rate,
socially, trust. It was inconceivable to me that you should take
advantage of my generosity.’
‘If it had been generosity,’ said Jim, fixing his steady, challenging
eyes on the angry man before him, ‘there might be some sense talking
about taking advantage of it. But you know as well as I do that you
asked me to dinner not to give me a pleasure but to get a concession out
of me; and I didn’t come for the pleasure of dining with you either. I
came because I wondered if I could square things for the men by a
personal discussion with you and Mr. Ainley.
‘I got nothing out of the discussion, and you got nothing out of it
either, so we were square about that dinner, weren’t we? Let’s talk
sense.
‘I want your daughter and I was a bargee, that’s what it comes to, isn’t
it?
‘Well, I _was_ a bargee, and I did kill my father, and I worked for
nearly a year on one of your docks. But I’m better off now, and I have
rather more education than your own son. I admit that it’s a facer for
you, but, to tell the truth, it’s a facer for me as well.
‘I didn’t mean to marry out of my class—people like you are my natural
enemies. You can’t want me less than I want you—that’s a fact!’
It was not, however, a fact to Mr. Egerton. It was a monstrous and
insulting statement. His intellect refused it as a donkey stops dead
when expected to cross water.
‘I can hardly credit,’ he said icily, ‘that people should easily believe
that their efforts produce no success. If you have any such
disinclination as you state, I am at a loss to conceive why I have been
subjected to the humiliation of this preposterous project?’
‘I’m sorry it’s humiliating,’ said Jim anxiously; ‘I don’t want to
humiliate you. I only want to stick to facts.
‘Of course I wouldn’t have told your daughter I loved her, if I could
have helped it. But when I saw I couldn’t help it and she convinced me
she couldn’t, there was nothing to be done but lump our prejudices and
carry it through.
‘After all, there is _one_ thing worth risking everybody’s feelings for
all round, and though I grant you, you’ve got to be tolerable sure
you’ve got it, it’s because we were sure, that I’m here now.’
Mr. Egerton scored his first point. He leaned forward and raised his
forefinger impressively.
‘My daughter,’ he said, ‘is twenty-one. I have known her for that amount
of time, and you have known her for a few interrupted and excitable
hours. Why should you be surer of her than I am?’
‘She has been brought up as blind to the life you know as a
fortnight-old kitten. Do you wonder that I should shrink from exposing
her to it?’
Jim hung his head. After all he knew nothing about ladies, except that
they were fragile and fine.
‘You say you are educated,’ Mr. Egerton went on. ‘Have you ever lived
with a delicate, fastidious girl out of your own class?’
Jim raised his head. ‘I’ve not lived with any woman,’ he said with more
confidence; ‘I’ve wanted them, but I’ve kept clear.’
‘You’ve kept clear as well,’ said Mr. Egerton scornfully, ‘of all
possible knowledge of how to do it.
‘Purity, if I understand you to make that claim, has just as much value
for a girl like Viola as not knowing how to make up a prescription has
for a chemist.’
This point of view was both new and disturbing to Jim. He swallowed
nervously and searched the room for assistance. His eyes moved from Mr.
Egerton, sophisticated and at ease, very nearly triumphant, to the
well-stocked, balanced library. Comfort and knowledge lived together in
equal quantities and with neither of them taking up too much room. This
was the Egertons’ ideal of vice and virtue as well; they liked a
convenient relation between them.
‘It’s odd you feel like that about it,’ Jim said at last. ‘But I don’t
suppose she does. I think she’d rather have me straight than not.
‘I’m sorry I’m not up to your standard, Mr. Egerton, because it’s rough
on you, our not getting on. But marriages are often like that. You
hardly ever see one that doesn’t hurt somebody else. But that can’t stop
people’s choosing, can it?
‘Viola’s young, but I’ve been as fair as I know how to her, I haven’t
let her think my life’s an easy one to share.’
‘There’s only one way of being fair to her,’ said Mr. Egerton
impressively, ‘and that’s by never setting eyes on her again.
‘She’d get over her feeling for you in six weeks then, and if you don’t
she’ll repent it all her life.’
‘I’ve only your word of that,’ said Jim sullenly, ‘I should have to have
hers.’
‘In the nature of things you can’t have that,’ said Mr. Egerton. ‘If you
ask her to choose, she’ll say she’s already made up her mind, but as she
doesn’t know anything about your kind of life, I think you’ll agree with
me that upon this point she hasn’t got a mind. She’s got a future, that
I admit is in your hands, to ruin or to save.’
Jim made no immediate answer. He was going over his hour with Viola in
the orchard.
He saw again her wavering eyes, steady and facing his; he felt the power
behind them, that as much as any power in him, had bound them together.
Was there not wisdom in her innocence?
After all he had nothing worse to reveal to her than an unsoiled heart
and a few material hardships.
There was a long silence, then Jim met Mr. Egerton’s eyes unflinchingly.
‘I’m sorry sir’ he said, ‘but it’s no good. You may be right. I
acknowledge I’m letting her take a big risk, but it’s not as big as you
think, and I’d be doing a worse thing, I feel, to stop her taking it.
‘I don’t know how to put it quite, but there’s something on the other
side of the risk which makes it worth taking, even for her.’
Jim got up to go. Mr. Egerton stopped him by a gesture of the hand.
He made his first effort to meet Jim as an equal. He stated what he
himself believed to be a fact.
‘Look here,’ he said, ‘you may take my word for it. I’m fifty and I know
life. This feeling that you think you have and that you think Viola has,
even if you both have it, is not worth a risk. You can marry the man or
woman you love and be a great deal worse off than if you hadn’t done so.
Nine times out of ten even in normal circumstances you make hash of it.
Love is no more immortal than a stomachache.’
Jim met his eyes in a long, searching look. He saw that he was being
faced honestly at last, and he saw why Mr. Egerton was tied down to his
money. Nothing else had lasted for him.
‘I can’t act on any one else’s experience,’ Jim said slowly. ‘I’ve
staked my life and hers on this—I believe what we’ve got will last.’
Mr. Egerton’s hand sunk to his side. He became again impassive and
calculating. He had one more weapon to use, though he had hoped not to
use it. And when he spoke again it was with a simulated cordiality.
‘I’m prepared to do the handsome thing by you, Barton,’ he said, ‘and
more than that, by the cause you stand for. I see you are an honest man,
though blindly mistaken. Perhaps you’re not altogether to blame for
being mistaken. Wiser men than you have had their head turned by a girl.
Financially, of course, Viola is penniless, and if she marries you will
remain so. But you care for your views, I know, and in the long run it
would mean more to you, wouldn’t it, to give your theories a leg up,
than have your own way? Well, there are concessions I can make and get
the other directors to make, which would, I think, meet even your
enlightened views.
‘If you give up this mad scheme about Viola, I’ll give you my influence
and back your scheme for the dockers. I’m prepared to meet you at my
lawyers’ and have the whole thing out in black and white. Your future,
and the future of your cause, will be safe in my hands.’
Jim held his breath. He knew what he could do if he had Mr. Egerton
behind him; he had long ago planned out a settled and studied schedule
of hours and conditions which would free half the river from its
top-heavy burdens. But his scheme was hopeless without revolution.
Nothing short of bloodshed or a hand from the top could shake the
shackles of the men from below; and here was this hand
outstretched—outstretched at the price of his private happiness. He
could get along without happiness if he won it for his men, but his old
suspicion of all employers kept him silent. He turned his eyes away from
Mr. Egerton’s. What must he resign to gain his help? Jim wasn’t to be
the only sacrifice. He was to resign Viola, and to resign her without
her consent.
In a flash his spirit seized upon the flaw in his enemies’ proposition,
and for the first time in their interview he was angry.
‘You can’t mix things up like that,’ he said fiercely. ‘I wouldn’t trust
a dog with you now. Why, by Heaven, you’re trying to bribe me to sack
Viola!’
Mr. Egerton pointed to the door. He was stuttering with rage. Only the
sight and feel of physical violence could have satisfied his outraged
senses; and he was an elderly Englishman who respected law. He felt as
if his honour had left him—but he did not know that he had taken it
away from himself.