“I want to catch the post,” he added, rising.
Aaron looked up at him quickly. But almost before there was time to speak, Lilly had slipped into his hat and coat, seized his letters, and gone.
It was a rainy night. Lilly turned down King Street to walk to Charing Cross. He liked being out of doors. He liked to post his letters at Charing Cross post office. He did not want to talk to Aaron any more. He was glad to be alone.
He walked quickly down Villiers Street to the river, to see it flowing blackly towards the sea. It had an endless fascination for him: never failed to soothe him and give him a sense of liberty. He liked the night, the dark rain, the river, and even the traffic. He enjoyed the sense of friction he got from the streaming of people who meant nothing to him. It was like a fox slipping alert among unsuspecting cattle.
When he got back, he saw in the distance the lights of a taxi standing outside the building where he lived, and heard a thumping and hallooing. He hurried forward.
It was a man called Herbertson.
“Oh, why, there you are!” exclaimed Herbertson, as Lilly drew near. “Can I come up and have a chat?”
“I've got that man who's had flu. I should think he is gone to bed.”
“Oh!” The disappointment was plain. “Well, look here I'll just come up for a couple of minutes.” He laid his hand on Lilly's arm. “I heard you were going away. Where are you going?”
“Malta.”
“Malta! Oh, I know Malta very well. Well now, it'll be all right if I come up for a minute? I'm not going to see much more of you, apparently.” He turned quickly to the taxi. “What is it on the clock?”
The taxi was paid, the two men went upstairs. Aaron was in bed, but he called as Lilly entered the room.
“Hullo!” said Lilly. “Not asleep? Captain Herbertson has come in for a minute.”
“Hope I shan't disturb you,” said Captain Herbertson, laying down his stick and gloves, and his cap. He was in uniform. He was one of the few surviving officers of the Guards, a man of about forty-five, good-looking, getting rather stout. He settled himself in the chair where Aaron had sat, hitching up his trousers. The gold identity plate, with its gold chain, fell conspicuously over his wrist.
“Been to 'Rosemary,'” he said. “Rotten play, you know—but passes the time awfully well. Oh, I quite enjoyed it.”
Lilly offered him Sauterne—the only thing in the house.
“Oh, yes! How awfully nice! Yes, thanks, I shall love it. Can I have it with soda? Thanks! Do you know, I think that's the very best drink in the tropics: sweet white wine, with soda? Yes—well!— Well—now, why are you going away?”
“For a change,” said Lilly.
“You're quite right, one needs a change now the damned thing is all over. As soon as I get out of khaki I shall be off. Malta! Yes! I've been in Malta several times. I think Valletta is quite enjoyable, particularly in winter, with the opera. Oh—er—how's your wife? All right? Yes!—glad to see her people again. Bound to be— Oh, by the way, I met Jim Bricknell. Sends you a message hoping you'll go down and stay—down at Captain Bingham's place in Surrey, you know. Awfully queer lot down there. Not my sort, no. You won't go down? No, I shouldn't. Not the right sort of people.”
Herbertson rattled away, rather spasmodic. He had been through the very front hell of the war—and like every man who had, he had the war at the back of his mind, like an obsession. But in the meantime, he skirmished.
“Yes. I was on guard one day when the Queen gave one of her tea-parties to the blind. Awful affair. But the children are awfully nice children. Prince of Wales awfully nice, almost too nice. Prince Henry smart boy, too—oh, a smart boy. Queen Mary poured the tea, and I handed round bread and butter. She told me I made a very good waiter. I said, Thank you, Madam. But I like the children. Very different from the Battenbergs. Oh!—” he wrinkled his nose. “I can't stand the Battenbergs.”
“Mount Battens,” said Lilly.
“Yes! Awful mistake, changing the royal name. They were Guelfs, why not remain it? Why, I'll tell you what Battenberg did. He was in the Guards, too—”
The talk flowed on: about royalty and the Guards, Buckingham Palace and St. James.
“Rather a nice story about Queen Victoria. Man named Joyce, something or other, often used to dine at the Palace. And he was an awfully good imitator—really clever, you know. Used to imitate the Queen. 'Mr. Joyce,' she said, 'I hear your imitation is very amusing. Will you do it for us now, and let us see what it is like?' 'Oh, no, Madam! I'm afraid I couldn't do it now. I'm afraid I'm not in the humour.' But she would have him do it. And it was really awfully funny. He had to do it. You know what he did. He used to take a table-napkin, and put it on with one corner over his forehead, and the rest hanging down behind, like her veil thing. And then he sent for the kettle-lid. He always had the kettle-lid, for that little crown of hers. And then he impersonated her. But he was awfully good—so clever. 'Mr. Joyce,' she said. 'We are not amused. Please leave the room.' Yes, that is exactly what she said: 'WE are not amused—please leave the room.' I like the WE, don't you? And he a man of sixty or so. However, he left the room and for a fortnight or so he wasn't invited—Wasn't she wonderful—Queen Victoria?”
And so, by light transitions, to the Prince of Wales at the front, and thus into the trenches. And then Herbertson was on the subject he was obsessed by. He had come, unconsciously, for this and this only, to talk war to Lilly: or at Lilly. For the latter listened and watched, and said nothing. As a man at night helplessly takes a taxi to find some woman, some prostitute, Herbertson had almost unthinkingly got into a taxi and come battering at the door in Covent Garden, only to talk war to Lilly, whom he knew very little. But it was a driving instinct—to come and get it off his chest.
And on and on he talked, over his wine and soda. He was not conceited—he was not showing off—far from it. It was the same thing here in this officer as it was with the privates, and the same with this Englishman as with a Frenchman or a German or an Italian. Lilly had sat in a cowshed listening to a youth in the north country: he had sat on the corn-straw that the oxen had been treading out, in Calabria, under the moon: he had sat in a farm-kitchen with a German prisoner: and every time it was the same thing, the same hot, blind, anguished voice of a man who has seen too much, experienced too much, and doesn't know where to turn. None of the glamour of returned heroes, none of the romance of war: only a hot, blind, mesmerised voice, going on and on, mesmerised by a vision that the soul cannot bear.
In this officer, of course, there was a lightness and an appearance of bright diffidence and humour. But underneath it all was the same as in the common men of all the combatant nations: the hot, seared burn of unbearable experience, which did not heal nor cool, and whose irritation was not to be relieved. The experience gradually cooled on top: but only with a surface crust. The soul did not heal, did not recover.
“I used to be awfully frightened,” laughed Herbertson. “Now you say, Lilly, you'd never have stood it. But you would. You're nervous—and it was just the nervous ones that did stand it. When nearly all our officers were gone, we had a man come out—a man called Margeritson, from India—big merchant people out there. They all said he was no good—not a bit of good—nervous chap. No good at all. But when you had to get out of the trench and go for the Germans he was perfect—perfect—It all came to him then, at the crisis, and he was perfect.
“Some things frighten one man, and some another. Now shells would never frighten me. But I couldn't stand bombs. You could tell the difference between our machines and the Germans. Ours was a steady noise—drrrrrrrr!—but their's was heavy, drrrrRURUrrrrRURU!— My word, that got on my nerves....
“No I was never hit. The nearest thing was when I was knocked down by an exploding shell—several times that—you know. When you shout like mad for the men to come and dig you out, under all the earth. And my word, you do feel frightened then.” Herbertson laughed with a twinkling motion to Lilly. But between his brows there was a tension like madness.
“And a funny thing you know—how you don't notice things. In—let me see—1916, the German guns were a lot better than ours. Ours were old, and when they're old you can't tell where they'll hit: whether they'll go beyond the mark, or whether they'll fall short. Well, this day our guns were firing short, and killing our own men. We'd had the order to charge, and were running forward, and I suddenly felt hot water spurting on my neck—” He put his hand to the back of his neck and glanced round apprehensively. “It was a chap called Innes—Oh, an awfully decent sort—people were in the Argentine. He'd been calling out to me as we were running, and I was just answering. When I felt this hot water on my neck and saw him running past me with no head—he'd got no head, and he went running past me. I don't know how far, but a long way.... Blood, you know—Yes—well—
“Oh, I hated Chelsea—I loathed Chelsea—Chelsea was purgatory to me. I had a corporal called Wallace—he was a fine chap—oh, he was a fine chap—six foot two—and about twenty-four years old. He was my stand-back. Oh, I hated Chelsea, and parades, and drills. You know, when it's drill, and you're giving orders, you forget what order you've just given—in front of the Palace there the crowd don't notice—but it's AWFUL for you. And you know you daren't look round to see what the men are doing. But Wallace was splendid. He was just behind me, and I'd hear him, quite quiet you know, 'It's right wheel, sir.' Always perfect, always perfect—yes—well....
“You know you don't get killed if you don't think you will. Now I never thought I should get killed. And I never knew a man get killed if he hadn't been thinking he would. I said to Wallace I'd rather be out here, at the front, than at Chelsea. I hated Chelsea—I can't tell you how much. 'Oh no, sir!' he said. 'I'd rather be at Chelsea than here. I'd rather be at Chelsea. There isn't hell like this at Chelsea.' We'd had orders that we were to go back to the real camp the next day. 'Never mind, Wallace,' I said. 'We shall be out of this hell-on-earth tomorrow.' And he took my hand. We weren't much for showing feeling or anything in the guards. But he took my hand. And we climbed out to charge—Poor fellow, he was killed—” Herbertson dropped his head, and for some moments seemed to go unconscious, as if struck. Then he lifted his face, and went on in the same animated chatty fashion: “You see, he had a presentiment. I'm sure he had a presentiment. None of the men got killed unless they had a presentiment—like that, you know....”
Herbertson nodded keenly at Lilly, with his sharp, twinkling, yet obsessed eyes. Lilly wondered why he made the presentiment responsible for the death—which he obviously did—and not vice versa. Herbertson implied every time, that you'd never get killed if you could keep yourself from having a presentiment. Perhaps there was something in it. Perhaps the soul issues its own ticket of death, when it can stand no more. Surely life controls life: and not accident.
“It's a funny thing what shock will do. We had a sergeant and he shouted to me. Both his feet were off—both his feet, clean at the ankle. I gave him morphia. You know officers aren't allowed to use the needle—might give the man blood poisoning. You give those tabloids. They say they act in a few minutes, but they DON'T. It's a quarter of an hour. And nothing is more demoralising than when you have a man, wounded, you know, and crying out. Well, this man I gave him the morphia before he got over the stunning, you know. So he didn't feel the pain. Well, they carried him in. I always used to like to look after my men. So I went next morning and I found he hadn't been removed to the Clearing Station. I got hold of the doctor and I said, 'Look here! Why hasn't this man been taken to the Clearing Station?' I used to get excited. But after some years they'd got used to me. 'Don't get excited, Herbertson, the man's dying.' 'But,' I said, 'he's just been talking to me as strong as you are.' And he had—he'd talk as strong and well as you or me, then go quiet for a bit. I said I gave him the morphia before he came round from the stunning. So he'd felt nothing. But in two hours he was dead. The doctor says that the shock does it like that sometimes. You can do nothing for them. Nothing vital is injured—and yet the life is broken in them. Nothing can be done—funny thing—Must be something in the brain—”
“It's obviously not the brain,” said Lilly. “It's deeper than the brain.”
“Deeper,” said Herbertson, nodding.
“Funny thing where life is. We had a lieutenant. You know we all buried our own dead. Well, he looked as if he was asleep. Most of the chaps looked like that.” Herbertson closed his eyes and laid his face aside, like a man asleep and dead peacefully. “You very rarely see a man dead with any other look on his face—you know the other look.—” And he clenched his teeth with a sudden, momentaneous, ghastly distortion.—“Well, you'd never have known this chap was dead. He had a wound here—in the back of the head—and a bit of blood on his hand—and nothing else, nothing. Well, I said we'd give him a decent burial. He lay there waiting—and they'd wrapped him in a filthy blanket—you know. Well, I said he should have a proper blanket. He'd been dead lying there a day and a half you know. So I went and got a blanket, a beautiful blanket, out of his private kit—his people were Scotch, well-known family—and I got the pins, you know, ready to pin him up properly, for the Scots Guards to bury him. And I thought he'd be stiff, you see. But when I took him by the arms, to lift him on, he sat up. It gave me an awful shock. 'Why he's alive!' I said. But they said he was dead. I couldn't believe it. It gave me an awful shock. He was as flexible as you or me, and looked as if he was asleep. You couldn't believe he was dead. But we pinned him up in his blanket. It was an awful shock to me. I couldn't believe a man could be like that after he'd been dead two days....
“The Germans were wonderful with the machine guns—it's a wicked thing, a machine gun. But they couldn't touch us with the bayonet. Every time the men came back they had bayonet practice, and they got awfully good. You know when you thrust at the Germans—so—if you miss him, you bring your rifle back sharp, with a round swing, so that the butt comes up and hits up under the jaw. It's one movement, following on with the stab, you see, if you miss him. It was too quick for them—But bayonet charge was worst, you know. Because your man cries out when you catch him, when you get him, you know. That's what does you....
“No, oh no, this was no war like other wars. All the machinery of it. No, you couldn't stand it, but for the men. The men are wonderful, you know. They'll be wiped out.... No, it's your men who keep you going, if you're an officer.... But there'll never be another war like this. Because the Germans are the only people who could make a war like this—and I don't think they'll ever do it again, do you?
“Oh, they were wonderful, the Germans. They were amazing. It was incredible, what they invented and did. We had to learn from them, in the first two years. But they were too methodical. That's why they lost the war. They were too methodical. They'd fire their guns every ten minutes—regular. Think of it. Of course we knew when to run, and when to lie down. You got so that you knew almost exactly what they'd do—if you'd been out long enough. And then you could time what you wanted to do yourselves.
“They were a lot more nervous than we were, at the last. They sent up enough light at night from their trenches—you know, those things that burst in the air like electric light—we had none of that to do—they did it all for us—lit up everything. They were more nervous than we were....”
It was nearly two o'clock when Herbertson left. Lilly, depressed, remained before the fire. Aaron got out of bed and came uneasily to the fire.
“It gives me the bellyache, that damned war,” he said.
“So it does me,” said Lilly. “All unreal.”
“Real enough for those that had to go through it.”
“No, least of all for them,” said Lilly sullenly. “Not as real as a bad dream. Why the hell don't they wake up and realise it!”
“That's a fact,” said Aaron. “They're hypnotised by it.”
“And they want to hypnotise me. And I won't be hypnotised. The war was a lie and is a lie and will go on being a lie till somebody busts it.”
“It was a fact—you can't bust that. You can't bust the fact that it happened.”
“Yes you can. It never happened. It never happened to me. No more than my dreams happen. My dreams don't happen: they only seem.”
“But the war did happen, right enough,” smiled Aaron palely.
“No, it didn't. Not to me or to any man, in his own self. It took place in the automatic sphere, like dreams do. But the ACTUAL MAN in every man was just absent—asleep—or drugged—inert—dream-logged. That's it.”
“You tell 'em so,” said Aaron.
“I do. But it's no good. Because they won't wake up now even—perhaps never. They'll all kill themselves in their sleep.”
“They wouldn't be any better if they did wake up and be themselves—that is, supposing they are asleep, which I can't see. They are what they are—and they're all alike—and never very different from what they are now.”
Lilly stared at Aaron with black eyes.
“Do you believe in them less than I do, Aaron?” he asked slowly.
“I don't even want to believe in them.”
“But in yourself?” Lilly was almost wistful—and Aaron uneasy.
“I don't know that I've any more right to believe in myself than in them,” he replied. Lilly watched and pondered.
“No,” he said. “That's not true—I KNEW the war was false: humanly quite false. I always knew it was false. The Germans were false, we were false, everybody was false.”
“And not you?” asked Aaron shrewishly.
“There was a wakeful, self-possessed bit of me which knew that the war and all that horrible movement was false for me. And so I wasn't going to be dragged in. The Germans could have shot my mother or me or what they liked: I wouldn't have joined the WAR. I would like to kill my enemy. But become a bit of that huge obscene machine they called the war, that I never would, no, not if I died ten deaths and had eleven mothers violated. But I would like to kill my enemy: Oh, yes, more than one enemy. But not as a unit in a vast obscene mechanism. That never: no, never.”
Poor Lilly was too earnest and vehement. Aaron made a fine nose. It seemed to him like a lot of words and a bit of wriggling out of a hole.
“Well,” he said, “you've got men and nations, and you've got the machines of war—so how are you going to get out of it? League of Nations?”
“Damn all leagues. Damn all masses and groups, anyhow. All I want is to get MYSELF out of their horrible heap: to get out of the swarm. The swarm to me is nightmare and nullity—horrible helpless writhing in a dream. I want to get myself awake, out of it all—all that mass-consciousness, all that mass-activity—it's the most horrible nightmare to me. No man is awake and himself. No man who was awake and in possession of himself would use poison gases: no man. His own awake self would scorn such a thing. It's only when the ghastly mob-sleep, the dream helplessness of the mass-psyche overcomes him, that he becomes completely base and obscene.”
“Ha—well,” said Aaron. “It's the wide-awake ones that invent the poison gas, and use it. Where should we be without it?”
Lilly started, went stiff and hostile.
“Do you mean that, Aaron?” he said, looking into Aaron's face with a hard, inflexible look.
Aaron turned aside half sheepishly.
“That's how it looks on the face of it, isn't it?” he said.
“Look here, my friend, it's too late for you to be talking to me about the face of things. If that's how you feel, put your things on and follow Herbertson. Yes—go out of my room. I don't put up with the face of things here.”
Aaron looked at him in cold amazement.
“It'll do tomorrow morning, won't it?” he asked rather mocking.
“Yes,” said Lilly coldly. “But please go tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, I'll go all right,” said Aaron. “Everybody's got to agree with you—that's your price.”
But Lilly did not answer. Aaron turned into bed, his satirical smile under his nose. Somewhat surprised, however, at this sudden turn of affairs.
As he was just going to sleep, dismissing the matter, Lilly came once more to his bedside, and said, in a hard voice:
“I'm NOT going to pretend to have friends on the face of things. No, and I don't have friends who don't fundamentally agree with me. A friend means one who is at one with me in matters of life and death. And if you're at one with all the rest, then you're THEIR friend, not mine. So be their friend. And please leave me in the morning. You owe me nothing, you have nothing more to do with me. I have had enough of these friendships where I pay the piper and the mob calls the tune.
“Let me tell you, moreover, your heroic Herbertsons lost us more than ever they won. A brave ant is a damned cowardly individual. Your heroic officers are a sad sight AFTERWARDS, when they come home. Bah, your Herbertson! The only justification for war is what we learn from it. And what have they learnt?—Why did so many of them have presentiments, as he called it? Because they could feel inside them, there was nothing to come after. There was no life-courage: only death-courage. Nothing beyond this hell—only death or love—languishing—”
“What could they have seen, anyhow?” said Aaron.
“It's not what you see, actually. It's the kind of spirit you keep inside you: the life spirit. When Wallace had presentiments, Herbertson, being officer, should have said: 'None of that, Wallace. You and I, we've got to live and make life smoke.'—Instead of which he let Wallace be killed and his own heart be broken. Always the death-choice— And we won't, we simply will not face the world as we've made it, and our own souls as we find them, and take the responsibility. We'll never get anywhere till we stand up man to man and face EVERYTHING out, and break the old forms, but never let our own pride and courage of life be broken.”
Lilly broke off, and went silently to bed. Aaron turned over to sleep, rather resenting the sound of so many words. What difference did it make, anyhow? In the morning, however, when he saw the other man's pale, closed, rather haughty face, he realised that somethinghadhappened. Lilly was courteous and even affable: but with a curious cold space between him and Aaron. Breakfast passed, and Aaron knew that he must leave. There was something in Lilly's bearing which just showed him the door. In some surprise and confusion, and in some anger, not unmingled with humorous irony, he put his things in his bag. He put on his hat and coat. Lilly was seated rather stiffly writing.
“Well,” said Aaron. “I suppose we shall meet again.”
“Oh, sure to,” said Lilly, rising from his chair. “We are sure to run across one another.”
“When are you going?” asked Aaron.
“In a few days' time.”
“Oh, well, I'll run in and see you before you go, shall I?”
“Yes, do.”
Lilly escorted his guest to the top of the stairs, shook hands, and then returned into his own room, closing the door on himself.
Aaron did not find his friend at home when he called. He took it rather as a slap in the face. But then he knew quite well that Lilly had made a certain call on his, Aaron's soul: a call which he, Aaron, did not at all intend to obey. If in return the soul-caller chose to shut his street-door in the face of the world-friend—well, let it be quits. He was not sure whether he felt superior to his unworldly enemy or not. He rather thought he did.
The opera season ended, Aaron was invited by Cyril Scott to join a group of musical people in a village by the sea. He accepted, and spent a pleasant month. It pleased the young men musically-inclined and bohemian by profession to patronise the flautist, whom they declared marvellous. Bohemians with well-to-do parents, they could already afford to squander a little spasmodic and self-gratifying patronage. And Aaron did not mind being patronised. He had nothing else to do.
But the party broke up early in September. The flautist was detained a few days at a country house, for the amusement of the guests. Then he left for London.
In London he found himself at a loose end. A certain fretful dislike of the patronage of indifferent young men, younger than himself, and a certain distaste for regular work in the orchestra made him look round. He wanted something else. He wanted to disappear again. Qualms and emotions concerning his abandoned family overcame him. The early, delicate autumn affected him. He took a train to the Midlands.
And again, just after dark, he strolled with his little bag across the field which lay at the end of his garden. It had been mown, and the grass was already growing long. He stood and looked at the line of back windows, lighted once more. He smelled the scents of autumn, phlox and moist old vegetation and corn in sheaf. A nostalgia which was half at least revulsion affected him. The place, the home, at once fascinated and revolted him.
Sitting in his shed, he scrutinised his garden carefully, in the starlight. There were two rows of beans, rather disshevelled. Near at hand the marrow plants sprawled from their old bed. He could detect the perfume of a few carnations. He wondered who it was had planted the garden, during his long absence. Anyhow, there it was, planted and fruited and waning into autumn.
The blind was not drawn. It was eight o'clock. The children were going to bed. Aaron waited in his shed, his bowels stirred with violent but only half-admitted emotions. There was his wife, slim and graceful, holding a little mug to the baby's mouth. And the baby was drinking. She looked lonely. Wild emotions attacked his heart. There was going to be a wild and emotional reconciliation.
Was there? It seemed like something fearful and imminent. A passion arose in him, a craving for the violent emotional reconciliation. He waited impatiently for the children to be gone to bed, gnawed with restless desire.
He heard the clock strike nine, then half-past, from the village behind. The children would be asleep. His wife was sitting sewing some little frock. He went lingering down the garden path, stooping to lift the fallen carnations, to see how they were. There were many flowers, but small. He broke one off, then threw it away. The golden rod was out. Even in the little lawn there were asters, as of old.
His wife started to listen, hearing his step. He was filled with a violent conflict of tenderness, like a sickness. He hesitated, tapping at the door, and entered. His wife started to her feet, at bay.
“What have you come for!” was her involuntary ejaculation.
But he, with the familiar odd jerk of his head towards the garden, asked with a faint smile:
“Who planted the garden?”
And he felt himself dropping into the twang of the vernacular, which he had discarded.
Lottie only stood and stared at him, objectively. She did not think to answer. He took his hat off, and put it on the dresser. Again the familiar act maddened her.
“What have you come for?” she cried again, with a voice full of hate. Or perhaps it was fear and doubt and even hope as well. He heard only hate.
This time he turned to look at her. The old dagger was drawn in her.
“I wonder,” he said, “myself.”
Then she recovered herself, and with trembling hand picked up her sewing again. But she still stood at bay, beyond the table. She said nothing. He, feeling tired, sat down on the chair nearest the door. But he reached for his hat, and kept it on his knee. She, as she stood there unnaturally, went on with her sewing. There was silence for some time. Curious sensations and emotions went through the man's frame seeming to destroy him. They were like electric shocks, which he felt she emitted against him. And an old sickness came in him again. He had forgotten it. It was the sickness of the unrecognised and incomprehensible strain between him and her.
After a time she put down her sewing, and sat again in her chair.
“Do you know how vilely you've treated me?” she said, staring across the space at him. He averted his face.
Yet he answered, not without irony.
“I suppose so.”
“And why?” she cried. “I should like to know why.”
He did not answer. The way she rushed in made him go vague.
“Justify yourself. Say why you've been so vile to me. Say what you had against me,” she demanded.
“What I HAD against her,” he mused to himself: and he wondered that she used the past tense. He made no answer.
“Accuse me,” she insisted. “Say what I've done to make you treat me like this. Say it. You must THINK it hard enough.”
“Nay,” he said. “I don't think it.”
This speech, by which he merely meant that he did not trouble to formulate any injuries he had against her, puzzled her.
“Don't come pretending you love me, NOW. It's too late,” she said with contempt. Yet perhaps also hope.
“You might wait till I start pretending,” he said.
This enraged her.
“You vile creature!” she exclaimed. “Go! What have you come for?”
“To look at YOU,” he said sarcastically.
After a few minutes she began to cry, sobbing violently into her apron. And again his bowels stirred and boiled.
“What have I done! What have I done! I don't know what I've done that he should be like this to me,” she sobbed, into her apron. It was childish, and perhaps true. At least it was true from the childish part of her nature. He sat gloomy and uneasy.
She took the apron from her tear-stained face, and looked at him. It was true, in her moments of roused exposure she was a beautiful woman—a beautiful woman. At this moment, with her flushed, tear-stained, wilful distress, she was beautiful.
“Tell me,” she challenged. “Tell me! Tell me what I've done. Tell me what you have against me. Tell me.”
Watching like a lynx, she saw the puzzled, hurt look in his face. Telling isn't so easy—especially when the trouble goes too deep for conscious comprehension. He couldn'ttellwhat he had against her. And he had not the slightest intention of doing what she would have liked him to do, starting to pile up detailed grievances. He knew the detailed grievances were nothing in themselves.
“You CAN'T,” she cried vindictively. “You CAN'T. You CAN'T find anything real to bring against me, though you'd like to. You'd like to be able to accuse me of something, but you CAN'T, because you know there isn't anything.”
She watched him, watched. And he sat in the chair near the door, without moving.
“You're unnatural, that's what you are,” she cried. “You're unnatural. You're not a man. You haven't got a man's feelings. You're nasty, and cold, and unnatural. And you're a coward. You're a coward. You run away from me, without telling me what you've got against me.”
“When you've had enough, you go away and you don't care what you do,” he said, epigrammatic.
She paused a moment.
“Enough of what?” she said. “What have you had enough of? Of me and your children? It's a nice manly thing to say. Haven't I loved you? Haven't I loved you for twelve years, and worked and slaved for you and tried to keep you right? Heaven knows where you'd have been but for me, evil as you are at the bottom. You're evil, that's what it is—and weak. You're too weak to love a woman and give her what she wants: too weak. Unmanly and cowardly, he runs away.”
“No wonder,” he said.
“No,” she cried. “It IS no wonder, with a nature like yours: weak and unnatural and evil. It IS no wonder.”
She became quiet—and then started to cry again, into her apron. Aaron waited. He felt physically weak.
“And who knows what you've been doing all these months?” she wept. “Who knows all the vile things you've been doing? And you're the father of my children—the father of my little girls—and who knows what vile things he's guilty of, all these months?”
“I shouldn't let my imagination run away with me,” he answered. “I've been playing the flute in the orchestra of one of the theatres in London.”
“Ha!” she cried. “It's more than that. Don't think I'm going to believe you. I know you, with your smooth-sounding lies. You're a liar, as you know. And I know you've been doing other things besides play a flute in an orchestra. You!—as if I don't know you. And then coming crawling back to me with your lies and your pretense. Don't think I'm taken in.”
“I should be sorry,” he said.
“Coming crawling back to me, and expecting to be forgiven,” she went on. “But no—I don't forgive—and I can't forgive—never—not as long as I live shall I forgive what you've done to me.”
“You can wait till you're asked, anyhow,” he said.
“And you can wait,” she said. “And you shall wait.” She took up her sewing, and stitched steadily, as if calmly. Anyone glancing in would have imagined a quiet domestic hearth at that moment. He, too, feeling physically weak, remained silent, feeling his soul absent from the scene.
Again she suddenly burst into tears, weeping bitterly.
“And the children,” she sobbed, rocking herself with grief and chagrin. “What have I been able to say to the children—what have I been able to tell them?”
“What HAVE you told them?” he asked coldly.
“I told them you'd gone away to work,” she sobbed, laying her head on her arms on the table. “What else could I tell them? I couldn't tell them the vile truth about their father. I couldn't tell THEM how evil you are.” She sobbed and moaned.
He wondered what exactly the vile truth would have been, had shestartedto tell it. And he began to feel, coldly and cynically, that among all her distress there was a luxuriating in the violent emotions of the scene in hand, and the situation altogether.
Then again she became quiet, and picked up her sewing. She stitched quietly, wistfully, for some time. Then she looked up at him—a long look of reproach, and sombre accusation, and wifely tenderness. He turned his face aside.
“You know you've been wrong to me, don't you?” she said, half wistfully, half menacing.
He felt her wistfulness and her menace tearing him in his bowels and loins.
“You do know, don't you?” she insisted, still with the wistful appeal, and the veiled threat.
“You do, or you would answer,” she said. “You've still got enough that's right in you, for you to know.”
She waited. He sat still, as if drawn by hot wires.
Then she slipped across to him, put her arms round him, sank on her knees at his side, and sank her face against his thigh.
“Say you know how wrong you are. Say you know how cruel you've been to me,” she pleaded. But under her female pleading and appeal he felt the iron of her threat.
“You DO know it,” she murmured, looking up into his face as she crouched by his knee. “You DO know it. I can see in your eyes that you know it. And why have you come back to me, if you don't know it! Why have you come back to me? Tell me!” Her arms gave him a sharp, compulsory little clutch round the waist. “Tell me! Tell me!” she murmured, with all her appeal liquid in her throat.
But him, it half overcame, and at the same time, horrified. He had a certain horror of her. The strange liquid sound of her appeal seemed to him like the swaying of a serpent which mesmerises the fated, fluttering, helpless bird. She clasped her arms round him, she drew him to her, she half roused his passion. At the same time she coldly horrified and repelled him. He had not the faintest feeling, at the moment, of his own wrong. But she wanted to win his own self-betrayal out of him. He could see himself as the fascinated victim, falling to this cajoling, awful woman, the wife of his bosom. But as well, he had a soul outside himself, which looked on the whole scene with cold revulsion, and which was as unchangeable as time.
“No,” he said. “I don't feel wrong.”
“You DO!” she said, giving him a sharp, admonitory clutch. “You DO. Only you're silly, and obstinate, babyish and silly and obstinate. An obstinate little boy—you DO feel wrong. And you ARE wrong. And you've got to say it.”
But quietly he disengaged himself and got to his feet, his face pale and set, obstinate as she said. He put his hat on, and took his little bag. She watched him curiously, still crouching by his chair.
“I'll go,” he said, putting his hand on the latch.
Suddenly she sprang to her feet and clutched him by the shirt-neck, her hand inside his soft collar, half strangling him.
“You villain,” she said, and her face was transfigured with passion as he had never seen it before, horrible. “You villain!” she said thickly. “What have you come here for?”
His soul went black as he looked at her. He broke her hand away from his shirt collar, bursting the stud-holes. She recoiled in silence. And in one black, unconscious movement he was gone, down the garden and over the fence and across the country, swallowed in a black unconsciousness.
She, realising, sank upon the hearth-rug and lay there curled upon herself. She was defeated. But she, too, would never yield. She lay quite motionless for some time. Then she got up, feeling the draught on the floor. She closed the door, and drew down the blind. Then she looked at her wrist, which he had gripped, and which pained her. Then she went to the mirror and looked for a long time at her white, strained, determined face. Come life, come death, she, too would never yield. And she realised now that he would never yield.
She was faint with weariness, and would be glad to get to bed and sleep.
Aaron meanwhile had walked across the country and was looking for a place to rest. He found a cornfield with a half-built stack, and sheaves in stook. Ten to one some tramp would have found the stack. He threw a dozen sheaves together and lay down, looking at the stars in the September sky. He, too, would never yield. The illusion of love was gone for ever. Love was a battle in which each party strove for the mastery of the other's soul. So far, man had yielded the mastery to woman. Now he was fighting for it back again. And too late, for the woman would never yield.
But whether woman yielded or not, he would keep the mastery of his own soul and conscience and actions. He would never yield himself up to her judgment again. He would hold himself forever beyond her jurisdiction.
Henceforth, life single, not life double.
He looked at the sky, and thanked the universe for the blessedness of being alone in the universe. To be alone, to be oneself, not to be driven or violated into something which is not oneself, surely it is better than anything. He thought of Lottie, and knew how much more truly herself she was when she was alone, with no man to distort her. And he was thankful for the division between them. Such scenes as the last were too horrible and unreal.
As for future unions, too soon to think about it. Let there be clean and pure division first, perfected singleness. That is the only way to final, living unison: through sheer, finished singleness.