XIIESCAPEAnt.Come, I’ll be out of the ague,For to live thus is not indeed to live,It is a mockery and abuse of life.I will not henceforth serve myself by halves!Love all or nothing.Delio.Your own virtue save you!HEspent hours brooding, prowling in the streets, in whose dull monotony his mind had grown so undisturbedly, responding to their small gaieties and smaller excitements, but moving on in the even smoothness of their life. It seemed incredible to him that such turmoil could have come out of them, and yet that turmoil had begun even before his marriage, before he had met his wife. Was there some strangeness in himself? Of his nature he became doubtful and suspicious. Yet the habit of acceptance was too strong in him; even his misery he could accept. Very laboriously he strove to come by an idea of himself, and was only the more confused when he arrived at this:“They won’t come out to meet me, and when I go out to meet them, they run away. I cannot enjoytheir pleasures, and they seem to want nothing else. It gets worse and worse. I couldn’t even talk to Elsie now. Almost anyone can make me seem ridiculous.”Linda wrote to him:“Can’t you see, Ren dear, that there are some things won’t bear thinking of, and spoil with thinking. You poor, tortured thing!” (Least of all did he want pity from her.) “I know you don’t really want to think, and you don’t think easily, like most people. At least you seem to hate thinking without coming to a conclusion. It is something finer than obstinacy, because it isn’t at all for yourself that you want—what you want. What do you want? Isn’t it enough to be happy? Oh, my dear, do let us be happy! I have been crying every night. It isn’t that I mind being apart; husbands and wives must be apart sometimes if their life is to be possible and decent, but I can’t bear our being apart in spirit.”Then she had understood! She had seen the gulf between them. She would help him to bridge it.He hastened to her joyfully, and caught her up in a great embrace, so that she laughed in delicious terror.And the torment began again. She had seen, understood, nothing. She was only for teasing, wheedling, cajoling him into submission. She told him—carefully choosing her moment—that she would bear him children, and for a little while, a second or two, he was appeased. Then his excited imagination worked on that. A child would mean only another entity in the house, the empty house, where there was no love to absorb it and foster its growth; more antagonism;more separation; his child or hers, it would not be both. He could not see at all clearly, but the idea of it had for him now something horrible. With no count of his words he said:“I do not wish for anything that you yourself do not want.”“I want it.”“Then why talk of it?”“A man and a woman——”“Talk of us, woman, talk of us. God! You don’t know how you spoil things with your busy mind. True things, simple things, lovely things, things that lie deep in heart and mind, there is nothing that you will not shape and mold and knead and twist into your own image, pretty, pretty, charming. Oh, the lies of it all, the lies, the lies, the lies! And you never know what you are doing. All is for your pleasure. Nothing can lead you beyond that. And everything that menaces your pleasure you draw with your busy brain into words, words.”“You don’t know what you are saying.”“No.”He looked up at her with his eyes glazed and dull, his jaw trembling, his fingers rubbing over and over again upon his thumbs.“If you have said what is true, then you must hate me.”“Yes.”He stated it as though it were a plain fact well coated over by habit, so that it could give no pain. She was tranquil, seemed to have tight control over herself.She walked twice up and down the room. Then she turned to him and said very quietly:“I knew a long time ago that if it ever came to a scene it would be the end. I suppose I’m not romantic enough for you. I don’t know what it is. But I know enough to feel that a scene with you would be serious. Even little girls know that men must have scenes. It’s a kind of love-making with them. You’re different.”“Yes.”“I can’t pretend that you haven’t hurt me.”“I’m sorry.”“Oh, I’d like to pretend. But I’ve changed, too. I suppose you can’t marry without being changed. A woman who loses her husband looks silly. But she needn’t if she doesn’t feel it. You can’t pretend. Neither can I. You’ve taught me that. We’ve failed where nearly everybody else fails, but we admit it. What’s the good of pitching good life after bad? It’s no one’s business but our own. They’ll talk. Let them talk.”He hardly heard what she said. He was weary of her voice droning on and on.“If it is the end,” he muttered, “then there is no more to be said.”He walked round to Professor Smallman’s. He had no notion of the time. Mrs. Smallman admitted him, saw that something was wrong, showed him into the study, and left him. He stood leaning against the doorpost. The Professor was sitting in his great chair with a cigar in one hand and a glass of whisky in the other.“Good evening,” said René. “I have left my wife.”Down went the Professor’s legs, round came his head out of the great chair:“Great God!”“I just walked round to tell you. I don’t know why.”“But, my dear fellow, what on earth— Not two years.”“Is it?”“I say. Is she? Would you like Freda to go round?”“No. She is quite calm. It’s finished. It’s she who said it. It never began.”“Come, come. Sit down. You’d better sleep here to-night.”“No, thanks. I don’t want to see you ever again.”“Tut, tut! My good Fourmy!”“I mean it,” said René dispassionately.“Wait a moment.”The Professor hurried out of the room, and René could hear him in the hall talking eagerly to his wife. He was seized with a dreary impatience of these good people, with their unfailing kindness. He knew perfectly well that in a moment they would return, husband and wife,thehusband and wife, and throw him scraps of their happiness for comfort and persuasion, while with their exchange of glances they would bar him out. No. That was intolerable. He stepped to the French window, opened it, and walked out, round the house and through the garden into the street.Another false move checked; another false relationship ended.He slept that night at the Denmark, lied and enjoyed lying to Mr. Sherman, saying that his wife was away and he had lost his key and could not wake the servants. He sat in his room at the Denmark feeling at peace and very confident, until his father came. Then he sat with the boon company, told them one or two stories that he was able to remember from the stock of the Common Room, told them heavily, dully, so that they gained in comicality and roused laughter. His father seemed to him rather contemptible. He enjoyed his own old jests as much as his audience, and that was displeasing to René’s fastidious mood.He walked home with his father, who was loquacious and tiresome. At last René interrupted him:“Father, do you mind not talking while I tell you what I have to tell? I have left Linda. I can’t tell you why without being unjust to her, because I can’t see clearly enough. She said it was finished, and so it is. I am extraordinarily happy. I never was so happy in my life. I have, in effect, told Professor Smallman to go to hell, and I shall do the same with anybody else who tries to interfere. I don’t know what I am going to do, and I don’t care. It is quite clear to me that there is no room for Linda and me in the same set of people. They talk so. I have no intention of continuing the life I have been leading. Everything I have ever done, as long as I can remember, has been because someone else wanted me to do it, or becausesomeone else thought I could. It has been surprising and delightful, but never satisfying. George has made a better thing out of his life than I. At least he has done what he wanted to do, though you and I may not think much of it. I don’t think I can see my mother. I would dearly like to, but I could not bear it. She would make me feel something, and at present I feel nothing at all. But I can remember her face against mine, and her voice saying: ‘I have always tried to do my best.’ Good night. Give her my love.”He turned on his heel, but his father caught him by the arm:“Don’t be a young lunatic,” he said. “You can’t go like that.”“I can,” answered René, puzzled that anybody should deny what was actually happening. “I can. Don’t you see that Iamgoing?”“Look here, I’m a bit of a queer one myself, but do you know what you are doing?”“For the first time in my life,” said René, “I know what I am doing. And I like it so immensely that I am going on doing it. You can’t stop me. Nothing can stop me. You said yourself that we live in a world of women, and I want to make the best of it.”His father let go of his arm.“Good Lord!” he said, “I’ve had my day, but I never was so cracked as that.”Then he acquiesced in his son’s indifference, nodded his head in a light parting, and went his way.René’s thoughts were reaching out to Scotland, tohis Aunt Janet’s, where he had known the best of his boyhood. He walked to a station and found the London express waiting, with little knots of people standing by the carriage doors, and porters bustling with luggage and lamps and pillows, all wearing the stealthy, excited air of importance of travelers by night. Putney was London, or near London. Why Putney? He did not know, but he wanted to go there. He bought a ticket, boarded a train as it was moving, and sat in a corner seat gazing at the lights of the towns and saying to himself: “That’s Ockley,” because when he had taken his first railway journey by night he had asked what the lights were, and his mother had said: “That’s Ockley.”
HEspent hours brooding, prowling in the streets, in whose dull monotony his mind had grown so undisturbedly, responding to their small gaieties and smaller excitements, but moving on in the even smoothness of their life. It seemed incredible to him that such turmoil could have come out of them, and yet that turmoil had begun even before his marriage, before he had met his wife. Was there some strangeness in himself? Of his nature he became doubtful and suspicious. Yet the habit of acceptance was too strong in him; even his misery he could accept. Very laboriously he strove to come by an idea of himself, and was only the more confused when he arrived at this:
“They won’t come out to meet me, and when I go out to meet them, they run away. I cannot enjoytheir pleasures, and they seem to want nothing else. It gets worse and worse. I couldn’t even talk to Elsie now. Almost anyone can make me seem ridiculous.”
Linda wrote to him:
“Can’t you see, Ren dear, that there are some things won’t bear thinking of, and spoil with thinking. You poor, tortured thing!” (Least of all did he want pity from her.) “I know you don’t really want to think, and you don’t think easily, like most people. At least you seem to hate thinking without coming to a conclusion. It is something finer than obstinacy, because it isn’t at all for yourself that you want—what you want. What do you want? Isn’t it enough to be happy? Oh, my dear, do let us be happy! I have been crying every night. It isn’t that I mind being apart; husbands and wives must be apart sometimes if their life is to be possible and decent, but I can’t bear our being apart in spirit.”
Then she had understood! She had seen the gulf between them. She would help him to bridge it.
He hastened to her joyfully, and caught her up in a great embrace, so that she laughed in delicious terror.
And the torment began again. She had seen, understood, nothing. She was only for teasing, wheedling, cajoling him into submission. She told him—carefully choosing her moment—that she would bear him children, and for a little while, a second or two, he was appeased. Then his excited imagination worked on that. A child would mean only another entity in the house, the empty house, where there was no love to absorb it and foster its growth; more antagonism;more separation; his child or hers, it would not be both. He could not see at all clearly, but the idea of it had for him now something horrible. With no count of his words he said:
“I do not wish for anything that you yourself do not want.”
“I want it.”
“Then why talk of it?”
“A man and a woman——”
“Talk of us, woman, talk of us. God! You don’t know how you spoil things with your busy mind. True things, simple things, lovely things, things that lie deep in heart and mind, there is nothing that you will not shape and mold and knead and twist into your own image, pretty, pretty, charming. Oh, the lies of it all, the lies, the lies, the lies! And you never know what you are doing. All is for your pleasure. Nothing can lead you beyond that. And everything that menaces your pleasure you draw with your busy brain into words, words.”
“You don’t know what you are saying.”
“No.”
He looked up at her with his eyes glazed and dull, his jaw trembling, his fingers rubbing over and over again upon his thumbs.
“If you have said what is true, then you must hate me.”
“Yes.”
He stated it as though it were a plain fact well coated over by habit, so that it could give no pain. She was tranquil, seemed to have tight control over herself.She walked twice up and down the room. Then she turned to him and said very quietly:
“I knew a long time ago that if it ever came to a scene it would be the end. I suppose I’m not romantic enough for you. I don’t know what it is. But I know enough to feel that a scene with you would be serious. Even little girls know that men must have scenes. It’s a kind of love-making with them. You’re different.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t pretend that you haven’t hurt me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, I’d like to pretend. But I’ve changed, too. I suppose you can’t marry without being changed. A woman who loses her husband looks silly. But she needn’t if she doesn’t feel it. You can’t pretend. Neither can I. You’ve taught me that. We’ve failed where nearly everybody else fails, but we admit it. What’s the good of pitching good life after bad? It’s no one’s business but our own. They’ll talk. Let them talk.”
He hardly heard what she said. He was weary of her voice droning on and on.
“If it is the end,” he muttered, “then there is no more to be said.”
He walked round to Professor Smallman’s. He had no notion of the time. Mrs. Smallman admitted him, saw that something was wrong, showed him into the study, and left him. He stood leaning against the doorpost. The Professor was sitting in his great chair with a cigar in one hand and a glass of whisky in the other.
“Good evening,” said René. “I have left my wife.”
Down went the Professor’s legs, round came his head out of the great chair:
“Great God!”
“I just walked round to tell you. I don’t know why.”
“But, my dear fellow, what on earth— Not two years.”
“Is it?”
“I say. Is she? Would you like Freda to go round?”
“No. She is quite calm. It’s finished. It’s she who said it. It never began.”
“Come, come. Sit down. You’d better sleep here to-night.”
“No, thanks. I don’t want to see you ever again.”
“Tut, tut! My good Fourmy!”
“I mean it,” said René dispassionately.
“Wait a moment.”
The Professor hurried out of the room, and René could hear him in the hall talking eagerly to his wife. He was seized with a dreary impatience of these good people, with their unfailing kindness. He knew perfectly well that in a moment they would return, husband and wife,thehusband and wife, and throw him scraps of their happiness for comfort and persuasion, while with their exchange of glances they would bar him out. No. That was intolerable. He stepped to the French window, opened it, and walked out, round the house and through the garden into the street.
Another false move checked; another false relationship ended.
He slept that night at the Denmark, lied and enjoyed lying to Mr. Sherman, saying that his wife was away and he had lost his key and could not wake the servants. He sat in his room at the Denmark feeling at peace and very confident, until his father came. Then he sat with the boon company, told them one or two stories that he was able to remember from the stock of the Common Room, told them heavily, dully, so that they gained in comicality and roused laughter. His father seemed to him rather contemptible. He enjoyed his own old jests as much as his audience, and that was displeasing to René’s fastidious mood.
He walked home with his father, who was loquacious and tiresome. At last René interrupted him:
“Father, do you mind not talking while I tell you what I have to tell? I have left Linda. I can’t tell you why without being unjust to her, because I can’t see clearly enough. She said it was finished, and so it is. I am extraordinarily happy. I never was so happy in my life. I have, in effect, told Professor Smallman to go to hell, and I shall do the same with anybody else who tries to interfere. I don’t know what I am going to do, and I don’t care. It is quite clear to me that there is no room for Linda and me in the same set of people. They talk so. I have no intention of continuing the life I have been leading. Everything I have ever done, as long as I can remember, has been because someone else wanted me to do it, or becausesomeone else thought I could. It has been surprising and delightful, but never satisfying. George has made a better thing out of his life than I. At least he has done what he wanted to do, though you and I may not think much of it. I don’t think I can see my mother. I would dearly like to, but I could not bear it. She would make me feel something, and at present I feel nothing at all. But I can remember her face against mine, and her voice saying: ‘I have always tried to do my best.’ Good night. Give her my love.”
He turned on his heel, but his father caught him by the arm:
“Don’t be a young lunatic,” he said. “You can’t go like that.”
“I can,” answered René, puzzled that anybody should deny what was actually happening. “I can. Don’t you see that Iamgoing?”
“Look here, I’m a bit of a queer one myself, but do you know what you are doing?”
“For the first time in my life,” said René, “I know what I am doing. And I like it so immensely that I am going on doing it. You can’t stop me. Nothing can stop me. You said yourself that we live in a world of women, and I want to make the best of it.”
His father let go of his arm.
“Good Lord!” he said, “I’ve had my day, but I never was so cracked as that.”
Then he acquiesced in his son’s indifference, nodded his head in a light parting, and went his way.
René’s thoughts were reaching out to Scotland, tohis Aunt Janet’s, where he had known the best of his boyhood. He walked to a station and found the London express waiting, with little knots of people standing by the carriage doors, and porters bustling with luggage and lamps and pillows, all wearing the stealthy, excited air of importance of travelers by night. Putney was London, or near London. Why Putney? He did not know, but he wanted to go there. He bought a ticket, boarded a train as it was moving, and sat in a corner seat gazing at the lights of the towns and saying to himself: “That’s Ockley,” because when he had taken his first railway journey by night he had asked what the lights were, and his mother had said: “That’s Ockley.”