Chapter XI: Book THREE: Cathleen Bentley (2)

He went round to Ann's room with a sinking at his heart. She must be told, she must be made to understand, and she never would. He felt immeasurably older than she, responsible for her, and rather helpless. She was out. He gazed round at the room and was touched by its poverty and thriftlessness, the cheap little ornaments on the mantelshelf, the souvenirs of Margate and Southend, the cigarette cards pinned to the wall, to make, with a mirror, its only ornaments. Here they had sat, so many evenings, he and she, in a kind of playing at happiness. Here they had quarreled. Between quarreling and laughing they had spent all their days, laughing into quarrels, quarreling into tears, and out of them again laughing: the happy life of the poor, the workers, the thoughtless, whom no care could subdue, no joy uplift. What a relief that life had been to him when he had turned from that other life, where all his qualities were exploited and thought and power of expression were used only to sneak advantages, and even love and wedded happiness were valued only as possessions! How it had stripped him of all arrogance and cupidity of mind! The simple innocence of those who sell themselves for bread, and know nothing of the business for which they are used, and more despise than envy the shows in the production of which more than half their efforts are expended. Ann's scorn of "ladies," believing them all to be light women, her hatred of charity organization inspectors (she had routed them more than once when they meddled with Rita), Insurance Cards, and Old Age Pensions. She resented being underpaid, but even more she loathed the spirit which tried to supplement the underpayment with instruction in virtue made impossible by it, with doles and callous assistance. It had not escaped her that the motor-cars in the mews cost more to maintain than the income of any one of the families who lived above them. But she loved her little bare rooms, and if she were allowed to keep them and the happiness that filled them she asked no more. The brave independence: that was what René had prized in her, what was expressed in her room. He had contributed nothing to it but a little comfort, an easy chair, a few books, and his pleasure in her. He knew that she treasured that above everything in the world, and he must take it from her. He was shaken with cowardice and dread and pity--by pity most of all. That bound him to her, dragged him down. He had not expected it, so clear had everything seemed in the light of his healthful experience. And, he knew, pity from him would be to her of all things the most hateful. He could not shake free of it, and it absorbed him.

He heard her footsteps on the short flight of stairs. He was filled with a longing to escape. With her hand on the door he lost his head and fled into the inner room. He heard her go to the fireplace and sit in the easy-chair. She sat silently brooding. Then she heard him in the inner room. She had heard that before, and he was never there. Slowly she came into the inner room, and he could just see her smoothing the pillows with her hands. She caught the sound of his breathing and stood stock-still. He could not move. She came toward him groping with her hands. She touched him.

"Renny, dear."

She was pressed close to him. Her arms went round his neck.

"I knew you'd come back."

He caressed her soothingly, gently, consumed and burning in his pity for her, and his terror lest she should discover it too suddenly.

He tried to draw her into the outer room, but she clung to him and kept him in the darkness, forcing him to feel her animal possession of him and hunger for him. Rage and the desire for self-preservation thrust back his pity and he carried her back to the outer room.

Then it was some moments before she could recover herself. She stood giggling and laughing nervously, almost hysterically.

"Renny, dear," she said, "you did say once we'd go off together. I want to. I want to. I'm sorry I went on working. I oughtn't to have done that. We ought to have had a house and me looking after it."

"You would have been even more unhappy."

"I'm not unhappy, Renny, dear. You've come back. And there's that coming----"

("She must be kept off that," he thought.)

"Old Martin's been that kind," she said. "He says he'll see us through if it's money."

"I can make enough money," he replied, and then stopped, puzzled and startled by the malicious pleasure that came into her eyes. He leaned forward the better to see her, for the gas jet was flickering, and she turned away with a half smile that was exasperatingly silly.

"It isn't money," he said, "and you know it. I've seen Kilner."

She was instantly defiant on that.

"Well, and what had he to say for himself?"

"Nothing you would understand."

"Heuh! Clever, aren't you, you two, when you get your heads together."

She began to lay supper. "I'm hungry," she said. "I've not felt like eating while you've been away. Where you been?"

"Away," he answered. "Out of London."

"To your home?"

"No."

"I thought you'd have gone to your home."

"There's nothing to take me there. I've been with friends."

"Women?"

"Yes."

She had nothing to say to that. He went on:

"One of them I knew years ago, when I was a boy."

"That's not so long ago. A lady?"

"Yes."

"A lady wouldn't take up with you now."

"She works for her living."

"The same as me?"

"The same as you."

"Well. What of it?"

"We went down into the country, she and I and her friend."

"I don't want to know about that."

"But I want to tell you."

She stood by the table and her fingers drew patterns on the cloth.

"What is it you want to tell me?"

"I'm in love with her."

Ann's lips set in a hard line, and her eyes narrowed and her brows scowled.

"Did you come back to tell me that?"

"Yes."

"Why? Did you think I'd want to know?"

"I'm so sorry."

"Sorry, you devil? You came down to torment me. You'd better go, d'ye hear."

René could not move. He was fascinated by the suffering in the little creature, melted and weakened by his pity for her.

"You'd better go," she repeated. "And tell her you left a poor girl hating you, and see how she'll like that. Sorry! That's what you say when you step on a fellow's foot in a bus. Sorry! When you got a girl body and soul, and you throw her away like dirt."

"I came back."

"Yes. To tell me that. To tell me I was dirt, to throw me down for her to walk on so's she shan't get her feet wet."

She changed her tone and asked quietly:

"You knew her before me?"

"Long years before."

"Before that other one as you married?"

"Before that."

"And she's pretty and has pretty things?"

"I've told her about you."

"Oh! and she sent you back! Thank you for nothing."

"She did not. I came of my own accord. I couldn't leave you like that."

"I'd rather you did. I'd rather you did. My Christ! I can't bear to see you sitting there and talking and talking----"

He rose to his feet: "I can't leave you, Ann. I couldn't leave you like you are. . . ."

She leaned across the table and put out her hand.

"Look here, Renny. D'you love me?"

"Yes."

"Heh!" She gave a snarl of incredulity. "Heh! See here! D'you want me!"

Her eyes were staring at him cunningly, invitingly. He saw that she half believed his weakness would lead him to evasion or consent to her will. He waited, and made her repeat her question.

"D'you want me?"

"I want your happiness," he said. "I don't believe you will find it in me."

She was inarticulate. Her eyes closed and she swayed. She jerked her head toward the door. He took that for a sign that he was to go, and moved round the table. She was before him, crouching, barring the way. Strangled sobbing sounds came from her throat. He stretched out his hands to implore her, to tell her of his almost intolerable pity. She sprang at him. She had a knife in her hand. He saw it flash, felt a burning pain in his breast, and fell. He could see her face twisted in an agony of fear close to his. Spittle from her lips fell upon his cheek. Her hands were busy at his breast. He lost consciousness.

V

THRIGSBY

Nothing I'll bear from thee
But nakedness, thou detestable town!

THAT was an appalling night. René lay with his wound roughly staunched. Ann crouched in the darkness by the bedside, fondling his hand, clinging to him, occasionally weeping. Both watched the light come creeping over the roofs and chimneys. Neither could say a word. Their eyes met, and hers were fixed hungrily on his face like a dog's that has been whipped for fighting. She looked so scared that he desired only to reassure her.

"Ann," he said.

She kissed his hand and fondled it, and pressed it to her cheek, and bathed it in her tears and kissed away the tears.

"You'd better fetch Kilner," he said. "He'll know what to do."

"Don't let him know how it happened. Don't let him know I did it."

"No. Go and fetch him."

"Oh! I thought you was dead. I thought you was dead. Oh! Renny, dear, what should I ha' done if you'd been dead, my dear?"

"Go and fetch Kilner. He'll tell us what to do."

She brought Kilner and left them together. René made a clumsy attempt to shield Ann in a very incoherent account of the affair. Kilner saw through it but acquiesced in the intention.

"Can you move?" he asked.

"I think so."

"Can you walk to a doctor's? There's one just round the corner. Better than having him here. Some doctors talk. You'll be better out of this."

Leaning on Kilner's arm, René managed to reach the doctor's, but there he fainted. Kilner invented a story of an early morning street attack, and the doctor, who was not interested, swallowed it. He patched René up, gave him a prescription, and told him to call again that day. René disliked the man so much that he refused inwardly ever to go near him again. Between them they had half the fee, and promised to send round the rest.

Kilner made René comfortable in his room and was then sent off to find Miss Cleethorpe.

Lotta came at once. She and Kilner liked each other. Kilner had begun to see the affair in a humorous light. Anything to do with René was to him never very far short of absurdity.

"I wish I'd thought of it like that before," he said. "I'd never have let him go to her. I might have known he would make a mess of it. He was simply bursting with exaltation, and when he's like that it never occurs to him that other people may have a different view. I half believe he expected Ann to share his enthusiasm for the other lady----"

Lotta could not help laughing, though she protested: "What a shame!"

"I can't help it," said Kilner, "other people's love affairs always are comic, and Fourmy--well, he is simply inappropriate in a community of creatures who live by cunning."

"You've hit it," replied Lotta. "I've been trying to understand what it was made him so exceptional. Creatures who live by cunning---- Thank you, Mr. Kilner."

"All artists are like that. Cunning is no use in the pursuit of art. But they are insulated by their work as ordinary people are by convention and habit. No artist takes personal relationships seriously. They happen. He handles them well or makes a mess of them. It does not greatly matter. The ordinary being cannot appreciate any personal relationship until it is conventionalized and stripped of its vigor and value. Well--you have seen your Fourmy in action."

"And well worth seeing too."

Kilner told her what he could make of the new disaster, and how Ann had hated him and destroyed his work.

"I imagine," he said, "that the same blind instinct operated against Fourmy. He's creative also in a way. My pictures, his life, his precious romantic life, are both things slowly shaped out of chaos, and the creative process in a man is absolutely indifferent to the stupid security most women value. Ann did her ridiculous little best to stop it in both of us."

"Poor girl," said Lotta, "I can imagine the two of you driving her distracted. After all, what she was going through was important to her."

"But only to her. She wanted it to be important for him. It couldn't be: it was quite meaningless."

"Nature is cruelly indifferent."

"If she weren't," said Kilner, "we should never have developed intelligence, let alone imagination."

"What are we to do with them?"

"I'll look after Fourmy if you'll take charge of Ann. Only, remember, you are not supposed to know that she did it, and, please, I have told you nothing about my picture."

The caution was unnecessary, for Ann tumbled out a full confession as she sank into the comfort of Lotta's kindness. She guessed at once who Lotta was, but was too exhausted for resentment. She had dragged herself off to her work in order to fill in the creeping hours.

Lotta said she was a friend of René's, and wished to help, and asked if there was anything she could do. Ann burst into tears and rolled her head from side to side, and cried:

"Oh! I wish I was dead, I do. I nearly did myself in last night when he lay there in the dark not saying a word. I wish I had--I wish I had. I never been so miserable. . . ."

Lotta comforted her as best she could, clumsily dropping a word in here and there as Ann poured out her confused narrative.

Ann kept on saying:

"He ought to have gone if he wanted to go."

"But he couldn't leave you like that----"

"It was seeing him again done it. I couldn't bear it, seeing him and knowing he was wanting to go."

"He was wanting you to feel that--that he was not going out of indifference to you."

"He doesn't want me. He said that."

"My dear child, you mustn't think about it like that. You must see that it is ended now."

"I'll never care for anybody again--not like that."

"Don't make things harder for yourself. How do you know?"

"You're only young once."

"Love is stronger when youth is gone."

Ann believed that. She wanted to believe in Lotta, and she sat very quietly, almost like a child, while the quiet, gentle woman tried to explain to her that René had taken nothing away, that their love must die for all it had lacked, that there was no disgrace in a failure to bring a love to life, that it was happening everywhere, every day, and that a dead love was the most horrible of prisons. And, said Lotta, if a child was to be born, it were better not to bring it into such captivity, better not to have the joy and beauty of motherhood spoiled by jealousy and disappointment in the failure of love. Ann wept anew. People were so kind, she said: there was Old Martin, and now there was Lotta; and she had only dreaded her loneliness of being left alone to face "that." Lotta said there was no question of being left alone. If Ann liked, she could come to her hostel as maid, and when her time came she could go out to the country.

"I think," said Lotta, "that all children ought to be born and bred in the country. Don't you?"

"The mews," replied Ann, "is not much of a place for them."

She did not quite like the idea of being "in service," but Lotta explained that it did not necessarily mean for always. Once the baby was born and provided for, Ann could go back to her factory and take up her life, if she wished, where it was before René came into it.

"But I'll always want to hear about him," said Ann.

"Of course. He'll always want to hear about you."

"And see him."

"He'll want to see you too."

So it was arranged, and Ann promised to be at the hostel next morning.

When Lotta had gone, she sat down and wrote:

"DEAR RENNY,--I do want you to forgive me. I have been awful, but not without excuse. I do like Miss Lotta. She's been an angel to me and made me feel awfuller. I'm going to her. A letter for you to say you 'ad come into some money. I tore it up when I first began to feel bad toward you. I don't feel bad any more.--Your loving ANN."

This confession reached René at the same time as a letter from his brother George conveying the same news. The attorney in Edinburgh had written to say he had no reply from Mr. René Fourmy, and to ask for information as to his whereabouts. "This," said George, "has been a bit of a shock to us. We'd counted on something from the old lady. However, it makes a difference to you. If you feel inclined to come up and see us I'll be glad to have you. I suppose you'll give up the street-slogging. The old man has been in London. Did you see him?"

René announced his intention of going to Thrigsby. His mind was going back and back over his life in the attempt to understand it. If he could see George and his mother, he felt and hoped that he might be able to follow up the threads placed in his hands by his chance encounter with his father.

A day or two later saw him arriving at the Albert Station with his arm in a sling. George was there to meet him.

"Hullo, old sport," he said, "been in the wars?"

René told the lie invented by Kilner for the doctor.

"By Jove," said George, "you have been roughing it. I'll tell that to the youngsters in our office when they get dotty about Canada and the Wild West. Wild West of London, eh?" and he chuckled at his own joke.

"Elsie's quite excited," he said, as they boarded the Hog Lane tram.

"And mother?" asked René.

"Well. Hum. You'll find a difference in the mother."

René was struck by many changes. New warehouses, new rows of shops, some attempt to bring distinction into the architecture of the city, though, for the most part, nothing but ostentation was attained. They passed the university. There were new buildings there, more like an insurance office than ever. Streets that he remembered as respectable and prosperous had become slums swarming with grimy children. A great piece had been taken out of Potter's Park for the building of a hideous art gallery. The trams now passed down Hog Lane West, with the result that most of the houses had apartment cards in their fanlights. George had moved from The Nest into 168. He could get a larger house for the same rent. His house was exactly the same as their old home. It gave René a depressing idea that nothing had changed. George was fatter: Elsie thinner. They had four children.

George was in the same office, and, as he said, had flung away ambition: too many children to take risks, and after all there was nothing in the small firm now. The one or two connections you depended on might go bust any day. It needed enormous capital to stand the fluctuations of prices. He had got a rise by pretending to go and was quite content. He played bowls in the summer and bridge in the winter. And Elsie? What with the house and the mother she had plenty to do, plenty to do.

As René walked along the passage he felt uncannily certain that he would find his mother sitting by the fireplace knitting. And it was so. She raised her eyes and looked at him with timid anxiety, held out her cheek to be kissed, went on knitting, and said:

"Now sit down and give an account of yourself."

He edited his experiences, and she listened without interest. Most of his talk was of Kilner.

"Artists are very immoral men, aren't they?"

René shrugged.

"It depends," he said, "on what you mean by morality."

"There _are_ rules," said she, "and commandments."

"My friend has rules," he replied, "rather good ones. He dislikes doing anything which interferes with his power to paint."

"To me that sounds very selfish."

"I don't think we can argue about that, mother."

"No. I suppose you made very little money."

"Three pounds a week."

"I suppose you could do with that, with only yourself to keep. Though it seems a pity, considering the amount of time and money spent on your education."

Was it his mother speaking? What had happened to her? Whence had come the dry hardness in her voice? Why were her eyes so dead? They used to steal quick little glances when she spoke. Now she only stared listlessly. A home-coming? This for a home? In the house next door there had been some stirring of life: the night when he had returned home from Scotland: the strange days after his father's restoration.

The windows of the room were shut. René felt stifled. He made some excuse and went away out of the house, and roamed through the familiar streets. There were many houses empty: the gardens, some of which had once been trim, were now unkempt. The whole district was dismal and devitalized. Only the red trams clanging and clanking down the cobbled streets made any stir and gaiety.

He found himself presently in Galt's Park. The little pink brick houses had invaded it. Many of the big houses were pulled down: others were being demolished, and only jagged walls and gaping windows were left. On the site of the Brocks' house stood a little red-brick chapel outside which were announcements in Welsh and English. That gave him a shock. Some of the past life had been brushed away. He disliked the idea of its room being usurped by a chapel, a place of Christian worship. He did not know why he disliked this idea so much, but it was connected vaguely with the image of his mother sitting in that room, knitting and talking in an empty voice, and clinging obstinately to rules of conduct.

At the other end of Galt's Park he came on a new street, flung straight across what he remembered as fields. Following its dreary length, he found himself near the Smallmans' house. It was now completely shut in with little pink brick houses. He turned in at the gate, rang at the bell and asked the maid if he could see the Professor. He was left waiting in the hall where he had seen Linda's green parasol. Here, too, there was no change. The Professor came out looking very mysterious. He took a hat down, seized René by the arm and led him out into the street.

"Well, well," he said. "I'm glad to see you, glad to see you. How are you?"

"Very well." René felt inclined to laugh. Clearly the Professor was trying not to hurt his feelings and to disguise the fact that he did not think him fit to enter his house, that temple of domesticity.

"Tell me about yourself. One doesn't lose interest, you know."

This time René did not edit his experiences.

"I had heard stories," said the Professor. "I was reluctant to believe them."

"Why?"

"Well--er-- You know--one expects----"

"That every man will do his duty."

"It is hardly a subject for satire," said the Professor.

René exploded:

"Good God! What else is it a subject for? England expects? Does the whole duty of man consist in self-mutilation? Why, then, the noblest man is he who shirks every responsibility, let his mind rot and his feelings wither, so that he can attain a devilish efficiency at the job into which he tumbles before he has begun to develop enough to know what he can do. These are your successful men, your pundits, your Lord Mayors, your merchant princes, your politicians----"

"My dear Fourmy, I think you should recollect that you hardly gave yourself time to recognize what Thrigsby stands for, the greatest industrial center in the world."

"I had time enough to realize what it has done for my father, my mother, my brother, and myself."

"Two wrongs do not make a right, and I do not think you set about remedying matters in the right way. You had every opportunity here. You had escaped the pressure of industrialism. You had good brains."

"Brains!" cried René. "I had escaped from industrialism only to talk about it."

"We are doing useful work. The defects of the system are slowly being recognized as a result of our investigations."

"Can't you realize them without investigation? Aren't they as plain as the nose on your face?"

"You can't find a remedy without investigation. That leads to mere sentimental socialism. But why need we quarrel about that? You didn't like the work. I hope you found more satisfaction in your vagabondage."

"London is just as bad, rather worse, because the wickedness of it all is glossed over with a kind of boastfulness. Here you either make money or you don't. There, as far as I can see, your only chance is to spend money: not that I saw much of that except from the outside; still I did see all sorts and kinds of people, and you can make rough conclusions about them."

"You don't mind my suggesting that you were hardly in a condition to make impartial observations?"

"We don't seem able to use the same terms. You still think I was a fool not to stay in my nice little home, with my nice little job and my nice little income."

"I don't judge you. I only say that if everybody were to do the same----"

"I only wish more people would. There'd soon be an end of congestion. I only came round to-night because I couldn't stand the sight of my brother settling down to his nice little home and my mother fast freezing into a nice old lady--and then I find you terrified lest I should enter and pollute your nice little home. I tell you, what I have seen to-day has settled me. I came up here in a muddle about it all, half feeling that I had made an ass of myself, but I'm absolutely certain now----"

"But a man must think of his wife and children, and, indeed, you are unjust. I have no fear of your disturbing my household. We should be only too glad to see you, only it happened, if you must know, that my wife was expecting Linda Brock. She uses her own name now."

René gave a shout of laughter.

"But I'd like to see her. How is she?"

"Her mother died six months ago and left her a great deal of money, a fortune. We had no idea she was so rich. Linda wrote some plays, you know. She has bought the theater and presented it to the Players. I am one of the trustees. Thrigsby is very proud of the theater----

"It used to be music when I was young," said René, "and the orchestra was always in debt."

"Art," said the Professor, "cannot be expected to pay for itself. We are running the theater to a certain extent in connection with the university----"

He had assumed the voice in which he lectured. René cut him short:

"I'd like to see Linda. Will you take me back with you."

"I--er----"

"You needn't thrust me on her. Just ask her if she'd like to see me, and come out and tell me: yes or no. After all, if it comes to that, we're still married. I believe, by the brutal laws of the country, I could insist on seeing her whether she liked it or not. You might tell her that I have come into some money also."

"Really? I'm so glad."

"Hurrah!" cried René, "you think I'll have to live up to it and settle down."

"It would certainly be a splendid thing if----"

The Professor's whole attitude toward him was changed. Already, it was clear, he was beginning to plan a grand scene of reconciliation, a reformed René, a forgiving Linda, the Smallman family in the background, symbolical of Impregnable Matrimony. René caught the hint and his mind played with it and blew it out into a grotesque. It gave him so much pleasure that he chuckled and said:

"It won't do, you know. We couldn't come together again without a scandal."

The Professor was so intent on his own thoughts that he did not notice the savage irony of the remark. He said:

"It would soon die down."

"Sooner than the other?"

"Well----!"

"I've got you there," observed René. "It wasn't fair though. I hadn't the slightest intention of doing any such thing."

"Why, then----?"

"Why do I want to see her? I don't know. I want to. Isn't that reason enough?"

They had returned to the house.

"You just ask her. Tell her I'm in Thrigsby for a few days and would like to see her. If she doesn't wish it, don't worry. I'll wait ten minutes."

"Very well," said the Professor, not altogether giving up hope, "I'll tell her, but the way you talk of it seems to me almost indecent."

He let himself in at the front door, and in ten minutes was out again.

"Very well," he said, "she will see you. . . . If you don't mind, my wife has gone up to her room."

"I wonder," thought René, "what they would make of Ann. They wouldn't mind my leaving her."

He felt rather nervous as he reached the threshold of the study, but stiffened himself for the plunge. The door opened and he found himself shaking Linda warmly by the hand and asking after her health, and explaining how he came to be in Thrigsby. Linda was noticeably plumper, rounder, and more solid. He could see no charm in her and thought her unsuitably dressed, tactlessly, provincially. On the whole, he liked her. The handshake was firm, her eyes were frank.

"It was nice of you to come and see me," she said. "So much better to have no nonsense about it."

"If you like," said the Professor, "I--I--will----"

Linda appealed to René.

"Oh, no. I've nothing to say. I only wanted to know that there was to be no nonsense between us. I'm very glad. I wish we could have arrived at that sooner, but I suppose that was impossible."

Linda smiled:

"You've changed, René. That would have been blasphemy to you a few years ago. You hated coming to your senses."

"I should think so," said the Professor.

"You're not going to stay in Thrigsby?" asked Linda.

"No. That's impossible, even if I wanted to. We should be crossing each other's tracks. Not that I should mind that, but---- Well, it wouldn't do, would it?"

"No. I prefer being without a husband. Really, for an active woman it seems to me to be the ideal condition. She has a status and no risk."

The Professor sat bolt upright:

"What _do_ you mean, Linda?"

"I won't insist on the advantages if it shocks you, Phil. René understands me."

"Oh, yes," said René, "Linda means she can lose her head without any danger of getting married."

The Professor exploded:

"I never heard of anything so--so abominable."

"But I did mean that," said Linda. "Women do lose their heads, you know, even when they are married. Ask Freda. Don't look so hurt. She and I were talking it over yesterday, and we agreed that the law was so horrid that all I could do was to disregard it. And if René is willing that is what I propose doing. You shall represent the world at large. You do represent its opinion. You know----"

"I do not."

Linda passed over the interruption:

"You are the world at large and I say to you: 'This man is no longer my husband.' No more than that should be necessary. You don't want any more than that, do you, René?"

"Even that seems to me a needless statement of fact, but perhaps I'm extreme."

The Professor rose and stood with his back to the fireplace: "All this," he said, "is extremely distasteful. You are making a mock of marriage."

Said René:

"We know more about it than you. We've tried disruption and you haven't. We're both the better for it. The fact is, there is no such thing as marriage. There are marriages, and precious few of them. Yours, no doubt, is one of the few."

The Professor was mollified, swallowed the harangue he had prepared, and sat down again.

René took Linda to her house in a remote suburb. She said:

"You know I quite dreaded meeting you again. I always had a feeling I should. The poor dear Professor was quite disappointed because we didn't make a scene."

"Oh, he didn't mind once we made it quite clear that we were casting no shadow of doubt upon the sanctity of his own domestic happiness. They're all like that."

"I'm sure he's quite convinced that you have become very wicked. Have you?"

"No. Strict monogamist."

"What do you mean by that?"

"One wife at a time."

Linda laughed at him. "You always were uncompromising."

Her laughter grated on René. He had a revulsion of feeling against her. She was, he realized, and always had been, cynical.

At her gate she held his hand for a long time, and asked him if he would not come and see her again.

"I think not," he said.

"I wish you would. We might be such friends. And you have become so interesting."

"I think not," he repeated. "Any friendship we might have would only be an----" He could not find the word and stopped rather foolishly. He could not move until he had found it. So they stood there hand in hand waiting in a ridiculous and empty silence.

"Would be what?" she asked in irritation.

He found the word.

"An impertinence."

She shook his hand from hers almost angrily and walked away.

He knew then why he had come to Thrigsby. It was to make a clean cut with her. That achieved, there was nothing more in the grim city of his youth to keep him.

VI

THE COMFORT OF RELIGION

Quoi! Dieu me punirait éternellement de m'être livré à des
passions qu'il m'a données?

THERE might be nothing to keep him, but yet he stayed five days longer. For one thing George's children were amusing and a profitable study. They had discovered that they had only to lie to their parents to keep them quiet, and, as lying was expected of them, and made things comfortable, they saw no harm in it. For the rest they did as they pleased and amused themselves. Little George was the very spit of his grandfather and a great spinner of yarns. René told him one morning to ask his mother if he could go out with him. Off trotted the boy, to return in a moment with a detailed account of the conversation he had had. It transpired subsequently that Elsie was out at the time. René told her. She said:

"I don't know what to do about the child. He has such an imagination."

"I prefer to call that invention. Imagination is the one quality in you that appreciates truth. I should begin if I were you by satisfying his curiosity. Tell him the truth about anything he wants to know."

"But he wants to know such awful things."

"What awful things?"

"Well, about me and George."

"It's hard to put a lie straight once you've told it. It is terribly easy to lose your respect for your parents."

"Oh, but little George loves us."

"How do you know?"

"He says so nearly every night."

"Oh, well," said René, "people believe only what they like to believe."

Elsie was rather ruffled:

"After all, they're our children."

"Certainly. You'll find out what they think of it soon enough."

It was interesting to watch the processes which went to make up the fool's paradise that George and Elsie, in common with their kind, called Home, the worship of lip-virtue, the constant practice of mean little subterfuges, George dodging Elsie's interest and suspicion of himself, she his of her, and the children, where necessary, contributing to the comedy and, for the rest, living thoroughly, selfishly, and callously in their own pursuits.

René found that as long as he would let George talk about bridge, bowls, and business, or splutter abuse of Radical legislation, and as long as he allowed Elsie to chatter of the neighbors and children and music-halls and clothes, they were both quite happy.

With his mother it was otherwise. She was uneasy in his presence and they could hardly talk at all, except about their relations, the rich Fourmys, and the shabby tricks they had done; but after a while René became aware that they were holding a stealthy converse, an undercurrent to the words they used. He tried all sorts of devices to bring it to the surface but without success. His mother would relapse into silence or, without a word, would hurry off to her church and return impenetrably encased in humility, pale with emotional satiety. There was something abnormal about her then, something unnatural that made René's flesh creep. When it had passed he would feel once more the wildness in her that she kept so savagely repressed.

He recognized at last that he was staying on in the hope of penetrating her defenses. Having come to that, he attacked her one night when George and Elsie were out, and he knew there was no service at the church for her to escape to. Like the dutiful husband he was, George made a practice of taking Elsie to a music-hall once a week, a music-hall or two cinemas, as she chose.

Mrs. Fourmy had put down her knitting and said:

"I think I would like a game of patience, René."

He put out the table and the cards and they played. He said:

"I wonder how you can stand seeing them play the old, old game."

"What old game?"

"Marriage. Killing each other in the first few weeks and then--humbug."

"George is a very good husband and father."

"He lives with a woman in his house and children come automatically."

"He is very good to Elsie."

"He placates her."

Mrs. Fourmy took out the ace of diamonds and covered it. René said:

"Do you ever think, mother, of how we used to say we'd go and live together?"

"Sometimes. I knew it was just nonsense."

Her eyes gave him a quick little affectionate glance, searching for affection. Ah! that was better.

"Not such nonsense, either. Why shouldn't you go and live in Aunt Janet's cottage? It was that I was thinking of, though I never thought it would be mine."

"I'd be so lonely."

"No lonelier than you are here."

"No."

That escaped her involuntarily. She covered it up.

"You're too old for that sort of talk, René. You're not a boy any longer."

"I'm much younger than I was then."

"Yes, that's true. Would you come too?"

"No. I--I'm going south again."

"Have you met--her?"

"Yes."

"I thought so." Her hands trembled. "Are you--are you going to live with her?"

"I hope so."

"It will be living in sin. I couldn't live in your house if I knew that----"

"You prefer George?"

"I--I---- Please don't talk about it any more, René."

"I must. You love me far more than you love George, and yet you prefer to accept a home from him rather than from me."

"Certain things are wrong, René."

"I take my chance of that."

"We aren't given any choice."

"Hell in this world or hell in the next."

"Don't speak lightly of such things, René."

"I saw my father in London."

Mrs. Fourmy let the cards trickle from her hands, and sat staring at him with weary, frightened eyes.

"You are your father over again."

"He told me. Then it was your love or your religion----"

"Don't, René, don't!"

He could not continue. He watched her living again in the agony of the memory, righting with it, fighting it back, stifling the hunger in herself. He rose to leave her. She thought he was already gone, and slipped to her knees in an attitude of prayer.

René went to his room at the back of the house, the exact counterpart of his old den. He cursed that jealous God, that brutal invention of cowardice which has laid waste the western world. His rage only subsided when he came to think of Cathleen. He took paper and pen and wrote to her:

"I seem hardly at all different from the boy who used to write to you. It is almost exactly the same room, the same hour, only now it is my brother and sister-in-law who occupy the big bed in the big front room. The window looks out at the same lighted windows opposite. And I am the same except that I know myself better and am more sure. What an extraordinary phantasmagoria between our parting and our meeting! How worthless and external adventures can be! How worthless and external the more intimate relationships! But without adventure, without mistakes, folly, suffering, how is that discovery to be made? I suppose my brother never could have made it, but he must have had, perhaps even now he has, his moments when his desire tugs against his little round of habits. He would call himself a happy man, and perhaps he is so. Perhaps we all get what we desire. That would be a comfortable creed, and I could believe it were it not for my mother. One is not born of a woman for nothing. Something binds. There is a deeper knowledge than that of the mind. There is in my mother a quality with which I feel at home, free. But she withholds it from me. I feel she hates it in me, as in herself, as in my father. Hard to find anything else in common between them. I told you that story of how she surrendered to him when he came back. It must have been that in her, taken unawares. It had lived without alarm for so long. It had been stirred in her when I came back from Scotland so full of that idiotic love for you--and after that, I can't follow. Too near to it perhaps, or perhaps it is obscured in me by all I have gone through since. But now she baffles me. She has suffered. Yes. We all suffer, but suffering leads to discovery, to joy, or life is altogether barren. She suffers, she must suffer from living here in the dull house, but she takes her suffering and bottles it up, sterilizes it with religion. Her comfort! From the bottom of my heart I hate it. When she is full of what she calls her religion, then I can only bear with her by my inborn knowledge of her, and for that only the more do I detest the poison that has ruined her splendid life. And how it has been exploited, this voluptuous, selfish pleasure which they dare to call prayer and worship, this cowardly refusal to follow suffering withersoever it leads. I cannot be tolerant about it. To thousands I know, it is no more than bridge or bowls to my brother George, a pastime. But with her, and with all who have a capacity for suffering, it is a passionate negation, and to have lived at all must be a horror. You see, I am almost inarticulate about it. I have tried to break through it and failed. She saw, and closed her eyes, as she must have seen time and again. The delight of seeing almost deliberately debased to fear. I wish I were more used to thinking about people, then I could make it more clear. But it doesn't seem much use, for I go on believing in them and liking them and expecting all sorts of things that never come. Oh, the freedom that I find with you, and the thought of you! Everything you understand, and all the differences between us we can just laugh at and use. I must take you to some place where we can build up a healthy life. Now that I have money, I thought for a time that we would go and live in Scotland in my house. (How odd that looks. I really am pleased with my possessions for the first time.) That would not do. There must be work and activity. We'll have a brave time making plans to keep each other and everybody we know happy and keen. No more grubby humbugging, and no more Mitcham Mews. We'll find a way. . . ."

There came a tap at his door. He went to open it. His mother stood there.

"Aren't you going to bed, René? George and Elsie came home long ago."

"I was writing a letter."

"You shouldn't stay up, wasting the gas and all."

VII

CASEY'S VENTURE

Fortis imaginatio venerat casum.

CATHLEEN replied:

"I think you are hard on your mother. You love her too well to judge her, but you read yourself into her. You do that with me too, and I am sometimes alarmed when I think how I may disappoint you. But then I trust you so completely. You give so much that what you give turns at once into a gift from me to you, and that makes me give too. So it goes on like rain and cloud and river. Don't try to upset your little family. They won't like it. Keep all the upsetting for me. I love it and need it constantly."

He was very happy with this letter, carried it in his pocket and fingered it continually. Under its influence he ceased to chafe against his surroundings, and made no further attempt to force himself on his mother, and in her shy way she seemed to take pleasure in his exuberance.

The Edinburgh attorney sent an advance of £100. He posted £20 to Kilner, and besought him to leave Mitcham Mews and find a studio or go down into the country. Another twenty he sent to Lotta for Ann. He bought his mother an Indian shawl and provided Elsie with two dresses, tailor-made. The children were taken to a toy shop and allowed to select three treasures each. Little George hesitated for a long time between a helmet and a whip, and finally chose the latter because his small brother was no good as a soldier, but quite fair as a horse.

When René announced that he must go, George declared that they would "make an evening of it," and they played bridge until ten, and then in the parlor Mrs. Fourmy drew soft music from the old piano with its yellow keys. Under her hand the beauty of the Moonlight Sonata seemed faded, and René thought sadly that it was like the beauty of her life, faded and gone to dust. And as she played he took down the old family copy of Shakespeare, a vulgar edition spoiled with colored portraits of actors and actresses. He opened it at random and his eyes fell on these words:

Fear no more the heat o' the sun
Nor the furious winter's rages:
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone and ta'en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney sweepers, come to dust.

And tears came to his eyes, and he was filled with love and appreciation for these good kinsfolk of his who found such wealth in their little happiness and were so easily consoled in their little sorrows. And in the music it seemed that he and his mother could meet, had found a language which both could understand, a song to unite passionate acceptance and passionate denial in the peace of the soul.

George said he never did think much of classical music, and asked Elsie to sing his favorite song: "Poppyland."

That done, they joined hands and sang "For Auld Lang Syne."

His mother came to see René in his bed. She said:

"You won't come again."

"How do you know that?"

"I feel it. You've been very good and you have made me very happy."

"Then I'll come again."

"I don't want you to come again. You'll never be the same. George is always the same."

René remembered how his father had said she had done her best to keep them from ever being men.

"All right, mother. I wouldn't like it to be a pain for you to see me."

She smiled.

"It always is pain, René, dear, because I had to let you go."

He drew her down to him and kissed her. She said:

"An old woman like me."

He whispered:

"There'll always be some music that I can never hear without thinking of you."

"Yes," she said. "You were always the one to listen. And your father liked it too--some things."

"I'll think of that too."

"Yes. Think kindly of your father. We both did try."

And she crept away. René called after her, but she did not hear him. He wished to keep her with him, to try to find some word that should comfort her. But he knew at once that the word would elude him, that there was nothing to say, that he and she were lost to each other, and must go their ways. All his efforts, all his hopes could wake no response in her. The mention of his father made him know how dearly she had loved the man, and he began to perceive the subtle force of love, how it can live in defiance of the will, and even through the failing of desire; how it uses even differences, even ruptures to bind and sustain; and how even the most selfish souls are knit with others, though it be to the destruction of every pleasant joy. He saw how little love needs consciousness, and how desperately men stand in need of it. Else are they consumed in love, and never for a moment do their lives take form and color before they sink to dust again, not wholly created before they are destroyed. Ideas of Kilner's came rushing back to René's mind, his description of his vision, the slow insistence on being given expression and form in paint, his own helplessness against the tyranny of what his eyes had seen and his imagination mastered. René began to understand that, to lose sense of time, to find in himself also a vision that had possessed him always. Only, unlike Kilner, he could not trace it back to any moment of ecstasy, any keen appreciation of some natural beauty, or the play of light. Light! That was the creating idea. Kilner responded to the light of the sun, René to the light of the imagination, the light of the sun wrought upon by men's minds, so that their life also had its sun to bring fertility, and make the body a spirit and love an intellectual thing; the light of the sun stored through all the generations to dissipate the terrors of life and the power of death, to concentrate upon all beloved objects and show them in their loveliness as visions urging to creation. And in his love of woman man seeks no reflection of his light but the flash of hers, that her beauty may not perish.

René in his joy began to sing to himself. It was the song Cathleen had sung in the woods. He could see her again as she was there in the green haze of the woods, in the dappled light, mysterious and wild.

From that he deliberately turned away to fix his gaze on the humorous reality, because there was nothing that he did not desire to sweep into his joy. He lit a match and gazed round the little, cheaply furnished room, the ugly toilet service, the yellow dressing-table, the silly patterned wall-paper of pallid roses, the execrable pictures on the wall. His eyes were dazzled by the light, and they ached. Came darkness again, and he hummed to himself as he thought of the morrow and the train, with its wheels humming along the rails, taking him nearer the goal of his desire.

. . . . . .

In the morning George shook him warmly by the hand when he came down, again as he was putting on his coat, and again, twice, as he set out for business.