The appearance of his bedroom, and the fact that he enjoyed being in it
alone, gave some ground for Maggie's first accusation. A screen hid the
bed, and this screen was half covered with written papers of memoranda;
roughly, it divided the room into dormitory and study. The whole
chamber was occupied by Edwin's personal goods, great and small, ranged
in the most careful order; it was full; in the occupation of a young man
who was not precociously an old maid, it would have been littered. It
was a complex and yet practical apparatus for daily use, completely
organised for the production of comfort. Edwin would move about in it
with the loving and assured gestures of a creator; and always he was
improving its perfection. His bedroom was his passion.
Often, during the wilderness of the day, he would think of his bedroom
as of a refuge, to which in the evening he should hasten. Ascending the
stairs after the meal, his heart would run on in advance of his legs,
and be within the room before his hand had opened the door. And then he
would close the door, as upon the whole tedious world, and turn up the
gas, and light the stove with an explosive _plop_, and settle himself.
And in the first few minutes of reading he would with distinct,
conscious pleasure, allow his attention to circle the room, dwelling
upon piled and serried volumes, and delighting in orderliness and in
convenience. And he would reflect: "This is my life. This is what I
shall always live for. This is the best. And why not?" It seemed to
him when he was alone in his bedroom and in the night, that he had
respectably well solved the problem offered to him by destiny. He
insisted to himself sharply that he was not made for marriage, that he
had always known marriage to be impossible for him, that what had
happened was bound to have happened. For a few weeks he had lived in a
fool's paradise: that was all... Fantastic scheme, mad self-deception!
In such wise he thought of his love-affair. His profound satisfaction
was that none except his father knew of it, and even his father did not
know how far it had gone. He felt that if the town had been aware of
his jilting, he could not have borne the humiliation. To himself he had
been horribly humiliated; but he had recovered in his own esteem.
It was only by very slow processes, by insensible degrees, that he had
arrived at the stage of being able to say to his mirror, "I've got over
that!" And who could judge better than he? He could trace no mark of
the episode in his face. Save for the detail of a moustache, it seemed
to him that he had looked on precisely the same unchangeable face for a
dozen years. Strange, that suffering had left no sign! Strange, that,
in the months just after Hilda's marriage, no acquaintance had taken him
on one side and said, "What is the tragedy I can read on your features?"
And indeed the truth was that no one suspected. The vision of his face
would remain with people long after he had passed them in the street, or
spoken to them in the shop. The charm of his sadness persisted in their
memory. But they would easily explain it to themselves by saying that
his face had a naturally melancholy cast--a sort of accident that had
happened to him in the beginning! He had a considerable reputation, of
which he was imperfectly aware, for secretiveness, timidity, gentleness,
and intellectual superiority. Sundry young women thought of him
wistfully when smiling upon quite other young men, and would even kiss
him while kissing them, according to the notorious perversity of love.
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