Chapter XVII: Three Years

The next three years of Roland’s life were an amplification of those three days, and nothing would be gained by a detailed description of them. The narrative would be cut across frequently by visits to Europe, dropped threads would have to be gathered up, relationships reopened. The action was delayed, interrupted and, at times, held up altogether. The trips abroad were always altering Roland’s perspective, and the sense of distance made him reconsider his attitude. Four months after the events described in the last chapter he had reached a state of acute reaction against his home, his parents and, in a way, against April, because of her connection with that world from which he was endeavoring to escape. Very little was needed to drive him into declared revolt, but at that moment he was sent abroad and, once abroad, everything became different. He began to accuse himself of selfishness and ingratitude. His parents had denied themselves comfort and pleasure to send him to an expensive school; they had given him everything. Like the pelican, they had gone hungry so that he should be full. Since he could remember, the life of that family had centered round him. Every question had been considered on the bearing it would have on his career. Was this the manner of repayment? And it was the same with April. He forgot her mother and her home; he remembered only her beauty and her love for him, her fixed, unwavering love, and the dreams that they had shared. He always returned home in a temper of sentimentality, full of good resolutions, promising himself that he would be gentle and sympathetic to his parents, that he would never swerve from his love for April. The first days were invariably soft and sweet; but in a short time the old conflict reasserted itself; the bright world of Hogstead stood in dazzling contrast to the unromantic Hammerton. He became irritated, as before, by the trifling inconveniences of a house that lacked a parlor maid; unpunctual, unappetizing meals; and, more especially, by the endless friction imposed on him by the company of men and women who had been harassed all their lives by the fret and worry of small houses and small incomes. Trivial, ignoble troubles, that was the misfortune of everyone fated to live in Hammerton. And April was a part of it. He was very fond of her; indeed, he still thought he was in love with her, but love for Roland was dependent on many other things, was bound up with his other enthusiasms and reactions. He enjoyed her company and her caresses. In her presence he was capable of genuine tenderness; but it was so easy. April responded so simply to any kindness shown to her. There was no uncertainty about her. He missed the swift anger of the chase.

More and more frequently he found himself receiving and accepting invitations to spend the week-end at Hogstead; and always when he announced his intention of going there he was aware of silent criticism on the part of his parents. He felt guilty and ashamed of himself for feeling guilty. It became a genuine struggle for him to pronounce the words at breakfast. It was like confessing a secret, and he hated it. Had he not a right to choose his friends? Then would come a reaction of acute self-accusation and he would improvise a treat, a theater or a picnic. His emotions would fling it like a sop to his conscience: “There, does that content you? Now may I go and live my own life?” Afterwards, of course, he was again bitterly ashamed of himself.

But always on the ebb-flow of his contrition came fear--the instinct of self-preservation, to save, at all costs, his individuality from the fate that threatened it. Whenever things seemed likely to reach a head, a European trip would intervene, and the whole business would have to begin again. An action that would ordinarily have completed its rhythm within three or four months was lengthened into three years; in the end inevitably the curve of the parabola was reached. The time was drawing near when Roland would have to make his decision one way or another.

He was by now earning a salary of four hundred pounds a year, and marriage--marriage as his parents understood it--was well within his means. Up till now, whenever any suggestion about the date of his marriage had been advanced, he referred to the uncertain nature of his work.

“I never know where I’m going to be from one week to another. Marriage is out of the question for a chap with a job like that.”

Their engagement was still unannounced. He had retained that loophole, though at the time it was not so that he had regarded it.

Ralph had asked him once whether he was engaged. And the question had put him on his guard. He didn’t like engagements. Love was a secret between two people. Why make it public? He must strike before the enemy struck. In other words, he must come to an agreement with April before her mother opened negotiations. That evening he had brought up the subject.

He was sitting in the window-seat, while she was on a stool beside him, her head resting against his knees and his hand stroking slowly her neck and hair and cheek.

“You know, darling,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about our engagement.”

“Yes, dear.”

“Well, are you awfully keen on an engagement?”

“But how do you mean? We shall have to be engaged sometime, shan’t we?”

“Oh, of course, yes. But there’s no need for a long engagement, is there? What I mean is that we could easily get engaged now if we wanted to. But it would be a long business, and oh, I don’t know! Once we’re engaged our affairs cease to be our own. People will be asking us ‘When’s the happy day?’ and all that sort of thing. Our love won’t be our own any longer.”

“It’s just as you like, dear.”

It was so nice to sit there against his knee, with his fingers against her face. Why should they worry about things? It would be nice to be engaged, of course, and to have a pretty ring, but it didn’t matter. “It’s just as you like,” she had said, and they had left it at that over two years ago and there had been no reason to rediscuss it. But he knew that now the whole matter would have to be brought up. It had been decided that he was to remain in London for a couple of years in charge of the Continental branch; he would have to go abroad occasionally, but there would be no more long trips. He was in a position to marry if he wanted to. His family would expect him to, those of his friends who had heard of the “understanding” would expect him to, Mrs. Curtis would expect him to, and he owed it to April that he should marry her. For years now he had kept her waiting. There was not the slightest doubt as to what was his duty.

Nothing, however, could alter the fact that there was nothing in the world that he wanted less than this marriage. It would mean an end to all those pleasant week-ends at Hogstead. It was one thing to invite a young bachelor who was no trouble to look after and who was amusing company; it was quite another thing to entertain a married couple. He would no longer be able to throw into his business that undivided energy of his. He would not be free; he would have to play for safety. As his friendship with the Marstons began to wane, he would become increasingly every year an employee and not an associate. He would belong to the ruled class. And it would be the end, too, of his pleasant little dinner parties with Gerald. He would have to be very careful with his money. They would be fairly comfortable in a small house for the first year or so, but from the birth of their first child their life would become complicated with endless financial worries and would begin to resemble that of his own father and mother, till, finally, he would lose interest in himself and begin to live in his children. What a world! The failure of the parent became forgotten in the high promise of the child, and that child grew up only to meet and be broken by the conspiracy of the world’s wisdom and, in its turn, to focus its thwarted ambitions on its children, and then its children’s children. That was the eternal cycle of disillusion; whatever happened he must break that wheel.

But the battle appeared hopeless. The forces were so strong that were marshaled against him. What chance did he stand against that mingled appeal of sentiment and habit? All that spring he felt himself standing upon a rapidly crumbling wall. Whenever he went down to Hogstead he kept saying to himself: “Yes, I’m safe now, secure within time and space. But it’s coming. Nothing can stop it. Night follows day, winter summer; one can’t fight against the future, one can’t anticipate it. One has to wait; it chooses its own time and its own place.” At the office he was fretful and absent-minded.

“What’s the matter with you?” Gerald asked him once.

“Nothing.”

“Oh, but there must be, you’ve been awfully queer the last week or so.”

Roland did not answer, and there was an awkward silence.

“I say, old man, I don’t quite like asking you, but you’re not in debt or anything, are you? Because if you are, I mean”

“Oh, no, really. I’m not even ‘overdrawn.’”

In Gerald’s experience of the world there were two ills to which mankind was heir--money and woman. The subdivisions of these ills were many, but he recognized no other main source. If Roland was not in debt, then there was a woman somewhere, and later in the day he brought the matter up again.

“I say, old son, you’ve not been making an ass of yourself with some woman, have you? No one’s got hold of you, have they?”

“Lord, no!” laughed Roland. “I only wish they had!”

But Gerald raised a warning finger.

“Touch wood, my son. Don’t insult Providence. You can take my word for it that sooner or later some woman will get hold of you and then it’s the devil, the very devil. Did I ever tell you about the girl at Broadstairs?” And there ensued the description of a seaside amour, followed by some shrewd generalities on the ways of a man with--but to conclude the quotation would be hardly pertinent. At any rate, Gerald told his story and pointed his moral.

“You may take my word for it, adultery is a whacking risk. It’s awfully jolly while it lasts, and you think yourself no end of a dog when you offer the husband a cigar, but sooner or later the wife clings round the bed-post and says: ‘Darling, I have deceived you!’ And then you’re in it, up to the ruddy neck!”

Roland laughed, as he always did, at Gerald’s stories, but it hurt him to think that his friend should have noticed a change in him. If he was altered already by a few weeks of Hammerton, what would he be like in five years’ time after the responsibilities of marriage had had their way with him? And marriage was not for five years, but for fifty.

He never spoke to Gerald of April now. There had been a time in the early days of their friendship when he had confided in him, under an oath of secrecy, that he hoped to marry her as soon as his position permitted. And Gerald had agreed with him that it was a fine thing to marry young, “and it’s the right thing for you,” he added; “some fellows are meant for marriage and others aren’t. I think you’re one of the ones that are.” A cryptic statement that Roland had, at the time, called in question, but Gerald only laughed. “I may be wrong,” he had said, “one never knows, but I don’t think I am.” Often afterwards he had asked Roland about April and whether they were still in love with each other as much as ever, and Roland, his vanity flattered by the inquiry, had assured him of their constancy. But of late, when Gerald had made some light reference to “the fair April,” Roland had changed the conversation, or, if a question were asked, had answered it obliquely, or managed to evade it, so that Gerald had realized that the subject was no longer agreeable to him, and, being blessed with an absence of curiosity, had dropped it from his repertoire of pleasantries. But he did not connect April with his friend’s despondency.