The Passionate Friends

By H. G. WELLS

Author of "Marriage. "

[Illustration]

WITH FRONTISPIECE

A. L. BURT COMPANY, PUBLISHERS

114-120 East Twenty-third Street - - New York

PUBLISHED BY ARRANGEMENT WITH HARPER & BROTHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY HARPER & BROTHERS

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICAPUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1913

TOL. E. N. S. 

[Illustration: "OUR KISSES WERE KISSES OF MOONLIGHT" See p. 85]

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

 I. MR. STRATTON TO HIS SON 1

 II. BOYHOOD 14

 III. INTENTIONS AND THE LADY MARY CHRISTIAN 40

 IV. THE MARRIAGE OF THE LADY MARY CHRISTIAN 73

 V. THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA 102

 VI. LADY MARY JUSTIN 132

 VII. BEGINNING AGAIN 197

VIII. THIS SWARMING BUSINESS OF MANKIND 220

 IX. THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW WORLD 246

 X. MARY WRITES 280

 XI. THE LAST MEETING 318

 XII. THE ARRAIGNMENT OF JEALOUSY 358

THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS

CHAPTER THE FIRST

MR. STRATTON TO HIS SON

§ 1

I want very much to set down my thoughts and my experiences of life. Iwant to do so now that I have come to middle age and now that myattitudes are all defined and my personal drama worked out I feel thatthe toil of writing and reconsideration may help to clear and fix manythings that remain a little uncertain in my thoughts because they havenever been fully stated, and I want to discover any lurkinginconsistencies and unsuspected gaps. And I have a story. I have livedthrough things that have searched me. I want to tell that story as wellas I can while I am still a clear-headed and active man, and while manydetails that may presently become blurred and altered are still rawlyfresh in my mind. And to one person in particular do I wish to think Iam writing, and that is to you, my only son. I want to write my storynot indeed to the child you are now, but to the man you are going to be. You are half my blood and temperamentally altogether mine. A day willcome when you will realize this, and want to know how life has gone withme, and then it may be altogether too late for me to answer yourenquiries. I may have become inaccessible as old people are sometimesinaccessible. And so I think of leaving this book for you--at any rate, I shall write it as if I meant to leave it for you. Afterwards I canconsider whether I will indeed leave it.... 

The idea of writing such a book as this came to me first as I sat by thedead body of your grandfather--my father. It was because I wanted sogreatly such a book from him that I am now writing this. He died, youmust know, only a few months ago, and I went to his house to bury himand settle all his affairs. 

At one time he had been my greatest friend. He had never indeed talkedto me about himself or his youth, but he had always showed anextraordinary sympathy and helpfulness for me in all the confusion andperplexities into which I fell. This did not last to the end of hislife. I was the child of his middle years, and suddenly, in a year orless, the curtains of age and infirmity fell between us. There came anillness, an operation, and he rose from it ailing, suffering, dwarfedand altogether changed. Of all the dark shadows upon life I think thatchange through illness and organic decay in the thoughts and spirits ofthose who are dear and close to us is the most evil and distressing andinexplicable. Suddenly he was a changeling, a being querulous andpitiful, needing indulgence and sacrifices. 

In a little while a new state of affairs was established. I ceased toconsider him as a man to whom one told things, of whom one could expecthelp or advice. We all ceased to consider him at all in that way. Wehumored him, put pleasant things before him, concealed whatever wasdisagreeable. A poor old man he was indeed in those concluding years, weakly rebellious against the firm kindliness of my cousin, hishousekeeper and nurse. He who had once been so alert was now at timesastonishingly apathetic. At times an impish malice I had never known inhim before gleamed in little acts and speeches. His talk rambled, andfor the most part was concerned with small, long-forgotten contentions. It was indistinct and difficult to follow because of a recent loss ofteeth, and he craved for brandy, to restore even for a moment the senseof strength and well-being that ebbed and ebbed away from him. So thatwhen I came to look at his dead face at last, it was with something likeamazement I perceived him grave and beautiful--more grave and beautifulthan he had been even in the fullness of life. 

All the estrangement of the final years was wiped in an instant from mymind as I looked upon his face. There came back a rush of memories, ofkind, strong, patient, human aspects of his fatherhood. And I rememberedas every son must remember--even you, my dear, will some day rememberbecause it is in the very nature of sonship--insubordinations, struggles, ingratitudes, great benefits taken unthankfully, slights anddisregards. It was not remorse I felt, nor repentance, but a tremendousregret that so things had happened and that life should be so. Why isit, I thought, that when a son has come to manhood he cannot take hisfather for a friend? I had a curious sense of unprecedented communionas I stood beside him now. I felt that he understood my thoughts; hisface seemed to answer with an expression of still and sympatheticpatience. 

I was sensible of amazing gaps. We had never talked together of love, never of religion. 

All sorts of things that a man of twenty-eight would not dream of hidingfrom a coeval he had hidden from me. For some days I had to remain inhis house, I had to go through his papers, handle all those intimatepersonal things that accumulate around a human being year byyear--letters, yellowing scraps of newspaper, tokens, relics kept, accidental vestiges, significant litter. I learnt many things I hadnever dreamt of. At times I doubted whether I was not prying, whether Iought not to risk the loss of those necessary legal facts I sought, andburn these papers unread. There were love letters, and many suchtouching things. 

My memories of him did not change because of these new lights, but theybecame wonderfully illuminated. I realized him as a young man, I beganto see him as a boy. I found a little half-bound botanical book withstencil-tinted illustrations, a good-conduct prize my father had won athis preparatory school; a rolled-up sheet of paper, carbonized and dryand brittle, revealed itself as a piece of specimen writing, stiff withboyish effort, decorated in ambitious and faltering flourishes and stillbetraying the pencil rulings his rubber should have erased. Already yourwriting is better than that. And I found a daguerreotype portrait of himin knickerbockers against a photographer's stile. His face then was notunlike yours. I stood with that in my hand at the little bureau in hisbedroom, and looked at his dead face. 

The flatly painted portrait of his father, my grandfather, hangingthere in the stillness above the coffin, looking out on the world he hadleft with steady, humorous blue eyes that followed one about theroom, --that, too, was revivified, touched into reality and participationby this and that, became a living presence at a conference of lives. Things of his were there also in that life's accumulation.... 

There we were, three Strattons together, and down in the dining-roomwere steel engravings to take us back two generations further, and wehad all lived full lives, suffered, attempted, signified. I had aglimpse of the long successions of mankind. What a huge inaccessiblelumber-room of thought and experience we amounted to, I thought; howmuch we are, how little we transmit. Each one of us was but a variation, an experiment upon the Stratton theme. All that I had now under my handswas but the merest hints and vestiges, moving and surprising indeed, butcasual and fragmentary, of those obliterated repetitions. Man is acreature becoming articulate, and why should those men have left so muchof the tale untold--to be lost and forgotten? Why must we all repeatthings done, and come again very bitterly to wisdom our fathers haveachieved before us? My grandfather there should have left me somethingbetter than the still enigma of his watching face. All my life so farhas gone in learning very painfully what many men have learnt before me;I have spent the greater part of forty years in finding a sort ofpurpose for the uncertain and declining decades that remain. Is it nottime the generations drew together and helped one another? Cannot webegin now to make a better use of the experiences of life so that oursons may not waste themselves so much, cannot we gather into books thatmen may read in an hour or so the gist of these confused andmultitudinous realities of the individual career? Surely the time iscoming for that, when a new private literature will exist, and fathersand mothers behind their rôles of rulers, protectors, and supporters, will prepare frank and intimate records of their thought and theirfeeling, told as one tells things to equals, without authority orreserves or discretions, so that, they being dead, their children mayrediscover them as contemporaries and friends. 

That desire for self-expression is indeed already almost an instinctwith many of us. Man is disposed to create a traditional wisdom. For methis book I contemplate is a need. I am just a year and a half from abitter tragedy and the loss of a friend as dear as life to me. It isvery constantly in my mind. She opened her mind to me as few people opentheir minds to anyone. In a way, little Stephen, she died for you. And Iam so placed that I have no one to talk to quite freely about her. Theone other person to whom I talk, I cannot talk to about her; it isstrange, seeing how we love and trust one another, but so it is; youwill understand that the better as this story unfolds. For eight longyears before the crisis that culminated in her tragic death I never sawher; yet, quite apart from the shock and distresses of that time, it hasleft me extraordinarily lonely and desolate. 

And there was a kind of dreadful splendor in that last act of hers, which has taken a great hold upon my imagination; it has interwoven witheverything else in my mind, it bears now upon every question. I cannotget away from it, while it is thus pent from utterance.... Perhapshaving written this to you I may never show it you or leave it for youto see. But yet I must write it. Of all conceivable persons you, whenyou have grown to manhood, are the most likely to understand. 

§ 2

You did not come to see your dead grandfather, nor did you know verymuch about the funeral. Nowadays we do not bring the sweet egotisms, thevivid beautiful personal intensities of childhood, into the cold, vastpresence of death. I would as soon, my dear, have sent your busy littlelimbs toiling up the Matterhorn. I have put by a photograph of my fatherfor you as he lay in that last stillness of his, that you will see at aproperer time. 

Your mother and I wore black only at his funeral and came back coloredagain into your colored world, and in a very little while your interestin this event that had taken us away for a time turned to other, moreassimilable things. But there happened a little incident that laid holdupon me; you forgot it, perhaps, in a week or less, but I shall neverforget it; and this incident it was that gathered up the fruits of thosemoments beside my father's body and set me to write this book. It hadthe effect of a little bright light held up against the vague darkimmensities of thought and feeling that filled my mind because of myfather's death. 

Now that I come to set it down I see that it is altogether trivial, andI cannot explain how it is that it is to me so piercingly significant. Ihad to whip you. Your respect for the admirable and patientMademoiselle Potin, the protectress and companion of your publicexpeditions, did in some slight crisis suddenly fail you. In the extremepublicity of Kensington Gardens, in the presence of your two littlesisters, before a startled world, you expressed an opinion of her, intwo languages and a loud voice, that was not only very unjust, butextremely offensive and improper. It reflected upon her intelligence andgoodness; it impeached her personal appearance; it was the kind ofoutcry no little gentleman should ever permit himself, however deeply hemay be aggrieved. You then, so far as I was able to disentangle theevidence, assaulted her violently, hurled a stone at her, and fled hercompany. You came home alone by a route chosen by yourself, flushed andwrathful, braving the dangers of Kensington High Street. This, after mystern and deliberate edict that, upon pain of corporal punishment, respect and obedience must be paid to Mademoiselle Potin. The logic ofthe position was relentless. 

But where your behavior was remarkable, where the affair begins to touchmy imagination, was that you yourself presently put the whole businessbefore me. Alone in the schoolroom, you seem to have come to somerealization of the extraordinary dreadfulness of your behavior. Suchmoments happen in the lives of all small boys; they happened to me timesenough, to my dead father, to that grandfather of the portrait which isnow in my study, to his father and his, and so on through long series ofStrattons, back to inarticulate, shock-haired little sinners slinkingfearfully away from the awful wrath, the bellowings and limitlessviolence of the hairy Old Man of the herd. The bottom goes out of yourheart then, you are full of a conviction of sin. So far you did butcarry on the experience of the race. But to ask audience of me, to comeand look me in the eye, to say you wanted my advice on a pressingmatter, that I think marks almost a new phase in the long developinghistory of father and son. And your account of the fracas struck me asquite reasonably frank and honest. "I didn't seem able, " you observed, "not to go on being badder and badder. "

We discussed the difficulties of our situation, and you passed sentenceupon yourself. I saw to it that the outraged dignity of MademoisellePotin was mocked by no mere formality of infliction. You did your bestto be stoical, I remember, but at last you yelped and wept. Then, justice being done, you rearranged your costume. The situation was alittle difficult until you, still sobbing and buttoning--you are reallya shocking bad hand at buttons--and looking a very small, tender, ruffled, rueful thing indeed, strolled towards my study window. "Thepear tree is out next door, " you remarked, without a trace of animosity, and sobbing as one might hiccough. 

I suppose there are moments in the lives of all grown men when they comenear to weeping aloud. In some secret place within myself I must havebeen a wild river of tears. I answered, however, with the same admirabledetachment from the smarting past that you had achieved, that my studywindow was particularly adapted to the appreciation of our neighbor'spear tree, because of its height from the ground. We fell into aconversation about blossom and the setting of fruit, kneeling togetherupon my window-seat and looking up into the pear tree against the sky, and then down through its black branches into the gardens allquickening with spring. We were on so friendly a footing when presentlyMademoiselle Potin returned and placed her dignity or her resignation inmy hands, that I doubt if she believed a word of all my assurances untilthe unmistakable confirmation of your evening bath. Then, as Iunderstood it, she was extremely remorseful to you and indignant againstmy violence.... 

But when I knelt with you, little urchin, upon my window-seat, it cameto me as a thing almost intolerably desirable that some day you shouldbecome my real and understanding friend. I loved you profoundly. Iwanted to stretch forward into time and speak to you, man myself to theman you are yet to be. It seemed to me that between us there must needsbe peculiar subtleties of sympathy. And I remembered that by the timeyou were a man fully grown and emerging from the passionately tumultuousopenings of manhood, capable of forgiving me all my blunderingparentage, capable of perceiving all the justifying fine intention of myill-conceived disciplines and misdirections, I might be either an oldman, shriveling again to an inexplicable egotism, or dead. I saw myselfas I had seen my father--first enfeebled and then inaccessibly tranquil. When presently you had gone from my study, I went to my writing-desk anddrew a paper pad towards me, and sat thinking and making idle marks uponit with my pen. I wanted to exceed the limits of those frozen silencesthat must come at last between us, write a book that should lie in yourworld like a seed, and at last, as your own being ripened, flower intoliving understanding by your side. 

This book, which before had been only an idea for a book, competingagainst many other ideas and the demands of that toilsome work forpeace and understanding to which I have devoted the daily energies of mylife, had become, I felt, an imperative necessity between us. 

§ 3

And then there happened one of those crises of dread and apprehensionand pain that are like a ploughing of the heart. It was brought home tome that you might die even before the first pages of this book of yourswere written. You became feverish, complained of that queer pain you hadfelt twice before, and for the third time you were ill withappendicitis. Your mother and I came and regarded your touzled head andflushed little face on the pillow as you slept uneasily, and decidedthat we must take no more risks with you. So soon as your temperaturehad fallen again we set about the business of an operation. 

We told each other that nowadays these operations were as safe as goingto sleep in your bed, but we knew better. Our own doctor had lost hisson. "That, " we said, "was different. " But we knew well enough in ourhearts that you were going very near to the edge of death, nearer thanyou had ever been since first you came clucking into the world. 

The operation was done at home. A capable, fair-complexioned nurse tookpossession of us; and my study, because it has the best light, wastransfigured into an admirable operating-room. All its furnishings weresent away, every cloth and curtain, and the walls and floor were coveredwith white sterilized sheets. The high little mechanical table theyerected before the window seemed to me like an altar on which I had tooffer up my son. There were basins of disinfectants and towelsconveniently about, the operator came, took out his array of scalpelsand forceps and little sponges from the black bag he carried, put themready for his hand, and then covered them from your sight with a whitecloth, and I brought you down in my arms, wrapped in a blanket, fromyour bedroom to the anæsthetist. You were beautifully trustful andsubmissive and unafraid. I stood by you until the chloroform had doneits work, and then left you there, lest my presence should in theslightest degree embarrass the surgeon. The anæsthetic had taken all thecolor out of your face, and you looked pinched and shrunken and greenishand very small and pitiful. I went into the drawing-room and stood therewith your mother and made conversation. I cannot recall what we said, Ithink it was about the moorland to which we were going for yourconvalescence. Indeed, we were but the ghosts of ourselves; all oursubstance seemed listening, listening to the little sounds that came tous from the study. 

Then after long ages there was a going to and fro of feet, a bump, theopening of a door, and our own doctor came into the room rubbing hishands together and doing nothing to conceal his profound relief. "Admirable, " he said, "altogether successful. " I went up to you and sawa tumbled little person in the bed, still heavily insensible and moaningslightly. By the table were bloody towels, and in a shallow glass traywas a small object like a damaged piece of earthworm. "Not a bit toosoon, " said the surgeon, holding this up in his forceps for myinspection. "It's on the very verge of perforation. " I affected adetached and scientific interest, but the prevailing impression in mymind was that this was a fragment from very nearly the centre of yourbeing. 

He took it away with him, I know not whither. Perhaps it is now inspirits in a specimen jar, an example to all medical students of what toavoid in an appendix; perhaps it was stained and frozen, andmicrotomized into transparent sections as they do such things, andmounted on glass slips and distributed about the world for curioushistologists to wreak their eyes upon. For a time you lay uneasily stilland then woke up to pain. Even then you got a fresh purchase on myheart. It has always been our custom to discourage weeping and outcries, and you did not forget your training. "I shan't mind so much, dadda, "you remarked to me, "if I may yelp. " So for a day, by specialconcession, you yelped, and then the sting of those fresh woundsdeparted. 

Within a fortnight, so quickly does an aseptic wound heal up again, youwere running about in the sun, and I had come back, as one comes back toa thing forgotten, to the first beginnings of this chapter on my desk. But for a time I could not go on working at it because of the fear I hadfelt, and it is only now in June, in this house in France to which wehave come for the summer, with you more flagrantly healthy than I haveever known you before, that my heart creeps out of its hole again, and Ican go on with my story. 

CHAPTER THE SECOND

BOYHOOD

§ 1

I was a Harbury boy as my father and grandfather were before me and asyou are presently to be. I went to Harbury at the age of fourteen. Untilthen I was educated at home, first by a governess and then by myfather's curate, Mr. Siddons, who went from us to St. Philip's inHampstead, and, succeeding marvellously there, is now Bishop ofExminster. My father became rector of Burnmore when I was nine; mymother had been dead four years, and my second cousin, Jane Stratton, was already his housekeeper. My father held the living until hisresignation when I was nearly thirty. So that all the mostimpressionable years of my life centre upon the Burnmore rectory and theeasy spaciousness of Burnmore Park. My boyhood and adolescencealternated between the ivied red-brick and ancient traditions of Harbury(and afterwards Christ-church) and that still untroubled countryside. 

I was never a town dweller until I married and we took our present housein Holland Park. I went into London at last as one goes into an arena. It cramps me and wearies me and at times nearly overwhelms me, butthere it is that the life of men centres and my work lies. But everysummer we do as we have done this year and go to some house in thecountry, near to forests or moorland or suchlike open and uncultivatedcountry, where one may have the refreshment of freedom among natural andunhurried things. This year we are in a walled garden upon the Seine, about four miles above Château Galliard, and with the forest reaching upto the paddock beyond the orchard close.... 

You will understand better when I have told you my story why I sawBurnmore for the last time when I was one-and-twenty and why my memoriesof it shine so crystalline clear. I have a thousand vivid miniatures ofit in my mind and all of them are beautiful to me, so that I could quiteeasily write a whole book of landscapes from the Park alone. I can stillrecall quite vividly the warm beauty-soaked sensation of going out intothe morning sunshine of the Park, with my lunch in a little green Swisstin under my arm and the vast interminable day all before me, thegigantic, divinely unconditional day that only boyhood knows, and thePark so great and various that it was more than two hours' going for meto reach its eastern fences. I was only a little older then than you arenow. Sometimes I went right up through the woods to the house tocompanion with Philip and Guy Christian and their sister--I loved herthen, and one day I was to love her with all my heart--but in thoseboyish times I liked most to go alone. 

My memories of the Park are all under blue sky and sunshine, with just athunderstorm or so; on wet days and cold days I was kept to closerlimits; and it seems to me now rather an intellectual conviction than apositive memory that save for a few pine-clad patches in the extremesouth-east, its soil was all thick clay. That meant for me onlybeautiful green marshes, a number of vividly interesting meres upon thecourse of its stream, and a wealth of gigantic oaks. The meres lay atvarious levels, and the hand of Lady Ladislaw had assisted nature intheir enrichment with lilies and water plants. There were places ofsedge and scented rush, amidst which were sapphire mists offorget-me-not for long stretches, skirmishing commandoes of yellow irisand wide wastes of floating water-lilies. The gardens passed insensiblyinto the Park, and beyond the house were broad stretches of grass, sun-lit, barred with the deep-green shadows of great trees, and animatedwith groups and lines of fallow deer. Near the house was an Italianategarden, with balustradings and statuary, and a great wealth of roses andflowering shrubs. 

Then there were bracken wildernesses in which the does lurked with theyoung fawns, and a hollow, shallow and wide, with the turf greatlyattacked by rabbits, and exceptionally threadbare, where a stricken oak, lightning-stripped, spread out its ghastly arms above contorted rottingbranches and the mysterious skeletons of I should think five severaldeer. In the evening-time the woods behind this place of bones--theywere woods of straight-growing, rather crowded trees and standing as itwere a little aloof--became even under the warmest sunset grey andcold--and as if they waited.... 

And in the distant corner where the sand was, rose suddenly a steeplittle hill, surmounted by a wild and splendid group of pines, throughwhich one looked across a vale of cornfields at an ancient town thatbecame strange and magical as the sun went down, so that I was heldgazing at it, and afterwards had to flee the twilight across the windyspaces and under the dim and darkling trees. It is only now in thedistant retrospect that I identify that far-off city of wonder, andluminous mist with the commonplace little town, through whose narrowstreets we drove to the railway station. But, of course, that is what itmust have been. 

There are persons to be found mixed up in those childish memories, --LadyLadislaw, tall and gracious, in dresses of floating blue or grey, orthin, subtly folding, flowering stuffs, Philip and his sister, Guy, theold butler, a multitude of fainter figures long become nameless andfeatureless; they are far less vivid in my memory than the finesolitudes of the Park itself--and the dreams I had there. 

I wonder if you dream as I dreamt. I wonder whether indeed I dreamt asnow I think I did. Have I, in these latter years, given form andsubstance and a name to things as vague in themselves as the urgenciesof instinct? Did I really go into those woods and waving green places asone keeps a tryst, expectant of a fellowship more free and delicate anddelightful than any I knew. Did I know in those days of nymphs anddryads and fauns and all those happy soulless beings with which thedesire of man's heart has animated the wilderness. Once certainly Icrawled slowly through the tall bracken and at last lay still for aninterminable while, convinced that so I should see those shadowspopulous with fairies, with green little people. How patiently I lay!But the stems creaked and stirred, and my heart would keep on beatinglike a drum in my throat. 

It is incredible that once a furry whispering half-human creature withbright brown eyes came and for a time played with me near where the tallferns foam in a broad torrent from between the big chestnuts down to theupper mere. That must have been real dreaming, and yet now, with all mysanities and scepticisms, I could half believe it real. 

§ 2

You become reserved. Perhaps not exceptionally so, but as all childrenbecome reserved. Already you understand that your heart is verypreciously your own. You keep it from me and everyone, so much so, sojustifiably so, that when by virtue of our kindred and all that we havein common I get sudden glimpses right into your depths, there mixes withthe swift spasm of love I feel, a dread--lest you should catch me, as itwere, spying into you and that one of us, I know not which, should feelashamed. 

Every child passes into this secret stage; it closes in from its firstfrankness; it carries off the growing jewel of its consciousness to hidefrom all mankind.... I think I can see why this should be so, but Icannot tell why in so many cases no jewel is given back again at last, alight, ripened, wonderful, glowing with the deep fires of experience. Ithink that is what ought to happen; it is what does happen now with truepoets and true artists. Someday I think it will be the life of allnormal human souls. But usually it does not seem to happen at all. Children pass out of a stage--open, beautiful, exquisitely simple--intosilences and discretions beneath an imposed and artificial life. Andthey are lost. Out of the finished, careful, watchful, restrained andlimited man or woman, no child emerges again.... 

I remember very distinctly how I myself came by imperceptible incrementsof reservation to withdraw those early delicacies of judgments, thoseoriginal and personal standards and appreciations, from sight andexpression. I can recall specific moments when I perceive now that mylittle childish figure stood, as it were, obstinately and with a senseof novelty in a doorway denying the self within. 

It was partly, I think, a simple instinct that drew that curtain ofsilences and concealments, it was much more a realization that I had nopower of lucidity to save the words and deeds I sought to makeexpressive from complete misunderstanding. But most of all it was theperception that I was under training and compulsion for ends that wereall askew and irrelevant to the trend of my imaginations, the quality ofmy dreams. There was around me something unfriendly to this innerworld--something very ready to pass from unfriendliness to acutehostility; and if, indeed, I succeeded in giving anything of my innerself to others, it was only, as people put it, to give myself away. 

My nurses, my governess, my tutor, my father, the servants about me, seemed all bent upon imposing an artificial personality upon me. Only ina very limited sense did they want me. What they wanted was somethingthat could be made out of me by extensive suppressions and additions. They ignored the fact that I had been born with a shape of my own; theywere resolved I should be pressed into a mould and cast. 

It was not that they wanted outer conformity to certain needs andstandards--that, I think, would be a reasonable thing enough todemand--but they wanted me to subdue my most private thoughts to theirideals. My nurses and my governesses would rate me for my very feelings, would clamor for gratitude and reproach me bitterly for betraying that Idid not at some particular moment--love. 

(Only yesterday I heard Mademoiselle Potin doing that very same thing toyou. "It is that you do not care, Master Steve. It is that you do notcare. You do not want to care. ")

They went too far in that invasion of my personal life, but I perceivequite clearly the present need for most of the process of moulding andsubjugation that children must undergo. Human society is a new thingupon the earth, an invention of the last ten thousand years. Man is acreature as yet not freely and instinctively gregarious; in his moreprimordial state he must have been an animal of very small groups andlimited associations, an animal rather self-centred and fierce, and heis still but imperfectly adapted either morally or physically to thewider social life his crowding interactions force upon him. He stilllearns speech and computation and civility and all the devices of thisartificially extended and continually broadening tribal life with anextreme reluctance. He has to be shaped in the interests of the species, I admit, to the newer conditions; the growing social order must beprotected from the keen edge of his still savage individuality, and hemust be trained in his own interests to save himself from thedestruction of impossible revolts. But how clumsily is the thing done!How we are caught and jammed and pressed and crippled into citizenship!How excessive and crushing is the suppression, and how inadequate!

Every child feels that, even if every child does not clearly know it. Every child presently begins to hide itself from the confused tyranniesof the social process, from the searching inspections and injunctionsand interferences of parent and priest and teacher. 

"I have got to be _so_, " we all say deep down in ourselves and more orless distinctly according to the lucidities of our minds; "but in myheart I am _this_. "

And in the outcome we all try to seem at least to be _so_, while anineffectual rebel struggles passionately, like a beast caught in a trap, for ends altogether more deep and dangerous, for the rose and the starand the wildfire, --for beauty and beautiful things. These, we all knowin our darkly vital recesses, are the real needs of life, the obediencesimposed upon us by our crude necessities and jostling proximities, mereincidentals on our way to those profounder purposes.... 

And when I write thus of our selves I mean our bodies quite as much asour imaginations; the two sides of us are covered up alike and put alikeinto disguises and unnatural shapes, we are taught and forced to hidethem for the same reasons, from a fear of ourselves and a fear of thepeople about us. The sense of beauty, the sense of one's body, thefreedom of thought and of desire and the wonder of life, are allinterwoven strands. I remember that in the Park of Burnmore one greatcraving I had was to take off my clothes there altogether, and bathe ina clear place among loosestrife and meadowsweet, and afterwards lie wetand naked upon the soft green turf with the sun shining upon me. But Ithought also that that was a very wicked and shameful craving to have, and I never dared give way to it. 

§ 3

As I think of myself and all these glowing secrecies and hidden fancieswithin, walking along beside old Siddons, and half listening to hisinstructive discourse, I see myself as though I was an image of allhumanity under tuition for the social life. 

I write "old Siddons, " for so he seemed to me then. In truth he wasscarcely a dozen years older than I, and the other day when I exchangedsalutations with his gaitered presence in the Haymarket, on his way Isuppose to the Athenæum, it struck me that he it is who is now theyounger man. But at Burnmore he was eighteen inches or more above myhead and all the way of school and university beyond me; full of theworld they had fitted him for and eager to impart its doctrines. He wentalong in his tweeds that were studiously untidy, a Norfolk jacket of oneclerically-greyish stuff and trousers of another somewhat lighterpattern, in thick boots, the collar of his calling, and a broad-mindedhat, bearing his face heavenward as he talked, and not so much aware ofme as appreciating the things he was saying. And sometimes he wasmanifestly talking to himself and airing his outlook. He carried awalking-stick, a manly, homely, knobby, donnish walking-stick. 

He forced the pace a little, for his legs were long and he had acquiredthe habit of strenuous pedestrianism at Oxford with all the otherthings; he obliged me to go at a kind of skipping trot, and he preferredthe high roads towards Wickenham for our walks, because they wereflatter and there was little traffic upon them in those days before themotor car, and we could keep abreast and go on talking uninterruptedly. That is to say, he could. 

What talk it was!

Of all the virtues that the young should have. He spoke of courage andhow splendid it was to accustom oneself not even to feel fear; of truth, and difficult cases when one might conceivably injure others by tellingthe truth and so perhaps, perhaps qualify the rigor of one's integrity, but how one should never hesitate to injure one's own self in thatmatter. Then in another phase he talked of belief--and thedisagreeableness of dissenters. But here, I remember, there was adiscussion. I have forgotten how I put the thing, but in some boyishphrasing or other I must have thrown out the idea that thought is freeand beliefs uncontrollable. What of conformity, if the truth was thatyou doubted? "Not if you make an effort, " I remember him saying, "not ifyou make an effort. I have had my struggles. But if you say firmly toyourself, the Church teaches this. If you dismiss mere carping and saythat. "

"But suppose you can't, " I must have urged. 

"You can if you will, " he said with a note near enthusiasm. "I have beenthrough all that. I did it. I dismissed doubts. I wouldn't listen. Ifelt, _This won't do. All this leads nowhere. _"

And he it was told me the classic story of that presumptuous schoolboywho went to his Head Master and declared himself an atheist. There wereno dialectics but a prompt horse-whipping. "In after life, " said Mr. Siddons, with unctuous gratification, "he came to recognize thatthrashing as the very best thing that had ever happened to him. Thekindest thing. "

"Yes, " urged the obstinate rebel within me, "but--the Truth, thatfearless insistence on the Truth!"

I could, however, find nothing effective to say aloud, and Siddonsprevailed over me. That story made my blood boil, it filled me with ananticipatory hatred of and hostility to Head Masters, and at the sametime there was something in it, brutally truer to the conditions ofhuman association than any argument. 

I do not remember the various steps by which I came to be discussingdoubts so early in my life. I could not have been much more thanthirteen when that conversation occurred. I am I think perhapsexceptionally unconscious about myself. I find I can recall the sayingsand even the gestures of other people far more distinctly than thethings I said and did myself. Even my dreams and imaginings are moreactive than my positive thoughts and proceedings. But I was no doubtvery much stimulated by the literature lying about my home and thegleans and echoes of controversies that played like summer lightninground and about the horizons of my world. Over my head and after I hadgone to bed, my father and Siddons were talking, my cousin was listeningwith strained apprehensions, there was a new spirit in my father'ssermons; it was the storm of Huxley-Darwin controversies that had atlast reached Burnmore. I was an intelligent little listener, an eagerreader of anything that came to hand, Mr. Siddons had a disposition tofight his battles over again in his monologues to me; and after all atthirteen one isn't a baby. The small boy of the lower classes used inthose days to start life for himself long before then. 

How dramatic a phase it was in the history of the human mind whenscience suddenly came into the vicarages, into all the studies and quietplaces that had been the fastnesses of conviction and our ideals, anddenied, with all the power of evidence it had been accumulating for solong, and so obscurely and inaggressively, with fossils and strata, withembryology and comparative anatomy, the doctrine of the historical Falland all the current scheme of orthodoxy that was based on that! What aquickening shock it must have been in countless thousands of educatedlives! And my father after a toughly honest resistance was won over toDarwinism, the idea of Evolution got hold of him, the idea that lifeitself was intolerant of vain repetitions; and he had had to "considerhis position" in the church. To him as to innumerable other honest, middle-aged and comfortable men, Darwinism came as a dreadful invitationto go out into the wilderness. Over my head and just out of range of myears he was debating that issue with Siddons as a foil and my cousin asa horrified antagonist. Slowly he was developing his conception ofcompromise. And meanwhile he wasn't going out into the wilderness atall, but punctually to and fro, along the edge of the lawn by the bed ofhollyhocks and through the little green door in the garden wall, andacross the corner of the churchyard to the vestry and the perennialservices and sacraments of the church. 

But he never talked to me privately of religion. He left that for mycousin and Mr. Siddons to do or not to do as they felt disposed, and inthose silences of his I may have found another confirmation of mygrowing feeling that religion was from one point of view a thingsomehow remote and unreal, claiming unjustifiable interventions in thedetailed conduct of my life, and from another a peculiar concern of myfather's and Mr. Siddons', to which they went--through the vestry, changing into strange garments on the way. 

§ 4

I do not want to leave the impression which my last section may haveconveyed that at the age of thirteen or thereabouts I walked about withMr. Siddons discussing doubt in a candid and intelligent manner andmaintaining theological positions. That particular conversation, youmust imagine with Mr. Siddons somewhat monologuing, addressing himselfnot only to my present self, but with an unaccustomed valiance to myabsent father. What I may have said or not said, whether I did indeeddispute or merely and by a kind of accident implied objections, I havealtogether forgotten long ago. 

A boy far more than a man is mentally a discontinuous being. Thedrifting chaos of his mind makes its experimental beginnings at ahundred different points and in a hundred different spirits anddirections; here he flashes into a concrete realization, here into aconviction unconsciously incompatible; here is something originallyconceived, here something uncritically accepted. I know that Icriticized Mr. Siddons quite acutely, and disbelieved in him. I knowalso that I accepted all sorts of suggestions from him quiteunhesitatingly and that I did my utmost to satisfy his standards andrealize his ideals of me. 

Like an outer casing to that primordial creature of senses and dreamswhich came to the surface in the solitudes of the Park was mySiddonsesque self, a high-minded and clean and brave English boy, conscientiously loyal to queen and country, athletic and a goodsportsman and acutely alive to good and bad "form. " Mr. Siddons made meaware of my clothed self as a visible object, I surveyed my garmentedbeing in mirrors and was trained to feel the "awfulness" of variousother small boys who appeared transitorily in the smaller Park when LadyLadislaw extended her wide hospitality to certain benevolent Londonassociations. Their ill-fitting clothing, their undisciplined outcries, their slouching, their bad throwing and defective aspirates were madematters for detestation in my plastic mind. Those things, I was assured, placed them outside the pale of any common humanity. 

"Very unfortunate and all that, " said Mr. Siddons, "and uncommonly goodof Lady Ladislaw to have them down. But dirty little cads, Stephen, dirty little cads; so don't go near 'em if you can help it. "

They played an indecent sort of cricket with coats instead of a wicket!

Mr. Siddons was very grave about games and the strict ritual and properapparatus for games. He believed that Waterloo was won by the indirectinfluence of public school cricket--disregarding many other contributoryfactors. We did not play very much, but we "practised" sedulously at anet in the paddock with the gardener and the doctor's almost grown-upsons. I thought missing a possible catch was an impropriety. Istudiously maintained the correct attitude, alert and elastic, while Iwas fielding. Moreover I had a shameful secret, that I did not reallyknow where a ball ought to pitch. I wasn't clear about it and I did notdare to ask. Also until I was nearly thirteen I couldn't bowl overarm. Such is the enduring force of early suggestion, my dear son, that I feela faint twinge of shame as I set this down for your humiliated eyes. Butso it was. May you be more precocious!

Then I was induced to believe that I really liked hunting and killingthings. In the depths of my being I was a gentle and primitive savagetowards animals; I believed they were as subtle and wise as myself andfull of a magic of their own, but Mr. Siddons nevertheless got me outinto the south Warren, where I had often watched the rabbits settingtheir silly cock-eared sentinels and lolloping out to feed aboutsundown, and beguiled me into shooting a furry little fellow-creature--Ican still see its eyelid quiver as it died--and carrying it home intriumph. On another occasion I remember I was worked up into a ferociousexcitement about the rats in the old barn. We went ratting, just asthough I was Tom Brown or Harry East or any other of the beastly littlemodels of cant and cruelty we English boys were trained to imitate. Itwas great sport. It was a tremendous spree. The distracted movements, the scampering and pawing of the little pink forefeet of one squawkinglittle fugitive, that I hit with a stick and then beat to a shapelessbag of fur, haunted my dreams for years, and then I saw the bowels ofanother still living victim that had been torn open by one of theterriers, and abruptly I fled out into the yard and was violently sick;the best of the fun was over so far as I was concerned. 

My cousin saved me from the uttermost shame of my failure by sayingthat I had been excited too soon after my dinner.... 

And also I collected stamps and birds' eggs. 

Mr. Siddons hypnotized me into believing that I really wanted thesethings; he gave me an egg-cabinet for a birthday present and told meexemplary stories of the wonderful collections other boys had made. Myown natural disposition to watch nests and establish heaven knows whatfriendly intimacy with the birds--perhaps I dreamt their mother mightlet me help to feed the young ones--gave place to a feverish artfulhunting, a clutch, and then, detestable process, the blowing of the egg. Of course we were very humane; we never took the nest, but justfrightened off the sitting bird and grabbed a warm egg or so. And thepoor perforated, rather damaged little egg-shells accumulated in thedrawers, against the wished-for but never actually realized day of glorywhen we should meet another collector who wouldn't have--something thatwe had. So far as it was for anything and not mere imbecileimitativeness, it was for that. 

And writing thus of eggs reminds me that I got into a row with Mr. Siddons for cruelty. 

I discovered there was the nest of a little tit in a hole between twostones in the rock bank that bordered the lawn. I found it out when Iwas sitting on the garden seat near by, learning Latin irregular verbs. I saw the minute preposterous round birds going and coming, and I foundsomething so absurdly amiable and confiding about them--they satbalancing and oscillating on a standard rose and cheeped at me to go andthen dived nestward and gave away their secret out of sheerimpatience--that I could not bring myself to explore further, and keptthe matter altogether secret from the enthusiasm of Mr. Siddons. And ina few days there were no more eggs and I could hear the hungry littlenestlings making the minutest of fairy hullabaloos, the very finest spunsilk of sound; a tremendous traffic in victual began and I was thetrusted friend of the family. 

Then one morning I was filled with amazement and anguish. There was arock torn down and lying in the path; a paw had gone up to that littlewarm place. Across the gravel, shreds of the nest and a wisp or so ofdown were scattered. I could imagine the brief horrors of that nightattack. I started off, picking up stones as I went, to murder that sandydevil, the stable cat. I got her once--alas! that I am still glad tothink of it--and just missed her as she flashed, a ginger streak, through the gate into the paddock. 

"_Now_ Steve! Now!" came Mr. Siddons' voice behind me.... 

How can one explain things of that sort to a man like Siddons? I took mylecture on the Utter Caddishness of Wanton Cruelty in a black rebellioussilence. The affair and my own emotions were not only far beyond mypowers of explanation, but far beyond my power of understanding. Justthen my soul was in shapeless and aimless revolt against somethinggreater and higher and deeper and darker than Siddons, and hisreproaches were no more than the chattering of a squirrel while a stormuproots great trees. I wanted to kill the cat. I wanted to kill whateverhad made that cat. 

§ 5

Mr. Siddons it was who first planted the conception of Life as a Careerin my mind. 

In those talks that did so much towards shaping me into the likeness ofa modest, reserved, sporting, seemly, clean and brave, patriotic anddecently slangy young Englishman, he was constantly reverting to thatview of existence. He spoke of failures and successes, talked ofstatesmen and administrators, peerages and Westminster Abbey. "Nelson, "he said, "was once a clergyman's son like you. "

"England has been made by the sons of the clergy. "

He talked of the things that led to failure and the things that had mademen prominent and famous. 

"Discursiveness ruins a man, " I remember him saying. "Choose your goaland press to it. "

"Never do anything needlessly odd. It's a sort of impertinence to allthe endless leaders of the past who created our traditions. Do notcommit yourself hastily to opinions, but once you have done so, stick tothem. The world would far rather have a firm man wrong, than a weak manhesitatingly right. Stick to them. "

"One has to remember, " I recall him meditating, far over my head withhis face upturned, "that Institutions are more important than Views. Very often one adopts a View only to express one's belief in anInstitution.... Men can do with almost all sorts of Views, but only withcertain Institutions. All this Doubt doesn't touch a truth like that. One does not refuse to live in a house because of the old symbols onefinds upon the door.... If they _are_ old symbols.... "

Out of such private contemplations he would descend suddenly upon me. 

"What are _you_ going to do with your life, Steve?" he would ask. 

"There is no happiness in life without some form of service. Where doyou mean to serve? With your bent for science and natural history, itwouldn't be difficult for you to get into the I. C. S. I doubt if you'd doanything at the law; it's a rough game, Steve, though the prizes arebig. Big prizes the lawyers get. I've known a man in the Privy Councilunder forty--and that without anything much in the way of a family.... But always one must concentrate. The one thing England will not stand isa loafer, a wool-gatherer, a man who goes about musing and half-awake. It's our energy. We're western. It's that has made us all we are. "

I knew whither that pointed. Never so far as I can remember did Mr. Siddons criticize either myself or my father directly, but I understoodwith the utmost clearness that he found my father indolent andhesitating, and myself more than a little bit of a mollycoddle, and inurgent need of pulling together. 

§ 6

Harbury went on with that process of suppressing, encrusting, hardening, and bracing-up which Mr. Siddons had begun. For a time I pulled myselftogether very thoroughly. I am not ungrateful nor unfaithful to Harbury;in your turn you will go there, you will have to live your life in thisBritish world of ours and you must learn its language and manners, acquire its reserves and develop the approved toughness and patterningof cuticle. Afterwards if you please you may quarrel with it. But don'twhen the time comes quarrel with the present conditions of humanassociation and think it is only with Harbury you quarrel. What man hasbecome and may become beneath the masks and impositions of civilization, in his intimate texture and in the depths of his being, I begin now inmy middle age to appreciate. No longer is he an instinctive savage but acreature of almost incredible variability and wonderful newpossibilities. Marvels undreamt of, power still inconceivable, an empirebeyond the uttermost stars; such is man's inheritance. But for thepresent, until we get a mastery of those vague and mighty intimations atonce so perplexing and so reassuring, if we are to live at all in themultitudinousness of human society we must submit to some scheme ofclumsy compromises and conventions or other, --and for us Strattons theHarbury system is the most convenient. You will have to go to the oldschool. 

I went to Rendle's. I just missed getting into college; I was two placesbelow the lowest successful boy. I was Maxton's fag to begin with, andmy chief chum was Raymond, who is your friend also, and who comes sooften to this house. I preferred water to land, boats to cricket, because of that difficulty about pitch I have already mentioned. But Iwas no great sportsman. Raymond and I shared a boat, and spent most ofthe time we gave to it under the big trees near Dartpool Lock, readingor talking. We would pull up to Sandy Hall perhaps once a week. I neverrowed in any of the eights, though I was urged to do so. I swam fairlywell, and got my colors on the strength of my diving. 

On the whole I found Harbury a satisfactory and amusing place, I wasneither bullied nor do I think I greatly bullied, and of all thatfurtive and puerile lasciviousness of which one hears so many hintsnowadays--excitable people talk of it as though it was the mostmonstrous and singular of vices instead of a slightly debasing butalmost unavoidable and very obvious result of heaping boys togetherunder the inefficient control of a timid pretentious class of men--ofsuch uncleanness as I say, scarcely more than a glimpse and a whisperand a vague tentative talk or so reached me. Little more will reach you, for that kind of thing, like the hells of Swedenborg, finds its own. 

I had already developed my growing instinct for observance to a veryconsiderable extent under Siddons, and at Harbury I remember myself, andpeople remember me, as an almost stiffly correct youth. I was prettygood at most of the work, and exceptionally so at history, geology, andthe biological side of natural science. I had to restrain my interest inthese latter subjects lest I should appear to be a "swat, " and amodern-side swat at that. I was early in the sixth, and rather afavorite with old Latimer. He incited me to exercise what he called awholesome influence on the younger boys, and I succeeded in doing thisfairly well without any gross interventions. I implied rather thanprofessed soundly orthodox views about things in general, and I wasextremely careful to tilt my straw hat forward over my nose so as justnot to expose the crown of my head behind, and to turn up my trouserswith exactly that width of margin which the judgment of myfellow-creatures had decided was correct. My socks were spirited withoutbeing vulgar, and the ties I wore were tied with a studious avoidanceof either slovenliness or priggish neatness. I wrote two articles in theHarburonian, became something of a debater in the Literacy andPolitical, conducted many long conversations with my seniorcontemporaries upon religion, politics, sport and social life, andconcealed my inmost thoughts from every human being. Indeed, soeffective had been the training of Harbury and Mr. Siddons, that I thinkat that time I came very near concealing them from myself. I couldsuppress wonder, I could pass by beauty as if I did not see it, almost Ithink I did not see it for a time, and yet I remember it in those yearstoo--a hundred beautiful things. 

Harbury itself is a very beautiful place. The country about it has allthe charm of river scenery in a settled and ancient land, and the greatcastle and piled town of Wetmore, cliffs of battlemented grey wallrising above a dense cluster of red roofs, form the background toinnumerable gracious prospects of great stream-fed trees, level meadowsof buttercups, sweeping curves of osier and rush-rimmed river, theplaying fields and the sedgy, lily-spangled levels of Avonlea. Thecollege itself is mostly late Tudor and Stuart brickwork, very ripe andmellow now, but the great grey chapel with its glorious east windowfloats over the whole like a voice singing in the evening. And theevening cloudscapes of Harbury are a perpetual succession of gloriouseffects, now serene, now mysteriously threatening and profound, nowtowering to incredible heights, now revealing undreamt-of distances ofluminous color. Assuredly I must have delighted in all those aspects, orwhy should I remember them so well? But I recall, I mean, no confessedrecognition of them; no deliberate going-out of my spirit, open andunashamed, to such things. 

I suppose one's early adolescence is necessarily the period of maximumshyness in one's life. Even to Raymond I attempted no extremities ofconfidence. Even to myself I tried to be the thing that was expected ofme. I professed a modest desire for temperate and tolerable achievementin life, though deep in my lost depths I wanted passionately to excel; Iworked hard, much harder than I allowed to appear, and I said I did itfor the credit of the school; I affected a dignified loyalty to queenand country and church; I pretended a stoical disdain for appetites anddelights and all the arts, though now and then a chance fragment ofpoetry would light me like a fire, or a lovely picture stir unwontedurgencies, though visions of delight haunted the shadows of myimagination and did not always fly when I regarded them. But on theother hand I affected an interest in games that I was far from feeling. Of some boys I was violently jealous, and this also I masked beneath agenerous appreciation. Certain popularities I applauded while I doubted. Whatever my intimate motives I became less and less disposed to obeythem until I had translated them into a plausible rendering of theaccepted code. If I could not so translate them I found it wise tocontrol them. When I wanted urgently one summer to wander by night overthe hills towards Kestering and lie upon heather and look up at thestars and wonder about them, I cast about and at last hit upon thewell-known and approved sport of treacling for moths, as a cloak for sostrange an indulgence. 

I must have known even then what a mask and front I was, because I knewquite well how things were with other people. I listened politely andrespected and understood the admirable explanations of my friends. Whensome fellow got a scholarship unexpectedly and declared it was rottenbad luck on the other chap, seeing the papers he had done, and doubtedwhether he shouldn't resign, I had an intuitive knowledge that hewouldn't resign, and I do not remember any time in my career as therespectful listener to Mr. Siddons' aspirations for service anddevotion, when I did not perceive quite clearly his undeviating eye upona bishopric. He thought of gaiters though he talked of wings. 

How firmly the bonds of an old relationship can hold one! I rememberwhen a few years ago he reached that toiled-for goal, I wrote in a toneof gratified surprise that in this blatant age, such disinterestedeffort as his should receive even so belated a recognition. Yet whatelse was there for me to write? We all have our Siddonses, with whomthere are no alternatives but insincerity or a disproportionatedestructiveness. I am still largely Siddonsized, little son, and so, Ifear, you will have to be. 

§ 7

The clue to all the perplexities of law and custom lies in this, thathuman association is an artificiality. We do not run together naturallyand easily as grazing deer do or feeding starlings or a shoal of fish. We are a sort of creature which is only resuming association after along heredity of extreme separation. We are beings stronglyindividualized, we are dominated by that passion which is no more andno less than individuality in action, --jealousy. Jealousy is a fierceinsistence on ourselves, an instinctive intolerance of ourfellow-creatures, ranging between an insatiable aggression as itsbuoyant phase and a savage defensiveness when it is touched by fear. Inour expansive moments we want to dominate and control everyone anddestroy every unlikeness to ourselves; in our recessive phases our homesare our castles and we want to be let alone. 

Now all law, all social order, all custom, is a patch-up and aconcession to this separating passion of self-insistence. It is anevasion of conflict and social death. Human society is as yet only atruce and not an alliance. 

When you understand that, you will begin to understand a thousandperplexing things in legislation and social life. You will understandthe necessity of all those restrictions that are called"conventionality, " and the inevitableness of the general hostility tosingularity. To be exceptional is to assert a difference, to disregardthe banked-up forces of jealousy and break the essential conditions ofthe social contract. It invites either resentment or aggression. So weall wear much the same clothing, affect modesty, use the same phrases, respect one another's "rights, " and pretend a greater disinterestednessthan we feel.... 

You have to face this reality as you must face all reality. This is thereality of laws and government; this is the reality of customs andinstitutions; _a convention between jealousies_. This is reality, justas the cat's way with the nestlings was reality, and the squealing ratone smashed in a paroxysm of cruelty and disgust in the barn. 

But it isn't the only reality. Equally real is the passionate revolt ofmy heart against cruelty, and the deep fluctuating impulse not topretend, to set aside fear and jealousy, to come nakedly out of thecompromises and secretive methods of every-day living into the light, into a wide impersonal love, into a new way of living for mankind.... 

CHAPTER THE THIRD

INTENTIONS AND THE LADY MARY CHRISTIAN

§ 1

I know that before the end of my Harbury days I was already dreaming ofa Career, of some great and conspicuous usefulness in the world. Thathas always haunted my mind and haunts it now. I may be cured perhaps ofthe large and showy anticipations of youth, I may have learnt to dropthe "great and conspicuous, " but still I find it necessary to believethat I matter, that I play a part no one else can play in a progress, ina universal scheme moving towards triumphant ends. 

Almost wholly I think I was dreaming of public service in those days. The Harbury tradition pointed steadfastly towards the state, and all myworld was bare of allurements to any other type of ambition. Success inart or literature did not appeal to us, and a Harbury boy would as soonthink of being a great tinker as a great philosopher. Science we called"stinks"; our three science masters were _ex officio_ ridiculous and thepractical laboratory a refuge for oddities. But a good half of ourfathers at least were peers or members of parliament, and our sense ofpolitics was close and keen. History, and particularly history as itcame up through the eighteenth century to our own times, supplied uswith a gallery of intimate models, our great uncles and grandfathers andancestors at large figured abundantly in the story and furnished thepattern to which we cut our anticipations of life. It was a season ofImperialism, the picturesque Imperialism of the earlier Kipling phase, and we were all of us enthusiasts for the Empire. It was the empire ofthe White Man's Burthen in those days; the sordid anti-climax of theTariff Reform Movement was still some years ahead of us. It was easierfor us at Harbury to believe then than it has become since, in our ownracial and national and class supremacy. We were the Anglo-Saxons, theelect of the earth, leading the world in social organization, in scienceand economic method. In India and the east more particularly we were theapostles of even-handed justice, relentless veracity, personalcleanliness, and modern efficiency. In a spirit of adventurousbenevolence we were spreading those blessings over a reluctant andoccasionally recalcitrant world of people for the most part "colored. "Our success in this had aroused the bitter envy and rivalry of variouscontinental nations, and particularly of France, Russia, and Germany. But France had been diverted to North Africa, Russia to Eastern Asia, and Germany was already the most considered antagonist in our pathtowards an empire over the world. 

This was the spacious and by no means ignoble project of the laternineties. Most of us Harbury boys, trained as I had been trained to beuncritical, saw the national outlook in those terms. We knew little ornothing, until the fierce wranglings of the Free Traders and TariffReformers a few years later brought it home to us, of the commercial, financial and squalid side of our relations with the vast congeries ofexploited new territories and subordinated and subjugated populations. We knew nothing of the social conditions of the mass of people in ourown country. We were blankly ignorant of economics. We knew nothing ofthat process of expropriation and the exploitation of labor which isgiving the world the Servile State. The very phrase was twenty yearsahead of us. We believed that an Englishman was a better thing in everyway than any other sort of man, that English literature, science andphilosophy were a shining and unapproachable light to all other peoples, that our soldiers were better than all other soldiers and our sailorsthan all other sailors. Such civilization and enterprise as existed inGermany for instance we regarded as a shadow, an envious shadow, following our own; it was still generally believed in those days thatGerman trade was concerned entirely with the dishonest imitation of ourunapproachable English goods. And as for the United States, well, theUnited States though blessed with a strain of English blood, werenevertheless "out of it, " marooned in a continent of their own and--wehad to admit it--corrupt. 

Given such ignorance, you know, it wasn't by any means ignoble to bepatriotic, to dream of this propagandist Empire of ours spreading itsgreat peace and culture, its virtue and its amazing and unprecedentedhonesty, --its honesty!--round the world. 

§ 2

When I look and try to recover those early intentions of mine I amastonished at the way in which I took them ready-made from the worldimmediately about me. In some way I seem to have stopped looking--ifever I had begun looking--at the heights and depths above and below thatimmediate life. I seem to have regarded these profounder realities nomore during this phase of concentration than a cow in a field regardsthe sky. My father's vestments, the Burnmore altar, the Harbury pulpitand Mr. Siddons, stood between me and the idea of God, so that it neededyears and much bitter disillusionment before I discovered my need of it. And I was as wanting in subtlety as in depth. We did no logic norphilosophy at Harbury, and at Oxford it was not so much thought we cameto deal with as a mistranslation and vulgarization of ancient and alienexercises in thinking. There is no such effective serum againstphilosophy as the scholarly decoction of a dead philosopher. Thephilosophical teaching of Oxford at the end of the last century was notso much teaching as a protective inoculation. The stuff was administeredwith a mysterious gilding of Greek and reverence, old Hegel's monstrousweb was the ultimate modernity, and Plato, that intellectualjournalist-artist, that bright, restless experimentalist in ideas, wasas it were the God of Wisdom, only a little less omniscient (and on thewhole more of a scholar and a gentleman) than the God of fact.... 

So I fell back upon the empire in my first attempts to unify my life. Iwould serve the empire. That should be my total significance. There wasa Roman touch, I perceive, in this devotion. Just how or where I shouldserve the empire I had not as yet determined. At times I thought of thecivil service, in my more ambitious moments I turned my thoughts topolitics. But it was doubtful whether my private expectations made thelast a reasonable possibility. 

I would serve the empire. 

§ 3

And all the while that the first attempts to consolidate, to gatherone's life together into a purpose and a plan of campaign, are going onupon the field of the young man's life, there come and go and come againin the sky above him the threatening clouds, the ethereal cirrus, thered dawns and glowing afternoons of that passion of love which is thesource and renewal of being. There are times when that solicitudematters no more than a spring-time sky to a runner who wins towards thepost, there are times when its passionate urgency dominates every factin his world. 

§ 4

One must have children and love them passionately before one realizesthe deep indignity of accident in life. It is not that I mind so muchwhen unexpected and disconcerting things happen to you or your sisters, but that I mind before they happen. My dreams and anticipations of yourlives are all marred by my sense of the huge importance mere chanceencounters and incalculable necessities will play in them. And infriendship and still more here, in this central business of love, accident rules it seems to me almost altogether. What personalities youwill encounter in life, and have for a chief interest in life, is nearlyas much a matter of chance as the drift of a grain of pollen in thepine forest. And once the light hazard has blown it has blown, never todrive again. In other schoolrooms and nurseries, in slum living-roomsperhaps or workhouse wards or palaces, round the other side of theearth, in Canada or Russia or China, other little creatures are tryingtheir small limbs, clutching at things about them with infantile hands, who someday will come into your life with a power and magic monstrousand irrational and irresistible. They will break the limits of yourconcentrating self, call you out to the service of beauty and theservice of the race, sound you to your highest and your lowest, give youyour chance to be godlike or filthy, divine or utterly ignoble, reacttogether with you upon the very core and essence of your being. Theseunknowns are the substance of your fate. You will in extreme intimacylove them, hate them, serve them, struggle with them, and in thatinteraction the vital force in you and the substance of your days willbe spent. 

And who they may chance to be and their peculiar quality and effect ishaphazard, utterly beyond designing. 

Law and custom conspire with the natural circumstances of man toexaggerate every consequence of this accumulating accident, and make itdefinite and fatal.... 

I find it quite impossible now to recall the steps and stages by whichthis power of sex invaded my life. It seems to me now that it began verymuch as a gale begins, in catspaws upon the water and little rustlingsamong the leaves, and then stillness and then a distant soughing againand a pause, and then a wider and longer disturbance and so more andmore, with a gathering continuity, until at last the stars were hidden, the heavens were hidden; all the heights and depths of life wereobscured by stormy impulses and passionate desires. I suppose thatquite at the first there were simple curiosities; no doubt they werevivid at the time but they have left scarcely a trace; there were vaguefirst intimations of a peculiar excitement. I do remember moredistinctly phases when there was a going-out from myself towards thesethings, these interests, and then a reaction of shame and concealment. 

And these memories were mixed up with others not sexual at all, andparticularly with the perception of beauty in things inanimate, withlights seen at twilight and the tender mysteriousness of the dusk andthe confused disturbing scents of flowers in the evening and theenigmatical serene animation of stars in the summer sky.... 

I think perhaps that my boyhood was exceptionally free from vulgarizinginfluences in this direction. There were few novels in my father's houseand I neither saw nor read any plays until I was near manhood, so that Ithought naturally about love and not rather artificially round and aboutlove as so many imaginative young people are trained to do. I fell inlove once or twice while I was still quite a boy. These earliestexperiences rarely got beyond a sort of dumb awe, a vague, vast, ineffectual desire for self-immolation. For a time I remember Iworshipped Lady Ladislaw with all my being. Then I talked to a girl in atrain--I forget upon what journey--but I remember very vividly her quickcolor and a certain roguish smile. I spread my adoration at her feet, fresh and frank. I wanted to write to her. Indeed I wanted to devote allmy being to her. I begged hard, but there was someone called Auntie whohad to be considered, an Atropos for that thread of romance. 

Then there was a photograph in my father's study of the Delphic Sibylfrom the Sistine Chapel, that for a time held my heart, and--Yes, therewas a girl in a tobacconist's shop in the Harbury High Street. Drawn byan irresistible impulse I used to go and buy cigarettes--and sometimesconverse about the weather. But afterwards in solitude I would meditatetremendous conversations and encounters with her. The cigarettesincreased the natural melancholy of my state and led to a reproof fromold Henson. Almost always I suppose there is that girl in thetobacconist's shop.... 

I believe if I made an effort I could disinter some dozens of suchmemories, more and more faded until the marginal ones would befeatureless and all but altogether effaced. As I look back at it now Iam struck by an absurd image; it is as if a fish nibbled at this baitand then at that. 

Given but the slightest aid from accidental circumstances and any ofthose slight attractions might have become a power to deflect all mylife. 

The day of decision arrived when, the Lady Mary Christian came smilingout of the sunshine to me into the pavilion at Burnmore. With that thephase of stirrings and intimations was over for ever in my life. Allthose other impressions went then to the dusty lumber room from which Inow so slightingly disinter them. 

§ 5

We five had all been playmates together. There were Lord Maxton, who waskilled at Paardeberg while I was in Ladysmith, he was my senior bynearly a year, Philip, who is now Earl Ladislaw and who was abouteighteen months younger than I, Mary, my contemporary within eight days, and Guy, whom we regarded as a baby and who was called, apparently onaccount of some early linguistic efforts, "Brugglesmith. " He did hisbest to avenge his juniority as time passed on by an enormous length oflimb. I had more imagination than Maxton and was a good deal betterread, so that Mary and I dominated most of the games of Indians andwarfare and exploration in which we passed our long days together. Whenthe Christians were at Burnmore, and they usually spent three or fourmonths in the year there, I had a kind of standing invitation to be withthem. Sometimes there would also be two Christian cousins to swell ourparty, and sometimes there would be a raid of the Fawney children with adetestable governess who was perpetually vociferating reproaches, butthese latter were absent-minded, lax young persons, and we did notgreatly love them. 

It is curious how little I remember of Mary's childhood. All that hashappened between us since lies between that and my present self likesome luminous impenetrable mist. I know we liked each other, that I wastaller than she was and thought her legs unreasonably thin, and thatonce when I knelt by accident on a dead stick she had brought into anIndian camp we had made near the end of the west shrubbery, she flew atme in a sudden fury, smacked my face, scratched me and had to besuppressed, and was suppressed with extreme difficulty by the unitedmanhood of us three elder boys. Then it was I noted first the blazingblueness of her eyes. She was light and very plucky, so that none of uscared to climb against her, and she was as difficult to hold as an eel. But all these traits and characteristics vanished when she wastransformed. 

For what seems now a long space of time I had not seen her or any of thefamily except Philip; it was certainly a year or more, probably two;Maxton was at a crammer's and I think the others must have been inCanada with Lord Ladislaw. Then came some sort of estrangement betweenhim and his wife, and she returned with Mary and Guy to Burnmore andstayed there all through the summer. 

I was in a state of transition between the infinitely great and theinfinitely little. I had just ceased to be that noble and potent being, that almost statesmanlike personage, a sixth form boy at Harbury, and Iwas going to be an Oxford undergraduate. Philip and I came down togetherby the same train from Harbury, I shared the Burnmore dog-cart andluggage cart, and he dropped me at the rectory. I was a long-limbedyoungster of seventeen, as tall as I am now, and fair, so fair that Iwas still boyish-faced while most of my contemporaries and Philip (whofavored his father) were at least smudgy with moustaches. With thehead-master's valediction and the grave elder-brotherliness of oldHenson, and the shrill cheers of a little crowd of juniors still echoingin my head, I very naturally came home in a mood of exalted gravity, andI can still remember pacing up and down the oblong lawn behind therockery and the fig-tree wall with my father, talking of my outlook withall the tremendous _savoir faire_ that was natural to my age, and notingwith a secret gratification that our shoulders were now on a level. Nodoubt we were discussing Oxford and all that I was to do at Oxford; Idon't remember a word of our speech though I recall the exact tint ofits color and the distinctive feeling of our measured equal paces in thesunshine.... 

I must have gone up to Burnmore House the following afternoon. I went upalone and I was sent out through the little door at the end of the biggallery into the garden. In those days Lady Ladislaw had made an Indianpavilion under the tall trees at the east end of the house, and here Ifound her with her cousin Helena Christian entertaining a mixture ofpeople, a carriageful from Hampton End, the two elder Fawneys and a manin brown who had I think ridden over from Chestoxter Castle. LadyLadislaw welcomed me with ample graciousness--as though I was apersonage. "The children" she said were still at tennis, and as shespoke I saw Guy, grown nearly beyond recognition and then a shiningbeing in white, very straight and graceful, with a big soft hat andovershadowed eyes that smiled, come out from the hurried endearments ofthe sunflakes under the shadows of the great chestnuts, into the glow ofsummer light before the pavilion. 

"Steve arrived!" she cried, and waved a welcoming racquet. 

I do not remember what I said to her or what else she said or whatanyone said. But I believe I could paint every detail of her effect. Iknow that when she came out of the brightness into the shadow of thepavilion it was like a regal condescension, and I know that she waswonderfully self-possessed and helpful with her mother's hospitalities, and that I marvelled I had never before perceived the subtler sweetnessin the cadence of her voice. I seem also to remember a severe internalstruggle for my self-possession, and that I had to recall my exaltedposition in the sixth form to save myself from becoming tongue-tied andabashed and awkward and utterly shamed. 

You see she had her hair up and very prettily dressed, and thoseaggressive lean legs of hers had vanished, and she was sheathed inmuslin that showed her the most delicately slender and beautiful ofyoung women. And she seemed so radiantly sure of herself!

After our first greeting I do not think I spoke to her or looked at heragain throughout the meal. I took things that she handed me with anappearance of supreme indifference, was politely attentive to the elderMiss Fawney, and engaged with Lady Ladislaw and the horsey little man inbrown in a discussion of the possibility of mechanical vehicles upon thehigh road. That was in the early nineties. We were all of opinion thatit was impossible to make a sufficiently light engine for the purpose. Afterwards Mary confessed to me how she had been looking forward to ourmeeting, and how snubbed I had made her feel.... 

Then a little later than this meeting in the pavilion, though I am notclear now whether it was the same or some subsequent afternoon, we arewalking in the sunken garden, and great clouds of purple clematis andsome less lavish heliotrope-colored creeper, foam up against the ruddystone balustrading. Just in front of us a fountain gushes out of agrotto of artificial stalagmite and bathes the pedestal of an absurdlittle statuette of the God of Love. We are talking almost easily. Shelooks sideways at my face, already with the quiet controlledwatchfulness of a woman interested in a man, she smiles and she talks offlowers and sunshine, the Canadian winter--and with an abrupttransition, of old times we've had together in the shrubbery and thewilderness of bracken out beyond. She seems tremendously grown-up andwomanly to me. I am talking my best, and glad, and in a manner scared atthe thrill her newly discovered beauty gives me, and keeping up mydignity and coherence with an effort. My attention is constantly beingdistracted to note how prettily she moves, to wonder why it is I nevernoticed the sweet fall, the faint delightful whisper of a lisp in hervoice before. 

We agree about the flowers and the sunshine and the Canadianwinter--about everything. "I think so often of those games we used toinvent, " she declares. "So do I, " I say, "so do I. " And then with asudden boldness: "Once I broke a stick of yours, a rotten stick youthought a sound one. Do you remember?"

Then we laugh together and seem to approach across a painful, unnecessary distance that has separated us. It vanishes for ever. "Icouldn't now, " she says, "smack your face like that, Stephen. "

That seems to me a brilliantly daring and delightful thing for her tosay, and jolly of her to use my Christian name too! "I believe Iscratched, " she adds. 

"You never scratched, " I assert with warm conviction. "Never. "

"I did, " she insists and I deny. "You couldn't. "

"We're growing up, " she cries. "That's what has happened to us. We shallnever fight again with our hands and feet, never--until death do uspart. "

"For better, or worse, " I say, with a sense of wit and enterprise beyondall human precedent. 

"For richer, or poorer, " she cries, taking up my challenge with alifting laugh in her voice. 

And then to make it all nothing again, she exclaims at the white liliesthat rise against masses of sweet bay along the further wall.... 

How plainly I can recall it all! How plainly and how brightly! As wecame up the broad steps at the further end towards the tennis lawn, sheturned suddenly upon me and with a novel assurance of command told me tostand still. "_There_, " she said with a hand out and seemed to survey mewith her chin up and her white neck at the level of my eyes. "Yes. Awhole step, " she estimated, "and more, taller than I. You will look downon me, Stephen, now, for all the rest of our days. "

"I shall always stand, " I answered, "a step or so below you. "

"No, " she said, "come up to the level. A girl should be smaller than aman. You are a man, Stephen--almost.... You must be near six feet.... Here's Guy with the box of balls. "

She flitted about the tennis court before me, playing with Philipagainst Guy and myself. She punished some opening condescensions with awicked vigor--and presently Guy and I were straining every nerve to savethe set. She had a low close serve I remember that seemed perfectlystraightforward and simple, and was very difficult to return. 

§ 6

All that golden summer on the threshold of my manhood was filled byMary. I loved her with the love of a boy and a man. Either I was withMary or I was hoping and planning to be with Mary or I was full of somevivid new impression of her or some enigmatical speech, some pregnantnothing, some glance or gesture engaged and perplexed my mind. In thosedays I slept the profound sweet sleep of youth, but whenever that deepflow broke towards the shallows, as I sank into it at night and came outof it at morning, I passed through dreams of Mary to and from a world ofwaking thought of her. 

There must have been days of friendly intercourse when it seemed wetalked nothings and wandered and meandered among subjects, but always wehad our eyes on one another. And afterwards I would spend long hours inrecalling and analyzing those nothings, questioning their nothingness, making out of things too submerged and impalpable for the rough drags ofrecollection, promises and indications. I would invent ingenious thingsto say, things pushing out suddenly from nothingness to extremesignificance. I rehearsed a hundred declarations. 

It was easy for us to be very much together. We were very free thatsummer and life was all leisure. Lady Ladislaw was busied with her ownconcerns; she sometimes went away for two or three days leaving no onebut an attenuated governess with even the shadow of a claim to interferewith Mary. Moreover she was used to seeing me with her children atBurnmore; we were still in her eyes no more than children.... And alsoperhaps she did not greatly mind if indeed we did a little fall in lovetogether. To her that may have seemed a very natural and slight andtransitory possibility.... 

One afternoon of warm shadows in the wood near the red-lacquered Chinesebridge, we two were alone together and we fell silent. I was tremblingand full of a wild courage. I can feel now the exquisite surmise, thedoubt of that moment. Our eyes met. She looked up at me with anunwonted touch of fear in her expression and I laid my hands on her. Shedid not recoil, she stood mute with her lips pressed together, lookingat me steadfastly. I can feel that moment now as a tremendoushesitation, blank and yet full of light and life, like a clear sky inthe moment before dawn.... 

She made a little move towards me. Impulsively, with no word said, wekissed. 

§ 7

I would like very much to give you a portrait of Mary as she was inthose days. Every portrait I ever had of her I burnt in the sincerity ofwhat was to have been our final separation, and now I have nothing ofher in my possession. I suppose that in the files of old illustratedweeklies somewhere, a score of portraits must be findable. Yetphotographs have a queer quality of falsehood. They have no movement andalways there was a little movement about Mary just as there is always alittle scent about flowers. She was slender and graceful, so that sheseemed taller than she was, she had beautifully shaped arms and abrightness in her face; it seemed to me always that there was light inher face, more than the light that shone upon it. Her fair, veryslightly reddish hair--it was warm like Australian gold--flowed with asort of joyous bravery back from her low broad forehead; the color underher delicate skin was bright and quick, and her mouth always smiledfaintly. There was a peculiar charm for me about her mouth, awhimsicality, a sort of humorous resolve in the way in which the upperlip fell upon the lower and in a faint obliquity that increased withher quickening smile. She spoke with a very clear delicate intonationthat made one want to hear her speak again; she often said faintlydaring things, and when she did, she had that little catch in thebreath--of one who dares. She did not talk hastily; often before shespoke came a brief grave pause. Her eyes were brightly blue except whenthe spirit of mischief took her and then they became black, and therewas something about the upper and lower lids that made them not only theprettiest but the sweetest and kindliest eyes in the world. And shemoved with a quiet rapidity, without any needless movements, to dowhatever she had a mind to do.... 

But how impossible it is to convey the personal charm of a human being. I catalogue these things and it is as if she moved about silently behindmy stumbling enumeration and smiled at me still, with her eyes a littledarkened, mocking me. That phantom will never be gone from my mind. Itwas all of these things and none of these things that made me hers, as Ihave never been any other person's.... 

We grew up together. The girl of nineteen mingles in my memory with thewoman of twenty-five. 

Always we were equals, or if anything she was the better of us two. Inever made love to her in the commoner sense of the word, a sense inwhich the woman is conceived of as shy, unawakened, younger, moreplastic, and the man as tempting, creating responses, persuading andcompelling. We made love to each other as youth should, we were friendslit by a passion.... I think that is the best love. If I could wish yourfuture I would have you love someone neither older and stronger noryounger and weaker than yourself. I would have you have neither a toynor a devotion, for the one makes the woman contemptible and the otherthe man. There should be something almost sisterly between you. Loveneither a goddess nor a captive woman. But I would wish you a betterfate in your love than chanced to me. 

Mary was not only naturally far more quick-minded, more swiftlyunderstanding than I, but more widely educated. Mine was the stifflimited education of the English public school and university; I couldnot speak and read and think French and German as she could for all thatI had a pedantic knowledge of the older forms of those tongues; and theclassics and mathematics upon which I had spent the substance of myyears were indeed of little use to me, have never been of any real useto me, they were ladders too clumsy to carry about and too short toreach anything. My general ideas came from the newspapers and thereviews. She on the other hand had read much, had heard no end of goodconversation, the conversation of people who mattered, had thought forherself and had picked the brains of her brothers. Her mother had lether read whatever books she liked, partly because she believed that wasthe proper thing to do, and partly because it was so much less troubleto be liberal in such things. 

We had the gravest conversations. 

I do not remember that we talked much of love, though we were very muchin love. We kissed; sometimes greatly daring we walked hand in hand;once I took her in my arms and carried her over a swampy place beyondthe Killing Wood, and held her closely to me; that was a great eventbetween us; but we were shy of one another, shy even of very intimatewords; and a thousand daring and beautiful things I dreamt of saying toher went unsaid. I do not remember any endearing names from that time. But we jested and shared our humors, shaped our developing ideas inquaint forms to amuse one another and talked--as young men talktogether. 

We talked of religion; I think she was the first person to thaw theprivate silences that had kept me bound in these matters even frommyself for years. I can still recall her face, a little flushed andcoming nearer to mine after avowals and comparisons. "But Stephen, " shesays; "if none of these things are really true, why do they keep ontelling them to us? What is true? What are we for? What is Everythingfor?"

I remember the awkwardness I felt at these indelicate thrusts intotopics I had come to regard as forbidden. 

"I suppose there's a sort of truth in them, " I said, and then moreSiddonsesquely: "endless people wiser than we are----"

"Yes, " she said. "But that doesn't matter to us. Endless people wiserthan we are have said one thing, and endless people wiser than we arehave said exactly the opposite. It's _we_ who have to understand--forourselves.... We don't understand, Stephen. "

I was forced to a choice between faith and denial. But I parried withquestions. "Don't you, " I asked, "feel there is a God?"

She hesitated. "There is something--something very beautiful, " she saidand stopped as if her breath had gone. "That is all I know, Stephen.... "

And I remember too that we talked endlessly about the things I was to doin the world. I do not remember that we talked about the things she wasto do, by some sort of instinct and some sort of dexterity she evadedthat, from the very first she had reserves from me, but my career andpurpose became as it were the form in which we discussed all thepurposes of life. I became Man in her imagination, the protagonist ofthe world. At first I displayed the modest worthy desire for respectableservice that Harbury had taught me, but her clear, sceptical littlevoice pierced and tore all those pretences to shreds. "Do some decentpublic work, " I said, or some such phrase. 

"But is that All you want?" I hear her asking. "Is that All you want?"

I lay prone upon the turf and dug up a root of grass with my penknife. "Before I met you it was, " I said. 

"And now?"

"I want you. "

"I'm nothing to want. I want you to want all the world.... _Whyshouldn't you?_"

I think I must have talked of the greatness of serving the empire. "Yes, but splendidly, " she insisted. "Not doing little things for otherpeople--who aren't doing anything at all. I want you to conquer peopleand lead people.... When I see you, Stephen, sometimes--I almost wish Iwere a man. In order to be able to do all the things that you are goingto do. "

"For you, " I said, "for you. "

I stretched out my hand for hers, and my gesture went disregarded. 

She sat rather crouched together with her eyes gazing far away acrossthe great spaces of the park. 

"That is what women are for, " she said. "To make men see how splendidlife can be. To lift them up--out of a sort of timid grubbiness----" Sheturned upon me suddenly. "Stephen, " she said, "promise me. Whatever youbecome, you promise and swear here and now never to be grey and grubby, never to be humpy and snuffy, never to be respectable and modest anddull and a little fat, like--like everybody. Ever. "

"I swear, " I said. 

"By me. "

"By you. No book to kiss! Please, give me your hand. "

§ 8

All through that summer we saw much of each other. I was up at the Houseperhaps every other day; we young people were supposed to be all in acompany together down by the tennis lawns, but indeed we dispersed andcame and went by a kind of tacit understanding, Guy and Philip each withone of the Fawney girls and I with Mary. I put all sorts ofconstructions upon the freedom I was given with her, but I perceive nowthat we still seemed scarcely more than children to Lady Ladislaw, andthat the idea of our marriage was as inconceivable to her as if we hadbeen brother and sister. Matrimonially I was as impossible as one of thestable boys. All the money I could hope to earn for years to come wouldnot have sufficed even to buy Mary clothes. But as yet we thought littleof matters so remote, glad in our wonderful new discovery of love, andwhen at last I went off to Oxford, albeit the parting moved us to muchtenderness and vows and embraces, I had no suspicion that never more inall our lives would Mary and I meet freely and gladly withoutrestriction. Yet so it was. From that day came restraints anddifficulties; the shadow of furtiveness fell between us; ourcorrespondence had to be concealed. 

I went to Oxford as one goes into exile; she to London. I would post toher so that the letters reached Landor House before lunch time when thesun of Lady Ladislaw came over the horizon, but indeed as yet no one waswatching her letters. Afterwards as she moved about she gave me otherinstructions, and for the most part I wrote to her in envelopesaddressed for her by one of the Fawney girls, who was under her spelland made no enquiry for what purpose these envelopes were needed. 

To me of course Mary wrote without restraint. All her letters to me weredestroyed after our crisis, but some of mine to her she kept for manyyears; at last they came back to me so that I have them now. And for alltheir occasional cheapness and crudity, I do not find anything in themto be ashamed of. They reflect, they are chiefly concerned with thatsearch for a career of fine service which was then the chiefpreoccupation of my mind, the bias is all to a large imperialism, but itis manifest that already the first ripples of a rising tide of criticismagainst the imperialist movement had reached and were exercising me. Inone letter I am explaining that imperialism is not a mereaggressiveness, but the establishment of peace and order throughout halfthe world. "We may never withdraw, " I wrote with all the confidence of aForeign Secretary, "from all these great territories of ours, but weshall stay only to raise their peoples ultimately to an equalcitizenship with ourselves. " And then in the same letter: "and if I donot devote myself to the Empire what else is there that gives anythinglike the same opportunity of a purpose in life. " I find myself inanother tolerantly disposed to "accept socialism, " but manifestlyhostile to "the narrow mental habits of the socialists. " The large noteof youth! And in another I am clearly very proud and excited and alittle mock-modest over the success of my first two speeches in theUnion. 

On the whole I like the rather boyish, tremendously serious young man ofthose letters. An egotist, of course, but what youth was ever anythingelse? I may write that much freely now, for by this time he is almost asmuch outside my personality as you or my father. He is the youngStratton, one of a line. I like his gravity; if youth is not grave withall the great spectacle of life opening at its feet, then surely no ageneed be grave. I love and envy his simplicity and honesty. His shammodesty and so forth are so translucent as scarcely to matter. It isclear I was opening my heart to myself as I opened it to Mary. I wasn'tacting to her. I meant what I said. And as I remember her answers shetook much the same high tone with me, though her style of writing wasfar lighter than mine, more easy and witty and less continuous. Sheflashed and flickered. As for confessed love-making there is verylittle, --I find at the end of one of my notes after the signature, "Ilove you, I love you. " And she was even more restrained. Such littlephrases as "Dear Stevenage"--that was one of her odd names for me--"Iwish you were here, " or "Dear, _dear_ Stevenage, " were epistolaryevents, and I would re-read the blessed wonderful outbreak a hundredtimes.... 

Our separation lengthened. There was a queer detached unexpectedmeeting in London in December, for some afternoon gathering. I was shyand the more disconcerted because she was in winter town clothes thatmade her seem strange and changed. Then came the devastating intimationthat all through the next summer the Ladislaws were to be in Scotland. 

I did my boyish utmost to get to Scotland. They were at Lankart nearInvermoriston, and the nearest thing I could contrive was to join areading party in Skye, a reading party of older men who manifestly hadno great desire for me. For more than a year we never met at all, andall sorts of new things happened to us both. I perceived they happenedto me, but I did not think they happened to her. Of course we changed. Of course in a measure and relatively we forgot. Of course there wereweeks when we never thought of each other at all. Then would come phasesof hunger. I remember a little note of hers. "Oh Stevenage, " it wasscrawled, "perhaps next Easter!" Next Easter was an aching desolation. The blinds of Burnmore House remained drawn; the place was empty exceptfor three old servants on board-wages. The Christians went instead tothe Canary Isles, following some occult impulse of Lady Ladislaw's. LordLadislaw spent the winter in Italy. 

What an empty useless beauty the great Park possessed during thoseseasons of intermission! There were a score of places in it we had madeour own.... 

Her letters to Oxford would cease for weeks, and suddenly revive andbecome frequent. Now and then would come a love-letter that seemed toshine like stars as I read it; for the most part they were low-pitched, friendly or humorous letters in a roundish girlish writing that wasmaturing into a squarely characteristic hand. My letters to her too Isuppose varied as greatly. We began to be used to living so apart. Therewere weeks of silence.... 

Yet always when I thought of my life as a whole, Mary ruled it. With heralone I had talked of my possible work and purpose; to her alone had Iconfessed to ambitions beyond such modest worthiness as a public schooldrills us to affect.... 

Then the whole sky of my life lit up again with a strange light ofexcitement and hope. I had a note, glad and serenely friendly, to saythey were to spend all the summer at Burnmore. 

I remember how I handled and scrutinized that letter, seeking for someintimation that our former intimacy was still alive. We were to meet. How should we meet? How would she look at me? What would she think ofme?

§ 9

Of course it was all different. Our first encounter in this new phasehad a quality of extreme disillusionment. The warm living creature, whowould whisper, who would kiss with wonderful lips, who would say strangedaring things, who had soft hair one might touch with a thrilling andworshipful hand, who changed one at a word or a look into a God ofpride, became as if she had been no more than a dream. A self-possessedyoung aristocrat in white and brown glanced at me from amidst a group ofbrilliant people on the terrace, nodded as it seemed quite carelesslyin acknowledgment of my salutation, and resumed her confidentconversation with a tall stooping man, no less a person than Evesham, the Prime Minister. He was lunching at Burnmore on his way acrosscountry to the Rileys. I heard that dear laugh of hers, as ready andeasy as when she laughed with me. I had not heard it for nearly threeyears--nor any sound that had its sweetness. "But Mr. Evesham, " she wassaying, "nowadays we don't believe that sort of thing----"

"There are a lot of things still for you to believe, " says Mr. Eveshambeaming. "A lot of things! One's capacity increases. It grows withexercise. Justin will bear me out. "

Beyond her stood an undersized, brown-clad middle-aged man with a bighead, a dark face and expressive brown eyes fixed now in unrestrainedadmiration on Mary's laughing face. This then was Justin, the incrediblyrich and powerful, whose comprehensive operations could make and break athousand fortunes in a day. He answered Evesham carelessly, with hisgaze still on Mary, and in a voice too low for my straining ears. Therewas some woman in the group also, but she has left nothing upon my mindwhatever except an effect of black and a very decorative green sunshade. She greeted Justin's remark, I remember, with the little yelp oflaughter that characterized that set. I think too there was someone elsein the group; but I cannot clearly recall who.... 

Presently as I and Philip made unreal conversation together I saw Marydisengage herself and come towards us. It was as if a princess cametowards a beggar. Absurd are the changes of phase between women andmen. A year or so ago and all of us had been but "the children"together; now here were I and Philip mere youths still, nobodies, echoesand aspirations, crude promises at the best, and here was Mary in fullflower, as glorious and central as the Hampton Court azaleas in spring. 

"And this is Stephen, " she said, aglow with happy confidence. 

I made no memorable reply, and there was a little pause thick with mutequestionings. 

"After lunch, " she said with her eye on mine, "I am going to measureagainst you on the steps. I'd hoped--when you weren't looking--I mightcreep up----"

"I've taken no advantage, " I said. 

"You've kept your lead. "

Justin had followed her towards us, and now held out a hand to Philip. "Well, Philip my boy, " he said, and defined our places. Philip made someintroductory gesture with a word or so towards me. Justin glanced at meas one might glance at someone's new dog, gave an expressionless nod tomy stiff movement of recognition, and addressed himself at once to Mary. 

"Lady Mary, " he said, "I've wanted to tell you----"

I caught her quick eye for a moment and knew she had more to say to me, but neither she nor I had the skill and alacrity to get that said. 

"I wanted to tell you, " said Justin, "I've found a little Japanese who'sdone exactly what you wanted with that group of dwarf maples. "

She clearly didn't understand. 

"But what did I want, Mr. Justin?" she asked. 

"Don't say that you forget?" cried Justin. "Oh don't tell me youforget! You wanted a little exact copy of a Japanese house---- I've hadit done. Beneath the trees.... "

"And so you're back in Burnmore, Mr. Stratton, " said Lady Ladislawintervening between me and their duologue. And I never knew how pleasedMary was with this faithful realization of her passing and forgottenfancy. My hostess greeted me warmly and pressed my hand, smiledmechanically and looked over my shoulder all the while to Mr. Eveshamand her company generally, and then came the deep uproar of a gong fromthe house and we were all moving in groups and couples luncheonward. 

Justin walked with Lady Mary, and she was I saw an inch taller than hissquat solidity. A tall lady in rose-pink had taken possession of Guy, Evesham and Lady Ladislaw made the two centres of a straggling group whowere bandying recondite political allusions. Then came one or twocouples and trios with nothing very much to say and active ears. Philipand I brought up the rear silently and in all humility. Even young Guyhad gone over our heads. I was too full of a stupendous realization forany words. Of course, during those years, she had been doing--no end ofthings! And while I had been just drudging with lectures and books andtheorizing about the Empire and what I could do with it, and takingexercise, she had learnt, it seemed--the World. 

§ 10

Lunch was in the great dining-room. There was a big table and twosmaller ones; we sat down anyhow, but the first comers had groupedthemselves about Lady Ladislaw and Evesham and Justin and Mary in acentral orb, and I had to drift perforce to one of the satellites. Isecured a seat whence I could get a glimpse ever and again over Justin'sassiduous shoulders of a delicate profile, and I found myselfimmediately engaged in answering the innumerable impossible questions ofLady Viping, the widow of terrible old Sir Joshua, that devastatingdivorce court judge who didn't believe in divorces. His domesticconfidences had I think corrupted her mind altogether. She cared fornothing but evidence. She was a rustling, incessant, sandy, peeringwoman with a lorgnette and rapid, confidential lisping undertones, andshe wanted to know who everybody was and how they were related. Thiskept us turning towards the other tables--and when my information failedshe would call upon Sir Godfrey Klavier, who was explaining, rathertestily on account of her interruptions, to Philip Christian and alittle lady in black and the elder Fawney girl just why he didn'tbelieve Lady Ladislaw's new golf course would succeed. There were two orthree other casual people at our table; one of the Roden girls, a youngguardsman and, I think, some other man whom I don't clearly remember. 

"And so that's the great Mr. Justin, " rustled Lady Viping and staredacross me. 

(I saw Evesham, leaning rather over the table to point some remark atMary, and noted her lips part to reply. )

"What _is_ the word?" insisted Lady Viping like a fly in my ear. 

I turned on her guiltily. 

"Whether it's brachy, " said Lady Viping, "or whether it's dolly--_I_ cannever remember?"

I guessed she was talking of Justin's head. "Oh!--brachycephalic, " Isaid. 

I had lost Mary's answer. 

"They say he's a woman hater, " said Lady Viping. "It hardly looks likeit now, does it?"

"Who?" I asked. "What?--oh!--Justin. "

"The great financial cannibal. Suppose she turned him into aphilanthropist! Stranger things have happened. Look!--now. The man'sface is positively tender. "

I hated looking, and I could not help but look. It was as if thisdetestable old woman was dragging me down and down, down far below alldignity to her own level of a peeping observer. Justin was sayingsomething to Mary in an undertone, something that made her glance upswiftly and at me before she answered, and there I was with my head sideby side with those quivering dyed curls, that flighty black bonnet, thatremorseless observant lorgnette. I could have sworn aloud at thehopeless indignity of my pose. 

I saw Mary color quickly before I looked away. 

"Charming, isn't she?" said Lady Viping, and I discovered those infernalglasses were for a moment honoring me. They shut with a click. "Ham, "said Lady Viping. "I told him no ham--and now I remember--I like ham. Orrather I like spinach. I forgot the spinach. One has the ham for thespinach, --don't you think? Yes, --tell him. She's a perfect Dresdenornament, Mr. Stratton. She's adorable ... (lorgnette and search forfresh topics). Who is the dark lady with the slight moustache--sittingthere next to Guy? Sir Godfrey, who is the dark lady? No, I don't meanMary Fitton. Over there! Mrs. Roperstone. Ooh. _The_ Mrs. Roperstone. (Renewed lorgnette and click. ) Yes--ham. With spinach. A lot of spinach. There's Mr. Evesham laughing again. He's greatly amused. Unusual for himto laugh twice. At least, aloud. (Rustle and adjustment of lorgnette. )Mr. Stratton, don't you think?--exactly like a little shepherdess. OnlyI can't say I think Mr. Justin is like a shepherd. On the whole, morelike a large cloisonné jar. Now Guy would do. As a pair they'rebeautiful. Pity they're brother and sister. Curious how that boy managesto be big and yet delicate. H'm. Mixed mantel ornaments. Sir Godfrey, how old _is_ Mrs. Roperstone?... You never know on principle. I think Ishall make Mr. Stratton guess. What do you think, Mr. Stratton?... Younever guess on principle! Well, we're all very high principled. (Freshexploratory movements of the lorgnette. ) Mr. Stratton, tell me; is thatlittle peaked man near Lady Ladislaw Mr. Roperstone? I thought as much!"

All this chatter is mixed up in my mind with an unusual sense ofhovering attentive menservants, who seemed all of them to my heatedimagination to be watching me (and particularly one clean-shaven, reddish-haired, full-faced young man) lest I looked too much at the LadyMary Christian. Of course they were merely watching our plates andglasses, but my nerves and temper were now in such a state that if myman went off to the buffet to get Sir Godfrey the pickled walnuts, Ifancied he went to report the progress of my infatuation, and if astrange face appeared with the cider cup, that this was a new observercome to mark the revelation of my behavior. My food embarrassed me. Ifound hidden meanings in the talk of the Roden girl and her guardsman, and an ironical discovery in Sir Godfrey's eye.... 

I felt indignant with Mary. I felt she disowned me and deserted me andrepudiated me, that she ought in some manner to have recognized me. Igave her no credit for her speech to me before the lunch, or her promiseto measure against me again. I blinded myself to all her frankfriendliness. I felt she ought not to notice Justin, ought not to answerhim.... 

Clearly she liked those men to flatter her, she liked it.... 

I remember too, so that I must have noted it and felt it then as a thingperceived for the first time, the large dignity of the room, the tallwindows and splendid rich curtains, the darkened Hoppners upon thewalls. I noted too the quality and abundance of the table things, andthere were grapes and peaches, strawberries, cherries and green almonds, piled lavishly above the waiting dessert plates with the golden knivesand forks, upon a table in the sunshine of the great bay. The verysunshine filtered through the tall narrow panes from the great chestnuttrees without, seemed of a different quality from the common light ofday.... 

I felt like a poor relation. I sympathized with Anarchists. We had comeout of the Park now finally, both Mary and I--into this.... 

"Mr. Stratton I am sure agrees with me. "

For a time I had been marooned conversationally, and Lady Viping hadengaged Sir Godfrey. Evidently he was refractory and she was back at me. 

"Look at it now in profile, " she said, and directed me once more to thatunendurable grouping. Justin again!

"It's a heavy face, " I said. 

"It's a powerful face. I wouldn't care anyhow to be up against it--aspeople say. " And the lorgnette shut with a click. "What is this?Peaches!--Yes, and give me some cream. " ... 

I hovered long for that measuring I had been promised on the steps, buteither Mary had forgotten or she deemed it wiser to forget. 

§ 11

I took my leave of Lady Ladislaw when the departure of Evesham broke theparty into dispersing fragments. I started down the drive towards therectory and then vaulted the railings by the paddock and struck acrossbeyond the mere. I could not go home with the immense burthen of thoughtand new ideas and emotions that had come upon me. I felt confused andshattered to incoherence by the new quality of Mary's atmosphere. Iturned my steps towards the wilder, lonelier part of the park beyond theKilling Wood, and lay down in a wide space of grass between twodivergent thickets of bracken, and remained there for a very long time. 

There it was in the park that for the first time I pitted myself againstlife upon a definite issue, and prepared my first experience of defeat. "I _will_ have her, " I said, hammering at the turf with my fist. "Iwill. I do not care if I give all my life.... "

Then I lay still and bit the sweetness out of joints of grass, andpresently thought and planned. 

CHAPTER THE FOURTH

THE MARRIAGE OF THE LADY MARY CHRISTIAN

§ 1

For three or four days I could get no word with Mary. I could not nowcome and go as I had been able to do in the days when we were still "thechildren. " I could not work, I could not rest, I prowled as near as Icould to Burnmore House hoping for some glimpse of her, waiting for themoment when I could decently present myself again at the house. 

When at last I called, Justin had gone and things had some flavor of theancient time. Lady Ladislaw received me with an airy intimacy, all thecareful responsibility of her luncheon party manner thrown aside. "Andhow goes Cambridge?" she sang, sailing through the great saloon towardsme, and I thought that for the occasion Cambridge instead of Oxfordwould serve sufficiently well. "You'll find them all at tennis, " saidLady Ladislaw, and waved me on to the gardens. There I found all four ofthem and had to wait until their set was finished. 

"Mary, " I said at the first chance, "are we never to talk again?"

"It's all different, " she said. 

"I am dying to talk to you--as we used to talk. "

"And I--Stevenage. But---- You see?"

"Next time I come, " I said, "I shall bring you a letter. There is somuch----"

"No, " she said. "Can't you get up in the morning? Very early--five orsix. No one is up until ever so late. "

"I'd stay up all night. "

"Serve!" said Maxton, who was playing the two of us and had stopped Ithink to tighten a shoe. 

Things conspired against any more intimacy for a time. But we got ourmoment on the way to tea. She glanced back at Philip, who was looseningthe net, and then forward to estimate the distance of Maxton and Guy. "They're all three going, " she said, "after Tuesday. Then--before six. "

"Wednesday?"

"Yes. "

"Suppose after all, " she threw out, "I can't come. "

"Fortunes of war. "

"If I can't come one morning I may come another, " she spoke hastily, andI perceived that Guy and Maxton had turned and were waiting for us. 

"You know the old Ice House?"

"Towards the gardens?"

"Yes. On the further side. Don't come by the road, come across by theend of the mere. Lie in the bracken until you see me coming.... I've notplayed tennis a dozen times this year. Not half a dozen. "

This last was for the boys. 

"You've played twenty times at least since you've been here, " said Guy, with the simple bluntness of a brother. "I'm certain. "

§ 2

To this day a dewy morning in late August brings back the thought ofMary and those stolen meetings. I have the minutest recollection of themisty bloom upon the turf, and the ragged, filmy carpet of gossamer oneither hand, of the warm wetness of every little blade and blossom andof the little scraps and seeds of grass upon my soaking and discoloredboots. Our footsteps were dark green upon the dew-grey grass. And I feelthe same hungry freshness again at the thought of those stolen meetings. Presently came the sunrise, blinding, warming, dew-dispelling arrows ofgold smiting through the tree stems, a flood of light foaming over thebracken and gilding the under sides of the branches. Everything isdifferent and distinctive in those opening hours; everything has adifferent value from what it has by day. All the little things upon theground, fallen branches, tussocks, wood-piles, have a peculiar intensityand importance, seem magnified, because of the length of their shadowsin the slanting rays, and all the great trees seem lifted above thelight and merged with the sky. And at last, a cool grey outline againstthe blaze and with a glancing iridescent halo about her, comes Mary, flitting, adventurous, friendly, wonderful. 

"Oh Stevenage!" she cries, "to see you again!"

We each hold out both our hands and clasp and hesitate and rather shylykiss. 

"Come!" she says, "we can talk for an hour. It's still not six. Andthere is a fallen branch where we can sit and put our feet out of thewet. Oh! it's so good to be out of things again--clean out ofthings--with you. Look! there is a stag watching us. "

"You're glad to be with me?" I ask, jealous of the very sunrise. 

"I am always glad, " she says, "to be with you. Why don't we always getup at dawn, Stevenage, every day of our lives?"

We go rustling through the grass to the prostrate timber she has chosen. (I can remember even the thin bracelet on the wrist of the hand thatlifted her skirt. ) I help her to clamber into a comfortable fork fromwhich her feet can swing.... 

Such fragments as this are as bright, as undimmed, as if we had met thismorning. But then comes our conversation, and that I find vague andirregularly obliterated. But I think I must have urged her to say sheloved me, and beat about the bush of that declaration, too fearful toput my heart's wish to the issue, that she would promise to wait threeyears for me--until I could prove it was not madness for her to marryme. "I have been thinking of it all night and every night since I havebeen here, " I said. "Somehow I will do something. In some way--I willget hold of things. Believe me!--with all my strength. "

I was standing between the forking boughs, and she was looking down uponme. 

"Stephen dear, " she said, "dear, dear Boy; I have never wanted to kissyou so much in all my life. Dear, come close to me. "

She bent her fresh young face down to mine, her fingers were in my hair. 

"My Knight, " she whispered close to me. "My beautiful young Knight. "

I whispered back and touched her dew fresh lips.... 

"And tell me what you would do to conquer the world for me?" she asked. 

I cannot remember now a word of all the vague threatenings against thesundering universe with which I replied. Her hand was on my shoulder asshe listened.... 

But I do know that even on this first morning she left me with a senseof beautiful unreality, of having dipped for some precious moments intoheroic gossamer. All my world subjugation seemed already as evanescentas the morning haze and the vanishing dews as I stood, a little hiddenin the shadows of the Killing Wood and ready to plunge back at the firsthint of an observer, and watched her slender whiteness flitcircumspectly towards the house. 

§ 3

Our next three or four meetings are not so clearly defined. We did notmeet every morning for fear that her early rising should seem toopunctual to be no more than a chance impulse, nor did we go to the sameplace. But there stands out very clearly a conversation in a differentmood. We had met at the sham ruins at the far end of the greatshrubbery, a huge shattered Corinthian portico of rather damaged stuccogiving wide views of the hills towards Alfridsham between its threeerect pillars, and affording a dry seat upon its fallen ones. It was anovercast morning, I remember probably the hour was earlier; a kind oftwilight clearness made the world seem strange and the bushes and treesbetween us and the house very heavy and still and dark. And we were atcross purpose, for now it was becoming clear to me that Mary did notmean to marry me, that she dreaded making any promise to me for thefuture, that all the heroic common cause I wanted with her, was quitealien to her dreams. 

"But Mary, " I said looking at her colorless delicate face, "don't youlove me? Don't you want me?"

"You know I love you, Stevenage, " she said. "You know. "

"But if two people love one another, they want to be always together, they want to belong to each other. "

She looked at me with her face very intent upon her meaning. "Stevenage, " she said after one of those steadfast pauses of hers, "Iwant to belong to myself. "

"Naturally, " I said with an air of disposing of an argument, and thenpaused. 

"Why should one have to tie oneself always to one other human being?"she asked. "Why must it be like that?"

I do not remember how I tried to meet this extraordinary idea. "Oneloves, " I may have said. The subtle scepticisms of her mind wentaltogether beyond my habits of thinking; it had never occurred to methat there was any other way of living except in these voluntary andinvoluntary mutual servitudes in which men and women live and die. "Ifyou love me, " I urged, "if you love me---- I want nothing better in allmy life but to love and serve and keep you and make you happy. "

She surveyed me and weighed my words against her own. 

"I love meeting you, " she said. "I love your going because it meansthat afterwards you will come again. I love this--this slipping out toyou. But up there, there is a room in the house that is _my_place--me--my own. Nobody follows me there. I want to go on living, Stevenage, just as I am living now. I don't want to become someone'scertain possession, to be just usual and familiar to anyone. No, noteven to you. "

"But if you love, " I cried. 

"To you least of all. Don't you see?--I want to be wonderful to you, Stevenage, more than to anyone. I want--I want always to make your heartbeat faster. I want always to be coming to you with my own heart beatingfaster. Always and always I want it to be like that. Just as it has beenon these mornings. It has been beautiful--altogether beautiful. "

"Yes, " I said, rather helplessly, and struggled with great issues I hadnever faced before. 

"It isn't, " I said, "how people live. "

"It is how I want to live, " said Mary. 

"It isn't the way life goes. "

"I want it to be. Why shouldn't it be? Why at any rate shouldn't it befor me?"

§ 4

I made some desperate schemes to grow suddenly rich and powerful, and Ilearnt for the first time my true economic value. Already my father andI had been discussing my prospects in life and he had been finding mevague and difficult. I was full of large political intentions, but sofar I had made no definite plans for a living that would render mypolitical ambitions possible. It was becoming apparent to me that for apoor man in England, the only possible route to political distinction isthe bar, and I was doing my best to reconcile myself to the years ofwaiting and practice that would have to precede my political début. 

My father disliked the law. And I do not think it reconciled him to theidea of my being a barrister that afterwards I hoped to become apolitician. "It isn't in our temperament, Stephen, " he said. "It's apushing, bullying, cramming, base life. I don't see you succeedingthere, and I don't see myself rejoicing even if you do succeed. You haveto shout, and Strattons don't shout; you have to be smart and tricky andthere's never been a smart and tricky Stratton yet; you have to snatchopportunities and get the better of the people and misrepresent therealities of every case you touch. You're a paid misrepresenter. Theysay you'll get a fellowship, Stephen. Why not stay up, and do somethinking for a year or so. There'll be enough to keep you. Write alittle. "

"The bar, " I said, "is only a means to an end. "

"If you succeed. "

"If I succeed. One has to take the chances of life everywhere. "

"And what is the end?"

"Constructive statesmanship. "

"Not in that way, " said my father, pouring himself a second glass ofport, and turned over my high-sounding phrase with a faint hint ofdistaste; "Constructive Statesmanship. No. Once a barrister always abarrister. You'll only be a party politician.... Vulgar men.... Vulgar.... If you succeed that is.... "

He criticized me but he did not oppose me, and already in the beginningof the summer we had settled that I should be called to the bar. 

Now suddenly I wanted to go back upon all these determinations. I beganto demand in the intellectual slang of the time "more actuality, " and toamaze my father with talk about empire makers and the greatness of LordStrathcona and Cecil Rhodes. Why, I asked, shouldn't I travel for a yearin search of opportunity? At Oxford I had made acquaintance with a sonof Pramley's, the big Mexican and Borneo man, and to him I wrote, apropos of a half-forgotten midnight talk in the rooms of some commonfriend. He wrote back with the suggestion that I should go and talk tohis father, and I tore myself away from Mary and went up to see thatgreat exploiter of undeveloped possibilities and have one of the mostilluminating and humiliating conversations in the world. He was, Iremember, a little pale-complexioned, slow-speaking man with a humorousblue eye, a faint, just perceptible northern accent and a trick ofkeeping silent for a moment after you had finished speaking, and hetalked to me as one might talk to a child of eight who wanted to knowhow one could become a commander-in-chief. His son had evidentlyemphasized my Union reputation, and he would have been quite willing, Iperceived, to give me employment if I had displayed the slightestintelligence or ability in any utilizable direction. But quitedreadfully he sounded my equipment with me and showed me the emptinessof my stores. 

"You want some way that gives you a chance of growing rich rapidly, " hesaid. "Aye. It's not a bad idea. But there's others, you know, havetried that game before ye. 

"You don't want riches just for riches but for an end. Aye! Aye! It'sthe spending attracts ye. You'd not have me think you'd the sin ofavarice. I'm clear on that about ye. 

"Well, " he explained, "it's all one of three things we do, youknow--prospecting and forestalling and--just stealing, and the onlyrespectable way is prospecting. You'd prefer the respectable way, Isuppose?... I knew ye would. Well, let's see what chances ye have. "

And he began to probe my practical knowledge. It was like an unfit manstripping for a medical inspection. Did I know anything of oil, ofrubber, of sugar, of substances generally, had I studied mineralogy orgeology, had I any ideas of industrial processes, of technicalchemistry, of rare minerals, of labor problems and the handling of alienlabor, of the economics of railway management or of camping out in dry, thinly populated countries, or again could I maybe speak Spanish orItalian or Russian? The little dons who career about Oxford afoot andawheel, wearing old gowns and mortarboards, giggling over Spooner'slatest, and being tremendous "characters" in the intervals of concoctingthe ruling-class mind, had turned my mind away from such mattersaltogether. I had left that sort of thing to Germans and east-end Jewsand young men from the upper-grade board schools of Sheffield andBirmingham. I was made to realize appalling wildernesses ofignorance.... 

"You see, " said old Pramley, "you don't seem to know anything whatever. It's a deeficulty. It'll stand in your way a little now, though nodoubt you'd be quick at the uptake--after all the education they'vegiven ye.... But it stands in your way, if ye think of setting out to dosomething large and effective, just immediately.... "

Moreover it came out, I forget now how, that I hadn't clearly graspedthe difference between cumulative and non-cumulative preferenceshares.... 

I remember too how I dined alone that evening in a mood between franticexasperation and utter abasement in the window of the MediatedUniversities Club, of which I was a junior member under theundergraduate rule. And I lay awake all night in one of the austere clubbedrooms, saying to old Pramley a number of extremely able andpenetrating things that had unhappily not occurred to me during theprogress of our interview. I didn't go back to Burnmore for severaldays. I had set my heart on achieving something, on returning with someearnest of the great attack I was to make upon the separating greatworld between myself and Mary. I am far enough off now from that angryand passionate youngster to smile at the thought that my subjugation ofthings in general and high finance in particular took at last the formof proposing to go into the office of Bean, Medhurst, Stockton, andSchnadhorst upon half commission terms. I was awaiting my father's replyto this startling new suggestion when I got a telegram from Mary. "Weare going to Scotland unexpectedly. Come down and see me. " I went homeinstantly, and told my father I had come to talk things over with him. Anote from Mary lay upon the hall-table as I came in and encountered myfather. "I thought it better to come down to you, " I said with myglance roving to find that, and then I met his eye. It wasn't altogetheran unkindly eye, but I winced dishonestly. 

"Talking is better for all sorts of things, " said my father, and wantedto know if the weather had been as hot in London as it had been inBurnmore. 

Mary's note was in pencil, scribbled hastily. I was to wait after eleventhat night near the great rose bushes behind the pavilion. Long beforeeleven I was there, on a seat in a thick shadow looking across greatlakes of moonlight towards the phantom statuary of the Italianate gardenand the dark laurels that partly masked the house. I waited nearly anhour, an hour of stillness and small creepings and cheepings and goingsto and fro among the branches. 

In the bushes near by me a little green glow-worm shared my vigil. 

And then, wrapped about in a dark velvet cloak, still in her whitedinner dress, with shining, gleaming, glancing stones about her dearthroat, warm and wonderful and glowing and daring, Mary came flittingout of the shadows to me. 

"My dear, " she whispered, panting and withdrawing a little from ourfirst passionate embrace, "Oh my dear!... How did I come? Twice before, when I was a girl, I got out this way. By the corner of the conservatoryand down the laundry wall. You can't see from here, but it's easy--easy. There's a tree that helps. And now I have come that way to you. _You!... _

"Oh! love me, my Stephen, love me, dear. Love me as if we were never tolove again. Am I beautiful, my dear? Am I beautiful in the moonlight?Tell me!... 

"Perhaps this is the night of our lives, dear! Perhaps never again willyou and I be happy!... 

"But the wonder, dear, the beauty! Isn't it still? It's as if nothingreally stood solid and dry. As if everything floated.... 

"Everyone in all the world has gone to sleep to-night and left the worldto us. Come! Come this way and peep at the house, there. Stoop--underthe branches. See, not a light is left! And all its blinds are drawn andits eyes shut. One window is open, _my_ little window, Stephen! but thatis in the shadow where that creeper makes everything black. 

"Along here a little further is night-stock. Now--Now! Sniff, Stephen!Sniff! The scent of it! It lies--like a bank of scented air.... AndStephen, there! Look!... A star--a star without a sound, falling out ofthe blue! It's gone!"

There was her dear face close to mine, soft under the soft moonlight, and the breath of her sweet speech mingled with the scent of thenight-stock.... 

That was indeed the most beautiful night of my life, a night ofmoonlight and cool fragrance and adventurous excitement. We weretransported out of this old world of dusty limitations; it was as if forthose hours the curse of man was lifted from our lives. No onediscovered us, no evil thing came near us. For a long time we lay closein one another's arms upon a bank of thyme. Our heads were closetogether; her eyelashes swept my cheek, we spoke rarely and in softwhispers, and our hearts were beating, beating. We were as solemn asgreat mountains and as innocent as sleeping children. Our kisses werekisses of moonlight. And it seemed to me that nothing that had everhappened or could happen afterwards, mattered against that happiness.... 

It was nearly three when at last I came back into my father's garden. Noone had missed me from my room and the house was all asleep, but I couldnot get in because I had closed a latch behind me, and so I stayed inthe little arbor until day, watching the day break upon long beaches ofpale cloud over the hills towards Alfridsham. I slept at last with myhead upon my arms upon the stone table, until the noise of shootingbolts and doors being unlocked roused me to watch my chance and slipback again into the house, and up the shuttered darkened staircase to mytranquil, undisturbed bedroom. 

§ 5

It was in the vein of something evasive in Mary's character that she letme hear first of her engagement to Justin through the _Times_. Awaythere in Scotland she got I suppose new perspectives, new ideas; theglow of our immediate passion faded. The thing must have been drawing inupon her for some time. Perhaps she had meant to tell me of it all thatnight when she had summoned me to Burnmore. Looking back now I am themore persuaded that she did. But the thing came to me in London with theeffect of an immense treachery. Within a day or so of the newspaper'sannouncement she had written me a long letter answering some argument ofmine, and saying nothing whatever of the people about her. Even thenJustin must have been asking her to marry him. Her mind must have beenfull of that question. Then came a storm of disappointment, humiliationand anger with this realization. I can still feel myself writing anddestroying letters to her, letters of satire, of protest. Oddly enough Icannot recall the letter that at last I sent her, but it is eloquent ofthe weak boyishness of my position that I sent it in our usual furtivemanner, accepted every precaution that confessed the impossibility ofour relationship. "No, " she scribbled back, "you do not understand. Icannot write. I must talk to you. "

We had a secret meeting. 

With Beatrice Normandy's connivance she managed to get away for thebetter part of the day, and we spent a long morning in argument in theBotanical Gardens--that obvious solitude--and afterwards we lunched uponham and ginger beer at a little open-air restaurant near the Broad Walkand talked on until nearly four. We were so young that I think we bothfelt, beneath our very real and vivid emotions, a gratifying sense ofromantic resourcefulness in this prolonged discussion. There issomething ridiculously petty and imitative about youth, something too, naïvely noble and adventurous. I can never determine if older people areless generous and imaginative or merely less absurd. I still recall theautumnal melancholy of that queer, neglected-looking place, in which Ihad never been before, and which I have never revisited--a memory ofwalking along narrow garden paths beside queer leaf-choked artificialchannels of water under yellow-tinted trees, of rustic bridges goingnowhere in particular, and of a kind of brickwork ruined castle, greatlydecayed and ivy-grown, in which we sat for a long time looking out upona lawn and a wide gravel path leading to a colossal frontage ofconservatory. 

I must have been resentful and bitter in the beginning of that talk. Ido not remember that I had any command of the situation or did anythingbut protest throughout that day. I was too full of the egotism of theyoung lover to mark Mary's moods and feelings. It was only afterwardsthat I came to understand that she was not wilfully and deliberatelyfollowing the course that was to separate us, that she was taking itwith hesitations and regrets. Yet she spoke plainly enough, she spokewith a manifest sincerity of feeling. And while I had neither the graspnor the subtlety to get behind her mind I perceive now as I think thingsout that Lady Ladislaw had both watched and acted, had determined herdaughter's ideas, sown her mind with suggestions, imposed upon her aconception of her situation that now dominated all her thoughts. 

"Dear Stephen, " reiterated Mary, "I love you. I do, clearly, definitely, deliberately love you. Haven't I told you that? Haven't I made thatplain to you?"

"But you are going to marry Justin!"

"Stephen dear, can I possibly marry you? Can I?"

"Why not? Why not make the adventure of life with me? Dare!"

She looked down on me. She was sitting upon a parapet of the brickworkand I was below her. She seemed to be weighing possibilities. 

"Why not?" I cried. "Even now. Why not run away with me, throw our twolives together? Do as lovers have dared to do since the beginning ofthings! Let us go somewhere together----"

"But Stephen, " she asked softly, "_where_?"

"Anywhere!"

She spoke as an elder might do to a child. "No! tell me where--exactly. Where would it be? Where should we go? How should we live? Tell me. Makeme see it, Stephen. "

"You are too cruel to me, Mary, " I said. "How can I--on the spur of themoment--arrange----?"

"But dear, suppose it was somewhere very grimy and narrow!Something--like some of those back streets I came through to get here. Suppose it was some dreadful place. And you had no money. And we wereboth worried and miserable. One gets ill in such places. If I loved you, Stephen--I mean if you and I--if you and I were to be together, I shouldwant it to be in sunshine, I should want it to be among beautifulforests and mountains. Somewhere very beautiful.... "

"Why not?"

"Because--to-day I know. There are no such places in the world for us. Stephen, they are dreams. "

"For three years now, " I said, "I have dreamed such dreams. 

"Oh!" I cried out, stung by my own words, "but this is cowardice! Whyshould we submit to this old world! Why should we give up--things youhave dreamed as well as I! You said once--to hear my voice--calling inthe morning.... Let us take each other, Mary, now. _Now!_ Let us takeeach other, and"--I still remember my impotent phrase--"afterwards countthe cost!"

"If I were a queen, " said Mary. "But you see I am not a queen. " ... 

So we talked in fragments and snatches of argument, and all she saidmade me see more clearly the large hopelessness of my desire. "Atleast, " I urged, "do not marry Justin now. Give me a chance. Give methree years, Mary, three short years, to work, to do something!"

She knew so clearly now the quality of her own intentions. 

"Dear Stephen, " she explained, "if I were to come away with you andmarry you, in just a little time I should cease to be your lover, Ishould be your squaw. I should have to share your worries and make yourcoffee--and disappoint you, disappoint you and fail you in a hundredways. Think! Should I be any good as a squaw? How can one love when oneknows the coffee isn't what it should be, and one is giving one's loverindigestion? And I don't _want_ to be your squaw. I don't want that atall. It isn't how I feel for you. I don't _want_ to be your servant andyour possession. "

"But you will be Justin's--squaw, you are going to marry him!"

"That is all different, Stevenage. Between him and me there will bespace, air, dignity, endless servants----"

"But, " I choked. "You! He! He will make love to you, Mary. "

"You don't understand, Stephen. "

"He will make love to you, Mary. Mary! don't you understand? Thesethings---- We've never talked of them.... You will bear him children!"

"No, " she said. 

"But----"

"No. He promises. Stephen, --I am to own myself. "

"But--He marries you!"

"Yes. Because he--he admires me. He cannot live without me. He loves mycompany. He loves to be seen with me. He wants me with him to enjoy allthe things he has. Can't you understand, Stephen?"

"But do you mean----?"

Our eyes met. 

"Stephen, " she said, "I swear. "

"But---- He hopes. "

"I don't care. He has promised. I have his promise. I shall be free. Oh!I shall be free--free! He is a different man from you, Stephen. He isn'tso fierce; he isn't so greedy. "

"But it parts us!"

"Only from impossible things. "

"It parts us. "

"It does not even part us, Stevenage. We shall see one another! we shalltalk to one another. "

"I shall lose you. "

"I shall keep you. "

"But I--do you expect me to be content with _this_?"

"I will make you content. Oh! Stephen dear, can't there be love--lovewithout this clutching, this gripping, this carrying off?"

"You will be carried altogether out of my world. "

"If I thought that, Stephen, indeed I would not marry him. "

But I insisted we should be parted, and parted in the end for ever, andthere I was the wiser of the two. I knew the insatiable urgency withinmyself. I knew that if I continued to meet Mary I should continue todesire her until I possessed her altogether. 

§ 6

I cannot reproduce with any greater exactness than this the quality andgist of our day-long conversation. Between us was a deep affection, andinstinctive attraction, and our mental temperaments and our fundamentalideas were profoundly incompatible. We were both still very young inquality, we had scarcely begun to think ourselves out, we were greatlyswayed by the suggestion of our circumstances, complex, incoherent andformless emotions confused our minds. But I see now that in us therestruggled vast creative forces, forces that through a long future, informs as yet undreamt of, must needs mould the destiny of our race. Farmore than Mary I was accepting the conventions of our time. It seemed tome not merely reasonable but necessary that because she loved me sheshould place her life in my youthful and inexpert keeping, share mystruggles and the real hardships they would have meant for her, devoteherself to my happiness, bear me children, be my inspiration inimaginative moments, my squaw, helper and possession through the wholetwenty-four hours of every day, and incidentally somehow rear whateverfamily we happened to produce, and I was still amazed in the depths ofmy being that she did not reciprocate this simple and comprehensiveintention. I was ready enough I thought for equivalent sacrifices. I wasprepared to give my whole life, subordinate all my ambitions, to theeffort to maintain our home. If only I could have her, have her for myown, I was ready to pledge every hour I had still to live to thatservice. It seemed mere perversity to me then that she should turn evensuch vows as that against me. 

"But I don't want it, Stevenage, " she said. "I don't want it. I want youto go on to the service of the empire, I want to see you do greatthings, do all the things we've talked about and written about. Don'tyou see how much better that is for you and for me--and for the worldand our lives? I don't want you to become a horrible little specialistin feeding and keeping me. "

"Then--then _wait_ for me!" I cried. 

"But--I want to live myself! I don't want to wait. I want a great house, I want a great position, I want space and freedom. I want to haveclothes--and be as splendid as your career is going to be. I want to bea great and shining lady in your life. I can't always live as I do now, dependent on my mother, whirled about by her movements, living in herlight. Why should I be just a hard-up Vestal Virgin, Stephen, in yourhonor? You will not be able to marry me for years and years andyears--unless you neglect your work, unless you throw away everythingthat is worth having between us in order just to get me. "

"But I want _you_, Mary, " I cried, drumming at the little green tablewith my fist. "I want you. I want nothing else in all the world unlessit has to do with you. "

"You've got me--as much as anyone will ever have me. You'll always haveme. Always I will write to you, talk to you, watch you. Why are you sogreedy, Stephen? Why are you so ignoble? If I were to come now and marryyou, it wouldn't help you. It would turn you into--a wife-keeper, intothe sort of uninteresting preoccupied man one sees running after andgloating over the woman he's bought--at the price of his money and hisdignity--and everything.... It's not proper for a man to live so for awoman and her children. It's dwarfish. It's enslaving. It's--it'sindecent. Stephen! I'd hate you so. " ... 

§ 7

We parted at last at a cab-rank near a bridge over the Canal at thewestern end of Park Village. I remember that I made a last appeal to heras we walked towards it, and that we loitered on the bridge, careless ofwho might see us there, in a final conflict of our wills. "Before it istoo late, Mary, dear, " I said. 

She shook her head, her white lips pressed together. 

"But after the things that have happened. That night--the moonlight!"

"It's not fair, " she said, "for you to talk of that. It isn't fair. "

"But Mary. This is parting. This indeed is parting. "

She answered never a word. 

"Then at least talk to me again for one time more. "

"Afterwards, " she said. "Afterwards I will talk to you. Don't makethings too hard for me, Stephen. "

"If I could I would make this impossible. It's--it's hateful. "

She turned to the kerb, and for a second or so we stood there withoutspeaking. Then I beckoned to a hansom. 

She told me Beatrice Normandy's address. 

I helped her into the cab. "Good-bye, " I said with a weak affectationof an everyday separation, and I turned to the cabman with herinstructions. 

Then again we looked at one another. The cabman waited. "All right, sir?" he asked. 

"Go ahead!" I said, and lifted my hat to the little white face within. 

I watched the cab until it vanished round the curve of the road. Then Iturned about to a world that had become very large and empty andmeaningless. 

§ 8

I struggled feebly to arrest the course of events. I wrote Mary someviolent and bitter letters. I treated her as though she alone wereresponsible for my life and hers; I said she had diverted my energies, betrayed me, ruined my life. I hinted she was cold-blooded, mercenary, shameless. Someday you, with that quick temper of yours and your powerof expression, will understand that impulse to write, to pour out apassionately unjust interpretation of some nearly intolerable situation, and it is not the least of all the things I owe to Mary that sheunderstood my passion and forgave those letters and forgot them. I triedtwice to go and see her. But I do not think I need tell you, little son, of these self-inflicted humiliations and degradations. An angry man isnone the less a pitiful man because he is injurious. The hope that hadheld together all the project of my life was gone, and all my thoughtsand emotions lay scattered in confusion.... 

You see, my little son, there are two sorts of love; we use one namefor very different things. The love that a father bears his children, that a mother feels, that comes sometimes, a strange brightness andtenderness that is half pain, at the revelation of some touching aspectof one long known to one, at the sight of a wife bent with fatigue andunsuspicious of one's presence, at the wretchedness and perplexity ofsome wrong-doing brother, or at an old servant's unanticipated tears, that is love--like the love God must bear us. That is the love we mustspread from those of our marrow until it reaches out to all mankind, that will some day reach out to all mankind. But the love of a young manfor a woman takes this quality only in rare moments of illumination andcomplete assurance. My love for Mary was a demand, it was a wanton claimI scored the more deeply against her for every moment of happiness shegave me. I see now that as I emerged from the first abjection of myadmiration and began to feel assured of her affection, I meant nothingby her but to possess her, I did not want her to be happy as I want youto be happy even at the price of my life; I wanted her. I wanted her asbarbarians want a hunted enemy, alive or dead. It was a flaming jealousyto have her mine. That granted, then I was prepared for alldevotions.... 

This is how men love women. Almost as exclusively and fiercely I thinkdo women love men. And the deepest question before humanity is just howfar this jealous greed may be subdued to a more generous passion. Thefierce jealousy of men for women and women for men is the very heart ofall our social jealousies, the underlying tension of this crowded modernlife that has grown out of the ampler, simpler, ancient life of men. That is why we compete against one another so bitterly, refuseassociation and generous co-operations, keep the struggle for existencehard and bitter, hamper and subordinate the women as they in their turnwould if they could hamper and subordinate the men--because each mustthoroughly have his own. 

And I knew my own heart too well to have any faith in Justin and hisword. He was taking what he could, and his mind would never rest untilsome day he had all. I had seen him only once, but the heavy andresolute profile above his bent back and slender shoulders stuck in mymemory. 

If he was cruel to Mary, I told her, or broke his least promise to her, I should kill him. 

§ 9

My distress grew rather than diminished in the days immediately beforeher marriage, and that day itself stands out by itself in my memory, aday of wandering and passionate unrest. My imagination tormented me withthoughts of Justin as a perpetual privileged wooer. 

Well, well, --I will not tell you, I will not write the ugly mockeries myimagination conjured up. I was constantly on the verge of talking andcursing aloud to myself, or striking aimlessly at nothing with clenchedfists. I was too stupid to leave London, too disturbed for work or anydistraction of my mind. I wandered about the streets of London all day. In the morning I came near going to the church and making somepreposterous interruptions. And I remember discovering three or fourcarriages adorned with white favors and a little waiting crowd outsidethat extinguisher-spired place at the top of Regent Street, andwondering for a moment or so at their common preoccupation, and thenunderstanding. Of course, another marriage! Of all devilishinstitutions!

What was I to do with my life now? What was to become of my life? I canstill recall the sense of blank unanswerableness with which thesequestions dominated my mind, and associated with it is an effect ofmyself as a small human being, singular and apart, wandering through anumber of London landscapes. At one time I was in a great greysmoke-rimmed autumnal space of park, much cut up by railings and worn bycricket pitches, far away from any idea of the Thames, and in thedistance over the tops of trees I discovered perplexingly the clusteringmasts and spars of ships. I have never seen that place since. Then theAngel at Islington is absurdly mixed up with the distresses of this day. I attempted some great detour thence, and found myself with a dumbirritation returning to the place from another direction. I remember tooa wide street over which passes a thundering railway bridge borne uponcolossal rounded pillars of iron, and carrying in white and blue somebig advertisement, I think of the _Daily Telegraph_. Near there Ithought a crowd was gathered about the victim of some accident, andthrusting myself among the people with a vague idea of help, discovereda man selling a remedy for corns. And somewhere about this north regionI discovered I was faint with hunger, and got some bread and cheese andbeer in a gaudily decorated saloon bar with a sanded floor. I resisteda monstrous impulse to stay in that place and drink myself intoinactivity and stupefaction with beer. 

Then for a long time I sat upon an iron seat near some flower beds in akind of garden that had the headstones of graves arranged in a rowagainst a yellow brick wall. The place was flooded with the ambersunshine of a September afternoon. I shared the seat with a nursemaid incharge of a perambulator and several scuffling uneasy children, and Ikept repeating to myself: "By now it is all over. The thing is done. "

My sense of the enormity of London increased with the twilight, andbegan to prevail a little against my intense personal wretchedness. Iremember wastes of building enterprise, interminable vistas of wide darkstreets, with passing trams, and here and there at strategic cornerscoruscating groups of shops. And somewhere I came along a narrow streetsuddenly upon the distant prospect of a great monstrous absurd place ona steep hill against the last brightness of the evening sky, a burlesqueblock of building with huge truncated pyramids at either corner, that Ihave since learnt was the Alexandra Palace. It was so queer and bulkythat it arrested and held my attention, struck on my memory with analmost dreamlike quality, so that years afterwards I went to MuswellHill to see if indeed there really was such a place on earth, or whetherI had had a waking nightmare during my wanderings.... 

I wandered far that night, very far. Some girl accosted me, a thin-facedruined child younger by a year or so than myself. I remembered how Italked to her, foolish rambling talk. "If you loved a man, and he waspoor, you'd wait, " I said, "you'd stick to him. You'd not leave himjust to get married to a richer man. "

We prowled talking for a time, and sat upon a seat somewhere near theRegent's Park canal. I rather think I planned to rescue her from afallen life, but somehow we dropped that topic. I know she kissed me. Ihave a queer impression that it came into my head to marry her. I putall my loose money in her hands at last and went away extraordinarilycomforted by her, I know not how, leaving her no doubt wonderinggreatly. 

I did not go to bed that night at all, nor to the office next morning. Inever showed myself in the office again. Instead I went straight down tomy father, and told him I wanted to go to the war forthwith. I had anindistinct memory of a promise I had made Mary to stay in England, but Ifelt it was altogether unendurable that I should ever meet her again. Myfather sat at table over the remains of his lunch, and regarded me withastonishment, with the beginnings of protest. 

"I want to get away, " I said, and to my own amazement and shame I burstinto tears. 

"My boy!" he gasped, astonished and terrified. "You've--you've notdone--some foolish thing?"

"No, " I said, already wiping the tears from my face, "nothing.... But Iwant to go away. "

"You shall do as you please, " he said, and sat for a moment regardinghis only son with unfathomable eyes. 

Then he got up with a manner altogether matter-of-fact, came half-wayround the table and mixed me a whisky and soda. "It won't be much of awar, I'm told, " he said with the syphon in his hands, breaking asilence. "I sometimes wish--I had seen a bit of soldiering. And thisseems to be an almost unavoidable war. Now, at any rate, it'sunavoidable.... Drink this and have a biscuit. "

He turned to the mantelshelf, and filled his pipe with his broad back tome. "Yes, " he said, "you---- You'll be interested in the war. I hope----I hope you'll have a good time there.... "

CHAPTER THE FIFTH

THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA

§ 1

Mary and I did not meet again for five years, and for nearly all thattime I remained in South Africa. I went from England a boy; I came backseasoned into manhood. They had been years of crowded experience, rapidyet complicated growth, disillusionment and thought. Responsibility hadcome to me. I had seen death, I had seen suffering, and held the livesof men in my hands. 

Of course one does not become a soldier on active service at once forthe wishing, and there was not at first that ready disposition on thepart of the home military authorities which arose later, to send outyoung enthusiasts. I could ride and shoot fairly well, and accordingly Idecided to go on my own account to Durban--for it was manifest thatthings would begin in Natal--and there attach myself to some of thelocal volunteer corps that would certainly be raised. This took me outof England at once, a thing that fell in very well with my mood. Iwould, I was resolved, begin life afresh. I would force myself to thinkof nothing but the war. I would never if I could help it think of Maryagain. 

The war had already begun when I reached Durban. The town was seethingwith the news of a great British victory at Dundee. We came into theport through rain and rough weather and passed a big white liner loadedup feverishly from steam tenders with wealthy refugees goingEngland-ward. From two troopships against the wharves there was a greatbusiness of landing horses--the horses of the dragoons and hussars fromIndia. I spent the best part of my first night in South Africa in thestreets looking in vain for a bedroom, and was helped at last by akindly rickshaw Zulu to a shanty where I slept upon three chairs. Iremember I felt singularly unwanted. 

The next day I set about my volunteering. By midday I had openedcommunications with that extremely untried and problematical body, theImperial Light Horse, and in three days more I was in the company of amixed batch of men, mostly Australian volunteers, on my way to a place Ihad never heard of before called Ladysmith, through a country ofincreasing picturesqueness and along a curious curving little line whosedown traffic seemed always waiting in sidings, and consisted of crowdedlittle trains full of pitiful fugitives, white, brown, and black, stifled and starving. They were all clamoring to buy food and drink--andnone seemed forthcoming. We shunted once to allow a southbound train topass, a peculiar train that sent everyone on to the line tosee--prisoners of war! There they were, real live enemies, rather glum, looking out at us with faces very like our own--but rather moreunshaven. They had come from the battle of Elandslaagte.... 

I had never been out of England before except for a littlemountaineering in the French Alps and one walking excursion in the BlackForest, and the scenery of lower Natal amazed me. I had expectednothing nearly so tropical, so rich and vivid. There were littleMozambique monkeys chattering in the thick-set trees beside the line anda quantity of unfamiliar birds and gaudy flowers amidst the abundantdeep greenery. There were aloe and cactus hedges, patches of unfamiliarcultivation upon the hills; bunchy, frondy growths that I learnt werebananas and plantains, and there were barbaric insanitary-looking Kaffirkraals which I supposed had vanished before our civilization. Thereseemed an enormous quantity of Kaffirs all along the line--and all ofthem, men, women, and children, were staring at the train. The scenerygrew finer and bolder, and more bare and mountainous, until at last wecame out into the great basin in which lay this Ladysmith. It seemed apoor unimportant, dusty little street of huts as we approached it, butthe great crests beyond struck me as very beautiful in the morninglight.... 

I forgot the beauty of those hills as we drew into the station. It wasthe morning after the surrender of Nicholson's Nek. I had come to joinan army already tremendously astonished and shattered. The sunnyprospect of a triumphal procession to Pretoria which had been still inmen's minds at Durban had vanished altogether. In rather less than afortnight of stubborn fighting we had displayed a strategy that wasflighty rather than brilliant, and lost a whole battery of guns andnearly twelve hundred prisoners. We had had compensations, our commonsoldiers were good stuff at any rate, but the fact was clear that wewere fighting an army not only very much bigger than ours but betterequipped, with bigger guns, better information, and it seemed superiorstrategy. We were being shoved back into this Ladysmith and encircled. This confused, disconcerted, and thoroughly bad-tempered army, whosemules and bullocks cumbered the central street of the place, was allthat was left of the British Empire in Natal. Behind it was anunprotected country and the line to Pietermaritzburg, Durban, and thesea. 

You cannot imagine how amazed I felt at it. I had been prepared for asort of Kentucky quality in the enemy, illiteracy, pluck, guile and goodshooting, but to find them with more modern arms than our own, moremodern methods! Weren't we there, after all, to teach _them_! Weren't wethe Twentieth and they the Eighteenth Century? The town had been shelledthe day before from those very hills I had admired; at any time it mightbe shelled again. The nose of a big gun was pointed out to me by ablasphemous little private in the Devons. It was a tremendous, aprofoundly impressive, black snout. His opinions of the directing wisdomat home were unquotable. The platform was a wild confusion of women andchildren and colored people, --there was even an invalid lady on astretcher. Every non-combatant who could be got out of Ladysmith wasbeing hustled out that day. Everyone was smarting with the sense ofdefeat in progress, everyone was disappointed and worried; one got shortanswers to one's questions. For a time I couldn't even find out where Ihad to go.... 

§ 2

I fired my first shot at a fellow-creature within four days of myarrival. We rode out down the road to the south to search some hills, and found the Boers in fair strength away to the east of us. We weredismounted and pushed up on foot through a wood to a grassy crest. Therefor the first time I saw the enemy, little respectable-lookingunsoldierlike figures, mostly in black, dodging about upon a ridgeperhaps a mile away. I took a shot at one of these figures just beforeit vanished into a gully. One or two bullets came overhead, and I triedto remember what I had picked up about cover. They made a sound, _whiff-er-whiff_, a kind of tearing whistle, and there was nothing but adistant crackling to give one a hint of their direction until they tookeffect. I remember the peculiar smell of the grass amidst which Icrouched, my sudden disgust to realize I was lying, and had to lie nowfor an indefinite time, in the open sunlight and far from any shade, andhow I wondered whether after all I had wanted to come to this war. 

We lay shooting intermittently until the afternoon, I couldn'tunderstand why; we went forward a little, and at last retired uponLadysmith. On the way down to the horses, I came upon my first dead man. He was lying in a crumpled heap not fifty yards from where I had beenshooting. There he lay, the shattered mirror of a world. One side of hisskull over the ear had been knocked away by a nearly spent bullet, andhe was crumpled up and face upward as though he had struggled to hisfeet and fallen back. He looked rather horrible, with blue eyes wideopen and glassily amazed, and the black flies clustering upon hisclotted wound and round his open mouth.... 

I halted for a moment at the sight, and found the keen scrutiny of afellow trooper upon me. "No good waiting for him, " I said with anaffectation of indifference. But all through the night I saw him again, and marvelled at the stupendous absurdity of such a death. I was alittle feverish, I remember, and engaged in an interminable theologicalargument with myself, why when a man is dead he should leave so queerand irrelevant a thing as a body to decay.... 

I was already very far away from London and Burnmore Park. I doubt if Ithought of Mary at all for many days. 

§ 3

It isn't my business to write here any consecutive story of my warexperiences. Luck and some latent quality in my composition made me afairly successful soldier. Among other things I have an exceptionallygood sense of direction, and that was very useful to me, and in BurnmorePark I suppose I had picked up many of the qualities of a scout. I didsome fair outpost work during the Ladysmith siege, I could report aswell as crawl and watch, and I was already a sergeant when we made anight attack and captured and blew up Long Tom. There, after the fight, while we were covering the engineers, I got a queer steel ball about thesize of a pea in my arm, a bicycle bearings ball it was, and had myfirst experience of an army surgeon's knife next day. It was much lesspainful than I had expected. I was also hit during the big assault onthe sixth of January in the left shoulder, but so very slightly that Iwasn't technically disabled. They were the only wounds I got in the war, but I went under with dysentery before the relief; and though I was byno means a bad case I was a very yellow-faced, broken-lookingconvalescent when at last the Boer hosts rolled northward again andBuller's men came riding across the flats.... 

I had seen some stimulating things during those four months of actualwarfare, a hundred intense impressions of death, wounds, anger, patience, brutality, courage, generosity and wasteful destruction--aboveall, wasteful destruction--to correct the easy optimistic patriotism ofmy university days. There is a depression in the opening stages of feverand a feebleness in a convalescence on a starvation diet that leads mento broad and sober views. (Heavens! how I hated the horseextract--'chevril' we called it--that served us for beef tea. ) When Icame down from Ladysmith to the sea to pick up my strength I had not anillusion left about the serene, divinely appointed empire of theEnglish. But if I had less national conceit, I had certainly morepatriotic determination. That grew with every day of returning health. The reality of this war had got hold of my imagination, as indeed for atime it got hold of the English imagination altogether, and I was nowalmost fiercely keen to learn and do. At the first chance I returned toactive service, and now I was no longer a disconsolate lover taking warfor a cure, but an earnest, and I think reasonably able, young officer, very alert for chances. 

I got those chances soon enough. I rejoined our men beyond Kimberley, onthe way to Mafeking, --we were the extreme British left in the advanceupon Pretoria--and I rode with Mahon and was ambushed with him in alittle affair beyond Koodoosrand. It was a sudden brisk encounter. Wegot fired into at close quarters, but we knew our work by that time, and charged home and brought in a handful of prisoners to make up forthe men we had lost. A few days later we came into the flattened ruinsof the quaintest siege in history.... 

Three days after we relieved Mafeking I had the luck to catch one ofSnyman's retreating guns rather easily, the only big gun that was takenat Mafeking. I came upon it unexpectedly with about twenty men, spotteda clump of brush four hundred yards ahead, galloped into it before theBoers realized the boldness of our game, shot all the draught oxen whilethey hesitated, and held them up until Chambers arrived on the scene. The incident got perhaps a disproportionate share of attention in thepapers at home, because of the way in which Mafeking had been kept infocus. I was mentioned twice again in despatches before we rode acrossto join Roberts in Pretoria and see what we believed to be the end ofthe war. We were too late to go on up to Komatipoort, and had somerather blank and troublesome work on the north side of the town. Thatwas indeed the end of the great war; the rest was a struggle withguerillas. 

Everyone thought things were altogether over. I wrote to my fatherdiscussing the probable date of my return. But there were great chancesstill to come for an active young officer; the guerilla war was toprolong the struggle yet for a whole laborious, eventful year, and I wasto make the most of those later opportunities.... 

Those years in South Africa are stuck into my mind like--like those pinkcolored pages about something else one finds at times in a railway_Indicateur_. Chance had put this work in my way, and started me uponit with a reputation that wasn't altogether deserved, and I found Icould only live up to it and get things done well by a fixed and extremeconcentration of my attention. But the whole business was so interestingthat I found it possible to make that concentration. Essentially warfareis a game of elaborate but witty problems in precaution andanticipation, with amazing scope for invention. You so saturate yourmind with the facts and possibilities of the situation that intuitionsemerge. It did not do to think of anything beyond those facts andpossibilities and dodges and counterdodges, for to do so was to let inirrelevant and distracting lights. During all that concluding year ofservice I was not so much myself as a forced and artificial thing I madeout of myself to meet the special needs of the time. I became aBoer-outwitting animal. When I was tired of this specialized thinking, then the best relief, I found, was some quite trivialoccupation--playing poker, yelling in the chorus of some interminablesong one of the men would sing, or coining South African Limericks orplaying burlesque _bouts-rimés_ with Fred Maxim, who was then my secondin command.... 

Yet occasionally thought overtook me. I remember lying one night outupon a huge dark hillside, in a melancholy wilderness of rock-ribbedhills, waiting for one of the flying commandoes that were breakingnorthward from Cape Colony towards the Orange River in front of ColonelEustace. We had been riding all day, I was taking risks in what I wasdoing, and there is something very cheerless in a fireless bivouac. Mymind became uncontrollably active. 

It was a clear, still night. The young moon set early in a glow of whitethat threw the jagged contours of a hill to the south-east intostrange, weird prominence. The patches of moonshine evaporated from thesummits of the nearer hills, and left them hard and dark. Then there wasnothing but a great soft black darkness below that jagged edge and aboveit the stars very large and bright. Somewhere under that enormousserenity to the south of us the hunted Boers must be halting to snatchan hour or so of rest, and beyond them again extended the long thin netof the pursuing British. It all seemed infinitely small and remote, there was no sound of it, no hint of it, no searchlight at work, nofaintest streamer of smoke nor the reflection of a solitary fire in thesky.... 

All this business that had held my mind so long was reduced toinsignificance between the blackness of the hills and the greatness ofthe sky; a little trouble, it seemed of no importance under the SouthernCross. And I fell wondering, as I had not wondered for long, at theforces that had brought me to this occupation and the strangeness ofthis game of war which had filled the minds and tempered the spirit of aquarter of a million of men for two hard-living years. 

I fell thinking of the dead. 

No soldier in a proper state of mind ever thinks of the dead. At timesof course one suspects, one catches a man glancing at the pair of bootssticking out stiffly from under a blanket, but at once he speaks ofother things. Nevertheless some suppressed part of my being had beenstirring up ugly and monstrous memories, of distortion, disfigurement, torment and decay, of dead men in stained and ragged clothes, with theirsole-worn boots drawn up under them, of the blood trail of a dying manwho had crawled up to a dead comrade rather than die alone, of Kaffirsheaping limp, pitiful bodies together for burial, of the voices ofinaccessible wounded in the rain on Waggon Hill crying in the night, ofa heap of men we found in a donga three days dead, of the dumb agony ofshell-torn horses, and the vast distressful litter and heavy broodingstench, the cans and cartridge-cases and filth and bloody rags of ashelled and captured laager. I will confess I have never lost my horrorof dead bodies; they are dreadful to me--dreadful. I dread their stiffattitudes, their terrible intent inattention. To this day such memorieshaunt me. That night they nearly overwhelmed me.... I thought of thegrim silence of the surgeon's tent, the miseries and disordered ravingsof the fever hospital, of the midnight burial of a journalist atLadysmith with the distant searchlight on Bulwana flicking suddenly uponour faces and making the coffin shine silver white. What a vast trail ofdestruction South Africa had become! I thought of the black scorchedstones of burnt and abandoned farms, of wretched natives we had foundshot like dogs and flung aside, rottenly amazed, decaying in infiniteindignity; of stories of treachery and fierce revenges sweeping along inthe trail of the greater fighting. I knew too well of certainatrocities, --one had to believe them incredibly stupid to escape theconviction that they were incredibly evil. 

For a time my mind could make no headway against its monstrousassemblage of horror. There was something in that jagged black hillagainst the moonshine and the gigantic basin of darkness out of which itrose that seemed to gather all these gaunt and grisly effects into oneappalling heap of agonizing futility. That rock rose up and crouchedlike something that broods and watches. 

I remember I sat up in the darkness staring at it. 

I found myself murmuring: "Get the proportions of things, get theproportions of things!" I had an absurd impression of a duel betweenmyself and the cavernous antagonism of the huge black spaces below me. Iargued that all this pain and waste was no more than the selvedge of aproportionately limitless fabric of sane, interested, impassioned andjoyous living. These stiff still memories seemed to refute me. But whyus? they seemed to insist. In some way it's essential, --this margin. Istopped at that. 

"If all this pain, waste, violence, anguish is essential to life, whydoes my spirit rise against it? What is wrong with me?" I got from thatinto a corner of self-examination. Did I respond overmuch to thesepainful aspects in life? When I was a boy I had never had the spiriteven to kill rats. Siddons came into the meditation, Siddons, theessential Englishman, a little scornful, throwing out contemptuousphrases. Soft! Was I a soft? What was a soft? Something not rough, nothearty and bloody! I felt I had to own to the word--after years ofresistance. A dreadful thing it is when a great empire has to rely uponsoft soldiers. 

Was civilization breeding a type of human being too tender to go onliving? I stuck for a time as one does on these nocturnal occasions atthe word "hypersensitive, " going round it and about it.... 

I do not know now how it was that I passed from a mood so darkened andsunless to one of exceptional exaltation, but I recall very clearly thatI did. I believe that I made a crowning effort against this despair andhorror that had found me out in the darkness and overcome. I cried inmy heart for help, as a lost child cries, to God. I seem to remember arush of impassioned prayer, not only for myself, not chiefly for myself, but for all those smashed and soiled and spoilt and battered residues ofmen whose memories tormented me. I prayed to God that they had not livedin vain, that particularly those poor Kaffir scouts might not have livedin vain. "They are like children, " I said. "It was a murder ofchildren.... _By children!_"

My horror passed insensibly. I have to feel the dreadfulness of thesethings, I told myself, because it is good for such a creature as I tofeel them dreadful, but if one understood it would all be simple. Notdreadful at all. I clung to that and repeated it, --"it would all beperfectly simple. " It would come out no more horrible than the thingsthat used to frighten me as a child, --the shadow on the stairs, thewhite moonrise reflected on a barked and withered tree, a peculiar dreamof moving geometrical forms, an ugly illustration in the "ArabianNights. " ... 

I do not know how long I wrestled with God and prayed that night, butabruptly the shadows broke; and very suddenly and swiftly my spiritseemed to flame up into space like some white beacon that is set alight. Everything became light and clear and confident. I was assured that allwas well with us, with us who lived and fought and with the dead whorotted now in fifty thousand hasty graves.... 

For a long time it seemed I was repeating again and again with soundlesslips and finding the deepest comfort in my words:--"And out of ouragonies comes victory, out of our agonies comes victory! Have pity onus, God our Father!"

I think that mood passed quite insensibly from waking to a kind ofclear dreaming. I have an impression that I fell asleep and was arousedby a gun. Yet I was certainly still sitting up when I heard that gun. 

I was astonished to find things darkly visible about me. I had not notedthat the stars were growing pale until the sound of this gun very faraway called my mind back to the grooves in which it was now accustomedto move. I started into absolute wakefulness. A gun?... 

I found myself trying to see my watch. 

I heard a slipping and clatter of pebbles near me, and discovered FredMaxim at my side. "Look!" he said, hoarse with excitement. "Already!" Hepointed to a string of dim little figures galloping helter-skelter overthe neck and down the gap in the hills towards us. 

They came up against the pale western sky, little nodding swaying blackdots, and flashed over and were lost in the misty purple groove towardsus. They must have been riding through the night--the British following. To them we were invisible. Behind us was the shining east, we were in ashadow still too dark to betray us. 

In a moment I was afoot and called out to the men, my philosophy, mydeep questionings, all torn out of my mind like a page of scribbledpoetry plucked out of a business note-book. Khaki figures were up allabout me passing the word and hurrying to their places. All thedispositions I had made overnight came back clear and sharp into mymind. We hadn't long for preparations.... 

It seems now there were only a few busy moments before the fightingbegan. It must have been much longer in reality. By that time we hadseen their gun come over and a train of carts. They were blunderingright into us. Every moment it was getting lighter, and the moment ofcontact nearer. Then "Crack!" from down below among the rocks, and therewas a sudden stoppage of the trail of dark shapes upon the hillside. "Crack!" came a shot from our extreme left. I damned the impatient menwho had shot away the secret of our presence. But we had to keep them ata shooting distance. Would the Boers have the wit to charge through usbefore the daylight came, or should we hold them? I had a swift, disturbing idea. Would they try a bolt across our front to the left? Hadwe extended far enough across the deep valley to our left? But they'dhesitate on account of their gun. The gun couldn't go that way becauseof the gullies and thickets.... But suppose they tried it! I hungbetween momentous decisions.... 

Then all up the dim hillside I could make out the Boers halting andriding back. One rifle across there flashed. 

We held them!... 

We had begun the fight of Pieters Nek which ended before midday with thesurrender of Simon Botha and over seven hundred men. It was the crown ofall my soldiering. 

§ 4

I came back to England at last when I was twenty-six. After the peace ofVereeniging I worked under the Repatriation Commission which controlledthe distribution of returning prisoners and concentrated population totheir homes; for the most part I was distributing stock and grain, andpresently manoeuvring a sort of ploughing flying column that the dearthof horses and oxen made necessary, work that was certainly as hard as iffar less exciting than war. That particular work of replanting thedesolated country with human beings took hold of my imagination, and fora time at least seemed quite straightforward and understandable. Thecomfort of ceasing to destroy!

No one has written anything that really conveys the quality of thatrepatriation process; the queer business of bringing these suspicious, illiterate, despondent people back to their desolated homes, reunitingswarthy fathers and stockish mothers, witnessing their touchinglyinexpressive encounters, doing what one could to put heart into theirresumption. Memories come back to me of great littered heaps of luggage, bundles, blankets, rough boxes, piled newly purchased stores, ready-madedoors, window sashes heaped ready for the waggons, slow-moving, apathetic figures sitting and eating, an infernal squawking of parrots, sometimes a wailing of babies. Repatriation went on to a parrotobligato, and I never hear a parrot squawk without a flash of SouthAfrica across my mind. All the prisoners, I believe, brought backparrots--some two or three. I had to spread these people out, over acountry still grassless, with teams of war-worn oxen, mules and horsesthat died by the dozen on my hands. The end of each individual instancewas a handshake, and one went lumbering on, leaving the children one haddeposited behind one already playing with old ration-tins or huntingabout for cartridge-cases, while adults stared at the work they had todo. 

There was something elementary in all that redistribution. I felt attimes like a child playing in a nursery and putting out its bricks andsoldiers on the floor. There was a kind of greatness too about theprocess, a quality of atonement. And the people I was taking back, themen anyhow, were for the most part charming and wonderful people, verysimple and emotional, so that once a big bearded man, when I wanted himin the face of an overflowing waggon to abandon about half-a-dozen greatangular colored West Indian shells he had lugged with him from Bermuda, burst into tears of disappointment. I let him take them, and at the endI saw them placed with joy and reverence in a little parlor, to becomethe war heirlooms no doubt of a long and bearded family. As we shookhands after our parting coffee he glanced at them with something betweengratitude and triumph in his eyes. 

Yes, that was a great work, more especially for a ripening youngstersuch as I was at that time. The memory of long rides and tramps overthat limitless veld returns to me, lonely in spite of the creaking, lumbering waggons and transport riders and Kaffirs that followed behind. South Africa is a country not only of immense spaces but of an immensespaciousness. Everything is far apart; even the grass blades are farapart. Sometimes one crossed wide stony wastes, sometimes came greatstretches of tall, yellow-green grass, wheel-high, sometimes a littlegreen patch of returning cultivation drew nearer for an hour or so, sometimes the blundering, toilsome passage of a torrent interrupted ourslow onward march. And constantly one saw long lines of torn and twistedbarbed wire stretching away and away, and here and there one foundarchipelagoes as it were in this dry ocean of the skeletons of cattle, and there were places where troops had halted and their scatteredration-tins shone like diamonds in the sunshine. Occasionally I strucktalk, some returning prisoner, some group of discharged British soldiersbecome carpenters or bricklayers again and making their pound a day bythe work of rebuilding; always everyone was ready to expatiate upon thesituation. Usually, however, I was alone, thinking over this immense nowvanished tornado of a war and this equally astonishing work of healingthat was following it. 

I became keenly interested in all this great business, and thought atfirst of remaining indefinitely in Africa. Repatriation was presentlydone and finished. I had won Milner's good opinion, and he was anxiousfor me to go on working in relation to the labor difficulty that rosenow more and more into prominence behind the agricultural re-settlement. But when I faced that I found myself in the middle of a tangleinfinitely less simple than putting back an agricultural population uponits land. 

§ 5

For the first time in my life I was really looking at the socialfundamental of Labor. 

There is something astonishingly naïve in the unconsciousness with whichpeople of our class float over the great economic realities. All my lifeI had been hearing of the Working Classes, of Industrialism, of LaborProblems and the Organization of Labor; but it was only now in SouthAfrica, in this chaotic, crude illuminating period of putting a smashedand desolated social order together again, that I perceived thesefamiliar phrases represented something--something stupendously real. There were, I began to recognize, two sides to civilization; onetraditional, immemorial, universal, the side of the homestead, the sideI had been seeing and restoring; and there was another, ancient, too, but never universal, as old at least as the mines of Syracuse and thebuilding of the pyramids, the side that came into view when I emergedfrom the dusty station and sighted the squat shanties and slenderchimneys of Johannesburg, that uprooted side of social life, thataccumulation of toilers divorced from the soil, which is Industrialismand Labor and which carries such people as ourselves, and whateversignificance and possibilities we have, as an elephant carries itsrider. 

Now all Johannesburg and Pretoria were discussing Labor and nothing butLabor. Bloemfontein was in conference thereon. Our work of repatriationwhich had loomed so large on the southernward veld became here abusiness at once incidental and remote. One felt that a little sooner ora little later all that would resume and go on, as the rains would, andthe veld-grass. But this was something less kindred to the succession ofthe seasons and the soil. This was a hitch in the upper fabric. Here inthe great ugly mine-scarred basin of the Rand, with its bare hillsides, half the stamps were standing idle, machinery was eating its head off, time and water were running to waste amidst an immense exasperateddisputation. Something had given way. The war had spoilt the Kaffir"boy, " he was demanding enormous wages, he was away from Johannesburg, and above all, he would no longer "go underground. "

Implicit in all the argument and suggestion about me was this profoundlysuggestive fact that some people, quite a lot of people, scores ofthousands, had to "go underground. " Implicit too always in the discoursewas the assumption that the talker or writer in question wasn't for amoment to be expected to go there. Those others, whoever they were, hadto do that for us. Before the war it had been the artless PortugueseKaffir, but he alas! was being diverted to open-air employment atDelagoa Bay. Should we raise wages and go on with the fatal process of"spoiling the workers, " should we by imposing a tremendous hut-tax drivethe Kaffir into our toils, should we carry the labor hunt across theZambesi into Central Africa, should we follow the lead of Lord Kitchenerand Mr. Creswell and employ the rather dangerous unskilled white labor(with "ideas" about strikes and socialism) that had drifted intoJohannesburg, should we do tremendous things with labor-savingmachinery, or were we indeed (desperate yet tempting resort!) to bringin the cheap Indian or Chinese coolie?

Steadily things were drifting towards that last tremendous experiment. There was a vigorous opposition in South Africa and in England (growingthere to an outcry), but behind that proposal was the one vitalizingconviction in modern initiative:--indisputably it would pay, _it wouldpay_!... 

The human mind has a much more complex and fluctuating process than mostof those explanatory people who write about psychology would have usbelieve. Instead of that simple, direct movement, like the movement of apoint, forward and from here to there, one's thoughts advance like anarmy, sometimes extended over an enormous front, sometimes in échelon, sometimes bunched in a column throwing out skirmishing clouds ofemotion, some flying and soaring, some crawling, some stopping anddying.... In this matter of Labor, for example, I have thought so much, thought over the ground again and again, come into it from this way andfrom that way, that for the life of me I find it impossible to state atall clearly how much I made of these questions during that Johannesburgtime. I cannot get back into those ancient ignorances, revive my oldastonishments and discoveries. Certainly I envisaged the whole processmuch less clearly than I do now, ignored difficulties that have sinceentangled me, regarded with a tremendous perplexity aspects that havenow become lucidly plain. I came back to England confused, and doingwhat confused people are apt to do, clinging to an inadequate phrasethat seemed at any rate to define a course of action. The word"efficiency" had got hold of me. All our troubles came, one assumed, from being "inefficient. " One turned towards politics with a bustlingair, and was all for fault-finding and renovation. 

I sit here at my desk, pen in hand, and trace figures on theblotting-paper, and wonder how much I understood at that time. I cameback to England to work on the side of "efficiency, " that is quitecertain. A little later I was writing articles and letters about it, sothat much is documented. But I think I must have apprehended too by thattime some vague outline at least of those wider issues in the sæcularconflict between the new forms of human association and the old, towhich contemporary politics and our national fate are no more thantransitory eddies and rufflings of the surface waters. It was all sonakedly plain there. On the one hand was the primordial, on the otherthe rankly new. The farm on the veld stood on the veld, a thing of theveld, a thing rooted and established there and nowhere else. The dusty, crude, brick-field desolation of the Rand on the other hand did notreally belong with any particularity to South Africa at all. It was onewith our camps and armies. It was part of something else, somethingstill bigger: a monstrous shadowy arm had thrust out from Europe andtorn open this country, erected these chimneys, piled these heaps--andsent the ration-tins and cartridge-cases to follow them. It was gigantickindred with that ancient predecessor which had built the walls ofZimbabwe. And this hungry, impatient demand for myriads of toilers, thisthreatening inundation of black or brown or yellow bond-serfs was justthe natural voice of this colossal system to which I belonged, which hadbrought me hither, and which I now perceived I did not even begin tounderstand.... 

One day when asking my way to some forgotten destination, I had pointedout to me the Grey and Roberts Deep Mine. Some familiarity in the nameset me thinking until I recalled that this was the mine in which I hadonce heard Lady Ladislaw confess large holdings, this mine in whichgangs of indentured Chinamen would presently be sweating to pay thewages of the game-keepers and roadmenders in Burnmore Park.... 

Yes, this was what I was taking in at that time, but it foundme--inexpressive; what I was saying on my return to England gave me nointimation of the broad conceptions growing in my mind. I came back tobe one of the many scores of energetic and ambitious young men who wereparroting "Efficiency, " stirring up people and more particularlystirring up themselves with the utmost vigor, --and all the time withintheir secret hearts more than a little at a loss.... 

§ 6

While I had been in South Africa circumstances had conspired to alter myprospects in life very greatly. Unanticipated freedoms and opportunitieshad come to me, and it was no longer out of the question for me to thinkof a parliamentary career. Our fortunes had altered. My father hadceased to be rector of Burnmore, and had become a comparatively wealthyman. 

My second cousin, Reginald Stratton, had been drowned in Finland, andhis father had only survived the shock of his death a fortnight; hissister, Arthur Mason's first wife, had died in giving birth to astillborn child the year before, and my father found himself suddenlythe owner of all that large stretch of developing downland and buildingland which old Reginald had bought between Shaddock and Golding on thesouth and West Esher station on the north, and in addition ofconsiderable investments in northern industrials. It was an oddcollusion of mortality; we had had only the coldest relations with ourcousins, and now abruptly through their commercial and speculativeactivities, which we had always affected to despise and ignore, I was ina position to attempt the realization of my old political ambitions. 

My cousins' house had not been to my father's taste. He had let it, andI came to a new home in a pleasant, plain red-brick house, a hundred andfifty years old perhaps, on an open and sunny hillside, sheltered bytrees eastward and northward, a few miles to the south-west ofGuildford. It had all the gracious proportions, the dignifiedsimplicity, the roomy comfort of the good building of that time. Itlooked sunward; we breakfasted in sunshine in the library, and outsidewas an old wall with peach trees and a row of pillar roses heavily inflower. I had a little feared this place; Burnmore Rectory had been soabsolutely home to me with its quiet serenities, its ample familiargarden, its greenhouses and intimately known corners, but I perceived Imight have trusted my father's character to preserve his essentialatmosphere. He was so much himself as I remembered him that I did noteven observe for a day or so that he had not only aged considerably butdiscarded the last vestiges of clerical costume in his attire. He met mein front of the house and led me into a wide panelled hall and wrung myhand again and again, deeply moved and very inexpressive. "Did you havea good journey?" he asked again and again, with tears in his eyes. "Didyou have a comfortable journey?"

"I've not seen the house, " said I. "It looks fine. "

"_You're_ a man, " he said, and patted my shoulder. "Of course! It was atBurnmore. "

"You're not changed, " I said. "You're not an atom changed. "

"How could I?" he replied. "Come--come and have something to eat. Youought to have something to eat. "

We talked of the house and what a good house it was, and he took me outinto the garden to see the peaches and grape vine and then brought meback without showing them to me in order to greet my cousin. "It's verylike Burnmore, " he said with his eyes devouring me, "very like. Alittle more space and--no services. No services at all. That makes a gapof course. There's a little chap about here, you'll find--his name isWednesday--who sorts my papers and calls himself my secretary.... Notnecessary perhaps but--_I missed the curate_. "

He said he was reading more than he used to do now that the parish wasoff his hands, and he was preparing material for a book. It was, heexplained later, to take the form of a huge essay ostensibly on SecularCanons, but its purport was to be no less than the completesecularization of the Church of England. At first he wanted merely tothrow open the cathedral chapters to distinguished laymen, irrespectiveof their theological opinions, and to make each English cathedral acentre of intellectual activity, a college as it were of philosophersand writers. But afterwards his suggestions grew bolder, the Articles ofReligion were to be set aside, the creeds made optional even for theclergy. His dream became more and more richly picturesque until at lasthe saw Canterbury a realized Thelema, and St. Paul's a new AcademicGrove. He was to work at that remarkable proposal intermittently formany years, and to leave it at last no more than a shapeless mass ofmemoranda, fragmentary essays, and selected passages for quotation. Yetmere patchwork and scrapbook as it would be, I still have some thoughtof publishing it. There is a large human charity about it, a sun toobroad and warm, a reasonableness too wide and free perhaps for the timidconvulsive quality of our time, yet all good as good wine for the wise. Is it incredible that a day should come when our great grey monuments tothe Norman spirit should cease to be occupied by narrow-witted parsonsand besieged by narrow-souled dissenters, the soul of our race in exilefrom the home and place our fathers built for it?... 

If he was not perceptibly changed, I thought my cousin Jane had becomemore than a little sharper and stiffer. She did not like my uncle's ownpersonal secularization, and still less the glimpses she got of theampler intentions of his book. She missed the proximity to the churchand her parochial authority. But she was always a silent woman, and madeher comments with her profile and not with her tongue.... 

"I'm glad you've come back, Stephen, " said my father as we sat togetherafter dinner and her departure, with port and tall silver candlesticksand shining mahogany between us. "I've missed you. I've done my best tofollow things out there. I've got, I suppose, every press mentionthere's been of you during the war and since. I've subscribed to twopress-cutting agencies, so that if one missed you the other fellow gotyou. Perhaps you'll like to read them over one of these days.... Yousee, there's not been a soldier in the family since the Peninsular War, and so I've been particularly interested.... You must tell me all thethings you're thinking of, and what you mean to do. This laststuff--this Chinese business--it puzzles me. I want to know what youthink of it--and everything. "

I did my best to give him my ideas such as they were. And as they werestill very vague ideas I have no doubt he found me rhetorical. I canimagine myself talking of the White Man's Burthen, and how in Africa ithad seemed at first to sit rather staggeringly upon our under-trainedshoulders. I spoke of slackness and planlessness. 

"I've come back in search of efficiency. " I have no doubt I said thatat any rate. 

"We're trying to run this big empire, " I may have explained, "withunder-trained, under-educated, poor-spirited stuff, and we shall come acropper unless we raise our quality. I'm still Imperialist, more thanever I was. But I'm an Imperialist on a different footing. I've no greatillusions left about the Superiority of the Anglo-Saxons. All that hasgone. But I do think it will be a monstrous waste, a disaster to humanpossibilities if this great liberal-spirited empire sprawls itselfasunder for the want of a little gravity and purpose. And it's here thework has to be done, the work of training and bracing up and stimulatingthe public imagination.... "

Yes, that would be the sort of thing I should have said in those days. There's an old _National Review_ on my desk as I write, containing anarticle by me with some of those very phrases in it. I have been lookingat it in order to remind myself of my own forgotten eloquence. 

"Yes, " I remember my father saying. "Yes. " And then after reflection, "But those coolies, those Chinese coolies. You can't build up animperial population by importing coolies. "

"I don't like that side of the business myself, " I said. "It's detail. "

"Perhaps. But the Liberals will turn you out on it next year. And thenstart badgering public houses and looting the church.... And then thisTariff talk! Everybody on our side seems to be mixing up the unity ofthe empire with tariffs. It's a pity. Salisbury wouldn't have stood it. Unity! Unity depends on a common literature and a common language andcommon ideas and sympathies. It doesn't unite people for them to beforced to trade with each other. Trading isn't friendship. I don't tradewith my friends and I don't make friends with my tradesmen. Naturalenemies--polite of course but antagonists. Are you keen over this Tariffstuff, Steve?"

"Not a bit, " I said. "That too seems a detail. "

"It doesn't seem to be keeping its place as a detail, " said my father. "Very few men can touch tariffs and not get a little soiled. I hate allthis international sharping, all these attempts to get artificialadvantages, all this making poor people buy inferior goods dear, in thename of the flag. If it comes to that, damn the flag! Custom-houses areugly things, Stephen; the dirty side of nationality. Dirty things, ignoble, cross, cunning things.... They wake you up in the small hoursand rout over your bags.... An imperial people ought to be an urbanepeople, a civilizing people--above such petty irritating things. I'd assoon put barbed wire along the footpath across that field where thevillage children go to school. Or claim that our mushrooms arecultivated. Or prosecute a Sunday-Society Cockney for picking myprimroses. Custom-houses indeed! It's Chinese. There are things a GreatCountry mustn't do, Stephen. A country like ours ought to get alongwithout the manners of a hard-breathing competitive cad.... If it can'tI'd rather it didn't get along.... What's the good of a huckstercountry?--it's like having a wife on the streets. It's no excuse thatshe brings you money. But since the peace, and that man Chamberlain'svisit to Africa, you Imperialists seem to have got this nasty spirit allover you.... The Germans do it, you say!"

My father shut one eye and regarded the color of his port against thewaning light. "Let _'em_, " he said.... "Fancy!--quoting the _Germans_!When I was a boy, there weren't any Germans. They came up after '70. Statecraft from Germany! And statesmen from Birmingham! German silverand Electroplated Empires.... No. "

"It's just a part of our narrow outlook, " I answered from the hearthrug, after a pause. "It's because we're so--limited that everyone istranslating the greatness of empire into preferential trading andjealousy of Germany. It's for something bigger than that that I'vereturned. "

"Those big things come slowly, " said my father. And then with a sigh:"Age after age. They seem at times--to be standing still. Good things gowith the bad; bad things come with the good.... "

I remember him saying that as though I could still hear him. 

It must have been after dinner, for he was sitting, duskily indistinct, against the light, with a voice coming out to him. The candles had notbeen brought in, and the view one saw through the big plate glass windowbehind him was very clear and splendid. Those little Wealden hills inSurrey and Sussex assume at times, for all that by Swiss standards theyare the merest ridges of earth, the dignity and mystery of greatmountains. Now, the crests of Hindhead and Blackdown, purple blackagainst the level gold of the evening sky, might have been somehigh-flung boundary chain. Nearer there gathered banks and pools ofluminous lavender-tinted mist out of which hills of pinewood rose likeislands out of the sea. The intervening spaces were magnified tocontinental dimensions. And the closer lowlier things over which welooked, the cottages below us, were grey and black and dim, pierced by afew luminous orange windows and with a solitary street lamp shining likea star; the village might have been nestling a mountain's height belowinstead of a couple of hundred feet. 

I left my hearthrug, and walked to the window to survey this. 

"Who's got all that land stretching away there; that little bluntedsierra of pines and escarpments I mean?"

My father halted for an instant in his answer, and glanced over hisshoulder. 

"Wardingham and Baxter share all those coppices, " he remarked. "Theycome up to my corner on each side. "

"But the dark heather and pine land beyond. With just the gables of ahouse among the trees. "

"Oh? _that_, " he said with a careful note of indifference. "That's--Justin. You know Justin. He used to come to Burnmore Park. "

CHAPTER THE SIXTH

LADY MARY JUSTIN

§ 1

I did not see Lady Mary Justin for nearly seven months after my returnto England. Of course I had known that a meeting was inevitable, and Ihad taken that very carefully into consideration before I decided toleave South Africa. But many things had happened to me during thosecrowded years, so that it seemed possible that that former magic wouldno longer sway and distress me. Not only had new imaginative intereststaken hold of me but--I had parted from adolescence. I was a man. I hadbeen through a great war, seen death abundantly, seen hardship andpassion, and known hunger and shame and desire. A hundred disillusioningrevelations of the quality of life had come to me; once for example whenwe were taking some people to the concentration camps it had beennecessary to assist at the premature birth of a child by the wayside, astartlingly gory and agonizing business for a young man to deal with. Heavens! how it shocked me! I could give a score of such grimpictures--and queer pictures.... 

And it wasn't only the earthlier aspects of the life about me but alsoof the life within me that I had been discovering. The first wonder andinnocence, the worshipping, dawn-clear passion of youth, had gone out ofme for ever.... 

§ 2

We met at a dinner. It was at a house the Tarvrilles had taken for theseason in Mayfair. The drawing-room was a big white square apartmentwith several big pictures and a pane of plate glass above the fireplacein the position in which one usually finds a mirror; this showed anotherroom beyond, containing an exceptionally large, gloriously coloredportrait in pastel--larger than I had ever thought pastels could be. Except for the pictures both rooms were almost colorless. It was abrilliant dinner, with a predominating note of ruby; three of the womenwore ruby velvet; and Ellersley was present just back from Arabia, andEthel Manton, Lady Hendon and the Duchess of Clynes. I was greeted byLady Tarvrille, spoke to Ellersley and Lady Hendon, and then discovereda lady in a dress of blue and pearls standing quite still under apicture in the opposite corner of the room and regarding me attentively. It was Mary. Some man was beside her, a tall grey man with a broadcrimson ribbon, and I think he must have spoken of me to her. It was asif she had just turned to look at me. 

Constantly during those intervening months I had been thinking ofmeeting her. None the less there was a shock, not so much of surprise asof deferred anticipation. There she stood like something amazinglyforgotten that was now amazingly recalled. She struck me in that briefcrowded instant of recognition as being exactly the person she had beenwhen we had made love in Burnmore Park; there were her eyes, at oncefrank and sidelong, the old familiar sweep of her hair, the old familiartilt of the chin, the faint humor of her lip, and at the same time sheseemed to be something altogether different from the memories I hadcherished, she was something graver, something inherently more splendidthan they had recorded. Her face lit now with recognition. 

I went across to her at once, with some dull obviousness upon my lips. 

"And so you are back from Africa at last, " she said, still unsmiling. "Isaw about you in the papers.... You had a good time. "

"I had great good luck, " I replied. 

"I never dreamt when we were boy and girl together that you would make asoldier. "

I think I said that luck made soldiers. 

Then I think we found a difficulty in going on with our talk, and begana dull little argument that would have been stupidly egotistical on mypart if it hadn't been so obviously merely clumsy, about luck makingsoldiers or only finding them out. I saw that she had not intended toconvey any doubt of my military capacity but only of that naturalinsensitiveness which is supposed to be needed in a soldier. But ourminds were remote from the words upon our lips. We were like aphasiacswho say one thing while they intend something altogether different. Theimpulse that had brought me across to her had brought me up to a wall ofimpossible utterances. It was with a real quality of rescue that ourhostess came between us to tell us our partners at the dinner-table, and to introduce me to mine. "You shall have him again on your otherside, " she said to Lady Mary with a charming smile for me, treating meas if I was a lion in request instead of the mere outsider I was. 

We talked very little at dinner. Both of us I think were quite unequalto the occasion. Whatever meetings we had imagined, certainly neither ofus had thought of this very possible encounter, a long disconcertinghour side by side. I began to remember old happenings with anastonishing vividness; there within six inches of me was the hand I hadkissed; her voice was the same to its lightest shade, her hair flowedoff her forehead with the same amazingly familiar wave. Was she tooremembering? But I perhaps had changed altogether.... 

"Why did you go away as you did?" she asked abruptly, when for a momentwe were isolated conversationally. "Why did you never write?"

She had still that phantom lisp. 

"What else could I do?"

She turned away from me and answered the man on her left, who had justaddressed her.... 

When the mid-dinner change came we talked a little about indifferentthings, making a stiff conversation like a bridge over a torrent ofunspoken intimacies. We discussed something; I think Lady Tarvrille'sflowers and the Cape Flora and gardens. She told me she had a Japanesegarden with three Japanese gardeners. They were wonderful little men towatch. "Humming-bird gardeners, " she called them. "They wear theirnative costume. "

"We are your neighbors in Surrey, " she said, going off abruptly fromthat. "We are quite near to your father. "

She paused with that characteristic effect of deliberation in herclosed lips. Then she added: "I can see the trees behind your father'shouse from the window of my room. "

"Yes, " I said. "You take all our southward skyline. "

She turned her face to me with the manner of a great lady adding a newacquaintance to her collection. But her eyes met mine very steadily andintimately. "Mr. Stratton, " she said--it was the first time in her lifeshe had called me that--"when we come back to Surrey I want you to comeand see me and tell me of all the things you are going to do. Will you?"

§ 3

That meeting, that revival, must have been late in November or early inDecember. Already by that time I had met your mother. I write to you, little son, not to you as you are now, but to the man you are someday tobe. I write to understand myself, and, so far as I can understand, tomake you understand. So that I want you to go back with me for a timeinto the days before your birth, to think not of that dear spirit oflove who broods over you three children, that wise, sure mother whorules your life, but of a young and slender girl, Rachel More, youngerthen than you will be when at last this story comes into your hands. Forunless you think of her as being a girl, if you let your presentknowledge of her fill out this part in our story, you will fail tounderstand the proportions of these two in my life. So I shall write ofher here as Rachel More, as if she were someone as completelydissociated from yourself as Lady Mary; as if she were someone in thestory of my life who had as little to do with yours. 

I had met her in September. The house my father lived in is about twelvemiles away from your mother's home at Ridinghanger, and I was taken overby Percy Restall in his motor-car. Restall had just become a convert tothis new mode of locomotion, and he was very active with a huge, malignant-looking French car that opened behind, and had a kind of pokebonnet and all sorts of features that have since disappeared from theautomobile world. He took everyone that he could lay hands upon forrides, --he called it extending their range, and he called upon everyoneelse to show off the car; he was responsible for more introduction andsocial admixture in that part of Surrey than had occurred during theprevious century. We punctured in the Ridinghanger drive, Restall didhis own repairs, and so it was we stayed for nearly four hours andinstead of a mere caller I became a familiar friend of the family. 

Your mother then was still not eighteen, a soft white slip of being, tall, slender, brown-haired and silent, with very still deep dark eyes. She and your three aunts formed a very gracious group of young womenindeed; Alice then as now the most assertive, with a gay initiative anda fluent tongue; Molly already a sun-brown gipsy, and Norah still apig-tailed thing of lank legs and wild embraces and the pinkest of swiftpink blushes; your uncle Sidney, with his shy lank moodiness, acted thebrotherly part of a foil. There were several stray visitors, young menand maidens, there were always stray visitors in those days atRidinghanger, and your grandmother, rosy and bright-eyed, maintained agentle flow of creature comforts and kindly but humorous observations. Ido not remember your grandfather on this occasion; probably he wasn'tthere. 

There was tea, and we played tennis and walked about and occasionallyvisited Restall, who was getting dirtier and dirtier, and crosser andcrosser at his repairs, and spreading a continually more remarkableassemblage of parts and instruments over the grass about him. He lookedat last more like a pitch in the Caledonian market than a decent countrygentleman paying an afternoon call. And then back to more tennis andmore talk. We fell into a discussion of Tariff Reform as we sat takingtea. Two of the visitor youths were strongly infected by the newteachings which were overshadowing the outlook of British Imperialism. Some mean phrase about not conquering Africa for the German bagman, someugly turn of thought that at a touch brought down Empire to the level ofa tradesman's advantage, fell from one of them, and stirred me to suddenindignation. I began to talk of things that had been gathering in mymind for some time. 

I do not know what I said. It was in the vein of my father's talk nodoubt. But I think that for once I may have been eloquent. And in themidst of my demand for ideals in politics that were wider and deeperthan artful buying and selling, that looked beyond a vulgar aggressionand a churl's dread and hatred of foreign things, while I struggled tosay how great and noble a thing empire might be, I saw Rachel's face. This, it was manifest, was a new kind of talk to her. Her dark eyes werealight with a beautiful enthusiasm for what I was trying to say, andfor what in the light of that glowing reception I seemed to be. 

I felt that queer shame one feels when one is taken suddenly at the fullvalue of one's utmost expressions. I felt as though I had cheated her, was passing myself off for something as great and splendid as the Empireof my dreams. It is hard to dissociate oneself from the fine things towhich one aspires. I stopped almost abruptly. Dumbly her eyes bade me goon, but when I spoke again it was at a lower level.... 

That look in Rachel's eyes remained with me. My mind had flashed veryrapidly from the realization of its significance to the thought that ifone could be sure of that, then indeed one could pitch oneself high. Rachel, I felt, had something for me that I needed profoundly, withoutever having known before that I needed it. She had the supreme gifts ofbelief and devotion; in that instant's gleam it seemed she held them outto me. 

Never before in my life had it seemed credible to me that anyone couldgive me that, or that I could hope for such a gift of support andsacrifice. Love as I had known it had been a community and an alliance, a frank abundant meeting; but this was another kind of love that shonefor an instant and promised, and vanished shyly out of sight as I andRachel looked at one another. 

Some interruption occurred. Restall came, I think, blackened byprogress, to drink a cup of tea and negotiate the loan of a kitchenskewer. A kitchen skewer it appeared was all that was needed to completehis reconstruction in the avenue. Norah darted off for a kitchen skewer, while Restall drank. And then there was a drift to tennis, and Racheland I were partners. All this time I was in a state of startledattention towards her, full of this astounding impression that somethingwonderful and unprecedented had flowed out from her towards my life, full too of doubts now whether that shining response had ever occurred, whether some trick of light and my brain had not deceived me. I wantedtremendously to talk to her, and did not know how to begin in anyserious fashion. Beyond everything I wanted to see again that deep onsetof belief.... 

"Come again, " said your grandmother to me, "come again!" after she hadtried in vain to make Restall stay for an informal supper. I was all forstaying, but Restall said darkly, "There are the Lamps. "

"But they will be all right, " said Mrs. More. 

"I can't trust 'em, " said Restall, with a deepening gloom. "Not after_that_. " The motor-car looked self-conscious and uncomfortable, but saidnothing by way of excuse, and Restall took me off in it like one whosesun has set for ever. "I wouldn't be surprised, " said Restall as we wentdown the drive, "if the damned thing turned a somersault. It mightdo--anything. " Those were the brighter days of motoring. 

The next time I went over released from Restall's limitations, andstayed to a jolly family supper. I found remarkably few obstacles in myway to a better acquaintance with Rachel. You see I was an entirelyeligible and desirable young man in Mrs. More's eyes.... 

§ 4

When I recall these long past emotions again, I am struck by theprofound essential difference between my feelings for your mother andfor Mary. They were so different that it seems scarcely rational to methat they should be called by the same name. Yet each was love, profoundly deep and sincere. The contrast lies, I think, in our relativeages, and our relative maturity; that altered the quality of all ouremotions. The one was the love of a man of six-and-twenty, exceptionallyseasoned and experienced and responsible for his years, for a girl stillat school, a girl attractively beautiful, mysterious and unknown to him;the other was the love of coevals, who had been playmates and intimatecompanions, and of whom the woman was certainly as capable and wilful asthe man. 

Now it is exceptional for men to love women of their own age, it is thecommoner thing that they should love maidens younger and often muchyounger than themselves. This is true more particularly of our ownclass; the masculine thirties and forties marry the feminine twenties, all the prevailing sentiment and usage between the sexes rises naturallyout of that. We treat this seniority as though it were a virilecharacteristic; we treat the man as though he were a natural senior, weexpect a weakness, a timid deference, in the girl. I and Mary had lovedone another as two rivers run together on the way to the sea, we hadgrown up side by side to the moment when we kissed; but I sought yourmother, I watched her and desired her and chose her, very tenderly andworshipfully indeed, to be mine. I do not remember that there was anycorresponding intention in my mind to be hers. I do not think that thatidea came in at all. She was something to be won, something playing aninferior and retreating part. And I was artificial in all my attitudesto her, I thought of what would interest her, what would please her, Iknew from the outset that what she saw in me to rouse that deep, shyglow of exaltation in her face was illusion, illusion it was my businessto sustain. And so I won her, and long years had to pass, years ofsecret loneliness and hidden feelings, of preposterous pretences andcovert perplexities, before we escaped from that crippling tradition ofinequality and looked into one another's eyes with understanding andforgiveness, a woman and a man. 

I made no great secret of the interest and attraction I found in Rachel, and the Mores made none of their entire approval of me. I walked over onthe second occasion, and Ridinghanger opened out, a great flower ofgenial appreciation that I came alone, hiding nothing of its dawningperception that it was Rachel in particular I came to see. 

Your grandmother's match-making was as honest as the day. There was thesame salad of family and visitors as on the former afternoon, and thistime I met Freshman, who was destined to marry Alice; there was tea, tennis, and, by your grandmother's suggestion, a walk to see the sunsetfrom the crest of the hill. Rachel and I walked across the breezymoorland together, while I talked and tempted her to talk. 

What, I wonder, did we talk about? English scenery, I think, and Africanscenery and the Weald about us, and the long history of the Weald andits present and future, and at last even a little of politics. I hadnever explored the mind of a girl of seventeen before; there was asurprise in all she knew and a delight in all she didn't know, and aboutherself a candor, a fresh simplicity of outlook that was sweeter thanthe clear air about us, sweeter than sunshine or the rising song of alark. She believed so gallantly and beautifully, she was so perfectly, unaffectedly and certainly prepared to be a brave and noble person--ifonly life would let her. And she hadn't as yet any suspicion that lifemight make that difficult.... 

I went to Ridinghanger a number of times in the spring and early summer. I talked a great deal with Rachel, and still I did not make love to her. It was always in my mind that I would make love to her, the heavens andearth and all her family were propitious, glowing golden with consentand approval, I thought she was the most wonderful and beautiful thingin life, and her eyes, the intonation of her voice, her hurrying colorand a hundred little involuntary signs told me how she quickened at mycoming. But there was a shyness. I loved her as one loves and admires awhite flower or a beautiful child--some stranger's child. I felt that Imight make her afraid of me. I had never before thought that to makelove is a coarse thing. But still at high summer when I met Mary againno definite thing had been said between myself and Rachel. But we knew, each of us knew, that somewhere in a world less palpable, in fairyland, in dreamland, we had met and made our vows. 

§ 5

You see how far my imagination had gone towards readjustment when Maryreturned into my life. You see how strange and distant it was to meether again, changed completely into the great lady she had intended tobe, speaking to me with the restrained and practised charm of a womanwho is young and beautiful and prominent and powerful and secure. Therewas no immediate sense of shock in that resumption of our brokenintercourse, it seemed to me that night simply that something odd andcurious had occurred. I do not remember how we parted that evening orwhether we even saw each other after dinner was over, but from that hourforth Mary by insensible degrees resumed her old predominance in mymind. I woke up in the night and thought about her, and next day I foundmyself thinking of her, remembering things out of the past and recallingand examining every detail of the overnight encounter. How cold andineffective we had been, both of us! We had been like people resuming adisused and partially forgotten language. Had she changed towards me?Did she indeed want to see me again or was that invitation a meredemonstration of how entirely unimportant seeing me or not seeing me hadbecome?

Then I would find myself thinking with the utmost particularity of herface. Had it changed at all? Was it altogether changed? I seemed to haveforgotten everything and remembered everything; that peculiar slightthickness of her eyelids that gave her eyes their tenderness, that lightfirmness of her lips. Of course she would want to talk to me, as now Iperceived I wanted to talk to her. 

Was I in love with her still? It seemed to me then that I was not. Ithad not been that hesitating fierceness, that pride and demand anddoubt, which is passionate love, that had made all my sensations strangeto me as I sat beside her. It had been something larger and finer, something great and embracing, a return to fellowship. Here beside me, veiled from me only by our transient embarrassment and the tarnish ofseparation and silences, was the one person who had ever broken down thecrust of shy insincerity which is so incurably my characteristic andtalked intimately of the inmost things of life to me. I discovered nowfor the first time how intense had been my loneliness for the past fiveyears. I discovered now that through all those years I had been hungryfor such talk as Mary alone could give me. My mind was filled with talk, filled with things I desired to say to her; that chaos began to take ona multitudinous expression at the touch of her spirit. I began toimagine conversations with her, to prepare reports for her of those newworlds of sensation and activity I had discovered since that boyishparting. 

But when at last that talk came it was altogether different from any ofthose I had invented. 

She wrote to me when she came down into Surrey and I walked over toMartens the next afternoon. I found her in her own sitting-room, abeautiful characteristic apartment with tall French windows hung withblue curtains, a large writing-desk and a great litter of books. Theroom gave upon a broad sunlit terrace with a balustrading of yellowishstone, on which there stood great oleanders. Beyond was a flower gardenand then the dark shadows of cypresses. She was standing as I came in toher, as though she had seen me coming across the lawns and had beenawaiting my entrance. "I thought you might come to-day, " she said, andtold the manservant to deny her to other callers. Again she producedthat queer effect of being at once altogether the same and altogetherdifferent from the Mary I had known. "Justin, " she said, "is in Paris. He comes back on Friday. " I saw then that the change lay in her bearing, that for the easy confidence of the girl she had now the deliberatedignity and control of a married woman--a very splendidly and spaciouslymarried woman. Her manner had been purged of impulse. Since we had metshe had stood, the mistress of great houses, and had dealt withthousands of people. 

"You walked over to me?"

"I walked, " I said. "It is nearly a straight path. You know it?"

"You came over the heather beyond our pine wood, " she confirmed. Andthen I think we talked some polite unrealities about Surrey scenery andthe weather. It was so formal that by a common impulse we let the topicsuddenly die. We stood through a pause, a hesitation. Were we indeed togo on at that altitude of cold civility? She turned to the window as ifthe view was to serve again. 

"Sit down, " she said and dropped into a chair against the light, lookingaway from me across the wide green space of afternoon sunshine. I satdown on a little sofa, at a loss also. 

"And so, " she said, turning her face to me suddenly, "you come back intomy life. " And I was amazed to see that the brightness of her eyes wastears. "We've lived--five years. "

"You, " I said clumsily, "have done all sorts of things. I hear ofyou--patronizing young artists--organizing experiments in villageeducation. "

"Yes, " she said, "I've done all sorts of things. One has to. Forced, unreal things for the most part. You I expect have done--all sorts ofthings also.... But yours have been real things.... "

"All things, " I remarked sententiously, "are real. And all of them alittle unreal. South Africa has been wonderful. And now it is all overone doubts if it really happened. Like that incredulous mood after astorm of passion. "

"You've come back for good?"

"For good. I want to do things in England. "

"Politics?"

"If I can get into that. "

Again a pause. There came the characteristic moment of deliberation thatI remembered so well. 

"I never meant you, " she said, "to go away.... You could have written. You never answered the notes I sent. "

"I was frantic, " I said, "with loss and jealousy. I wanted to forget. "

"And you forgot?"

"I did my best. "

"I did my best, " said Mary. "And now---- Have you forgotten?"

"Nothing. "

"Nor I. I thought I had. Until I saw you again. I've thought of youendlessly. I've wanted to talk to you. We had a way of talking together. But you went away. You turned your back as though all that wasnothing--not worth having. You--you drove home my marriage, Stephen. Youmade me know what a thing of sex a woman is to a man--and how littleelse.... "

She paused. 

"You see, " I said slowly. "You had made me, as people say, in love withyou.... I don't know--if you remember everything.... "

She looked me in the eyes for a moment. 

"I hadn't been fair, " she said with an abrupt abandonment of accusation. "But you know, Stephen, that night---- I meant to explain. Andafterwards.... Things sometimes go as one hasn't expected them to go, even the things one has planned to say. I suppose--I treatedyou--disgustingly. "

I protested. 

"Yes, " she said. "I treated you as I did--and I thought you would standit. I _knew_, I knew then as well as you do now that male to my femaleyou wouldn't stand it, but somehow--I thought there were other things. Things that could override that.... "

"Not, " I said, "for a boy of one-and-twenty. "

"But in a man of twenty-six?"

I weighed the question. "Things are different, " I said, and then, "Yes. Anyhow now--if I may come back penitent, --to a friendship. "

We looked at one another gravely. Faintly in our ears sounded the musicof past and distant things. We pretended to hear nothing of that, triedhonestly to hear nothing of it. I had not remembered how steadfast andquiet her face could be. "Yes, " she said, "a friendship. "

"I've always had you in my mind, Stephen, " she said. "When I saw Icouldn't marry you, it seemed to me I had better marry and be free ofany further hope. I thought we could get over that. 'Let's get it over, 'I thought. Now--at any rate--we have got over that. " Her eyes verifiedher words a little doubtfully. "And we can talk and you can tell me ofyour life, and the things you want to do that make life worth living. Oh! life has been _stupid_ without you, Stephen, large and expensive andaimless.... Tell me of your politics. They say--Justin told me--you thinkof parliament?"

"I want to do that. I have been thinking---- In fact I am going tostand. " I found myself hesitating on the verge of phrases in the qualityof a review article. It was too unreal for her presence. And yet it wasthis she seemed to want from me. "This, " I said, "is a phase of greatopportunities. The war has stirred the Empire to a sense of itself, to asense of what it might be. Of course this Tariff Reform row is a squalidnuisance; it may kill out all the fine spirit again before anything isdone. Everything will become a haggle, a chaffering of figures.... Allthe more reason why we should try and save things from the commercialtraveller. If the Empire is anything at all, it is something infinitelymore than a combination in restraint of trade.... "

"Yes, " she said. "And you want to take that line. The high line. "

"If one does not take the high line, " I said, "what does one go intopolitics for?"

"Stephen, " she smiled, "you haven't lost a sort of simplicity---- Peoplego into politics because it looks important, because other people gointo politics, because they can get titles and a sense of influenceand--other things. And then there are quarrels, old grudges to serve. "

"These are roughnesses of the surface. "

"Old Stephen!" she cried with the note of a mother. "They will worry youin politics. "

I laughed. "Perhaps I'm not altogether so simple. "

"Oh! you'll get through. You have a way of going on. But I shall haveto watch over you. I see I shall have to watch over you. Tell me of thethings you mean to do. Where are you standing?"

I began to tell her a little disjointedly of the probabilities of myYorkshire constituency.... 

§ 6

I have a vivid vignette in my memory of my return to my father's house, down through the pine woods and by the winding path across the deepvalley that separated our two ridges. I was thinking of Mary and nothingbut Mary in all the world and of the friendly sweetness of her eyes andthe clean strong sharpness of her voice. That sweet white figure ofRachel that had been creeping to an ascendancy in my imagination wasmoonlight to her sunrise. I knew it was Mary I loved and had alwaysloved. I wanted passionately to be as she desired, the friend shedemanded, that intimate brother and confederate, but all my heart criedout for her, cried out for her altogether. 

I would be her friend, I repeated to myself, I would be her friend. Iwould talk to her often, plan with her, work with her. I could put mymeanings into her life and she should throw her beauty over mine. Ibegan already to dream of the talk of to-morrow's meeting.... 

§ 7

And now let me go on to tell at once the thing that changed life forboth of us altogether, that turned us out of the courses that seemedset for us, our spacious, successful and divergent ways, she to thetragedy of her death and I from all the prospects of the public careerthat lay before me to the work that now, toilsomely, inadequately andblunderingly enough, I do. It was to pierce and slash away theappearances of life for me, it was to open my way to infinitedisillusionment, and unsuspected truths. Within a few weeks of oursecond meeting Mary and I were passionately in love with one another; wehad indeed become lovers. The arrested attractions of our former lovereleased again, drew us inevitably to that. We tried to seem outwardlyonly friends, with this hot glow between us. Our tormented secret washalf discovered and half betrayed itself. There followed a tragi-comedyof hesitations and disunited struggle. Within four months the crisis ofour two lives was past.... 

It is not within my purpose to tell you, my son, of the particularevents, the particular comings and goings, the chance words, the chancemeetings, the fatal momentary misunderstandings that occurred betweenus. I want to tell of something more general than that. Thismisadventure is in our strain. It is our inheritance. It is apossibility in the inheritance of all honest and emotional men andwomen. There are no doubt people altogether cynical and adventurous towhom these passions and desires are at once controllable and permissibleindulgences without any radiation of consequences, a secret anddetachable part of life, and there may be people of convictions sostrong and simple that these disturbances are eliminated, but weStrattons are of a quality neither so low nor so high, we stoop andrise, we are not convinced about our standards, and for manygenerations to come, with us and with such people as the Christians, andindeed with most of our sort of people, we shall be equally desirous offree and intimate friendship and prone to blaze into passion anddisaster at that proximity. 

This is one of the essential riddles in the adaptation of such humanbeings as ourselves to that greater civilized state of which I dream. Itis the gist of my story. It is one of the two essential riddles thatconfront our kind. The servitude of sex and the servitude of labor arethe twin conditions upon which human society rests to-day, the twolimitations upon its progress towards a greater social order, to thatgreater community, those uplands of light and happy freedom, towardswhich that Being who was my father yesterday, who thinks in myselfto-day, and who will be you to-morrow and your sons after you, by hisvery nature urges and must continue to urge the life of mankind. Thestory of myself and Mary is a mere incident in that gigantic, scarceconscious effort to get clear of toils and confusions and encumbrances, and have our way with life. We are like little figures, dots ascendantupon a vast hillside; I take up our intimacy for an instant and hold itunder a lens for you. I become more than myself then, and Mary standsfor innumerable women. It happened yesterday, and it is just a part ofthat same history that made Edmond Stratton of the Hays elope withCharlotte Anstruther and get himself run through the body at Haddingtontwo hundred years ago, which drove the Laidlaw-Christians to Virginia in'45, gave Stratton Street to the moneylenders when George IV. WasRegent, and broke the heart of Margaret Stratton in the days whenCharles the First was king. With our individual variations and underchanged conditions the old desires and impulses stirred us, the oldantagonisms confronted us, the old difficulties and sloughs andimpassable places baffled us. There are times when I think of my historyamong all those widespread repeated histories, until it seems to me thatthe human Lover is like a creature who struggles for ever through athicket without an end.... 

There are no universal laws of affection and desire, but it ismanifestly true that for the most of us free talk, intimate association, and any real fellowship between men and women turns with an extremereadiness to love. And that being so it follows that under existingconditions the unrestricted meeting and companionship of men and womenin society is a monstrous sham, a merely dangerous pretence ofencounters. The safe reality beneath those liberal appearances is that awoman must be content with the easy friendship of other women and of oneman only, letting a superficial friendship towards all other men veilimpassable abysses of separation, and a man must in the same way haveone sole woman intimate. To all other women he must be a little blind, alittle deaf, politely inattentive. He must respect the transparent, intangible, tacit purdah about them, respect it but never allude to it. To me that is an intolerable state of affairs, but it is reality. If youlive in the spirit of any other understanding you will court socialdisaster. I suppose it is a particularly intolerable state of affairs tous Strattons because it is in our nature to want things to seem whatthey are. That translucent yet impassible purdah outrages our veracity. And it is plain to me that our social order cannot stand and is notstanding the tensions it creates. The convention that passions andemotions are absent when they are palpably present broke down betweenMary and myself, as it breaks down in a thousand other cases, as itbreaks down everywhere. Our social life is honeycombed and rotten withsecret hidden relationships. The rigid, the obtuse and theunscrupulously cunning escape; the honest passion sooner or later flaresout and destroys.... Here is a difficulty that no bullying imposition ofarbitrary rules on the one hand nor any reckless abandonment of law onthe other, can solve. Humanity has yet to find its method in sexualthings; it has to discover the use and the limitation of jealousy. Andbefore it can even begin to attempt to find, it has to cease its presenttimid secret groping in shame and darkness and turn on the light ofknowledge. None of us knows much and most of us do not even know what isknown. 

§ 8

The house is very quiet to-day. It is your mother's birthday, and youthree children have gone with her and Mademoiselle Potin into the forestto celebrate the occasion. Presently I shall join you. The sunlitgarden, with its tall dreaming lilies against the trellised vines uponthe wall, the cedars and the grassy space about the sundial, have thatdistinguished stillness, that definite, palpable and almost outlinedemptiness which is so to speak your negative presence. It is like asheet of sunlit colored paper out of which your figures have been cut. There is a commotion of birds in the jasmine, and your Barker reclineswith an infinite tranquillity, a masterless dog, upon the lawn. I takeup this writing again after an interval of some weeks. I have been inParis, attending the Sabotage Conference, and dealing with thoseintricate puzzles of justice and discipline and the secret sources ofcontentment that have to be solved if sabotage is ever to vanish fromlabor struggles again. I think a few points have been made clearer inthat curious riddle of reconciliations.... 

Now I resume this story. I turn over the sheets that were written andfinished before my departure, and come to the notes for what is tofollow. 

Perhaps my days of work in Paris have carried my mind on beyond thepoint at which I left the narrative. I sit as it were among a pile ofmemories that are now all disordered and mixed up together, their propersequences and connexions lost. I cannot trace the phases through whichour mutual passion rode up through the restrained and dignifiedintentions of our friendship. But I know that presently we were in awhite heat of desire. There must have been passages that I nowaltogether forget, moments of tense transition. I am more and moreconvinced that our swiftest, intensest, mental changes leave far lessvivid memories than impressions one receives when one is comparativelypassive. And of this phase in my life of which I am now telling I haveclear memories of a time when we talked like brother and sister, or likeangels if you will, and hard upon that came a time when we were planningin all our moments together how and when and where we might meet insecret and meet again. 

Things drift with a phantom-like uncertainty into my mind and passagain; those fierce motives of our transition have lost now all stableform and feature, but I believe there was a curious tormenting urgencyin our jealousy of those others, of Justin on my part and of Rachel onhers. At first we had talked quite freely about Rachel, had discussed myconceivable marriage with her. We had indeed a little forced that topic, as if to reassure ourselves of the honesty of our new footing. But theforce that urged us nearer pervaded all our being. It was hard enough tobe barred apart, to snatch back our hands from touching, to avoid eachother's eyes, to hurry a little out of the dusk towards the lit houseand its protecting servants, but the constant presence and suggestion ofthose others from whom there were no bars, or towards whom bars could beabolished at a look, at an impulse, exacerbated that hardship, roused afierce insatiable spirit of revolt within us. At times we grew angrywith each other's formalism, came near to quarrelling.... 

I associate these moods with the golden stillnesses of a prolonged andsultry autumn, and with slowly falling leaves.... 

I will not tell you how that step was taken, it matters very little tomy story, nor will I tell which one of us it was first broke thebarriers down. 

§ 9

But I do want to tell you certain things. I want to tell you thembecause they are things that affect you closely. There was almost fromthe first a difference between Mary and myself in this, that I wanted tobe public about our love, I wanted to be open and defiant, andshe--hesitated. She wanted to be secret. She wanted to keep me; Isometimes think that she was moved to become my mistress because shewanted to keep me. But she also wanted to keep everything else in herlife, --her position, her ample freedoms and wealth and dignity. Our lovewas to be a secret cavern, Endymion's cave. I was ready enough to dowhat I could to please her, and for a time I served that secrecy, lied, pretended, agreed to false addresses, assumed names, and tangled myselfin a net-work of furtive proceedings. These are things that poison andconsume honest love. 

You will learn soon enough as you grow to be a man that beneath therespectable assumptions of our social life there is an endless intricateworld of subterfuge and hidden and perverted passion, --for all passionthat wears a mask is perversion--and that thousands of people of oursort are hiding and shamming about their desires, their gratifications, their true relationships. I do not mean the open offenders, for they aremostly honest and gallant people, but the men and women who sin in theshadows, the people who are not clean and scandalous, but immoral andrespectable. This underworld is not for us. I wish that I who havelooked into it could in some way inoculate you now against therepetition of my misadventure. We Strattons are daylight men, and if Iwork now for widened facilities of divorce, for an organized freedom andindependence of women, and greater breadth of toleration, it is becauseI know in my own person the degradations, the falsity, the bitterness, that can lurk beneath the inflexible pretentions of the established codeto-day. 

And I want to tell you too of something altogether unforeseen thathappened to us, and that was this, that from the day that passioncarried us and we became in the narrower sense of the word lovers, allthe wider interests we had in common, our political intentions, ourimpersonal schemes, began to pass out of our intercourse. Our situationclosed upon us like a trap and hid the sky. Something more intense hadour attention by the feet, and we used our wings no more. I do not thinkthat we even had the real happiness and beauty and delight of oneanother. Because, I tell you, there is no light upon kiss or embracethat is not done with pride. I do not know why it should be so, butpeople of our race and quality are a little ashamed of meregratification in love. Always we seem in my memory to have beenwhispering with flushed cheeks, and discussinginterminably--_situation_. Had something betrayed us, might somethingbetray, was this or that sufficiently cunning? Had we perhaps left afootmark or failed to burn a note, was the second footman who wasdetailed as my valet even now pausing astonished in the brushing of myclothes with our crumpled secret in his hand? Between myself and theclear vision of this world about me this infernal net-work ofprecautions spread like a veil. 

And it was not only a matter of concealments but of positive deceptions. The figure of Justin comes back to me. It is a curious thing that inspite of our bitter antagonism and the savage jealousy we were to feelfor one another, there has always been, and there remains now in mythought of him, a certain liking, a regret at our opposition, a qualityof friendliness. His broad face, which the common impression and thecaricaturist make so powerful and eagle-like, is really not a brutal orheavy face at all. It is no doubt aquiline, after the fashion of aneagle-owl, the mouth and chin broad and the eyes very far apart, butthere is a minute puckering of the brows which combines with that queerstreak of brown discoloration that runs across his cheek and into thewhite of his eyes, to give something faintly plaintive and pitiful tohis expression, an effect enhanced by the dark softness of his eyes. They are gentle eyes; it is absurd to suppose them the eyes of aviolently forceful man. And indeed they do not belie Justin. It is notby vehemence or pressure that his wealth and power have been attained;it is by the sheer detailed abundance of his mind. In that queer bigbrain of his there is something of the calculating boy and not a littleof the chess champion; he has a kind of financial gift, he must be rich, and grows richer. What else is there for him to do? How many times haveI not tried to glance carelessly at his face and scrutinize that look inhis eyes, and ask myself was that his usual look, or was it lit by aninstinctive jealousy? Did he perhaps begin to suspect? I had become apersistent visitor in the house, he might well be jealous of such minorfavors as she showed me, for with him she talked but little and sharedno thoughts. His manner with her was tinctured by an habituated despair. They were extraordinarily polite and friendly with one another.... 

I tried a hundred sophistications of my treachery to him. I assuredmyself that a modern woman is mistress and owner of herself; no chattel, and so forth. But he did not think so, and neither she nor I werebehaving as though we thought so. In innumerable little things we weredoing our best tacitly to reassure him. And so you see me shaking handswith this man, affecting an interest in his topics and affairs, stayingin his house, eating his food and drinking his wine, that I might be thenearer to his wife. It is not the first time that has been done in theworld, there are esoteric codes to justify all I did; I perceive thereare types of men to whom such relationships are attractive by the veryreason of their illicit excitement. But we Strattons are honest people, there is no secretive passion in our blood; this is no game for us;never you risk the playing of it, little son, big son as you will bewhen you read this story. Perhaps, but I hope indeed not, this may reachyou too late to be a warning, come to you in mid-situation. Go throughwith it then, inheritor of mine, and keep as clean as you can, followthe warped honor that is still left to you--and if you can, come out ofthe tangle.... 

It is not only Justin haunts the memories of that furtive time, butRachel More. I see her still as she was then, a straight, white-dressedgirl with big brown eyes that regarded me now with perplexity, now witha faint dismay. I still went over to see her, and my manner had changed. I had nothing to say to her now and everything to hide. Everythingbetween us hung arrested, and nothing could occur to make an end. 

I told Mary I must cease my visits to the Mores. I tried to make herfeel my own sense of an accumulating cruelty to Rachel. "But it explainsaway so much, " she said. "If you stop going there--everyone will talk. Everything will swing round--and point here. "

"Rachel!" I protested. 

"No, " she said, overbearing me, "you must keep on going to Ridinghanger. You must. You must. " ... 

For a long time I had said nothing to Mary of the burthen thesepretences were to me; it had seemed a monstrous ingratitude to find theslightest flaw in the passionate love and intimacy she had given me. Butat last the divergence of our purposes became manifest to us both. Atime came when we perceived it clearly and discussed it openly. I havestill a vivid recollection of a golden October day when we had met atthe edge of the plantation that overlooks Bearshill. She had comethrough the gardens into the pine-wood, and I had jumped the rustybanked stream that runs down the Bearshill valley, and clambered thebarbed wire fence. I came up the steep bank and through a fringe offurze to where she stood in the shade; I kissed her hand, and discoveredmine had been torn open by one of the thorns of the wire and wasdripping blood. "Mind my dress, " she said, and we laughed as we kissedwith my arm held aloof. 

We sat down side by side upon the warm pine needles that carpeted thesand, and she made a mothering fuss about my petty wound, and bound itin my handkerchief. We looked together across the steep gorge at theblue ridge of trees beyond. "Anyone, " she said, "might have seen us thisminute. "

"I never thought, " I said, and moved a foot away from her. 

"It's too late if they have, " said she, pulling me back to her. "Overbeyond there, that must be Hindhead. Someone with a telescope----!"

"That's less credible, " I said. And it occurred to me that the greystretch of downland beyond must be the ridge to the west ofRidinghanger. 

"I wish, " I said, "it didn't matter. I wish I could come and go andfear nobody--and spend long hours with you--oh! at our ease. "

"Now, " she said, "we spend short hours. I wonder if I would like----It's no good, Stephen, letting ourselves think of things that can't be. Here we are. Kiss that hand, my lover, there, just between wrist andthumb--the little hollow. Yes, exactly there. "

But thoughts had been set going in my mind. "Why, " I said presently, "should you always speak of things that can't be? Why should we take allthis as if it were all that there could be? I want long hours. I wantyou to shine all the day through on my life. Now, dear, it's as if thesun was shown ever and again, and then put back behind an eclipse. Icome to you half-blinded, I go away unsatisfied. All the world is darkin between, and little phantom _yous_ float over it. "

She rested her cheek on her hand and looked at me gravely. 

"You are hard to satisfy, brother heart, " she said. 

"I live in snatches of brightness and all the rest of life is waitingand thinking and waiting. "

"What else is there? Haven't we the brightness?"

"I want you, " I said. "I want _you_ altogether. "

"After so much?"

"I want the more. Mary, I want you to come away with me. No, listen!this life--don't think I'm not full of the beauty, the happiness, thewonder---- But it's a suspense. It doesn't go on. It's just a dawn, dear, a splendid dawn, a glory of color and brightness and freshness andhope, and--no sun rises. I want the day. Everything else has stoppedwith me and stopped with you. I do nothing with my politics now, --Ipretend. I have no plans in life except plans for meeting you and againmeeting you. I want to go on, I want to go on with you and take up workand the world again--you beside me. I want you to come out of all thislife--out of all this immense wealthy emptiness of yours----"

"Stop, " she said, "and listen to me, Stephen. "

She paused with her lips pressed together, her brows a little knit. 

"I won't, " she said slowly. "I am going on like this. I and you aregoing to be lovers--just as we are lovers now--secret lovers. And I amgoing to help you in all your projects, hold your party together--foryou will have a party--my house shall be its centre----"

"But Justin----"

"He takes no interest in politics. He will do what pleases me. "

I took some time before I answered. "You don't understand how men feel, "I said. 

She waited for what else I had to say. I lay prone, and gatheredtogether and shaped and reshaped a little heap of pine needles. "Yousee---- I can't do it. I want you. "

She gripped a handful of my hair, and tugged hard between each word. "Haven't you got me?" she asked between her teeth. "What more _could_you have?"

"I want you openly. "

She folded her arms beneath her. "_No_, " she said. 

For a little while neither of us spoke. 

"It's the trouble of the deceit?" she asked. 

"It's--the deceit. "

"We can stop all that, " she said. 

I looked up at her face enquiringly. 

"By having no more to hide, " she said, with her eyes full of tears. "Ifit's nothing to you----"

"It's everything to me, " I said. "It's overwhelming me. Oh Mary, heartof my life, my dear, come out of this! Come with me, come and be mywife, make a clean thing of it! Let me take you away, and then let memarry you. I know it's asking you--to come to a sort of poverty----"

But Mary's blue eyes were alight with anger. "Isn't it a clean thing_now_, Stephen?" she was crying. "Do you mean that you and I aren'tclean now? Will you never understand?"

"Oh clean, " I answered, "clean as Eve in the garden. But can we keepclean? Won't the shadow of our falsehoods darken at all? Come out of itwhile we are still clean. Come with me. Justin will divorce you. We canstay abroad and marry and come back. "

Mary was kneeling up now with her hands upon her knees. 

"Come back to what?" she cried. "Parliament?--after that? You _boy!_ yousentimentalist! you--you duffer! Do you think I'd let you do it for yourown sake even? Do you think I want you--spoilt? We should come back tomope outside of things, we should come back to fret our lives out. Iwon't do it, Stephen, I won't do it. End _this_ if you like, break ourhearts and throw them away and go on without them, but to turn all ourlives into a scandal, to give ourselves over to the mean and themalicious, a prey to old women--and _you_ damned out of everything! Aman partly forgiven! A man who went wrong for a woman! _No!_"

She sprang lightly to her feet and stood over me as I knelt before her. "And I came here to be made love to, Stephen! I came here to be loved!And you talk that nonsense! You remind me of everything--wretched!"

She lifted up her hands and then struck down with them, a gesture ofinfinite impatience. Her face as she bent to me was alive with afriendly anger, her eyes suddenly dark. "You _duffer_!" she repeated.... 

§ 10

Discovery followed hard upon that meeting. I had come over to Martenswith some book as a pretext; the man had told me that Lady Mary awaitedme in her blue parlor, and I went unannounced through the long galleryto find her. The door stood a little ajar, I opened it softly so thatshe did not hear me, and saw her seated at her writing-desk with herback to me, and her cheek and eyebrow just touched by the sunlight fromthe open terrace window. She was writing a note. I put my hand about hershoulder, and bent to kiss her as she turned. Then as she came round tome she started, was for a moment rigid, then thrust me from her and rosevery slowly to her feet. 

I turned to the window and became as rigid, facing Justin. He wasstanding on the terrace, staring at us, with a face that looked stupidand inexpressive and--very white. The sky behind him, appropriatelyenough, was full of the tattered inky onset of a thunderstorm. So weremained for a lengthy second perhaps, a trite _tableau vivant_. We twoseemed to hang helplessly upon Justin, and he was the first of us tomove. 

He made a queer, incomplete gesture with one hand, as if he wanted toundo the top button of his waistcoat and then thought better of it. Hecame very slowly into the room. When he spoke his voice had neither ragenor denunciation in it. It was simply conversational. "I felt this wasgoing on, " he said. And then to his wife with the note of one whoremarks dispassionately on a peculiar situation. "Yet somehow it seemedwrong and unnatural to think such a thing of you. "

His face took on something of the vexed look of a child who struggleswith a difficult task. "Do you mind, " he said to me, "will you go?"

I took a moment for my reply. "No, " I said. "Since you know at last----There are things to be said. "

"No, " said Mary, suddenly. "Go! Let me talk to him. "

"No, " I said, "my place is here beside you. "

He seemed not to hear me. His eyes were fixed on Mary. He seemed tothink he had dismissed me, and that I was no longer there. His mind wasnot concerned about me, but about her. He spoke as though what he saidhad been in his mind, and no doubt it had been in his mind, for manydays. "I didn't deserve this, " he said to her. "I've tried to make yourlife as you wanted your life. It's astonishing to find--I haven't. Yougave no sign. I suppose I ought to have felt all this happening, but itcomes upon me surprisingly. I don't know what I'm to do. " He becameaware of me again. "And _you_!" he said. "What am I to do? To think thatyou--while I have been treating her like some sacred thing.... "

The color was creeping back into his face. Indignation had come intohis voice, the first yellow lights of rising jealousy showed in hiseyes. 

"Stephen, " I heard Mary say, "will you leave me to talk to my husband?"

"There is only one thing to do, " I said. "What is the need of talking?We two are lovers, Justin. " I spoke to both of them. "We two must go outinto the world, go out now together. This marriage of yours--it's nomarriage, no real marriage.... "

I think I said that. I seem to remember saying that; perhaps with otherphrases that I have forgotten. But my memory of what we said and did, which is so photographically clear of these earlier passages that Ibelieve I can answer for every gesture and nearly every word that I haveset down, becomes suddenly turbid. The high tension of our firstconfrontation was giving place to a flood of emotional impulse. We allbecame eager to talk, to impose interpretations and justifications uponour situation. We all three became divided between our partial attentionto one another and our urgent necessity to keep hold of our points ofview. That I think is the common tragedy of almost all human conflicts, that rapid breakdown from the first cool apprehension of an issue toheat, confusion, and insistence. I do not know if indeed we raised ourvoices, but my memory has an effect of raised voices, and when at last Iwent out of the house it seemed to me that the men-servants in the hallwere as hushed as beasts before a thunderstorm, and all of them quitefully aware of the tremendous catastrophe that had come to Martens. Andmoreover, as I recalled afterwards with astonishment, I went past themand out into the driving rain unprotected, and not one of them stirreda serviceable hand.... 

What was it we said? I have a vivid sense of declaring not once only butseveral times that Mary and I were husband and wife "in the sight ofGod. " I was full of the idea that now she must inevitably be mine. Imust have spoken to Justin at times as if he had come merely to confirmmy view of the long dispute there had been between us. For a while mymind resisted his extraordinary attitude that the matter lay between himand Mary, that I was in some way an interloper. It seemed to me therewas nothing for it now but that Mary should stand by my side and faceJustin with the world behind him. I remember my confused sense thatpresently she and I would have to go straight out of Martens. And shewas wearing a tea-gown, easy and open, and the flimsiest of slippers. Any packing, any change of clothing, struck me as an incredibleanti-climax. I had visions of our going forth, hand in hand. Outside wasthe soughing of a coming storm, a chill wind drove a tumult of leavesalong the terrace, the door slammed and yawned open again, and then camethe rain. Justin, I remember, still talking, closed the door. I tried tothink how I could get to the station five miles away, and then what wecould do in London. We should seem rather odd visitors to anhotel--without luggage. All this was behind my valiant demand that sheshould come with me, and come now. 

And then my mind was lanced by the thin edge of realization that she didnot intend to come now, and that Justin was resolved she should not doso. After the first shock of finding herself discovered she had stoodpale but uncowed before her bureau, with her eyes rather on him than onme. Her hands, I think, were behind her upon the edge of the writingflap, and she was a little leaning upon them. She had the watchful alertexpression of one who faces an unanticipated but by no meansoverwhelming situation. She cast a remark to me. "But I do not want tocome with you, " she said. "I have told you I do not want to come withyou. " All her mind seemed concentrated upon what she should do withJustin. "You must send him away, " he was saying. "It's an abominablething. It must stop. How can you dream it should go on?"

"But you said when you married me I should be free, I should own myself!You gave me this house----"

"What! To disgrace myself!"

I was moved to intervene. 

"You must choose between us, Mary, " I cried. "It is impossible youshould stay here! You cannot stay here. "

She turned upon me, a creature at bay. "Why shouldn't I stay here? Whymust I choose between two men? I want neither of you. I want myself. I'mnot a thing. I'm a human being. I'm not your thing, Justin--nor yours, Stephen. Yet you want to quarrel over me--like two dogs over a bone. Iam going to stay here--in my house! It's my house. I made it. Every roomof it is full of me. Here I am!"

She stood there making this magnificently extravagant claim; her eyesblazing blue, her hair a little dishevelled with a strand across hercheek. 

Both I and Justin spoke together, and then turned in helpless anger uponone another. I remember that with the clumsiest of weak gestures he bademe begone from the house, and that I with a now rather deflatedrhetoric answered I would go only with Mary at my side. And there shestood, less like a desperate rebel against the most fundamental socialrelations than an indignant princess, and demanded of us and highheaven, "Why should I be fought for? Why should I be fought for?"

And then abruptly she gathered her skirts in her hand and advanced. "Open that door, Stephen, " she said, and was gone with a silken whirland rustle from our presence. 

We were left regarding one another with blank expressions. 

Her departure had torn the substance out of our dispute. For the momentwe found ourselves left with a new situation for which there is as yetno tradition of behavior. We had become actors in that new human comedythat is just beginning in the world, that comedy in which men stilldispute the possession and the manner of the possession of womanaccording to the ancient rules, while they on their side are determiningever more definitely that they will not be possessed.... 

We had little to say to one another, --mere echoes and endorsements ofour recent declarations. "She must come to me, " said I. And he, "I willsave her from that at any cost. "

That was the gist of our confrontation, and then I turned about andwalked along the gallery towards the entrance, with Justin following meslowly. I was full of the wrath of baffled heroics; I turned towards himwith something of a gesture. Down the perspective of the white and emptygallery he appeared small and perplexed. The panes of the tall Frenchwindows were slashed with rain.... 

§ 11

I forget now absolutely what I may have expected to happen next. Icannot remember my return to my father's house that day. But I know thatwhat did happen was the most unanticipated and incredible experience ofmy life. It was as if the whole world of mankind were suddenly to turnupside down and people go about calmly in positions of completeinversion. I had a note from Mary on the morning after this discoverythat indeed dealt with that but was otherwise not very different fromendless notes I had received before our crisis. It was destroyed, sothat I do not know its exact text now, but it did not add anythingmaterial to the situation, or give me the faintest shadow to intimatewhat crept close upon us both. She repeated her strangely thwartingrefusal to come away and live with me. She seemed indignant that we hadbeen discovered--as though Justin had indulged in an excess of existenceby discovering us. I completed and despatched to her a long letter I hadalready been writing overnight in which I made clear the hopelessimpossibility of her attitude, vowed all my life and strength to her, tried to make some picture of the happiness that was possible for ustogether, sketched as definitely as I could when and where we might meetand whither we might go. It must have made an extraordinary jumble ofprotest, persuasion and practicality. It never reached her; it wasintercepted by Justin. 

I have gathered since that after I left Martens he sent telegrams to Guyand Philip and her cousin Lord Tarvrille. He was I think amazed beyondmeasure at this revelation of the possibilities of his cold and distantwife, with a vast passion of jealousy awaking in him, and absolutelyincapable of forming any plan to meet the demands of his extraordinarysituation. Guy and Philip got to him that night, Tarvrille came downnext morning, and Martens became a debate. Justin did not so muchexpress views and intentions as have them extracted from him; it wasmanifest he was prepared for the amplest forgiveness of his wife if onlyI could be obliterated from their world. Confronted with her brothers, the two men in the world who could be frankly brutal to her, Mary'sdignity suffered; she persisted she meant to go on seeing me, but shewas reduced to passionate tears. 

Into some such state of affairs I came that morning on the heels of myletter, demanding Lady Mary of a scared evasive butler. 

Maxton and Tarvrille appeared: "Hullo, Stratton!" said Tarvrille, with afine flavor of an agreeable chance meeting. Philip had doubts about hisgreeting me, and then extended his reluctant hand with a nervous grin toexcuse the delay. 

"I want to see Lady Mary, " said I, stiffly. 

"She's not up yet, " said Tarvrille, with a hand on my shoulder. "Comeand have a talk in the garden. "

We went out with Tarvrille expanding the topic of the seasons. "It's adamned good month, November, say what you like about it. " Philip walkedgrimly silent on my other hand. 

"And it's a damned awkward situation you've got us into, Stratton, " saidTarvrille, "say what you like about it. "

"It isn't as though old Justin was any sort of beast, " he reflected, "or anything like that, you know. He's a most astonishing decent chap, clean as they make them. "

"This isn't a beastly intrigue, " I said. 

"It never is, " said Tarvrille genially. 

"We've loved each other a long time. It's just flared out here. "

"No doubt of that, " said Tarvrille. "It's been like a beacon to allSurrey. "

"It's one of those cases where things have to be readjusted. The bestthing to do is for Mary and me to go abroad----"

"Yes, but does Mary think so?"

"Look here!" said Philip in a voice thick with rage. "I won't have Marydivorced. I won't. See? I won't. "

"What the devil's it got to do with _you_?" I asked with an answeringflash of fury. 

Tarvrille's arm ran through mine. "Nobody's going to divorce Mary, " hesaid reassuringly. "Not even Justin. He doesn't want to, and nobody elsecan, and there you are!"

"But we two----"

"You two have had a tremendously good time. You've got found out--andthere you are!"

"This thing has got to stop absolutely now, " said Philip and echoed witha note of satisfaction in his own phrasing, "absolutely _now_. "

"You see, Stratton, " said Tarvrille as if he were expanding Philip'sassertion, "there's been too many divorces in society. It's demoralizingpeople. It's discrediting us. It's setting class against class. Everybody is saying why don't these big people either set aboutrespecting the law or altering it. Common people are getting tooinfernally clear-headed. Hitherto it's mattered so little.... But wecan't stand any more of it, Stratton, now. It's something more than aprivate issue; it's a question of public policy. We can't stand any moredivorces. "

He reflected. "We have to consider something more than our own personalinclinations. We've got no business to be here at all if we're not aresponsible class. We owe something--to ourselves. "

It was as if Tarvrille was as concerned as I was for this particulardivorce, as if he struggled with a lively desire to see me and Maryhappily married after the shortest possible interval. And indeed hemanifestly wasn't unsympathetic; he had the strongest proclivity for theromantic and picturesque, and it was largely the romanticpicturesqueness of renunciation that he urged upon me. Philip for themost part maintained a resentful silence; he was a clenched angeragainst me, against Mary, against the flaming possibilities thatthreatened the sister of Lord Maxton, that most promising anddistinguished young man. 

Of course their plans must have been definitely made before this talk, probably they had made them overnight, and probably it was Tarvrille hadgiven them a practicable shape, but he threw over the whole of our talkso satisfying a suggestion of arrest and prolonged discussion that itnever occurred to me that I should not be able to come again on themorrow and renew my demand to see Mary. Even when next day I turned myface to Martens and saw the flag had vanished from the flagstaff, itseemed merely a token of that household's perturbation. I thought thehouse looked oddly blank and sleepy as I drew near, but I did notperceive that this was because all the blinds were drawn. The door uponthe lawn was closed, and presently the butler came to open it. He was inan old white jacket, and collarless. "Lady Mary!" he said. "Lady Maryhas gone, sir. She and Mr. Justin went yesterday after you called. "

"Gone!" said I. "But where?"

"I _think_ abroad, sir. "

"Abroad!"

"I _think_ abroad. "

"But---- They've left an address?"

"Only to Mr. Justin's office, " said the man. "Any letters will beforwarded from there. "

I paused upon the step. He remained stiffly deferential, but with an airof having disposed of me. He reproved me tacitly for forgetting that Iought to conceal my astonishment at this disappearance. He was indeed anadmirable man-servant. "Thank you, " said I, and dropped away defeatedfrom the door. 

I went down the broad steps, walked out up the lawn, and surveyed houseand trees and garden and sky. To the heights and the depths and theuttermost, I knew now what it was to be amazed.... 

§ 12

I had felt myself an actor in a drama, and now I had very much thefeeling an actor would have who answers to a cue and finds himself inmid-stage with the scenery and the rest of the cast suddenly vanishedbehind him. By that mixture of force and persuasion which avails itselfof a woman's instinctive and cultivated dread of disputes and raisedvoices and the betrayal of contention to strangers, by the sheer tiringdown of nerves and of sleepless body and by threats of an immediatedivorce and a campaign of ruin against me, these three men had obligedMary to leave Martens and go with them to Southampton, and thence theytook her in Justin's yacht, the _Water-Witch_, to Waterford, and thenceby train to a hired house, an adapted old castle at Mirk near Crogham inMayo. There for all practical purposes she was a prisoner. They tookaway her purse, and she was four miles from a pillar-box and ten from atelegraph office. This house they had taken furnished without seeing iton the recommendation of a London agent, and in the name of Justin'ssolicitor. Thither presently went Lady Ladislaw, and an announcementappeared in the _Times_ that Justin and Lady Mary had gone abroad for atime and that no letters would be forwarded. 

I have never learnt the particulars of that abduction, but I imagineMary astonished, her pride outraged, humiliated, helpless, perplexed andmaintaining a certain outward dignity. Moreover, as I was presently tobe told, she was ill. Guy and Philip were, I believe, the moving spiritsin the affair; Tarvrille was their apologetic accomplice, Justin tookthe responsibility for what they did and bore the cost, he was bitterlyashamed to have these compulsions applied to his wife, but full now of agusty fury against myself. He loved Mary still with a love that wasshamed and torn and bleeding, but his ruling passion was that infinitelystronger passion than love in our poor human hearts, jealousy. He wasprepared to fight for her now as men fight for a flag, tearing it topieces in the struggle. He meant now to keep Mary. That settled, he wasprepared to consider whether he still loved her or she him.... 

Now here it may seem to you that we are on the very verge of romance. Here is a beautiful lady carried off and held prisoner in a wild oldplace, standing out half cut off from the mainland among the wintrybreakers of the west coast of Ireland. Here is the lover, baffled butinsistent. Here are the fierce brothers and the stern dragon husband, and you have but to make out that the marriage was compulsory, irregularand, on the ground of that irregularity, finally dissoluble, to furnishforth a theme for Marriott Watson in his most admirable and adventurousvein. You can imagine the happy chances that would have guided me to thehiding-place, the trusty friend who would have come with me and told thestory, the grim siege of the place--all as it were _sotto voce_ for fearof scandal--the fight with Guy in the little cave, my attemptedassassination, the secret passage. Would to heaven life had those richsimplicities, and one could meet one's man at the end of a sword! Mysiege of Mirk makes a very different story from that. 

In the first place I had no trusted friend of so extravagant afriendship as such aid would demand. I had no one whom it seemedpermissible to tell of our relations. I was not one man against three orfour men in a romantic struggle for a woman. I was one man againstsomething infinitely greater than that, I was one man against nearly allmen, one man against laws, traditions, instincts, institutions, socialorder. Whatever my position had been before, my continuing pursuit ofMary was open social rebellion. And I was in a state of extremeuncertainty how far Mary was a willing agent in this abruptdisappearance. I was disposed to think she had consented far more thanshe had done to this astonishing step. Carrying off an unwilling womanwas outside my imaginative range. It was luminously clear in my mindthat so far she had never countenanced the idea of flight with me, anduntil she did I was absolutely bound to silence about her. I felt thatuntil I saw her face to face again, and was sure she wanted me torelease her, that prohibition held. Yet how was I to get at her and hearwhat she had to say? Clearly it was possible that she was underrestraint, but I did not know; I was not certain, I could not prove it. At Guildford station I gathered, after ignominious enquiries, that theJustins had booked to London. I had two days of nearly franticinactivity at home, and then pretended business that took me to London, for fear that I should break out to my father. I came up revolving adozen impossible projects of action in my mind. I had to get into touchwith Mary, at that my mind hung and stopped. All through the twenty-fourhours my nerves jumped at every knock upon my door; this might be theletter, this might be the telegram, this might be herself escaped andcome to me. The days passed like days upon a painful sick-bed, grey orfoggy London days of an appalling length and emptiness. If I sat at homemy imagination tortured me; if I went out I wanted to be back and see ifany communication had come. I tried repeatedly to see Tarvrille. I hadan idea of obtaining a complete outfit for an elopement, but I wasrestrained by my entire ignorance of what a woman may need. I tried toequip myself for a sudden crisis by the completest preparation of everypossible aspect. I did some absurd and ill-advised things. I astonisheda respectable solicitor in a grimy little office behind a queer littlecourt with trees near Cornhill, by asking him to give advice to ananonymous client and then putting my anonymous case before him. "Suppose, " said I, "it was for the plot of a play. " He nodded gravely. 

My case as I stated it struck me as an unattractive one. 

"Application for a Writ of Habeas Corpus, " he considered with eyes thattried to remain severely impartial, "by a Wife's Lover, who wants tofind out where she is.... It's unusual. You will be requiring thehusband to produce her Corpus.... I don't think--speaking in the samegeneral terms as those in which you put the circumstances, it would belikely to succeed.... No. "

Then I overcame a profound repugnance and went to a firm of privatedetectives. It had occurred to me that if I could have Justin, Tarvrille, Guy or Philip traced I might get a clue to Mary'shiding-place. I remember a queer little office, a blusterous, frock-coated creature with a pock-marked face, iron-grey hair, aneyeglass and a strained tenor voice, who told me twice that he was agentleman and several times that he would prefer not to do business thanto do it in an ungentlemanly manner, and who was quite obviously readyand eager to blackmail either side in any scandal into which spite orweakness admitted his gesticulating fingers. He alluded vaguely to hisstaff, to his woman helpers, "some personally attached to me, " to hisremarkable underground knowledge of social life--"the illicit side. "What could he do for me? There was nothing, I said, illicit about me. His interest waned a little. I told him that I was interested incertain financial matters, no matter what they were, and that I wantedto have a report of the movements of Justin and his brothers-in-law forthe past few weeks and for a little time to come. "You want themwatched?" said my private enquiry agent, leaning over the desk towardsme and betraying a slight squint. "Exactly, " said I. "I want to knowwhat sort of things they are looking at just at present. "

"Have you any inkling----?"

"None. "

"If our agents have to travel----"

I expressed a reasonable generosity in the matter of expenses, and lefthim at last with a vague discomfort in my mind. How far mightn't thisundesirable unearth the whole business in the course of hisinvestigations? And then what could he do? Suppose I went back forthwithand stopped his enquiries before they began! I had a disagreeablefeeling of meanness that I couldn't shake off; I felt I was taking up aweapon that Justin didn't deserve. Yet I argued with myself that theabduction of Mary justified any such course. 

As I was still debating this I saw Philip. He was perhaps twenty yardsahead of me, he was paying off a hansom which had just put him downoutside Blake's. "Philip, " I cried, following him up the steps andovertaking him and seizing his arm as the commissionaire opened the doorfor him. "Philip! What have you people done with Mary? Where is Mary?"

He turned a white face to me. "How dare you, " he said with a catch ofthe breath, "mention my sister?"

I spoke in an undertone, and stepped a little between him and the man atthe door in order that the latter might not hear what I said. "I wantto see her, " I expostulated. "I _must_ see her. What you are doing isnot playing the game. I've _got_ to see her. "

"Let go of my arm, sir!" cried he, and suddenly I felt a whirlwind ofrage answering the rage in his eyes. The pent-up exasperation of threeweeks rushed to its violent release. He struck me in the face with thehand that was gripped about his umbrella. He meant to strike me in theface and then escape into his club, but before he could get away from meafter his blow I had flung out at him, and had hit him under thejawbone. My blow followed his before guard or counter was possible. Ihit with all my being. It was an amazing flare up of animal passion;from the moment that I perceived he was striking at me to the momentwhen both of us came staggering across the door-mat into the dignifiedand spacious hall-way of Blake's, we were back at the ancestral ape, andwe did exactly what the ancestral ape would have done. The arms of thecommissionaire about my waist, the rush of the astonished porter fromhis little glass box, two incredibly startled and delighted pages, andan intervening member bawling out "Sir! Sir!" converged to remind usthat we were a million years or so beyond those purely arboreal days.... 

We seemed for a time to be confronted before an audience that hesitatedto interfere. "How dare you name my sister to me?" he shouted at me, andbrought to my mind the amazing folly of which he was capable. Iperceived Mary's name flung to the four winds of heaven. 

"You idiot, Philip!" I cried. "I don't _know_ your sister. I've not seenher--scarcely seen her for years. I ask you--I ask you for a match-boxor something and you hit me. "

"If you dare to speak to her----!"

"You fool!" I cried, going nearer to him and trying to make himunderstand. But he winced and recoiled defensively. "I'm sorry, " I saidto the commissionaire who was intervening. "Lord Maxton has made amistake. "

"Is he a member?" said someone in the background, and somebody elsesuggested calling a policeman. I perceived that only a prompt retreatwould save the whole story of our quarrel from the newspapers. So far asI could see nobody knew me there except Philip. I had to take the risksof his behavior; manifestly I couldn't control it. I made no furtherattempt to explain anything to anybody. Everyone was a little tooperplexed for prompt action, and so the advantage in that matter laywith me. I walked through the door, and with what I imagined to be anappearance of the utmost serenity down the steps. I noted an ascendingmember glance at me with an expression of exceptional interest, but itwas only after I had traversed the length of Pall Mall that I realizedthat my lip and the corner of my nostril were both bleeding profusely. Icalled a cab when I discovered my handkerchief scarlet, and retreated tomy flat and cold ablutions. Then I sat down to write a letter toTarvrille, with a clamorous "Urgent, Please forward if away" above theaddress, and tell him at least to suppress Philip. But within the clubthat blockhead, thinking of nothing but the appearances of our fight andhis own credit, was varying his assertion that he had thrashed me, withdenunciations of me as a "blackguard, " and giving half a dozen men ahighly colored, improvised, and altogether improbable account of myrelentless pursuit and persecution of Lady Mary Justin, and how she hadleft London to avoid me. They listened, no doubt, with extreme avidity. The matrimonial relations of the Justins had long been a matter forspeculative minds. 

And while Philip was doing this, Guy, away in Mayo still, was writing atender, trusting, and all too explicit letter to a well-known andextremely impatient lady in London to account for his continued absencefrom her house. "So that is it!" said the lady, reading, and was atleast in the enviable position of one who had confirmatory facts toimpart.... 

And so quite suddenly the masks were off our situation and we were opento an impertinent world. For some days I did not realize what hadhappened, and lived in hope that Philip had been willing and able tocover his lapse. I went about with my preoccupation still, as Iimagined, concealed, and with an increasing number of typed letters frommy private enquiry agent in my pocket containing inaccurate andworthless information about the movements of Justin, which appeared tohave been culled for the most part from a communicative young policemanstationed at the corner nearest to the Justins' house, or expanded from_Who's Who_ and other kindred works of reference. The second letter, Iremember, gave some particulars about the financial position of theyounger men, and added that Justin's credit with the west-end tradesmenwas "limitless, " points upon which I had no sort of curiositywhatever.... 

I suppose a couple of hundred people in London knew before I did thatLady Mary Justin had been carried off to Ireland and practicallyimprisoned there by her husband because I was her lover. The thingreached me at last through little Fred Riddling, who came to my rooms inthe morning while I was sitting over my breakfast. "Stratton!" said he, "what is all this story of your shaking Justin by the collar, andthreatening to kill him if he didn't give up his wife to you? And why doyou want to fight a duel with Maxton? What's it all about? Fire-eateryou must be! I stood up for you as well as I could, but I heard youabused for a solid hour last night, and there was a chap there simplysquirting out facts and dates and names. Got it all.... What have youbeen up to?"

He stood on my hearthrug with an air of having called for an explanationto which he was entitled, and he very nearly got one. But I just hadsome scraps of reserve left, and they saved me. "Tell me first, " I said, delaying myself with the lighting of a cigarette, "the particulars ... As you heard them. "

Riddling embarked upon a descriptive sketch, and I got a minute or so tothink. 

"Go on, " I said with a note of irony, when he paused. "Go on. Tell mesome more. Where did you say they have taken her; let us have it right. "

By the time his little store had run out I knew exactly what to do withhim. "Riddling, " said I, and stood up beside him suddenly and dropped myhand with a little added weight upon his shoulder, "Riddling, do youknow the only right and proper thing to do when you hear scandal about afriend?"

"Come straight to him, " said Riddling virtuously, "as I have done. "

"No. Say you don't believe it. Ask the scandal-monger how he knows andinsist on his telling you--insist. And if he won't--be very, very rudeto him. Insist up to the quarrelling point. Now who were those people?"

"Well--that's a bit stiff.... One chap I didn't know at all. "

"You should have pulled him up and insisted upon knowing who he was, andwhat right he had to lie about me. For it's lying, Riddling. Listen! Itisn't true that I'm besieging Lady Mary Justin. So far from besiegingher I didn't even know where she was until you told me. Justin is aneighbor of my father's and a friend of mine. I had tea with him and hiswife not a month ago. I had tea with them together. I knew they weregoing away, but it was a matter of such slight importance to me, suchslight importance"--I impressed this on his collarbone--"that I was leftwith the idea that they were going to the south of France. I believethey are in the south of France. And there you are. I'm sorry to spoilsport, but that's the bleak unromantic truth of the matter. "

"You mean to say that there is nothing in it all?"

"Nothing. "

He was atrociously disappointed. "But everybody, " he said, "everybodyhas got something. "

"Somebody will get a slander case if this goes on. I don't care whatthey've got. "

"Good Lord!" he said, and stared at the rug. "You'll take your oath----"He glanced up and met my eye. "Oh, of course it's all right what yousay. " He was profoundly perplexed. He reflected. "But then, I sayStratton, why did you go for Maxton at Blake's? _That_ I had from aneye-witness. You can't deny a scrap like that--in broad daylight. Whydid you do that?"

"Oh _that's_ it, " said I. "I begin to have glimmerings. There's a littlematter between myself and Maxton.... " I found it a little difficult toimprovise a plausible story. 

"But he said it was his sister, " persisted Riddling. "He said soafterwards, in the club. "

"Maxton, " said I, losing my temper, "is a fool and a knave and a liar. His sister indeed! Lady Mary! If he can't leave his sister out of thisbusiness I'll break every bone of his body. " ... I perceived my temperwas undoing me. I invented rapidly but thinly. "As a matter of fact, Riddling, it's quite another sort of lady has set us by the ears. "

Riddling stuck his chin out, tucked in the corners of his mouth, maderound eyes at the breakfast things and, hands in pockets, rocked fromheels to toes and from toes to heels. "I see Stratton, yes, I see. Yes, all this makes it very plain, of course. Very plain.... Stupid thing, scandal is.... Thanks! no, I won't have a cigarette. "

And he left me presently with an uncomfortable sense that he did see, and didn't for one moment intend to restrain his considerable histrionicskill in handing on his vision to others. For some moments I stoodsavoring this all too manifest possibility, and then my thoughts wentswirling into another channel. At last the curtain was pierced. I was nolonger helplessly in the dark. I got out my Bradshaw, and sat with themap spread out over the breakfast things studying the routes to Mayo. Then I rang for Williams, the man I shared with the two adjacentflat-holders, and told him to pack my kit-bag because I was suddenlycalled away. 

§ 13

Many of the particulars of my journey to Ireland have faded out of mymind altogether. I remember most distinctly my mood of grim elation thatat last I had to deal with accessible persons again.... 

The weather was windy and violent, and I was sea-sick for most of thecrossing, and very tired and exhausted when I landed. Williams hadthought of my thick over-coat and loaded me with wraps and rugs, and Isat in the corner of a compartment in that state of mental and bodilyfatigue that presses on the brows like a painless headache. I got tosome little junction at last where I had to wait an hour for abranch-line train. I tasted all the bitterness of Irish hospitality, andsuch coffee as Ireland alone can produce. Then I went on to a stationcalled Clumber or Clumboye, or some such name, and thence after somedifficulty I got a car for my destination. It was a wretched car inwhich hens had been roosting, and it was drawn by a steaming horse thathad sores under its mended harness. 

An immense wet wind was blowing as we came over the big hill that liesto the south of Mirk. Everything was wet, the hillside above me waseither intensely green sodden turf or great streaming slabs oflimestone, seaward was a rocky headland, a ruin of a beehive shape, andbeyond a vast waste of tumbling waters unlit by any sun. Not a treebroke that melancholy wilderness, nor any living thing but ourselves. The horse went stumblingly under the incessant stimulation of thedriver's lash and tongue.... 

"Yonder it is, " said my man, pointing with his whip, and I twistedround to see over his shoulder, not the Rhine-like castle I hadexpected, but a long low house of stone upon a headland, backed by adistant mountain that vanished in a wild driven storm of rain as Ilooked. But at the sight of Mirk my lassitude passed, my nervestightened, and my will began to march again. Now, thought I, we bringthings to an issue. Now we come to something personal and definite. Thevagueness is at an end. I kept my eyes upon the place, and thought itmore and more like a prison as we drew nearer. Perhaps from that windowMary was looking for me now. Had she wondered why I did not come to herbefore? Now at any rate I had found her. I sprang off the car, found abell-handle, and set the house jangling. 

The door opened, and a little old man appeared with his fingers thrustinside his collar as though he were struggling against strangulation. Heregarded me for a second, and spoke before I could speak. 

"What might you be wanting?" said he, as if he had an answer ready. 

"I want to see Lady Mary Justin, " I said. 

"You can't, " he said. "She's gone. "

"Gone!"

"The day before yesterday she went to London. You'll have to be gettingback there. "

"She's gone to London. "

"No less. "

"Willingly?"

The little old man struggled with his collar. "Anyone would gowillingly, " he said, and seemed to await my further commands. He eyed meobliquely with a shadow of malice in his eyes. 

It was then my heart failed, and I knew that we lovers were beaten. Iturned from the door without another word to the janitor. "Back, " said Ito my driver, and got up behind him. 

But it is one thing to decide to go back, and another to do it. At thelittle station I studied time-tables, and I could not get to Englandagain without a delay of half a day. Somewhere I must wait. I did notwant to wait where there was any concourse of people. I decided to stayin the inn by the station for the intervening six hours, and get somesleep before I started upon my return, but when I saw the bedroom Ichanged my plan and went down out of the village by a steep road towardsthe shore. I wandered down through the rain and spindrift to the veryedge of the sea, and there found a corner among the rocks a littlesheltered from the wind, and sat, inert and wretched; my lips salt, myhair stiff with salt, and my body wet and cold; a miserable defeatedman. For I had now an irrational and entirely overwhelming conviction ofdefeat. I saw as if I ought always to have seen that I had been pursuinga phantom of hopeless happiness, that my dream of ever possessing Maryagain was fantastic and foolish, and that I had expended all my strengthin vain. Over me triumphed a law and tradition more towering than thosecliffs and stronger than those waves. I was overwhelmed by a sense ofhuman weakness, of the infinite feebleness of the individual man againstwind and wave and the stress of tradition and the ancient usages ofmankind. "We must submit, " I whispered, crouching close, "we mustsubmit. " ... 

Far as the eye could reach the waves followed one another in longunhurrying lines, an inexhaustible succession, rolling, hissing, breaking, and tossing white manes of foam, to gather at last for acrowning effort and break thunderously, squirting foam two hundred feetup the streaming faces of the cliffs. The wind tore and tugged at me, and wind and water made together a clamor as though all the evil voicesin the world, all the violent passions and all the hasty judgments wereseeking a hearing above the more elemental uproar.... 

§ 14

And while I was in this phase of fatigue and despair in Mayo, the scenewas laid and all the other actors were waiting for the last act of mydefeat in London. I came back to find two letters from Mary and a littleaccumulation of telegrams and notes, one written in my flat, fromTarvrille. 

Mary's letters were neither of them very long, and full of a new-borndespair. She had not realized how great were the forces against her andagainst us both. She let fall a phrase that suggested she was ill. Shehad given in, she said, to save herself and myself and others from theshame and ruin of a divorce, and I must give in too. We had to agree notto meet or communicate for three years, and I was to go out of England. She prayed me to accept this. She knew, she said, she seemed to desertme, but I did not know everything, --I did not know everything, --I mustagree; she could not come with me; it was impossible. _Now_ certainly itwas impossible. She had been weak, but I did not know all. If I knew allI should be the readier to understand and forgive her, but it was partof the conditions that I could not know all. Justin had been generous, in his way.... Justin had everything in his hands, the whole world wasbehind him against us, and I must give in. Those letters had a quality Ihad never before met in her, they were broken-spirited. I could notunderstand them fully, and they left me perplexed, with a strong desireto see her, to question her, to learn more fully what this change in hermight mean. 

Tarvrille's notes recorded his repeated attempts to see me, I felt thathe alone was capable of clearing up things for me, and I went out againat once and telegraphed to him for an appointment. 

He wired to me from that same house in Mayfair in which I had first metMary after my return. He asked me to come to him in the afternoon, andthither I went through a November fog, and found him in the drawing-roomthat had the plate glass above the fireplace. But now he was vacatingthe house, and everything was already covered up, the pictures and theirframes were under holland, the fine furniture all in covers of fadedstuff, the chandeliers and statues wrapped up, the carpets rolled out ofthe way. Even the window-curtains were tucked into wrappers, and theblinds, except one he had raised, drawn down. He greeted me andapologized for the cold inhospitality of the house. "It was convenienthere, " he said. "I came here to clear out my papers and boxes. Andthere's no chance of interruptions. "

He went and stood before the empty fireplace, and plunged into themiddle of the matter. 

"You know, my dear Stratton, in this confounded business my heart's withyou. It has been all along. If I could have seen a clear chance beforeyou--for you and Mary to get away--and make any kind of life ofit--though she's my cousin--I'd have helped you. Indeed I would. Butthere's no sort of chance--not the ghost of a chance.... "

He began to explain very fully, quite incontrovertibly, that entireabsence of any chance for Mary and myself together. He argued to theconverted. "You know as well as I do what that romantic flight abroad, that Ouidaesque casa in some secluded valley, comes to in reality. Allround Florence there's no end of such scandalous people, I've been amongthem, the nine circles of the repenting scandalous, all cutting oneanother. "

"I agree, " I said. "And yet----"

"What?"

"We could have come back. "

Tarvrille paused, and then leant forward. "No. "

"But people have done so. It would have been a clean sort of divorce. "

"You don't understand Justin. Justin would ruin you. If you were to takeMary away.... He's a queer little man. Everything is in his hands. Everything always is in the husband's hands in these affairs. If hechooses. And keeps himself in the right. For an injured husband the lawsanctifies revenge.... 

"And you see, you've got to take Justin's terms. He's changed. He didn'tat first fully realize. He feels--cheated. We've had to persuade him. There's a case for Justin, you know. He's had to stand--a lot. I don'twonder at his going stiff at last. No doubt it's hard for you to seethat. But you have to see it. You've got to go away as herequires--three years out of England, you've got to promise not tocorrespond, not to meet afterwards----"

"It's so extravagant a separation. "

"The alternative is--not for you to have Mary, but for you two to beflung into the ditch together--that's what it comes to, Stratton. Justin's got his case. He's set like--steel. You're up against the law, up against social tradition, up against money--any one of those a manmay fight, but not all three. And she's ill, Stratton. You owe herconsideration. You of all people. That's no got-up story; she's trulyill and broken. She can no longer fly with you and fight with you, travel in uncomfortable trains, stay in horrible little inns. You don'tunderstand. The edge is off her pluck, Stratton. "

"What do you mean?" I asked, and questioned his face. 

"Just exactly what I say. "

A gleam of understanding came to me.... 

"Why can't I see her?" I broke in, with my voice full of misery andanger. "Why can't I see her? As if seeing her once more could matter sovery greatly now!"

He appeared to weigh something in his mind. "You can't, " he said. 

"How do I know that she's not being told some story of my abandonment ofher? How do I know she isn't being led to believe I no longer want herto come to me?"

"She isn't, " said Tarvrille, still with that arrested judicial note inhis voice. "You had her letters?" he said. 

"Two. "

"Yes. Didn't they speak?"

"I want to see her. Damn it, Tarvrille!" I cried with sudden tears inmy smarting eyes. "Let _her_ send me away. This isn't---- Not treatingus like human beings. "

"Women, " said Tarvrille and looked at his boot toes, "are different frommen. You see, Stratton----"

He paused. "You always strike me, Stratton, as not realizing that womenare weak things. We've got to take _care_ of them. You don't seem tofeel that as I do. Their moods--fluctuate--more than ours do. If youhold 'em to what they say in the same way you hold a man--it isn'tfair.... "

He halted as though he awaited my assent to that proposition. 

"If you were to meet Mary now, you see, and if you were to say to her, come--come and we'll jump down Etna together, and you said it in theproper voice and with the proper force, she'd do it, Stratton. You knowthat. Any man knows a thing like that. And she wouldn't _want_ to doit.... "

"You mean that's why I can't see her. "

"That's why you can't see her. "

"Because we'd become--dramatic. "

"Because you'd become--romantic and uncivilized. "

"Well, " I said sullenly, realizing the bargain we were making, "Iwon't. "

"You won't make any appeal?"

"No. "

He made no answer, and I looked up to discover him glancing over hisshoulder through the great glass window into the other room. I stood upvery quickly, and there in the further apartment were Guy and Mary, standing side by side. Our eyes met, and she came forward towards thewindow impulsively, and paused, with that unpitying pane between us.... 

Then Guy was opening the door for her and she stood in the doorway. Shewas in dark furs wrapped about her, but in the instant I could see howill she was and how broken. She came a step or so towards me and thenstopped short, and so we stood, shyly and awkwardly under Guy andTarvrille's eyes, two yards apart. "You see, " she said, and stoppedlamely. 

"You and I, " I said, "have to part, Mary. We---- We are beaten. Is thatso?"

"Stephen, there is nothing for us to do. We've offended. We broke therules. We have to pay. "

"By parting?"

"What else is there to do?"

"No, " I said. "There's nothing else. " ... 

"I tried, " she said, "that you shouldn't be sent from England. "

"That's a detail, " I answered. 

"But your politics--your work?"

"That does not matter. The great thing is that you are ill andunhappy--that I can't help you. I can't do anything.... I'd go anywhere... To save you.... All I can do, I suppose, is to part like this andgo. "

"I shan't be--altogether unhappy. And I shall think of you----"

She paused, and we stood facing one another, tongue-tied. There was onlyone word more to say, and neither of us would say it for a moment. 

"Good-bye, " she whispered at last, and then, "Don't think I desertedyou, Stephen my dear. Don't think ill of me. I couldn't come--I couldn'tcome to you, " and suddenly her face changed slowly and she began toweep, my fearless playmate whom I had never seen weeping before; shebegan to weep as an unhappy child might weep. 

"Oh my Mary!" I cried, weeping also, and held out my arms, and we clungtogether and kissed with tear-wet faces. 

"No, " cried Guy belatedly, "we promised Justin!"

But Tarvrille restrained his forbidding arm, and then after a second'sinterval put a hand on my shoulder. "Come, " he said.... 

And so it was Mary and I parted from one another. 

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH

BEGINNING AGAIN

§ 1

In operas and romances one goes from such a parting in a splendiddignity of gloom. But I am no hero, and I went down the big staircase ofTarvrille's house the empty shuck of an abandoned desire. I was acutelyashamed of my recent tears. In the centre of the hall was a marblefigure swathed about with yellow muslin. "On account of the flies, " Isaid, breaking our silence. 

My words were far too unexpected for Tarvrille to understand. "Theflies, " I repeated with an air of explanation. 

"You're sure she'll be all right?" I said abruptly. 

"You've done the best thing you can for her. "

"I suppose I have. I have to go. " And then I saw ahead of me a worldfull of the tiresome need of decisions and arrangements and empty of allinterest. "Where the _devil_ am I to go, Tarvrille? I can't even get outof things altogether.... "

And then with a fresh realization of painful difficulties ahead: "I haveto tell this to my father. I've got to explain---- And he thought--heexpected----"

Tarvrille opened the half of the heavy front door for me, hesitated, and came down the broad steps into the chilly grey street and a fewyards along the pavement with me. He wanted to say something that hefound difficult to say. When at last he did find words they were quiteridiculous in substance, and yet at the time I took them as gravely ashe intended them. "It's no good quoting Marcus Aurelius, " saidTarvrille, "to a chap with his finger in the crack of a door. "

"I suppose it isn't, " I said. 

"One doesn't want to be a flatulent ass of course, " said Tarvrille, "still----"

He resumed with an air of plunging. "It will sound just rot to you now, Stratton, but after all it comes to this. Behind us isa--situation--with half-a-dozen particular persons. Out here--I meanhere round the world--before you've done with them--there's a thousandmillion people--men and women. "

"Oh! what does that matter to me?" said I. 

"Everything, " said Tarvrille. "At least--it ought to. "

He stopped and held out his hand. "Good-bye, Stratton--good luck to you!Good-bye. "

"Yes, " I said. "Good-bye. "

I turned away from him. The image of Mary crying as a child criessuddenly blinded me and blotted out the world. 

§ 2

I want to give you as clearly as I can some impression of the mentalstates that followed this passion and this collapse. It seems to me oneof the most extraordinary aspects of all that literature of speculativeattack which is called psychology, that there is no name and nodescription at all of most of the mental states that make up life. Psychology, like sociology, is still largely in the scholastic stage, itis ignorant and intellectual, a happy refuge for the lazy industry ofpedants; instead of experience and accurate description and analysis itbegins with the rash assumption of elements and starts out uponridiculous syntheses. Who with a sick soul would dream of going to apsychologist?... 

Now here was I with a mind sore and inflamed. I did not clearlyunderstand what had happened to me. I had blundered, offended, entangledmyself; and I had no more conception than a beast in a bog what it washad got me, or the method or even the need of escape. The desires andpassionate excitements, the anger and stress and strain and suspicion ofthe last few months had worn deep grooves in my brain, channels withoutend or issue, out of which it seemed impossible to keep my thoughts. Ihad done dishonorable things, told lies, abused the confidence of afriend. I kept wrestling with these intolerable facts. If some momentarydistraction released me for a time, back I would fall presently before Iknew what was happening, and find myself scheming once more to reversethe accomplished, or eloquently restating things already intolerablyoverdiscussed in my mind, justifying the unjustifiable or avengingdefeat. I would dream again and again of some tremendous appeal to Mary, some violent return and attack upon the situation.... 

One very great factor in my mental and moral distress was the uncertainvalues of nearly every aspect of the case. There is an invincible senseof wild rightness about passionate love that no reasoning and notraining will ever altogether repudiate; I had a persuasion that out ofthat I would presently extract a magic to excuse my deceits andtreacheries and assuage my smarting shame. And round these deep centralpreoccupations were others of acute exasperation and hatred towardssecondary people. There had been interventions, judgments uponinsufficient evidence, comments, and often quite justifiable comments, that had filled me with an extraordinary savagery of resentment. 

I had a persuasion, illogical but invincible, that I was still entitledto all the respect due to a man of unblemished honor. I clung fiercelyto the idea that to do dishonorable things isn't necessarily to bedishonorable.... This state of mind I am describing is, I am convinced, the state of every man who has involved himself in any affair at oncequestionable and passionate. He seems free, but he is not free; he isthe slave of the relentless paradox of his position. 

And we were all of us more or less in deep grooves we had made forourselves, Philip, Guy, Justin, the friends involved, and all in themeasure of our grooves incapable of tolerance or sympatheticrealization. Even when we slept, the clenched fist of the attitudes wehad assumed gave a direction to our dreams. 

You see the same string of events that had produced all this system ofintense preoccupations had also severed me from the possible resumptionof those wider interests out of which our intrigue had taken me. I hadhad to leave England and all the political beginnings I had beenplanning, and to return to those projects now, those now impossibleprojects, was to fall back promptly into hopeless exasperation.... 

And then the longing, the longing that is like a physical pain, thathunger of the heart for some one intolerably dear! The desire for avoice! The arrested habit of phrasing one's thoughts for a hearer whowill listen in peace no more! From that lonely distress even rage, eventhe concoction of insult and conflict, was a refuge. From that pitilesstravail of emptiness I was ready to turn desperately to any offer ofexcitement and distraction. 

From all those things I was to escape at last unhelped, but I want youto understand particularly these phases through which I passed; it fallsto many and it may fall to you to pass through such a period of darknessand malign obsession. Make the groove only a little deeper, a littlemore unclimbable, make the temperament a little less sanguine, andsuicide stares you in the face. And things worse than suicide, thatsuicide of self-respect which turns men to drugs and inflammatory vicesand the utmost outrageous defiance of the dreaming noble self that hasbeen so despitefully used. Into these same inky pools I have dipped myfeet, where other men have drowned. I understand why they drown. And mytaste of misdeed and resentment has given me just an inkling of what menmust feel who go to prison. I know what it is to quarrel with a world. 

§ 3

My first plan when I went abroad was to change my Harbury French, whichwas poor stuff and pedantic, into a more colloquial article, and then gointo Germany to do the same thing with my German, and then perhaps toremain in Germany studying German social conditions--and the quality ofthe German army. It seemed to me that when the term of my exile was overI might return to England and re-enter the army. But all these were veryanæmic plans conceived by a tired mind, and I set about carrying themout in a mood of slack lassitude. I got to Paris, and in Paris I threwthem all overboard and went to Switzerland. 

I remember very clearly how I reached Paris. I arrived about sunset--Isuppose at St. Lazare or the Gare du Nord--sent my luggage to the littlehotel in the Rue d'Antin where I had taken rooms, and dreading theirloneliness decided to go direct to a restaurant and dine. I rememberwalking out into the streets just as shops and windows and street lampswere beginning to light up, and strolling circuitously through the clearbright stir of the Parisian streets to find a dinner at the Café de laPaix. Some day you will know that peculiar sharp definite excitement ofParis. All cities are exciting, and each I think in a different way. Andas I walked down along some boulevard towards the centre of things I sawa woman coming along a side street towards me, a woman with something inher body and something in her carriage that reminded me acutely of Mary. Her face was downcast, and then as we converged she looked up at me, notwith the meretricious smile of her class but with a steadfast, friendlylook. Her face seemed to me sane and strong. I passed and hesitated. Anextraordinary impulse took me. I turned back. I followed this womanacross the road and a little way along the opposite pavement. I rememberI did that, but I do not remember clearly what was in my mind at thetime; I think it was a vague rush towards the flash of companionship inher eyes. There I had seemed to see the glimmer of a refuge from mydesolation. Then came amazement and reaction. I turned about and went onmy way, and saw her no more. 

But afterwards, later, I went out into the streets of Paris bent uponfinding that woman. She had become a hope, a desire. 

I looked for her for what seemed a long time, half an hour perhaps ortwo hours. I went along, peering at the women's faces, through theblazing various lights, the pools of shadowy darkness, the flickeringreflections and transient glitter, one of a vast stream of slow-movingadventurous human beings. I crossed streams of traffic, paused atluminous kiosks, became aware of dim rows of faces looking down upon mefrom above the shining enamel of the omnibuses.... My first intentnessupon one person, so that I disregarded any distracting intervention, gave place by insensible degrees to a more general apprehension of thethings about me. That original woman became as it were diffused. I beganto look at the men and women sitting at the little tables behind thepanes of the cafés, and even on the terraces--for the weather was stilldry and open. I scrutinized the faces I passed, faces for the most partanimated by a sort of shallow eagerness. Many were ugly, many vile withan intense vulgarity, but some in that throng were pretty, some almostgracious. There was something pathetic and appealing for me in thisgreat sweeping together of people into a little light, into a weakcommunity of desire for joy and eventfulness. There came to me a senseof tolerance, of fellowship, of participation. From an outer darknessof unhappiness or at least of joylessness, they had all come hither--asI had come. 

I was like a creature that slips back again towards some deep waters outof which long since it came, into the light and air. It was as if oldforgotten things, prenatal experiences, some magic of ancestralmemories, urged me to mingle again with this unsatisfied passion forlife about me.... 

Then suddenly a wave of feeling between self-disgust and fear pouredover me. This vortex was drawing me into deep and unknown things.... Ihailed a passing _fiacre_, went straight to my little hotel, settled myaccount with the proprietor, and caught a night train for Switzerland. 

All night long my head ached, and I lay awake swaying and jolting andlistening to the rhythms of the wheels, Paris clean forgotten so soon asit was left, and my thoughts circling continually about Justin andPhilip and Mary and the things I might have said and done. 

§ 4

One day late in February I found myself in Vevey. I had come down withthe break-up of the weather from Montana, where I had met some Oxfordmen I knew and had learned to ski. I had made a few of those vagueacquaintances one makes in a winter-sport hotel, but now all thesepeople were going back to England and I was thrown back upon myself oncemore. I was dull and angry and unhappy still, full of self-reproachesand dreary indignations, and then very much as the sky will sometimesbreak surprisingly through storm clouds there began in me a new seriesof moods. They came to me by surprise. One clear bright afternoon I satupon the wall that runs along under the limes by the lake shore, envyingall these people who were going back to England and work and usefulness. I thought of myself, of my career spoilt, my honor tarnished, mycharacter tested and found wanting. So far as English politics went myprospects had closed for ever. Even after three years it was improbablethat I should be considered by the party managers again. And besides, itseemed to me I was a man crippled. My other self, the mate andconfirmation of my mind, had gone from me. I was no more than amutilated man. My life was a thing condemned; I had joined the ranks ofloafing, morally-limping, English exiles. 

I looked up. The sun was setting, a warm glow fell upon the dissolvingmountains of Savoy and upon the shining mirror of the lake. Theluminous, tranquil breadth of it caught me and held me. "I am done for. "The light upon the lake and upon the mountains, the downward swoop of abird over the water and something in my heart, gave me the lie. 

"What nonsense!" I said, and felt as if some dark cloud that hadovershadowed me had been thrust back. 

I stared across at Savoy as though that land had spoken. Why should Ilet all my life be ruled by the blunders and adventures of one shortyear of adventure? Why should I become the votary of a train ofconsequences? What had I been dreaming of all this time? Over there weregigantic uplands I had never seen and trodden; and beyond were greatplains and cities, and beyond that the sea, and so on, great spaces andmultitudinous things all round about the world. What did the things Ihad done, the things I had failed to do, the hopes crushed out of me, the tears and the anger, matter to _that_? And in some amazing way thisthought so took possession of me that the question seemed also to carrywith it the still more startling collateral, what then did they matterto me? "Come out of yourself, " said the mountains and all the beauty ofthe world. "Whatever you have done or suffered is nothing to theinexhaustible offer life makes you. We are you, just as much as the pastis you. "

It was as though I had forgotten and now remembered how infinitelymultitudinous life can be. It was as if Tarvrille's neglected words tome had sprouted in the obscurity of my mind and borne fruit.... 

I cannot explain how that mood came, I am doing my best to describe it, and it is not easy even to describe. And I fear that to you who willhave had I hope no experience of such shadows as I had passed through, it is impossible to convey its immense elation.... I remember once Icame in a boat out of the caves of Han after two hours in the darkness, and there was the common daylight that is nothing wonderful at all, andits brightness ahead there seemed like trumpets and cheering, likewaving flags and like the sunrise. And so it was with this mood of myrelease. 

There is a phrase of Peter E. Noyes', that queer echo of Emerson whompeople are always rediscovering and forgetting again, a phrase thatsticks in my mind, --"Every living soul is heir to an empire and hasfallen into a pit. " It's an image wonderfully apt to describe my changeof mental attitude, and render the contrast between those intenselypassionate personal entanglements that had held me tight and that wideestate of life that spreads about us all, open to all of us in just themeasure that we can scramble out of our individual selves--to a moregeneral self. I seemed to be hanging there at the brim of my stale andpainful den, staring at the unthought-of greatness of the world, with anunhoped-for wind out of heaven blowing upon my face. 

I suppose the intention of the phrase "finding salvation, " as religiouspeople use it, is very much this experience. If it is not the same thingit is something very closely akin. It is as if someone were scramblingout of a pit into a largeness--a largeness that is attainable by everyman just in the measure that he realizes it is there. 

I leave these fine discriminations to the theologian. I know that I wentback to my hotel in Vevey with my mind healed, with my will restored tome, and my ideas running together into plans. And I know that I had comeout that day a broken and apathetic man. 

§ 5

The next day my mood declined again; it was as if that light, that senseof release that had shone so clear and strong in my mind, had escapedme. I sought earnestly to recover it. But I could not do so, and I foundmy old narrow preoccupations calling urgently to me again. 

I thought that perhaps I might get back those intimations of outlook andrelief if I clambered alone into some high solitude and thought. I hada crude attractive vision of myself far above the heat and noise, communing with the sky. It was the worst season for climbing, and on thespur of the moment I could do nothing but get up the Rochers de Naye onthe wrong side, and try and find some eyrie that was neither slipperynor wet. I did not succeed. In one place I slipped down a wet bank forsome yards and held at last by a root; if I had slipped much further Ishould not be writing here now; and I came back a very weary and bruisedclimber, without any meditation.... 

Three nights after when I was in bed I became very lucidly awake--itmust have been about two or three in the morning--and the vision of lifereturned to me, with that same effect of enlargement and illumination. It was as if the great stillness that is behind and above and around theworld of sense did in some way communicate with me. It bade me rouse myspirit and go on with the thoughts and purposes that had been stirringand proliferating in my mind when I had returned to England from theCape. "Dismiss your passion. " But I urged that that I could not do;there was the thought of Mary subjugated and weeping, the smartingmemory of injury and defeat, the stains of subterfuge and discovery, theaching separation. No matter, the stillness answered, in the end allthat is just to temper you for your greater uses.... I cannot forget, Iinsisted. Do not forget, but for the present this leads you no whither;this chapter has ended; dismiss it and turn to those other things. Youare not only Stephen Stratton who fell into adultery; in these silenceshe is a little thing and far away; here and with me you areMan--Everyman--in this round world in which your lot has fallen. ButMary, I urged, to forget Mary is a treason, an ingratitude, seeing thatshe loved me. But the stillness did not command me to forget her, butonly to turn my face now to the great work that lies before mankind. Andthat work? That work, so far as your share goes, is first to understand, to solve, and then to achieve, to work out in the measure of yourselfthat torment of pity and that desire for order and justice whichtogether saturate your soul. Go about the world, embrue yourself withlife, make use of that confusedly striving brain that I have lifted sopainfully out of the deadness of matter.... 

"But who are you?" I cried out suddenly to the night. "Who are you?"

I sat up on the side of my bed. The dawn was just beginning to break upthe featureless blackness of the small hours. "This is just some oddcorner of my brain, " I said.... 

Yet---- How did I come to have this odd corner in my brain? What _is_this lucid stillness?... 

§ 6

Let me tell you rather of my thoughts than of my moods, for there atleast one comes to something with a form that may be drawn and asubstance that is measurable; one ceases to struggle with thingsindefinable and the effort to convey by metaphors and imaginary voicesthings that are at once bodiless and soundless and lightless and yetinfinitely close and real. And moreover with that mysterious and subtlechange of heart in me there came also a change in the quality and rangeof my ideas. I seemed to rise out of a tangle of immediacies andmisconceptions, to see more largely and more freely than I had ever donebefore. 

I have told how in my muddled and wounded phase I had snatched at thedull project of improving my languages, and under the cloak of thatspying a little upon German military arrangements. Now my mind set suchpetty romanticism on one side. It had recovered the strength to look onthe whole of life and on my place in it. It could resume the ideas thatour storm of passion had for a time thrust into the background of mythoughts. I took up again all those broad generalizations that hadarisen out of my experiences in South Africa, and which I had been notso much fitting into as forcing into the formulæ of English politics; Irecalled my disillusionment with British Imperialism, my vague butelaborating apprehension of a profound conflict between enterprise andlabor, a profound conflict between the life of the farm and the life oftrade and finance and wholesale production, as being something far truerto realities than any of the issues of party and patriotism upon whichmen were spending their lives. So far as this rivalry between Englandand Germany, which so obsessed the imagination of Europe, went, I foundthat any faith I may have had in its importance had simply fallen out ofmy mind. As a danger to civilization, as a conceivable source ofdestruction and delay, it was a monstrous business enough, but that inthe long run it mattered how or when they fought and which won I did notbelieve. In the development of mankind the thing was of far lessimportance than the struggle for Flanders or the wars of France andBurgundy. I was already coming to see Europe as no more than thedog's-eared corner of the page of history, --like most Europeans I hadthought it the page--and my recovering mind was eager and open to seethe world beyond and form some conception of the greater forces that layoutside our insularities. What is humanity as a whole doing? What is thenature of the world process of which I am a part? Why should I driftfrom cradle to grave wearing the blinkers of my time and nationality, amere denizen of Christendom, accepting its beliefs, its staleantagonisms, its unreal purposes? That perhaps had been tolerable whileI was still an accepted member of the little world into which my lot hadfallen, but now that I was thrust out its absurdity glared. For me thealternative was to be a world-man or no man. I had seemed sinkingtowards the latter: now I faced about and began to make myself what Istill seek to make myself to-day, a son of mankind, a conscious part ofthat web of effort and perplexity which wraps about our globe.... 

All this I say came into my mind as if it were a part of that recoveryof my mind from its first passionate abjection. And it seemed a simpleand obvious part of the same conversion to realize that I was ignorantand narrow, and that, too, in a world which is suffering like a beast ina slime pit by reason of ignorance and narrowness of outlook, and thatit was my manifest work and purpose to make myself less ignorant and tosee and learn with all my being. It came to me as a clear duty that Ishould get out of the land of hotels and leisure and go seeking thefacts and clues to human inter-relationship nearer the earthy roots ofthings, and I turned my thoughts to India and China, those vast enigmasof human accumulation, in a spirit extraordinarily like that of somemystic who receives a call. I felt I must go to Asia and from Asiaperhaps round the world. But it was the greatness of Asia commanded me. I wanted to see the East not as a spectacle but as the simmering vat inwhich the greater destiny of man brews and brews.... 

§ 7

It was necessary to tell my father of my intentions. I made numerousbeginnings. I tore up several letters and quarrelled bitterly with thehotel pens. At first I tried to describe the change that had happened tomy mind, to give him some impression of the new light, the release thathad come to me. But how difficult this present world is with its taintedand poisoned phrases and its tangled misunderstandings! Here was Iwriting for the first time in my life of something essentially religiousand writing it to him whose profession was religion, and I could find nowords to convey my meaning to him that did not seem to me fraught withthe possibilities of misinterpretation. One evening I made a desperateresolve to let myself go, and scrawled my heart out to him as it seemedthat night, a strange, long letter. It was one of the profoundestregrets that came to me when I saw him dead last winter that I did notrisk his misunderstanding and post that letter. But when I re-read it inthe next morning's daylight it seemed to me so rhetorical, so fullof--what shall I call it?--spiritual bombast, it so caricatured andreflected upon the deep feelings sustaining me, that I could not post itfor shamefacedness, and I tore it up into little pieces and sentinstead the briefest of notes. 

"I am doing no good here in Switzerland, " I wrote. "Would you mind if Iwent east? I want to see something of the world outside Europe. I have afancy I may find something to do beyond there. Of course, it will costrather more than my present allowance. I will do my best to economize. Don't bother if it bothers you--I've been bother enough to you.... "

He replied still more compactly. "By all means. I will send you somecircular notes, Poste Restante, Rome. That will be on your way. Goodwishes to you, Stephen. I'm glad you want to go east instead of juststaying in Switzerland. "

I sit here now and wonder, little son, what he thought, what hesupposed, what he understood. 

I loved my father, and I began to perceive he loved me wonderfully. Ican imagine no man I would have sooner had for a priest than him; allpriestcraft lays hands if it can, and with an excellent wisdom, upon thetitles and dignity of fatherhood; and yet here am I left to guessing--Ido not know whether my father ever worshipped, whether he ever prayedwith his heart bared to God. There are times when the inexpressivenessof life comes near to overwhelming me, when it seems to me we are allasleep or entranced, and but a little way above the still cows who standmunching slowly in a field. Why couldn't we and why didn't we talktogether?... We fear bathos too much, are shyly decent to the pitch ofmania. We have neither the courage of our bodies nor of our souls.... 

I went almost immediately to Rome. I stayed in Rome some days, gettingtogether an outfit, and incidentally seeing that greater city of thedead in whose embrace the modern city lies. I was now becominginterested in things outside my grooves, though my grooves were stillthere, deep and receptive, and I went about the place at last almosteagerly, tracing the outlines of that great departed city on whosecolossal bones the churches and palaces of the middle ages cluster likeweeds in the spaces and ruins of a magnificent garden. I found myselfone day in the Forum, thinking of that imperialism that had built theBasilica of Julius Cæsar, and comparing its cramped vestiges with thatvaster second administrative effort which has left the world themonstrous arches of Constantine. I sat down over against these lastamong the ruins of the Vestals' House, and mused on that laterreconstruction when the Empire, with its science aborted and itsliterature and philosophy shrivelled to nothing, its social fabricruined by the extravagances of financial adventure and its honor andpatriotism altogether dead, united itself, in a desperate effort tocontinue, with all that was most bickeringly intolerant and destructivein Christianity--only to achieve one common vast decay. All Europe tothis day is little more than the sequel to that failure. It is the RomanEmpire in disintegration. The very churches whose domes rise to thenorthward of the ancient remains are built of looted stones and looklike parasitic and fungoid growths, and the tourists stream throughthose spaces day by day, stare at the marble fragments, the arches, thefallen carvings and rich capitals, with nothing greater in their mindsand nothing clearer.... 

I discovered I was putting all this into the form of a letter to Mary. I was writing to her in my mind, as many people talk to themselves. AndI remember that I wandered upon the Palatine Hill musing over the ideaof writing a long letter to her, a long continuous letter to her, a sortof diary of impressions and ideas, that somewhen, years ahead, I mightbe able to put into her hands. 

One does not carry out such an idea into reality; it is so much easierto leave the letter imagined and unwritten if there lives but littlehope of its delivery; yet for many years I kept up an impalpablecorrespondence in my thoughts, a stream of expression to which no answercame--until at last the habits of public writing and the gatheringinterests of a new rôle in life diverted it to other ends. 

§ 8

One morning on the way from Brindisi to Egypt I came up on deck at dawnbecause my mind was restless and I could not sleep. Another solitarypassenger was already up, so intently watching a pink-lit rockycoast-line away to the north of us that for a time he did not observeme. 

"That's Crete, " he said, when at last he became aware of me close athand. 

"Crete!" said I. 

"Yes, " he said, "Crete. "

He came nearer to me. "That, sir, " he said with a challenging emphasis, "is the most wonderful island I've ever yet set eyes on, --quite the mostwonderful. "

"Five thousand years ago, " he remarked after a pause that seemed to meto be calculated, "they were building palaces there, better than thebest we can build to-day. And things--like modern things. They hadbathrooms there, beautifully fitted bathrooms--and admirablesanitation--admirable. Practically--American. They had better artists toserve them than your King Edward has, why! Minos would have laughed orscreamed at all that Windsor furniture. And the things they made ofgold, sir--you couldn't get them done anywhere to-day. Not for anymoney. There was a Go about them.... They had a kind of writing, too--before the Phoenicians. No man can read it now, and there it is. Fifty centuries ago it was; and to-day--They grow oranges and lemons. And they riot.... Everything else gone.... It's as if men struggled upto a certain pitch and then--grew tired.... All this Mediterranean; it'sa tired sea.... "

That was the beginning of a curious conversation. He was an American, ayear or so younger than myself, going, he said, "to look at Egypt. "

"In our country, " he explained, "we're apt to forget all theseworked-out regions. Too apt. We don't get our perspectives. We think thewhole blessed world is one everlasting boom. It hit me first down inYucatan that that wasn't so. Why! the world's littered with the remainsof booms and swaggering beginnings. Americanism!--there's always beenAmericanism. This Mediterranean is just a Museum of old Americas. Iguess Tyre and Sidon thought they were licking creation all the time. It's set me thinking. What's _really_ going on? Why--anywhere, --you'rerunning about among ruins--anywhere. And ruins of something just as goodas anything we're doing to-day. Better--in some ways. It takes the heartout of you.... "

It was Gidding, who is now my close friend and ally. I remember veryvividly the flavor of morning freshness as we watched Crete pass awaynorthward and I listened to his talk. 

"I was coming out of New York Harbor a month ago and looking back at theskyscrapers, " he said, "and suddenly it hit me in the mind;--'That'sjust the next ruin, ' I thought. "

I remember that much of our first talk, but the rest of it now isindistinct. 

We had however struck up an acquaintance, we were both alone, and untilhe left me on his way to Abydos we seem now to have been conversing allthe time. And almost all the time we were discussing human destiny andthe causes of effort and decay, and whether the last few ascendantcenturies the world has seen have in them anything more persistent thanthe countless beginnings that have gone before. 

"There's Science, " said I a little doubtfully. 

"At Cnossus there they had Dædalus, sir, fifty centuries ago. Dædalus!He was an F. R. S. All right. I haven't a doubt he flew. If they hadn'tsteel they had brass. We're too conceited about our little modernthings. "

§ 9

I found something very striking and dramatic in the passage from Europeto Asia. One steams slowly through a desert that comes up close to theship; the sand stretches away, hillock and mound beyond hillock andmound; one sees camels in the offing stringing out to some ancientdestination; one is manifestly passing across a barrier, --the canal haschanged nothing of that. Suez is a first dab of tumultuous Orientalism, noisy and vivid. And then, after that gleam of turmoil, one opens outinto the lonely dark blue waters of the Red Sea. Right and left theshore is a bitter, sun-scorched desolation; eastward frowns a greatrampart of lowering purple mountains towering up to Sinai. It is like noEuropean landscape. The boat goes slowly as if uncharted dangers lurkedahead. It is a new world with a new atmosphere. Then comes wave uponwave of ever more sultry air, and the punkahs begin to swing and thewhite clothes appear. Everyone casts off Europe, assumes an Asiaticlivery. The very sun, rushing up angrily and abruptly after a heatednight, is unfamiliar, an Asiatic sun. 

And so one goes down that reef-fringed waterway to Aden; it is studdedwith lonely-looking lighthouses that burn, it seems, untended, andsometimes in their melancholy isolation swing great rhythmic arms oflight. And then, land and the last lateen sails of Aden vanishingtogether, one stands out into the hot thundery monotonies of the IndianOcean; into imprisonment in a blue horizon across whose Titan ring theengines seem to throb in vain. How one paces the ship day by day, andeats and dozes and eats again, and gossips inanely and thanks Heaveneven for a flight of flying fish or a trail of smoke from over thehorizon to take one's mind a little out of one's oily quiveringprison!... A hot portentous delay; a sinister significant pause; that isthe voyage from Europe to India still. 

I suppose by the time that you will go to India all this prelude willhave vanished, you will rattle through in a train-de-luxe from Calais, by way of Baku or Constantinople; you will have none of this effect ofa deliberate sullen approach across limitless miles of sea. But that ishow I went to India. Everything seemed to expand; I was coming out ofthe frequent landfalls, the neighborly intimacies and neighborlyconflicts of the Mediterranean into something remoter; into larger seasand greater lands, rarer communications and a vaster future.... 

To go from Europe to Asia is like going from Norway to Russia, fromsomething slight and "advanced" to something massive and portentous. Ifelt that nearly nine years ago; to-day all Asia seems moving forward tojustify my feelings.... 

And I remember too that as I went down the Red Sea and again in theIndian Ocean I had a nearly intolerable passion of loneliness. A woundmay heal and still leave pain. I was coming out of Europe as one comesout of a familiar house into something larger and stranger, I seemed buta little speck of life, and behind me, far away and silent and receding, was the one other being to whom my thoughts were open. It seemed verycruel to me that I could not write to her. 

Such moods were to come to me again and again, and particularly duringthe inactivities of voyages and in large empty spaces and at night whenI was weary. At other times I could banish and overcome them by forcingmyself to be busy and by going to see novel and moving things. 

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH

THIS SWARMING BUSINESS OF MANKIND

§ 1

I do not think I could now arrange into a consecutive history mytravellings, my goings and returnings in my wandering effort to see andcomprehend the world. And certainly even if I could arrange my facts Ishould still be at a loss to tell of the growth of ideas that is so muchmore important than any facts, to trace the increasing light to itsinnumerable sources, to a chink here, to a glowing reflection there, toa leap of burning light from some long inert darkness close at hand. Butsteadily the light grew, and this vast world of man, in which our world, little son, is the world of a limited class in a small island, began totake on definite forms, to betray broad universal movements; what seemedat first chaotic, a drift and tangle of passions, traditions, foolishideas, blundering hostilities, careless tolerances, became confusedlysystematic, showed something persistent and generalized at work amongits multitudinous perplexity. 

I wonder now if I can put before you very briefly the maingeneralizations that were growing up in my mind during my exile, thesimplified picture into which I translated the billions of sights andsounds and--smells, for every part of the world has its distinctiveolfactory palette as much as its palette of colors--that rained dailyand nightly upon my mind. 

Before, my eyes again as I sit here in this quiet walled French garden, the great space before the Jumna Musjid at Delhi reappears, as I saw itin the evening stillness against a glowing sky of gold, and the memoryof countless worshippers within, praying with a devotion no Europeandisplays. And then comes a memory of that long reef of staircases andtemples and buildings, the ghats of Benares, in the blazing morning sun, swarming with a vast multitude of multicolored people and the water alsoswarming with brown bodies. It has the colors of a bed of extravagantlysplendid flowers and the light that is Indian alone. Even as I sit herethese places are alive with happening. It is just past midday here; atthis moment the sun sinks in the skies of India, the Jumna Musjidflushes again with the glow of sunset, the smoke of evening firesstreams heavenward against its subtle lines, and upon those steps atBenares that come down the hillside between the conquering mosque ofAurangzeb and the shining mirror of the Ganges a thousand silent seatedfigures fall into meditation. And other memories recur and struggle withone another; the crowded river-streets of Canton, the rafts andhouseboats and junks innumerable, riding over inky water, begin now totwinkle with a thousand lights. They are ablaze in Osaka and Yokohamaand Tokio, and the swarming staircase streets of Hong Kong glitter witha wicked activity now that night has come. I flash a glimpse of Burmesetemples, of villages in Java, of the sombre purple masses of the wallsof the Tartar city at Pekin with squat pagoda-guarded gates. How thosegreat outlines lowered at me in the twilight, full of fresh memories andgrim anticipations of baseness and violence and bloodshed! I sit hererecalling it--feeling it all out beyond the trellised vine-clad wallthat bounds my physical vision.... Vast crowded world that I have seen!going from point to point seeking for clues, for generalities, until atlast it seems to me that there emerges--something understandable. 

I think I have got something understandable out of it all. 

What a fantastically courageous thing is this mind of ours! My thoughtsseem to me at once presumptuous and inevitable. I do not know why it isthat I should dare, that any of us should dream of this attempt tocomprehend. But we who think are everyone impelled to this amazingeffort to get it all together into some simple generality. It is notreason but a deep-seated instinct that draws our intelligence towardsexplanations, that sets us perpetually seeking laws, seeking statementsthat will fit into infinite, incessantly interweaving complexities, andbe true of them all! There is I perceive a valiant and magnificentstupidity about the human mind, a disregard of disproportion andinsufficiency--like the ferret which will turn from the leveret it hasseized to attack even man if he should interfere. By these desperatefeats of thinking it is that our species has achieved its victories. Bythem it survives. By them it must stand the test of ultimate survival. Some forgotten man in our ancestry--for every begetting man alive was inmy individual ancestry and yours three thousand years ago--first daredto think of the world as round, --an astounding temerity. He rolled upthe rivers and mountains, the forests and plains and broad horizonsthat stretched beyond his ken, that seemed to commonsense to go oncertainly for ever, into a ball, into a little ball "like an orange. "Magnificent feat of the imagination, outdoing Thor's deep draught of thesea! And once he had done it, all do it and no one falters at the deed. You are not yet seven as I write and already you are serenely aware thatyou live upon a sphere. And in much the same manner it is that we, whoare sociologists and economists, publicists and philosophers and whatnot, are attempting now to roll up the vast world of facts which concernhuman intercourse, the whole indeed of history and archæology, into somesimilar imaginable and manageable shape, that presently everyone will beable to grasp. 

I suppose there was a time when nobody bothered at all about the shapeof the earth, when nobody had even had the idea that the earth could beconceived as having a shape, and similarly it is true that it is only inrecent centuries that people have been able to suppose that there was ashape to human history. It is indeed not much more than a century sincethere was any real emergence from theological assumptions and pureromanticism and accidentalism in these matters. Old Adam Smith it was, probing away at the roots of economics, who set going the constructionof ampler propositions. From him spring all those new interpretationswhich have changed the writing of history from a record of dramaticreigns and wars and crises to an analysis of economic forces. Howimpossible it would be for anyone now to write that great chapter ofGibbon's in which he sweeps together into one contempt the history ofsixty Emperors and six hundred years of time. His note of weariness andfutility vanishes directly one's vision penetrates the immediatesurface. Those Heraclians and Isaurians and Comneni were not history, aschoolboy nowadays knows that their record is not history, knows themfor the mere scum upon the stream. 

And still to-day we have our great interpretations to make. Ours is atime of guesses, theories and provisional generalizations. Our phasecorresponds to the cosmography that was still a little divided betweendiscs and domes and spheres and cosmic eggs; that was still a thousandyears from measuring and weighing a planet. For a long time my mindhovered about the stimulating theories of Socialism and particularlyabout those more systematic forms of Socialist teaching that centreabout Karl Marx. He rose quite naturally out of those early economistswho saw all the world in terms of production and saving. He was anecessary step for me at least, on the way to understanding. For a timeI did so shape the world in my mind that it seemed to me no more than avast enterprise for the organization and exploitation of labor. For atime I thought human life was essentially a labor problem, that workingand controlling work and lending and selling and "speculating" made theessential substance of human life, over which the forms of politics ranas the stripes of a tiger's skin run and bend over its living muscles. Ifollowed my period in thinking that. You will find in Ferrero's "RomanDecline, " which was published early in this century, and which waits foryou in the library, almost exactly the method of interpretation that wasrecommending itself to me in 1904 and 1905. 

Well, the labor problem concerns a great--_substantial_, shall Isay?--in human society. It is only I think the basis and matter ofsociety, not its shape and life and reality, but it had to beapprehended before I could get on to more actual things. Insensibly theidea that contemporary political forms mattered very fundamentally tomen, was fading out of my mind. The British Empire and the GermanEmpire, the Unity of Italy, and Anglo-Saxon ascendency, the Yellow Periland all the other vast phantoms of the World-politician's mythology werefading out of my mind in those years, as the Olympic cosmogony must havefaded from the mind of some inquiring Greek philosopher in the days ofHeraclitus. And I revised my history altogether in the new light. Theworld had ceased to be chaotic in my mind; it had become a vast if asyet a quite inconclusive drama between employer and employed. 

It makes a wonderful history, this history of mankind as a history ofLabor, as a history of the perpetual attempts of an intelligent minorityto get things done by other people. It does not explain how thataggression of the minority arose nor does it give any conception of aprimordial society which corresponds with our knowledge of the realitiesof primitive communities. One begins rather in the air with a humansociety that sells and barters and sustains contracts and permits landto be privately owned, and having as hastily as possible got away fromthat difficulty of beginnings, having ignored the large areas of theworld which remain under a pacific and unprogressive agriculture to thisday, the rest of the story becomes extremely convincing andilluminating. It does indeed give a sustaining explanation to a largepart of recorded history, this generalization about the proclivity ofable and energetic people to make other people do things. One ignoreswhat is being done as if that mattered nothing, and concentrates uponthe use and enslavement of men. 

One sees that enslavement to labor progressing from crude directness tothe most subtly indirect methods. The first expedient of enterprise wasthe sword and then the whip, and still there are remote and ugly cornersof the world, in the Mexican Valle Nazionale or in Portuguese SouthAfrica, where the whip whistles still and the threat of great sufferingand death follows hard upon the reluctant toiler. But the larger part ofour modern slavery is past the stage of brand and whip. We have falleninto methods at once more subtle and more effective. We standbenevolently in front of our fellow man, offering, almost as if it werefood and drink and shelter and love, the work we want him to do; andbehind him, we are acutely aware, is necessity, sometimes quite of ourmaking, as when we drive him to work by a hut-tax or a poll tax or arent, that obliges him to earn money, and sometimes not so obviously ofour making, sometimes so little of our making that it is easy to believewe have no power to remove it. Instead of flicking the whip, we groan atlast with Harriet Martineau at the inexorable laws of political economythat condemn us to comfort and direction, and those others to toil andhardship and indignity.... 

And through the consideration of these latter later aspects it was thatI came at last to those subtler problems of tacit self-deception, ofimperfect and unwilling apprehension, of innocently assumed advantages, of wilfully disregarded unfairness; and also to all those other problemsof motive, those forgotten questions of why we make others work for uslong after our personal needs are satisfied, why men aggrandize andundertake, which gradually have become in my mind the essential problemsof human relationship, replacing the crude problems of labor altogetherin that position, making _them_ at last only questions of contrivanceand management on the way to greater ends. 

I have come to believe now that labor problems are problems merely bythe way. They have played their part in a greater scheme. This phase ofexpropriation and enslavement, this half designed and half unconsciousdriving of the duller by the clever, of the pacific by the bolder, ofthose with weak appetites and imaginations by those with strongerappetites and imaginations, has been a necessary phase in humandevelopment. With my innate passionate desire to find the whole worldpurposeful, I cannot but believe that. But however necessary it hasbeen, it is necessary no longer. Strangest of saviors, there rises overthe conflicts of mankind the glittering angular promise of the machine. There is no longer any need for slavery, open or disguised. We do notneed slaves nor toilers nor mere laborers any more; they are no longeressential to a civilization. Man has ridden on his brother man out ofthe need of servitude. He struggles through to a new phase, a phase ofrelease, a phase when leisure and an unexampled freedom is possible toevery human being. Is possible. And it is there one halts seeing thatsplendid possibility of aspiration and creation before mankind--andseeing mankind for the most part still downcast, quite unaware orincredulous, following the old rounds, the grooves of ancient andsuperseded assumptions and subjections.... 

But here I will not trace in any detail the growth of my convictionthat the ancient and heavy obligation to work hard and continuallythroughout life has already slipped from man's shoulders. Suffice itthat now I conceive of the task before mankind as a task essentially ofrearrangement, as a problem in relationships, extremely complex anddifficult indeed, but credibly solvable. During my Indian and Chinesejourney I was still at the Marxist stage. I went about the east lookingat labor, watching its organization and direction, seeing greatinterests and enterprises replace the diffused life of an earlier phase;the disputes and discussions in the Transvaal which had first opened mymind to these questions came back to me, and steadily I lost my interestin those mere political and national issues with their paraphernalia ofkings and flags and governments and parties that had hitherto blinded meto these more fundamental interactions. 

§ 2

It happened that in Bombay circumstances conspired to bring the crudefacts of labor enslavement vividly before me. I found a vigorousagitation raging in the English press against the horrible sweating thatwas going on in the cotton mills, I met the journalist most intimatelyconcerned in the business on my second day in India, and before a weekwas out I was hard at work getting up the question and preparing amemorandum with him on the possibility of immediate legislativeintervention. The very name of Bombay, which for most people recalls aspacious and dignified landfall, lateen sails, green islands andjutting precipices, a long city of trees and buildings like a bright andvarious breakwater between the great harbor and the sea, and thenexquisite little temples, painted bullock carriages, Towers of Silence, Parsis, and an amazingly kaleidoscopic population, --is for me a reminderof narrow, foetid, plague-stricken streets and tall insanitarytenement-houses packed and dripping with humanity, and of terriblethrobbing factories working far into the night, blazing with electriclight against the velvet-black night-sky of India, damp with thesteam-clouds that are maintained to moisten the thread, and swarmingwith emaciated overworked brown children--for even the adults, spare andsmall, in those mills seem children to a western eye. 

I plunged into this heated dreadful business with a passionate interestand went back to the Yacht Club only when the craving for air and a goodbath and clean clothes and space and respect became unendurable. I wadeddeep in labor, in this process of consuming humanity for gain, chasingmy facts through throbbing quivering sheds reeking of sweat andexcrement under the tall black-smoking chimneys, --chasing them in verytruth, because when we came prying into the mills after the hour whenchild-labor should cease, there would be a shrill whistle, a patter offeet and a cuffing and hiding of the naked little creatures we weretrying to rescue. They would be hidden under rugs, in boxes, in the mostimpossible places, and we dragged them out scared and lying. Many ofthem were perhaps seven years old at most; and the adults--men and womenof fourteen that is to say--we could not touch at all, and they workedin that Indian heat, in a noisome air drenched with steam for fourteenand fifteen hours a day. And essential to that general impression is amemory of a slim Parsi mill-manager luminously explaining the inheritedpassion for toil in the Indian weaver, and a certain bulky Hindu with alemon-yellow turban and a strip of plump brown stomach showing betweenhis clothes, who was doing very well, he said, with two wives and fivechildren in the mills. 

That is my Bombay, that and the columns of crossed circles markingplague cases upon the corners of houses and a peculiar acrid smell, andthe polychromatic stir of crowded narrow streets between cliffs ofarchitecture with carved timbers and heavy ornamentations, into whichthe sun strikes obliquely and lights a thousand vivid hues.... 

Bombay, the gateway of what silly people were still calling in thosedays "the immemorial East, " Bombay, which is newer than Boston or NewYork, Bombay which has grown beneath the Englishman's shadow out of aPortuguese fort in the last two hundred years.... 

§ 3

I came out of these dark corners presently into the sunblaze of India. Iwas now intensely interested in the whole question of employment andengaged in preparing matter for my first book, "Enterprise and India, "and therein you may read how I went first to Assam and then down toCeylon following up this perplexing and complicated business of humanenslavement to toil, exercised by this great spectacle of human labor, and at once attracted by and stimulated by and dissatisfied with thosesocialist generalizations that would make all this vast harsh spectacleof productive enterprise a kind of wickedness and outrage upon humanity. And behind and about the things I was looking for were other things forwhich I was not looking, that slowly came into and qualified theproblem. It dawned upon me by degrees that India is not so much onecountry as a vast spectacle of human development at every stage, ininfinite variety. One ranges between naked savages and the mostsophisticated of human beings. I pursued my enquiries about great modernenterprises, about railway labor, canal labor, tea-planting, across vaststretches of country where men still lived, illiterate, agricultural, unprogressive and simple, as men lived before the first stirrings ofrecorded history. One sees by the tanks of those mud-built villagesgroups of women with brass vessels who are identical in pose and figureand quality with the women modelled in Tanagra figures, and the droningwall-wheel is the same that irrigated the fields of ancient Greece, andthe crops and beasts and all the life is as it was in Greece and Italy, Phoenicia and Judea before the very dawn of history. 

By imperceptible degrees I came to realize that this matter ofexpropriation and enslavement and control, which bulks so vastly uponthe modern consciousness, which the Socialists treat as though it wasthe comprehensive present process of mankind, is no more than one aspectof an overlife that struggles out of a massive ancient and traditionalcommon way of living, struggles out again and again--blindly and alwaysso far with a disorderly insuccess.... 

I began to see in their proper proportion the vast enduring normal humanexistence, the peasant's agricultural life, unlettered, laborious andessentially unchanging on the one hand, and on the other thoseexcrescences of multitudinous city aggregation, those stormy excesses ofproductive energy that flare up out of that life, establish for a timegreat unstable strangenesses of human living, palaces, cities, roads, empires, literatures, and then totter and fall back again into ruin. InIndia even more than about the Mediterranean all this is spectacular. There the peasant goes about his work according to the usage of fiftythousand years. He has a primitive version of religion, a moraltradition, a social usage, closely adapted by countless years of trialand survival to his needs, and the whole land is littered with thevestiges and abandoned material of those newer, bolder, moreexperimental beginnings, beginnings that merely began. 

It was when I was going through the panther-haunted palaces of Akbar atFatehpur Sikri that I first felt how tremendously the ruins of the pastmay face towards the future; the thing there is like a frozen wave thatrose and never broke; and once I had caught that light upon things, Ifound the same quality in all the ruins I saw, in Amber and Vijayanagarand Chitor, and in all that I have seen or heard of, in ancient Rome andancient Verona, in Pæstum and Cnossus and ancient Athens. None of theseplaces was ever really finished and done with; the Basilicas of Cæsarand Constantine just as much as the baths and galleries and halls ofaudience at Fatehpur Sikri express not ends achieved but thwartedintentions of permanence. They embody repulse and rejection. They aretrials, abandoned trials, towards ends vaguely apprehended, ends feltrather than known. Even so was I moved by the Bruges-like emptinesses ofPekin, in the vast pretensions of its Forbidden City, which are like acry, long sustained, that at last dies away in a wail. I saw the placein 1905 in that slack interval after the European looting and before thegreat awakening that followed the Russo-Japanese war. Pekin in a centuryor so may be added in its turn to the list of abandoned endeavors. Insensibly the sceptre passes.... Nearer home than any of these placeshave I imagined the same thing; in Paris it seemed to me I felt thefirst chill shadow of that same arrest, that impalpable ebb andcessation at the very crest of things, that voice which opposes to allthe hasty ambitions and gathering eagerness of men: "It is not here, itis not yet. "

Only the other day as I came back from Paris to this quiet place andwalked across the fields from the railway station to this house, I sawan old woman, a grandmother, a bent old crone with two children playingabout her as she cut grass by the wayside, and she cut it, except thather sickle was steel, exactly as old women were cutting grass beforethere was writing, before the dawn of history, before men laid the firststones one upon the other of the first city that ever became a ruin.... 

You see Civilization has never yet existed, it has only continually andobstinately attempted to be. Our Civilization is but the indistincttwilight before the dawn. It is still only a confused attempt, aflourish out of barbarism, and the normal life of men, the toilingearthy life of the field and the byre, goes on still like a stream thatat once supports and carries to destruction the experimental ships ofsome still imperfect inventor. India gives it all from first to last, and now the modern movement, the latest half-conscious struggle of theNew Thing in mankind, throws up Bombay and Calcutta, vast feverishpustules upon the face of the peninsula, bridges the sacred rivers withhideous iron lattice-work and smears the sky of the dusty ruin-girdledcity of Delhi, --each ruin is the vestige of an empire, --with the blacksmoke of factory chimneys. 

Altogether scattered over that sun-burnt plain there are the remains offive or six extinguished Delhis, that played their dramas of frustrationbefore the Delhi of the Great Mogul. This present phase of humanliving--its symbol at Delhi is now, I suppose, a scaffold-bristling pileof neo-Georgian building--is the latest of the constructive syntheticefforts to make a newer and fuller life for mankind. Who dares call itthe last? I question myself constantly whether this life we live to-day, whether that too, is more than a trial of these blind constructiveforces, more universal perhaps, more powerful perhaps than anypredecessor but still a trial, to litter the world with rusting materialwhen the phase of recession recurs. 

But yet I can never quite think that is so. This time, surely, it isdifferent. This time may indeed be the beginning of a permanent change;this time there are new elements, new methods and a new spirit at workupon construction that the world has never known before. Mankind may benow in the dawn of a fresh phase of living altogether. It is possible. The forces of construction are proportionally gigantic. There was neverso much clear and critical thought in the world as there is now, neverso large a body of generally accessible knowledge and suggestion, neveranything like the same breadth of outlook, the same universality ofimaginative freedom. That is so in spite of infinite turmoil andconfusion. Moreover the effort now is less concentrated, less dramatic. There is no one vital center to the modern movement which disaster canstrike or decay undermine. If Paris or New York slacken and grow dulland materialist, if Berlin and London conspire for a mutual destruction, Tokio or Baku or Valparaiso or Christiania or Smyrna or Delhi willshelter and continue the onward impetus. 

And this time too it is not any one person, any one dynasty, any onecult or race which carries our destiny. Human thought has begun to freeitself from individual entanglements and dramatic necessities andaccidental standards. It becomes a collective mind, a collective willtowards achievement, greater than individuals or cities or kingdoms orpeoples, a mind and will to which we all contribute and which none of usmay command nor compromise by our private errors. It ceases to bearistocratic; it detaches itself from persons and takes possession of usall. We are involved as it grows free and dominant, we find ourselves, in spite of ourselves, in spite of quarrels and jealousies andconflicts, helping and serving in the making of a new world-city, a newgreater State above our legal States, in which all human life becomes asplendid enterprise, free and beautiful, whose aptest symbol in all ourworld is a huge Gothic Cathedral lit to flame by the sun, whose schemeis the towering conquest of the universe, whose every little detail isthe wrought-out effort of a human soul.... 

Such were the ideas that grew together in my mind as I went about Indiaand the East, across those vast sunlit plains, where men and women stilltoil in their dusty fields for a harsh living and live in doorlesshovels on floors of trampled cow-dung, persecuted by a hundred hostilebeasts and parasites, caught and eaten by tigers and panthers as catseat mice, and grievously afflicted by periodic famine and pestilence, even as men and women lived before the dawn of history, for untoldcenturies, for hundreds of thousands of years. 

§ 4

How strange we English seem in India, a little scattered garrison. Arewe anything more than accidental, anything more than the messenger-boywho has brought the impetus of the new effort towards civilizationthrough the gates of the East? Are we makers or just a means, casuallytaken up and used by the great forces of God?

I do not know, I have never been able to tell. I have never been able todecide whether we are the greatest or the dullest of peoples. 

I think we are an imaginative people with an imagination at oncegigantic, heroic and shy, and also we are a strangely restrained anddisciplined people who are yet neither subdued nor subordinated.... These are flat contradictions to state, and yet how else can one renderthe paradox of the English character and this spectacle of a handful ofmute, snobbish, not obviously clever and quite obviously ill-educatedmen, holding together kingdoms, tongues and races, three hundredmillions of them, in a restless fermenting peace? Again and again inIndia I would find myself in little circles of the officialEnglish, -supercilious, pretentious, conventional, carefully "turned out"people, living gawkily, thinking gawkily, talking nothing but sport andgossip, relaxing at rare intervals into sentimentality and levity asmean as a banjo tune, and a kind of despairful disgust would engulf me. And then in some man's work, in some huge irrigation scheme, some featof strategic foresight, some simple, penetrating realization ofdeep-lying things, I would find an effect, as if out of a thickly rustedsheath one had pulled a sword and found it--flame.... 

I recall one evening I spent at a little station in Bengal, betweenLucknow and Delhi, an evening given over to private theatricals. Thetheatre was a huge tent, and the little roughly improvised stage was litby a row of oil footlights and so small as barely to give a foothold forthe actors and actresses in the more crowded scenes. About me were thegreat people, the colonel's wife, a touring young man of family, officers and the wife of the manager of the big sugar refinery close athand. Behind were English of a more dubious social position, alsoconnected with the sugar refinery, a Eurasian family or so, very dressyand aggressive and terribly snubbed, and then I think various Portugueseand other nondescripts and groups of non-commissioned officers and men, some with their wives. The play, admirably chosen, was thatcrystallization of liberal Victorian snobbery, _Caste_, and I rememberthere was a sub-current of amusement because the young officer whoplayed--what _is_ the name of the hero's friend? I forget--had in thehaste of his superficiality adopted a moustache that would not keep onand an eyeglass that would not keep in. 

Everybody was acting very badly, nobody was word-perfect and a raspingprompter would not keep ahead as he ought to have done; the scenery andthe make-ups were daubs, and I was filled with amazement that havingquite wantonly undertaken to do this thing these people could then do itso slackly. Then a certain sudden warmth in the applause about mequickened my attention, and I realized the satirical purport of drunkenold father Eccles, and the moral intention of his son-in-law, theplumber. Between them they expressed the whole duty of the workingman asthe prosperous Victorians conceived it. He was to work hard always atany job he could find for any wages he could get, and if he didn't hewas a "drunken shirker" and the dupe of "paid agitators. " A comfortingbut misleading doctrine. And here were these people a decade on in thetwentieth century, with Time, Death, and Judgment close upon them, stilleagerly applauding, eager to excuse their minds with this one-sided, ungracious, old-fashioned nonsense, that has done so much to intensifythe deepening class antagonisms that strain us now at home almost to thebreaking point!

How amazingly, it seemed, those people didn't understand and wouldn'tunderstand any class but their own, any race but their own, any usageother than their use! Covertly I surveyed the colonel's profile. Itexpressed nothing but entire satisfaction with these disastrousinterpretations. What a weather-worn thought-free face that grizzledveteran showed the world!

I was seized with a sudden curiosity to see how the private soldiersbehind me were taking old Eccles. I turned round to discover croppedheads and faces as expressionless as masks, and behind them dusky faceswatching very alertly, and then other dusky faces, Eurasians, inferiors, servants, natives. 

Then at a sharp edge the glare of our lighting ceased and the canvaswalls of our narrow world of illusion opened into a vast blue twilight. At the opening stood two white-clad Sikhs, very, very still andattentive, watching the performance, and beyond them was a great spaceof sky over a dim profile of trees and roofs and a minaret, a skydarkling down to the flushed red memory--such a short memory it is inIndia--of a day that had gone for ever. 

I remained staring at that for some time. 

"Isn't old Eccles _good_?" whispered the colonel's wife beside me, andrecalled me to the play.... 

Somehow that picture of a narrow canvas tent in the midst of immensitieshas become my symbol for the whole life of the governing English, theEnglish of India and Switzerland and the Riviera and the West End andthe public services.... 

But they are not England, they are not the English reality, which is athing at once bright and illuminating and fitful, a thing humorous andwise and adventurous--Shakespeare, Dickens, Newton, Darwin, Nelson, Bacon, Shelley--English names every one--like the piercing light oflanterns swinging and swaying among the branches of dark trees at night. 

§ 5

I went again to Ceylon to look into the conditions of Coolieimportation, and then I was going back into Assam once more, still inthe wake of indentured labor, when I chanced upon a misadventure. I hadmy first and only experience of big game shooting in the Garo Hills, Iwas clawed out of a tree by a wounded panther, he missed his hold and Igot back to my branch, but my shoulder was put out, my thigh was badlytorn, and my blood was poisoned by the wound. I had an eviluncomfortable time. My injury hampered me greatly, and for a while itseemed likely I should be permanently lamed. I had to keep to vehiclesand reasonably good roads. I wound up my convalescence with a voyage toSingapore, and from thence I went on rather disconnectedly to a numberof exploratory journeys--excursions rather than journeys--into China. Igot to Pekin and then suddenly faced back to Europe, returning overlandthrough Russia. 

I wanted now to study the conditions of modern industrialism at itssources, and my disablement did but a little accelerate a return alreadydecided upon. I had got my conception of the East as a whole and of theshape of the historical process. I no longer felt adrift in a formlesschaos of forces. I perceived now very clearly that human life isessentially a creative struggle out of the usage of immemorial years, that the synthesis of our contemporary civilization is this creativeimpulse rising again in its latest and greatest effort, the creativeimpulse rising again, as a wave rises from the trough of itspredecessors, out of the ruins of our parent system, imperial Rome. Butthis time, and for the first time, the effort is world-wide, and Chinaand Iceland, Patagonia and Central Africa all swing together with us tomake--or into another catastrophic failure to make--the Great State ofmankind. All this I had now distinctly in my mind. The new process Iperceive had gone further in the west; was most developed in the west. The lighter end lifts first. So back I came away from the great body ofmankind, which is Asia, to its head. And since I was still held by mypromise from returning to England I betook myself first to the Pas deCalais and then to Belgium and thence into industrial Germany, to studythe socialistic movement at its sources. 

And I was beginning to see too very clearly by the time of my returnthat what is confusedly called the labor problem is really not oneproblem at all, but two. There is the old problem, the problem as old asZimbabwe and the pyramids, the declining problem, the problem oforganizing masses of unskilled labor to the constructive ends of a GreatState, and there is the new modification due to machinery, which hasrendered unskilled labor and labor of a low grade of skill almostunnecessary to mankind, added coal, oil, wind and water, the elementaryschool and the printing-press to our sources of power, and supersededthe ancient shepherding and driving of men by the possibility of theirintelligent and willing co-operation. The two are still mixed in everydiscussion, even as they are mixed in the practice of life, butinevitably they will be disentangled. We break free from slavery, openor disguised, just as we illuminate and develop this disentanglement.... 

I have long since ceased to trouble about the economics of humansociety. Ours are not economic but psychological difficulties. There isenough for everyone, and only a fool can be found to deny it. But ourmethods of getting and making are still ruled by legal and socialtraditions from the time before we had tapped these new sources ofpower, before there was more than enough for everyone, and when a baresupply was only secured by jealous possession and unremitting toil. Wehave no longer to secure enough by a stern insistence. We have come to aplenty. The problem now is to make that plenty go round, and _keep itenough_ while we do. 

Our real perplexities are altogether psychological. There are no validarguments against a great-spirited Socialism but this, that people willnot. Indolence, greed, meanness of spirit, the aggressiveness ofauthority, and above all jealousy, jealousy for our pride and vanity, jealousy for what we esteem our possessions, jealousy for those uponwhom we have set the heavy fetters of our love, a jealousy of criticismand association, these are the real obstacles to those brave largereconstructions, those profitable abnegations and brotherly feats ofgenerosity that will yet turn human life--of which our individual livesare but the momentary parts--into a glad, beautiful and triumphantco-operation all round this sunlit world. 

If but humanity could have its imagination touched----

I was already beginning to see the great problem of mankind as indeednothing other than a magnification of the little problem of myself, as aproblem in escape from grooves, from preoccupations and suspicions, precautions and ancient angers, a problem of escape from these spiritualbeasts that prowl and claw, to a new generosity and a new breadth ofview. 

For all of us, little son, as for each of us, salvation is that. We haveto get away from ourselves to a greater thing, to a giant's desire andan unending life, ours and yet not our own. 

§ 6

It is a queer experience to be even for a moment in the grip of a greatbeast. I had been put into the fork of a tree, so that I could shootwith the big stem behind my back. The fork wasn't, I suppose, more thana score of feet from the ground. It was a safe enough place from atiger, and that is what we expected. We had been misled by our tracker, who had mistaken the pugs of a big leopard for a tiger's, --they wereover rocky ground for the most part and he had only the spoor of achance patch of half-dried mud to go upon. The beast had killed a goatand was beaten out of a thicket near by me in which he had been lyingup. The probability had seemed that he would go away along a temptingravine to where Captain Crosby, who was my host, awaited him; I, as theamateur, was intended to be little more than a spectator. But he brokeback towards the wing of the line of beaters and came across the sunlitrocks within thirty yards of my post. 

Seen going along in that way, flattened almost to the ground, he wasn'ta particularly impressive beast, and I shot at his shoulder as one mightblaze away at a rabbit, --perhaps just a little more carefully, feelingas a Lord of Creation should who dispenses a merited death. I expectedhim either to roll over or bolt. 

Then instantly he was coming in huge bounds towards me.... 

He came so rapidly that he was covered by the big limb of the tree onwhich I was standing until he was quite beneath me, and my second shot, which I thought in the instant must have missed him, was taken rapidlyas he crouched to spring up the trunk. 

Then you know came a sort of astonishment, and I think, --becauseafterwards Crosby picked up a dropped cartridge at the foot of thetree--that I tried to reload. I believe I was completely incredulousthat the beast was going to have me until he actually got me. The thingwas too completely out of my imaginative picture. I don't believe Ithought at all while he was coming up the tree. I merely noted howastonishingly he resembled an angry cat. Then he'd got my leg, he washanging on to it first by two claws and then by one claw, and the wholeweight of him was pulling me down. It didn't seem to be my leg. I wasn'tfrightened, I felt absolutely nothing, I was amazed. I slipped, tried toget a hold on the tree trunk, felt myself being hauled down, and thengot my arm about the branch. I still clung to my unloaded gun as animpoverished aristocrat might cling to his patent of nobility. That was, I felt, my answer for him yet. 

I suppose the situation lasted a fraction of a second, though it seemedto me to last an interminable time. Then I could feel my leggings ripand his claw go scoring deeply down my calf. That hurt in a kind ofpainless, impersonal interesting way. Was my leg coming off? Boot? Theweight had gone, that enormous weight!

He'd missed his hold altogether! I heard his claws tear down the bark ofthe tree and then his heavy, soft fall upon the ground. 

I achieved a cat-like celerity. In another second I was back in my forkreloading, my legs tucked up as tightly as possible. 

I peered down through the branches ready for him. He wasn't there. Notup the tree again?... Then I saw him making off, with a halting gait, across the scorching rocks some thirty yards away, but I could not getmy gun into a comfortable position before he was out of sight behind aridge.... I wondered why the sunlight seemed to be flickering like anelectric light that fails, was somehow aware of blood streaming from myleg down the tree-stem; it seemed a torrent of blood, and there was along, loose ribbon of flesh very sickening to see; and then I faintedand fell out of the tree, bruising my arm and cheek badly anddislocating my shoulder in the fall.... Some of the beaters saw me fall, and brought Crosby in sufficient time to improvise a _torniquet_ andsave my life. 

CHAPTER THE NINTH

THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW WORLD

§ 1

I met Rachel again in Germany through the devices of my cousin theFürstin Letzlingen. I had finished seeing what I wanted to see inWestphalia and I was preparing to go to the United States. There Ithought I should be able to complete and round off that large view ofthe human process I had been developing in my mind. But my departure wasdelayed by an attack of influenza that I picked up at a SocialistCongress in Munich, and the dear Durchlaucht, hearing of this and havingher own views of my destiny, descended upon me while I was still in bedthere, made me get up and carried me off in her car, to take care of meherself at her villa at Boppard, telling me nothing of any fellow-guestsI might encounter. 

She had a villa upon the Rhine under a hill of vineyards, where shedevoted herself--she was a widow--to matchmaking and belated regrets forthe childlessness that necessitated a perpetual borrowing of materialfor her pursuit. She had a motor-car, a steam-launch, several rowingboats and canoes, a tennis-lawn, a rambling garden, a devious house anda rapid mind, and in fact everything that was necessary for throwingyoung people together. She made her surprise seem easy and natural, andwith returning health I found myself already back upon my old footing offriendly intimacy with Rachel. 

I found her a new and yet a familiar Rachel. She had grown up, she wasno longer a schoolgirl, crystalline clear with gleams of emotion andunderstanding, and what she had lost in transparency she had gained indepth. And she had become well-informed, she had been reading verywidely and well, I could see, and not simply reading but talking andlistening and thinking. She showed a vivid interest in the current ofhome politics, --at that time the last government of Mr. Balfour wasebbing to its end and my old Transvaal friends, the Chinese coolies, were to avenge themselves on their importers. The Tariff Reformers myfather detested were still struggling to unseat the Premier from hisleadership of Conservatism.... 

It was queer to hear once more, after my Asiatic wanderings anddreamings, those West-End dinner-table politics, those speculationsabout "Winston's" future and the possibility of Lloyd George or RamsayMacdonald or Macnamara taking office with the Liberals and whether theremight not ultimately be a middle party in which Haldane and Balfour, Grey and the Cecils could meet upon common ground. It seemed now notonly very small but very far off. She told me too of the huge popularityof King Edward. He had proved to be interested, curious, understandingand clever, an unexpectedly successful King. She described how he wasbreaking out of the narrow official limits that had kept his mother in akind of social bandbox, extending his solvent informality offriendliness to all sorts of men. He had won the heart of Will Crooks, the labor member for Poplar, for example, made John Burns a socialsuccess and warmed all France for England. 

I surveyed this novel picture of the English throne diffusingamiability. 

"I suppose it's what the throne ought to do, " said Rachel. "If it can'tbe inspiration, at any rate it can tolerate and reconcile and take theill-bred bitterness out of politics. "

"My father might have said that. "

"I got that from your father, " she said; and added after a momentarypause, "I go over and talk to him. "

"You talk to my father!"

"I like to. Or rather I listen and take it in. I go over in theafternoon. I go sometimes twice or three times a week. "

"That's kind of you. "

"Not at all. You see---- It sounds impudent, I know, for a girl to sayso, but we've so many interests in common. "

§ 2

I was more and more interested by Rachel as the days went on. A man mustbe stupid who does not know that a woman is happy in his presence, andfor two years now and more I had met no one with a very strong personalfeeling for me. And quite apart from that, her mind was extraordinarilyinteresting to me because it was at once so active and so clear and solimited by her entirely English circumstances. She had the prosperousEnglish outlook. She didn't so much see the wide world as get glimpsesof it through the tangle of Westminster and of West End and week-endlimitations. She wasn't even aware of that greater unprosperous England, already sulking and darkling outside her political world, that greaterEngland which was presently to make its first audible intimations ofdiscontent in that remarkable anti-climax to King George's Coronation, the Railway Strike. India for her was the land of people's cousins, Germany and the German Dreadnoughts bulked far larger, and all thetremendous gathering forces of the East were beyond the range of herimagination. I set myself to widen her horizons. 

I told her something of the intention and range of my travels, andsomething of the views that were growing out of their experiences. 

I have a clear little picture in my mind of an excursion we made to thathuge national Denkmal which rears its head out of the amiable vineyardsof Assmannshausen and Rudesheim over against Bingen. We landed at theformer place, went up its little funicular to eat our lunch and drinkits red wine at the pleasant inn above, and then strolled along throughthe woods to the monument. 

The Fürstin fell behind with her unwilling escort, a newly arrivedmedical student from England, a very pleasant youngster named Berwick, who was all too obviously anxious to change places with me. She deviseddelays, and meanwhile I, as yet unaware of the state of affairs, went onwith Rachel to that towering florid monument with its vast gesticulatingGermania, which triumphs over the conquered provinces. 

We fell talking of war and the passions and delusions that lead to war. Rachel's thoughts were strongly colored by those ideas of a naturalrivalry between Germany and England and of a necessary revenge forFrance which have for nearly forty years diverted the bulk of Europeanthought and energy to the mere waste of military preparations. I jarredwith an edifice of preconceptions when I scoffed and scolded at theseassumptions. 

"Our two great peoples are disputing for the leadership of the world, " Isaid, "and meanwhile the whole world sweeps past us. We're drifting intoa quarrelsome backwater. "

I began to tell of the fermentation and new beginnings that wereeverywhere perceptible throughout the East, of the vast masses of humanability and energy that were coming into action in China and India, ofthe unlimited future of both North and South America, of the mereaccidentalness of the European advantage. "History, " I said, "is alreadyshifting the significance out of Western Europe altogether, and weEnglish cannot see it; we can see no further than Berlin, and theseGermans can think of nothing better than to taunt the French with suchtawdry effigies as _this_! Europe goes on to-day as India went on in theeighteenth century, making aimless history. And the sands of opportunityrun and run.... "

I shrugged my shoulders and we stood for a little while looking down onthe shining crescent of the Rhine. 

"Suppose, " said Rachel, "that someone were to say that--in the House. "

"The House, " I said, "doesn't hear things at my pitch. Bat outcries. Tooshrill altogether. "

"It might. If _you_----"

She halted, hesitated for a moment on the question and asked abruptly:

"When are you coming back to England, Mr. Stratton?"

"Certainly not for six months, " I said. 

A movement of her eyes made me aware of the Fürstin and Berwick emergingfrom the trees. "And then?" asked Rachel. 

I didn't want to answer that question, in which the personal notesounded so clearly. "I am going to America to see America, " I said, "andAmerica may be rather a big thing to see. "

"You must see it?"

"I want to be sure of it--as something comprehensive. I want to get ageneral effect of it.... "

Rachel hesitated, looked back to measure the distance of the Fürstin andher companion and put her question again, but this time with asignificance that did not seem even to want to hide itself. "_Then_ willyou come back?" she said. 

Her face flamed scarlet, but her eyes met mine boldly. Between us therewas a flash of complete understanding. 

My answer, if it was lame and ungallant to such a challenge, was atleast perfectly honest. "I can't make up my mind, " I said. "I've beennear making plans--taking steps.... Something holds me back.... "

I had no time for an explanation. 

"I can't make up my mind, " I repeated. 

She stood for a moment rather stiffly, staring away towards the bluehills of Alsace. 

Then she turned with a smiling and undisturbed countenance to theFürstin. Her crimson had given place to white. "The triumph of it, " shesaid with a slight gesture to the flamboyant Teutonism that toweredover us, and boldly repeating words I had used scarcely five minutesbefore, "makes me angry. They conquered--ungraciously.... "

She had overlooked something in her effort to seem entirelyself-possessed. She collapsed. "My dear!" she cried, --"I forgot!"

"Oh! I'm only a German by marriage!" cried the Fürstin. "And I canassure you I quite understand--about the triumph of it.... " She surveyedthe achievement of her countrymen. "It is--ungracious. But indeed it'sonly a sort of artlessness if you see the thing properly.... It's notvulgarity--it's childishness.... They've hardly got over it yet--theirintense astonishment at being any good at war.... That large throatyVictory! She's not so militant as she seems. She's too plump.... Ofcourse what a German really appreciates is nutrition. But I quite agreewith you both.... I'm beginning to want my tea, Mr. Stratton.... Rachel!"

Her eyes had been on Rachel as she chattered. The girl had turned to thedistant hills again, and had forgotten even to pretend to listen to theanswer she had evoked. Now she came back sharply to the sound of hername. 

"Tea?" said the Fürstin. 

"Oh!" cried Rachel. "Yes. Yes, certainly. Rather. Tea. "

§ 3

It was clear to me that after that I must as people say "have thingsout" with Rachel. But before I could do anything of the sort theFürstin pounced upon me. She made me sit up that night after her otherguests had gone to their rooms, in the cosy little turret apartment shecalled her study and devoted to the reading of whatever was mostnotorious in contemporary British fiction. "Sit down, " said she, "by thefire in that chair there and tell me all about it. It's no good yourpretending you don't know what I mean. What are you up to with her, andwhy don't you go straight to your manifest destiny as a decent manshould?"

"Because manifestly it isn't my destiny, " I said. 

"Stuff, " said the Fürstin. 

"You know perfectly well why I am out of England. "

"Everybody knows--except of course quite young persons who are beingcarefully brought up. "

"Does _she_ know?"

"She doesn't seem to. "

"Well, that's what I want to know. "

"Need she know?"

"Well, it does seem rather essential----"

"I suppose if you think so----"

"Will you tell her?"

"Tell her yourself, if she must be told. Down there in Surrey, she_must_ have seen things and heard things. But I don't see that she wantsa lot of ancient history. "

"If it is ancient history!"

"Oh! two years and a half, --it's an Era. "

I made no answer to that, but sat staring into the fire while my cousinwatched my face. At length I made my confession. "I don't think it isancient history at all, " I said. "I think if I met Mary again now----"

"You mean Lady Mary Justin?"

"Of course. "

"It would be good for your mind if you remembered to call her by herproper name.... You think if you met her again you two would begin tocarry on. But you see, --you aren't going to meet her. Everybody will seethat doesn't happen. "

"I mean that I---- Well----"

"You'd better not say it. Besides, it's nonsense. I doubt if you'vegiven her a thought for weeks and weeks. "

"Until I came here perhaps that was almost nearly true. But you'vestirred me up, sweet cousin, and old things, old memories and habitshave come to the surface again. Mary wrote herself over my life--in allsorts of places.... I can't tell you. I've never talked of her toanyone. I'm not able, very well, to talk about my feelings.... Perhaps aman of my sort--doesn't love twice over. "

I disregarded a note of dissent from my cousin. "That was all so magic, all my youth, all my hope, all the splendid adventure of it. Why shouldone pretend?... I'm giving none of that to Rachel. It isn't there anymore to give.... "

"One would think, " remarked the Fürstin, "there was no gift of healing. "

She waited for me to speak, and then irritated by my silence struck atme sharply with that wicked little tongue of hers. 

"Do you think that Lady Mary Justin thinks of you--as you think of her?Do you think she hasn't settled down?"

I looked up at her quickly. 

"She's just going to have a second child, " the Fürstin flung out. 

Yes, that did astonish me. I suppose my face showed it. 

"That girl, " said the Fürstin, "that clean girl would have soonerdied--ten thousand deaths.... And she's never--never been anything toyou. "

I think that for an instant she had been frightened at her own words. She was now quite angry and short of breath. She had contrived a rapidindignation against Mary and myself. 

"I didn't know Mary had had any child at all, " I said. 

"This makes two, " said the Fürstin, and held up a brace of fingers, "with scarcely a year and a half between them. Not much more anyhow.... It was natural, I suppose. A natural female indecency. I don't blameher. When a woman gives in she ought to do it thoroughly. But I don'tsee that it leaves _you_ much scope for philandering, Stephen, doesit?... And there you are, and here is Rachel. And why don't you make aclean job of your life?... "

"I didn't understand. "

"I wonder what you imagined. "

I reflected. "I wonder what I did. I suppose I thought of Mary--just asI had left her--always. "

I remained with my mind filled with confused images of Mary, memories, astonishment.... 

I perceived the Fürstin was talking. 

"Maundering about, " she was saying, "like a huntsman without a horse.... You've got work to do--blood in your veins. I'm not one of your ignorantwomen, Stephen. You ought to have a wife.... "

"Rachel's too good, " I said, at the end of a pause and perceiving I hadto say something, "to be that sort of wife. "

"No woman's too good for a man, " said the Fürstin von Letzlingen withconviction. "It's what God made her for. "

§ 4

My visit to Boppard was drawing to an end before I had a clearopportunity to have things out with Rachel. It was in a little garden, under the very shadow of that gracious cathedral at Worms, the sort oflittle garden to which one is admitted by ringing a bell and tipping acustodian. I think Worms is in many respects one of the most beautifulcathedrals I have ever seen, so perfectly proportioned, so delicatelyfaded, so aloof, so free from pride or presumption, and it rises overthis green and flowery peace, a towering, lithe, light brown, sunlit, easy thing, as unconsciously and irrelevantly splendid as a tall ship inthe evening glow under a press of canvas. We looked up at it for a timeand then went on with the talk to which we had been coming slowly sincethe Fürstin had packed us off for it, while she went into the town withBerwick to buy toys for her gatekeeper's children. I had talked aboutmyself, and the gradual replacement of my ambition to play a part inimperial politics by wider intentions. "You know, " I asked abruptly, "why I left England?"

She thought through the briefest of pauses. "No, " she decided at last. 

"I made love, " I said, "to Lady Mary Justin, and we were found out. Wecouldn't go away together----"

"Why not?" she interjected. 

"It was impossible. "

For some moments neither of us spoke. "Something, " she said, and then, "Some vague report, " and left these fragments to be her reply. 

"We were old playmates; we were children together. Wehave--something--that draws us to each other. She--she made a mistake inmarrying. We were both very young and the situation was difficult. Andthen afterwards we were thrown together.... But you see that has made agreat difference to my life; it's turned me off the rails on which menof my sort usually run. I've had to look to these other things.... They've become more to me than to most people if only because ofthat.... "

"You mean these ideas of yours--learning as much as you can about theworld, and then doing what you can to help other people to a betterunderstanding. "

"Yes, " I said. 

"And that--will fill your life. "

"It ought to. "

"I suppose it ought. I suppose--you find--it does. "

"Don't you think it ought to fill my life?"

"I wondered if it did. "

"But why shouldn't it?"

"It's so--so cold. "

My questioning silence made her attempt to explain. 

"One wants life more beautiful than that, " she said. "One wants----There are things one needs, things nearer one. "

We became aware of a jangling at the janitor's bell. Our opportunity fortalk was slipping away. And we were both still undecided, bothblunderingly nervous and insecure. We were hurried into clumsy phrasesthat afterwards we would have given much to recall. 

"But how could life be more beautiful, " I said, "than when it serves bighuman ends?"

Her brows were knit. She seemed to be listening for the sound of theunlocking gate. 

"But, " she said, and plunged, "one wants to be loved. Surely one needsthat. "

"You see, for me--that's gone. "

"Why should it be gone?"

"It is. One doesn't begin again. I mean--myself. _You_--can. You'venever begun. Not when you've loved--loved really. " I forced that on her. I over emphasized. "It was real love, you know; the real thing.... Idon't mean the mere imaginative love, blindfold love, but love thatsees.... I want you to understand that. I loved--altogether.... "

Across the lawn under its trim flowering-trees appeared Berwick loadedwith little parcels, and manifestly eager to separate us, and theFürstin as manifestly putting on the drag. 

"There's a sort of love, " I hurried, "that doesn't renew itself ever. Don't let yourself believe it does. Something else may come in itsplace, but that is different. It's youth, --a wonderful newness.... Lookat that youngster. _He_ can love you like that. I've watched him. Hedoes. You know he does.... "

"Yes, " she said, as hurriedly; "but then, you see, I don't love him. "

"You don't?"

"I can't. "

"But he's such a fresh clean human being----"

"That's not all, " said Rachel. "That's not all.... You don'tunderstand. "

The two drew near. "It is so hard to explain, " she said. "Things thatone hardly sees for oneself. Sometimes it seems one cannot help oneself. You can't choose. You are taken.... " She seemed about to say somethingmore, and stopped and bit her lip. 

In another moment I was standing up, and the Fürstin was calling to usacross ten feet of space. "Such amoosin' little toyshops. We've got aheap of things. Just look at him!"

He smiled over his load with anxious eyes upon our faces. 

"Ten separate parcels, " he said, appealing for Rachel's sympathy. "I'mdoing my best not to complain. "

And rather adroitly he contrived to let two of them slip, and capturedRachel to assist him. 

He didn't relinquish her again. 

§ 5

The Fürstin and I followed them along the broad, pleasant, tree-linedstreet towards the railway station. 

"A boy of that age ought not to marry a girl of that age, " said theFürstin, breaking a silence. 

I didn't answer. 

"Well?" she said, domineering. 

"My dear cousin, " I said, "I know all that you have in your mind. Iadmit--I covet her. You can't make me more jealous than I am. She'sclean and sweet--it is marvellous how the God of the rest of the worldcan have made a thing so brave and honest and wonderful. She's betterthan flowers. But I think I'm going away to-night, nevertheless. "

"You don't mean you're going to carry chivalry to the point of givingthat boy a chance--for he hasn't one while you're about. "

"No. You see--I want to give Rachel a chance. You know as well as Ido--the things in my mind. "

"That you've got to forget. "

"That I don't forget. "

"That you're bound in honor to forget. And who could help you better?"

"I'm going, " I said and then, wrathfully, "If you think I want to useRachel as a sort of dressing--for my old sores----"

I left the sentence unfinished. 

"Oh _nonsense_!" cried the Fürstin, and wouldn't speak to me again untilwe got to that entirely Teutonic "art" station that is not the leastamong the sights of Worms. 

"Sores, indeed!" said the Fürstin presently, as we walked up the end ofthe platform. 

"There's nothing, " said the Fürstin, with an unusual note of petulance, "she'd like better. "

"I can't think what men are coming to, " she went on. "You're in lovewith her, or you wouldn't be so generous. And she's head over heels withyou. And here you are! I'll give you one more chance----"

"I won't take it, " I interrupted. "It isn't fair. I tell you I won'ttake it. I'll go two days earlier to prevent you. Unless you promiseme---- Of course I see how things are with her. She's not a sphinx. Butit isn't fair. It isn't. Not to her, or to him--or myself. _He's_ gotsome claims. He's got more right to her than I.... "

"A boy like that! No man has any rights about women--until he's thirty. And as for me and all the pains _I've_ taken---- Oh! I _hate_ Worms. Dust and ashes! Well here thank heaven! comes the train. If nothing elsecould stir you, Stephen, at least I could have imagined some decentimpulse of gratitude to me. Stephen, you're disgusting. You'veabsolutely spoilt this trip for me--absolutely. When only a littlereasonableness on your part---- Oh!"

She left her sentence unfinished. 

Berwick and I had to make any conversation that was needed on the wayback to Boppard. Rachel did not talk and the Fürstin did not want to. 

§ 6

Directly I had parted from Rachel's questioning eyes I wanted to go backto them. It seems to me now that all the way across to America, in thatmagnificent German liner I joined at Hamburg, I was thinking in confusedalternations of her and of Mary. There are turns of thought that stillbring back inseparably with them the faint echo of the airs of theexcellent but industrious band that glorified our crossing. 

I had been extraordinarily shocked and concerned at the thought of Marybearing children. It is a grotesque thing to confess but I had never letmyself imagine the possibility of such a thing for her who had been soimmensely mine.... 

We are the oddest creatures, little son, beasts and barbarians andbrains, neither one nor the other but all confusedly, and here was I whohad given up Mary and resigned her and freed myself from her as Ithought altogether, cast back again into my old pit by the most obviousand necessary consequence of her surrender and mine. And it's just thereand in that relation that we men and women are so elaborately insecure. We try to love as equals and behave as equals and concede a levelfreedom, and then comes a crisis, --our laboriously contrived edifice ofliberty collapses and we perceive that so far as sex goes the womanremains to the man no more than a possession--capable of loyalty ortreachery. 

There, still at that barbaric stage, the situation stands. You see I hadalways wanted to own Mary, and always she had disputed that. That is ourwhole story, the story of an instinctive subjugation struggling againsta passionate desire for fellowship. She had denied herself to me, takenherself away; that much I could endure; but now came this blazing factthat showed her as it seemed in the most material and conclusiveway--overcome. I had storms of retrospective passion at the thoroughnessof her surrender.... Yes, and that's in everyone of us, --in everyone. Iwonder if in all decent law-abiding London there lives a single healthyadult man who has not at times longed to trample and kill.... 

For once I think the Fürstin miscalculated consequences. I think Ishould have engaged myself to Rachel before I went to America if it hadnot been for the Fürstin's revelation, but this so tore me that I couldno longer go on falling in love again, naturally and sweetly. No manfalls in love if he has just been flayed.... I could no longer think ofRachel except as a foil to Mary. I was moved to marry her by a new setof motives; to fling her so to speak in Mary's face, and from the fiercevulgarity of that at least I recoiled--and let her go as I have toldyou. 

§ 7

I had thought all that was over. 

I remember my struggles to recover my peace. 

I remember how very late one night I went up to the promenade deck tosmoke a cigar before turning in. It was a warm moonlight night. Thebroad low waves of ebony water that went seething past below, foamedluminous and were streaked and starred with phosphorescence. Therecumbent moon, past its full and sinking westward, seemed bigger than Ihad ever seen it before, and the roundness of the watery globe wasmanifest about the edge of the sky. One had that sense so rare on land, so common in the night at sea, of the world as a conceivable sphere, andof interstellar space as of something clear and close at hand. 

There came back to me again that feeling I had lost for a time inGermany of being not myself but Man consciously on his little planetcommuning with God. 

But my spirit was saying all the time, "I am still in my pit, in my pit. After all I am still in my pit. "

And then there broke the answer on my mind, that all our lives we muststruggle out of our pits, that to struggle out of our pit is this life, there is no individual life but that, and that there comes no escapehere, no end to that effort, until the release of death. Continually orfrequently we may taste salvation, but never may we achieve it while weare things of substance. Each moment in our lives we come to the testand are lost again or saved again. To be assured of one's security is toforget and fall away. 

And standing at the rail with these thoughts in my mind, suddenly Iprayed.... 

I remember how the engine-throbs beat through me like the beating of aheart, and that far below, among the dim lights that came up from theemigrants in the steerage, there was a tinkling music as I prayed and aman's voice singing a plaintive air in some strange Slavonic tongue. 

That voice of the invisible singer and the spirit of the unknownsong-maker and the serenity of the sky, they were all, I perceived, nomore and no less than things in myself that I did not understand. Theywere out beyond the range of understanding. And yet they fell into thecompletest harmony that night with all that I seemed to understand.... 

§ 8

The onset of New York was extraordinarily stimulating to me. I writeonset. It is indeed that. New York rides up out of the waters, a cliffof man's making; its great buildings at a distance seem like longChinese banners held up against the sky. From Sandy Hook to the greatlanding stages and the swirling hooting traffic of the Hudson Riverthere fails nothing in that magnificent crescendo of approach. 

And New York keeps the promise of its first appearance. There is nosuch fulness of life elsewhere in all the world. The common man in thestreets is a bigger common man than any Old World city can show, physically bigger; there is hope in his eyes and a braced defiance. NewYork may be harsh and blusterous and violent, but there is a breeze fromthe sea and a breeze of fraternity in the streets, and the Americans ofall peoples in the world are a nation of still unbroken men. 

I went to America curious, balancing between hope and scepticism. TheEuropean world is full of the criticism of America, and for the matterof that America too is full of it; hostility and depreciationprevail, --overmuch, for in spite of rawness and vehemence and a scum ofblatant, oh! quite asinine folly, the United States of America remainsthe greatest country in the world and the living hope of mankind. It isthe supreme break with the old tradition; it is the freshest and mostvaliant beginning that has ever been made in human life. 

Here was the antithesis of India; here were no peasants whatever, notraditional culture, no castes, no established differences (except forthe one schism of color); this amazing place had never had a famine, never a plague; here were no temples and no priesthoods dominating thelives of the people, --old Trinity church embedded amidst toweringsky-scrapers was a symbol for as much as they had of all that; and heretoo there was no crown, no affectations of an ancient loyalty, novisible army, no traditions of hostility, for the old defiance ofBritain is a thing now ridiculous and dead; and everyone I met had anair as if he knew that to-morrow must be different from to-day anddifferent and novel and remarkable by virtue of himself and such ashimself. 

I went about New York, with the incredulous satisfaction of a man whohas long doubted, to find that after all America was coming true. Thevery clatter pleased me, the crowds, the camp-like slovenliness, adisorder so entirely different from the established and accepteduntidiness of China or India. Here was something the old world had nevershown me, a new enterprise, a fresh vigor. In the old world there isChange, a mighty wave now of Change, but it drives men before it as ifit were a power outside them and not in them; they do not know, they donot believe; but here the change is in the very blood and spirit ofmankind. They breathe it in even before the launch has brought theirfeet to Ellis Island soil. In six months they are Americanized. Does itmatter that a thing so gigantic should be a little coarse and blunderingin detail, if this stumbling giant of the new time breaks a graciousrelic or so in his eager clutch and treads a little on the flowers?

§ 9

And in this setting of energy and activity, towering city life andbracing sea breezes, I met Gidding again, whom I had last seen departinginto Egypt to look more particularly at the prehistoric remains and thetemples of the first and second dynasty at Abydos. It was at adinner-party, one of those large gatherings that welcome interestingvisitors. It wasn't, of course, I who was the centre of interest, but adistinguished French portrait painter; I was there as just any guest. Ihadn't even perceived Gidding until he came round to me in thatprecious gap of masculine intercourse that ensues upon the departure ofthe ladies. That gap is one of the rare opportunities for conversationmen get in America. 

"I don't know whether you will remember me, " he said, "but perhaps youremember Crete--in the sunrise. "

"And no end of talk afterwards, " I said, grasping his hand, "no end--forwe didn't half finish. Did you have a good time in Egypt?"

"I'm not going to talk to you about Egypt, " said Gidding. "I'm throughwith ruins. I'm going to ask you--you know what I'm going to ask you. "

"What I think of America. It's the same inevitable question. I thinkeverything of it. It's the stepping-off place. I've come here at last, because it matters most. "

"That's what we all want to believe, " said Gidding. "That's what we wantyou to tell us. "

He reflected. "It's immense, isn't it, perfectly immense? But---- I amafraid at times we're too disposed to forget just what it's all about. We've got to be reminded. That, you know, is why we keep on asking. "

He went on to question me where I had been, what I had done, what I madeof things. He'd never, he said, forgotten our two days' gossip in theLevant, and all the wide questions about the world and ourselves that wehad broached then and left so open. I soon found myself talking veryfreely to him. I am not a ready or abundant talker, but Gidding has theknack of precipitating my ideas. He is America to my Europe, and at histouch all that has been hanging in concentrated solution in my mindcomes crystallizing out. He has to a peculiar degree that directnessand simplicity which is the distinctive American quality. I tried toexplain to his solemnly nodding head and entirely intelligent eyes justexactly what I was making of things, of the world, of humanity, ofmyself.... 

It was an odd theme for two men to attempt after dinner, servantshovering about them, their two faces a little flushed by wine and goodeating, their keen interest masked from the others around them by agossiping affectation, their hands going out as they talked for matchesor cigarette, and before we had gone further than to fling out a fewintimations to each other our colloquy was interrupted by our hoststanding up and by the general stir that preluded our return to femininesociety. "We've got more to say than this, " said Gidding. "We've got to_talk_. " He brought out a little engagement book that at once drew outmine in response. And a couple of days after, we spent a morning andafternoon together and got down to some very intimate conversation. Wemotored out to lunch at a place called Nyack, above the Palisades, wecrossed on a ferry to reach it, and we visited the house of WashingtonIrving near Yonkers on our way. 

I've still a vivid picture in my mind of the little lawn at Irvingtonthat looks out upon the rushing steel of Hudson River, where Giddingopened his heart to me. I can see him now as he leant a little forwardover the table, with his wrists resting upon it, his long clean-shavenface very solemn and earnest and grey against the hard American sunlightin the greenery about us, while he told me in that deliberate Americanvoice of his and with the deliberate American solemnity, of his desireto "do some decent thing with life. "

He was very anxious to set himself completely before me, I remember, onthat occasion. There was a peculiar mental kinship between us that eventhe profound differences of our English and American trainings could notmask. And now he told me almost everything material about his life. Forthe first time I learnt how enormously rich he was, not only by reasonof his father's acquisitions, but also because of his own almostinstinctive aptitude for business. "I've got, " he said, "to begin with, what almost all men spend their whole lives in trying to get. And itamounts to nothing. It leaves me with life like a blank sheet of paper, and nothing in particular to write on it. "

"You know, " he said, "it's--exasperating. I'm already half-way tothree-score and ten, and I'm still wandering about wondering what to dowith this piece of life God has given me.... "

He had "lived" as people say, he had been in scrapes and scandals, tasted to the full the bitter intensities of the personal life; he hadcome by a different route to the same conclusions as myself, was asanxious as I to escape from memories and associations and feuds and thatexcessive vividness of individual feeling which blinds us to the commonhumanity, the common interest, the gentler, larger reality, which liesbehind each tawdrily emphatic self.... 

"It's a sort of inverted homoeopathy I want, " he said. "The big thing tocure the little thing.... "

But I will say no more of that side of our friendship, because the ideasof it are spread all through this book from the first page to thelast.... What concerns me now is not our sympathy and agreement, butthat other aspect of our relations in which Gidding becomes impulse andurgency. "Seeing we have these ideas, " said he, --"and mind you theremust be others who have them or are getting to them, for nobody thinksall alone in this world, --seeing we have these ideas what are we goingto _do_?"

§ 10

That meeting was followed by another before I left New York, andpresently Gidding joined me at Denver, where I was trying to measure thetrue significance of a labor paper called _The Appeal to Reason_ that, in spite of a rigid boycott by the ordinary agencies for newsdistribution went out in the middle west to nearly half a millionsubscribers, and was filled with such a fierceness of insurrectionagainst labor conditions, such a hatred, blind and impassioned, as I hadnever known before. Gidding remained with me there and came back with meto Chicago, where I wanted to see something of the Americanization ofthe immigrant, and my survey of America, the social and economic problemof America, resolved itself more and more into a conference with him. 

There is no more fruitless thing in the world than to speculate how lifewould have gone if this thing or that had not happened. Yet I cannothelp but wonder how far I might have travelled along the lines of mypresent work if I had gone to America and not met Gidding, or if I hadmet him without visiting America. The man and his country areinextricably interwoven in my mind. Yet I do think that his simplicityand directness, his force of initiative that turned me from a mereenquirer into an active writer and organizer, are qualities less his inparticular than America's in general. There is in America a splendidcrudity, a directness that cleared my spirit as a bracing wind willsweep the clouds from mountain scenery. Compared with our oldercontinents America is mankind stripped for achievement. So many thingsare not there at all, need not be considered; no institutionalaristocracy, no Kaisers, Czars, nor King-Emperors to maintain alitigious sequel to the Empire of Rome; it has no uneducated immovablepeasantry rooted to the soil, indeed it has no rooting to the soil atall; it is, from the Forty-ninth Parallel to the tip of Cape Horn, onetriumphant embodiment of freedom and deliberate agreement. For I meanall America, Spanish-speaking as well as English-speaking; they havethis detachment from tradition in common. See how the United States, forexample, stands flatly on that bare piece of eighteenth-centuryintellectualism the Constitution, and is by virtue of that a structureeither wilful and intellectual or absurd. That sense of incurableservitude to fate and past traditions, that encumbrance with ruins, pledges, laws and ancient institutions, that perpetual complication ofconsiderations and those haunting memories of preceding human failureswhich dwarf the courage of destiny in Europe and Asia, vanish from themind within a week of one's arrival in the New World. Naturally onebegins to do things. One is inspired to do things. One feels that onehas escaped, one feels that the time is _now_. All America, North andSouth alike, is one tremendous escape from ancient obsessions intoactivity and making. 

And by the time I had reached America I had already come to see thatjust as the issues of party politics at home and international politicsabroad are mere superficialities above the greater struggle of anenergetic minority to organize and exploit the labor of the masses ofmankind, so that struggle also is only a huge incident in the still morethan half unconscious impulse to replace the ancient way of human livingby a more highly organized world-wide social order, by a worldcivilization embodying itself in a World State. And I saw now how thatimpulse could neither cease nor could it on the other hand realizeitself until it became conscious and deliberate and merciful, free fromhaste and tyranny, persuasive and sustained by a nearly universalsympathy and understanding. For until that arrives the creative forcesmust inevitably spend themselves very largely in blind alleys, futilerushes and destructive conflicts. Upon that our two minds were agreed. 

"We have, " said Gidding, "to understand and make understanding. That isthe real work for us to do, Stratton, that is our job. The world, as yousay, has been floundering about, half making civilization and neverachieving it. Now _we_, I don't mean just you and me, Stratton, particularly, but every intelligent man among us, have got to set to andmake it thorough. There is no other sane policy for a man outside hisprivate passions but that. So let's get at it----"

I find it now impossible to trace the phases by which I reached thesebroad ideas upon which I rest all my work, but certainly they werepresent very early in my discussions with Gidding. We two men had beenthinking independently but very similarly, and it is hard to say justwhat completing touches either of us gave to the other's propositions. We found ourselves rather than arrived at the conception of ourselvesas the citizens neither of the United States nor of England but of astate that had still to come into being, a World State, a great unitybehind and embracing the ostensible political fabrics of to-day--a unityto be reached by weakening antagonisms, by developing understandings andtoleration, by fostering the sense of brotherhood across the ancientbounds. 

We believed and we believe that such a creative conception of a humancommonweal can be fostered in exactly the same way that the idea ofGerman unity was fostered behind the dukedoms, the free cities andkingdoms of Germany, a conception so creative that it can dissolvetraditional hatreds, incorporate narrower loyalties and replace athousand suspicions and hostilities by a common passion for collectiveachievement, so creative that at last the national boundaries of to-daymay become obstacles as trivial to the amplifying good-will of men asthe imaginary line that severs Normandy from Brittany, or Berwick fromNorthumberland. 

And it is not only a great peace about the earth that this idea of aWorld State means for us, but social justice also. We are both convincedaltogether that there survives no reason for lives of toil, forhardship, poverty, famine, infectious disease, for the continuingcruelties of wild beasts and the greater multitude of crimes, butmismanagement and waste, and that mismanagement and waste spring from noother source than ignorance and from stupid divisions and jealousies, base patriotisms, fanaticisms, prejudices and suspicions that are all nomore than ignorance a little mingled with viciousness. We have lookedclosely into this servitude of modern labor, we have seen its injusticefester towards syndicalism and revolutionary socialism, and we knowthese things for the mere aimless, ignorant resentments they are;punishments, not remedies. We have looked into the portentous threat ofmodern war, and it is ignorant vanity and ignorant suspicion, thebargaining aggression of the British prosperous and the swaggeringvulgarity of the German junker that make and sustain that monstrousEuropean devotion to arms. And we are convinced there is nothing inthese evils and conflicts that light may not dispel. We believe thatthese things can be dispelled, that the great universals, Science whichhas limitations neither of race nor class, Art which speaks to its ownin every rank and nation, Philosophy and Literature which broadensympathy and banish prejudice, can flood and submerge and will yet flowover and submerge every one of these separations between man and man. 

I will not say that this Great State, this World Republic of civilizedmen, is our dream, because it is not a dream, it is a manifestlyreasonable possibility. It is our intention. It is what we aredeliberately making and what in a little while very many men and womenwill be making. We are secessionists from all contemporary nationalitiesand loyalties. We have set ourselves with all the capacity and energy atour disposal to create a world-wide common fund of ideas and knowledge, and to evoke a world-wide sense of human solidarity in which theexisting limitations of political structure must inevitably melt away. 

It was Gidding and his Americanism, his inborn predisposition toinnovation and the large freedom of his wealth that turned these ideasinto immediate concrete undertakings. I see more and more that it ishere that we of the old European stocks, who still grow upon the oldwood, differ most from those vigorous grafts of our race in America andAfrica and Australia on the one hand and from the renascent peoples ofthe East on the other: that we have lost the courage of youth and havenot yet gained the courage of desperate humiliations, in taking hold ofthings. To Gidding it was neither preposterous nor insufferablymagnificent that we should set about a propaganda of all science, allknowledge, all philosophical and political ideas, round about thehabitable globe. His mind began producing concrete projects as afire-work being lit produces sparks, and soon he was "figuring out" themost colossal of printing and publishing projects, as a man might workout the particulars for an alteration to his bathroom. It was soentirely natural to him, it was so entirely novel to me, to go on fromthe proposition that understanding was the primary need of humanity tothe systematic organization of free publishing, exhaustive discussion, intellectual stimulation. He set about it as a company of pharmacistsmight organize the distribution of some beneficial cure. 

"Say, Stratton, " he said, after a conversation that had seemed to mehalf fantasy; "Let's _do_ it. "

There are moments still when it seems to me that this life of mine hasbecome the most preposterous of adventures. We two absurd human beingsare spending our days and nights in a sustained and growing attempt todo what? To destroy certain obsessions and to give the universal humanmind a form and a desire for expression. We have put into the shape ofone comprehensive project that force of released wealth that has alreadydotted America with universities, libraries, institutions for researchand enquiry. Already there are others at work with us, and presentlythere will be a great number. We have started an avalanche above the oldpolitics and it gathers mass and pace.... 

And there never was an impulse towards endeavor in a human heart thatwasn't preposterous. Man is a preposterous animal. Thereby he ceases tobe a creature and becomes a creator, he turns upon the powers that madehim and subdues them to his service; by his sheer impudence heestablishes his claim to possess a soul.... 

But I need not write at all fully of my work here. This book is notabout that but about my coming to that. Long before this manuscriptreaches your hands--if ultimately I decide that it shall reach yourhands--you will be taking your share, I hope, in this open conspiracyagainst potentates and prejudices and all the separating powers ofdarkness. 

§ 11

I would if I could omit one thing that I must tell you here, because itgoes so close to the very core of all this book has to convey. I wish Icould leave it out altogether. I wish I could simplify my story bysmoothing out this wrinkle at least and obliterating a thing that was atonce very real and very ugly. You see I had at last struggled up to asustaining idea, to a conception of work and duty to which I couldsurely give my life. I had escaped from my pit so far. And it wasnatural that now with something to give I should turn not merely forconsolation and service but for help and fellowship to that dear humanbeing across the seas who had offered them to me so straightly andsweetly. All that is brave and good and as you would have me, is it not?Only, dear son, that is not all the truth. 

There was still in my mind, for long it remained in my mind, abitterness against Mary. I had left her, I had lost her, we had parted;but from Germany to America and all through America and home again to mymarriage and with me after my marriage, it rankled that she could stillgo on living a life independent of mine. I had not yet lost my desire topossess her, to pervade and dominate her existence; my resentment thatthough she loved me she had first not married me and afterwards notconsented to come away with me was smouldering under the closed hatchesof my mind. And so while the better part of me was laying hold of thiswork because it gave me the hope of a complete distraction and escapefrom my narrow and jealous self, that lower being of the pit was alsorejoicing in the great enterprises before me and in the marriage uponwhich I had now determined, because it was a last trampling upon mydevotion to Mary, because it defied and denied some lurking claims toempire I could suspect in her. I want to tell you that particularlybecause so I am made, so you are made, so most of us are made. There isscarcely a high purpose in all the world that has no dwarfish footman atits stirrup, no base intention over which there does not ride at leastthe phantom of an angel. 

Constantly in those days, it seems to me now, I was haunted by my ownimagination of Mary amiably reconciled to Justin, bearing him children, forgetful of or repudiating all the sweetness, all the wonder and beautywe had shared.... It was an unjust and ungenerous conception, I knew itfor a caricature even as I entertained it, and yet it tormented me. Itstung me like a spur. It kept me at work, and if I strayed intoindolence brought me back to work with a mind galled and bleeding.... 

§ 12

And I suppose it is mixed up with all this that I could not make loveeasily and naturally to Rachel. I could not write love-letters to her. There is a burlesque quality in these scruples, I know, seeing that Iwas now resolved to marry her, but that is the quality, that is themixed texture of life. We overcome the greater things and areconscience-stricken by the details. 

I wouldn't, even at the price of losing her--and I was now passionatelyanxious not to lose her--use a single phrase of endearment that did notcome out of me almost in spite of myself. At any rate I would not cheather. And my offer of marriage when at last I sent it to her from Chicagowas, as I remember it, almost business-like. I atoned soon enough forthat arid letter in ten thousand sweet words that came of themselves tomy lips. And she paid me at any rate in my own coin when she sent me heranswer by cable, the one word "Yes. "

And indeed I was already in love with her long before I wrote. It wasonly a dread of giving her a single undeserved cheapness that had heldme back so long. It was that and the perplexity that Mary still grippedmy feelings; my old love for her was there in my heart in spite of mynew passion for Rachel, it was blackened perhaps and ruined and changedbut it was there. It was as if a new crater burnt now in the amplercircumference of an old volcano, which showed all the more desolate andsorrowful and obsolete for the warm light of the new flames.... 

How impatiently I came home! Thoughts of England I had not dared tothink for three long years might now do what they would in me. I dreamtof the Surrey Hills and the great woods of Burnmore Park, of thechanging skies and stirring soft winds of our grey green Motherland. There was fog in the Irish Sea, and we lost the better part of a dayhooting our way towards Liverpool while I fretted about the ship withall my luggage packed, staring at the grey waters that weltered underthe mist. It was the longest day in my life. My heart was full ofdesire, my eyes ached for the little fields and golden October skies ofEngland, England that was waiting to welcome me back from my exile withsuch open arms. I was coming home, --home. 

I hurried through London into Surrey and in my father's study, warned bya telegram, I found a bright-eyed, resolute young woman awaiting me, with the quality about her of one who embarks upon a long premeditatedadventure. And I found too a family her sisters and her brother allgladly ready for me, my father too was a happy man, and on the eighth ofNovember in 1906 Rachel and I were married in the little church atShere. We stayed for a week or so in Hampshire near Ringwood, the seasonwas late that year and the trees still very beautiful; and then we wentto Portofino on the Ligurian coast. 

There presently Gidding joined us and we began to work out the schemeswe had made in America, the schemes that now fill my life. 

CHAPTER THE TENTH

MARY WRITES

§ 1

It was in the early spring of 1909 that I had a letter from Mary. 

By that time my life was set fully upon its present courses, Gidding andI had passed from the stage of talking and scheming to definiteundertakings. Indeed by 1909 things were already organized upon theirpresent lines. We had developed a huge publishing establishment with onebig printing plant in Barcelona and another in Manchester, and we werestudying the peculiar difficulties that might attend the establishmentof a third plant in America. Our company was an English company underthe name of Alphabet and Mollentrave, and we were rapidly making it thebroadest and steadiest flow of publication the world had ever seen. Itsstreams already reached further and carried more than any single firmhad ever managed to do before. We were reprinting, in as carefullyedited and revised editions as we could, the whole of the English, Spanish and French literature, and we were only waiting for the releaseof machinery to attack German, Russian and Italian, and were giving eachlanguage not only its own but a very complete series of goodtranslations of the classical writers in every other tongue. We had alittle band of editors and translators permanently in our service ateach important literary centre. We had, for example, more than a scoreof men at work translating Bengali fiction and verse into English, --alot of that new literature is wonderfully illuminating to an intelligentEnglishman--and we had a couple of men hunting about for new work inArabic. We meant to give so good and cheap a book, and to be socomprehensive in our choice of books, excluding nothing if only it wasreal and living, on account of any inferiority of quality, obscurity ofsubject or narrowness of demand, that in the long run anybody, anywhere, desiring to read anything would turn naturally and inevitably to ourlists. 

Ours was to be in the first place a world literature. Then afterwardsupon its broad currents of distribution and in the same forms we meantto publish new work and new thought. We were also planning anencyclopædia. Behind our enterprise of translations and reprints we weregetting together and putting out a series of guide-books, gazetteers, dictionaries, text-books and books of reference, and we were organizinga revising staff for these, a staff that should be constantly keepingthem up to date. It was our intention to make every copy we printed bearthe date of its last revision in a conspicuous place, and we hoped toget the whole line of these books ultimately upon an annual basis, andto sell them upon repurchasing terms that would enable us to issue a newcopy and take back and send the old one to the pulping mill at a narrowmargin of profit. Then we meant to spread our arms wider, andconsolidate and offer our whole line of text-books, guide-books andgazetteers, bibliographies, atlases, dictionaries and directories as anew World Encyclopædia, that should also annually or at longestbiennially renew its youth. 

So far we had gone in the creation of a huge international organ ofinformation, and of a kind of gigantic modern Bible of world literature, and in the process of its distribution we were rapidly acquiring animmense detailed knowledge of the book and publishing trade, findingcongestions here, neglected opportunities there, and devising anddrawing up a hundred schemes for relief, assistance, amalgamation andrearrangement. We had branches in China, Japan, Peru, Iceland and athousand remote places that would have sounded as far off as the moon toan English or American bookseller in the seventies. China in particularwas a growing market. We had a subsidiary company running a flourishingline of book shops in the east-end of London, and others in New Jersey, Chicago, Buenos Ayres, the South of France, and Ireland. Incidentally wehad bought up some thousands of miles of Labrador forest to ensure ourpaper supply, and we could believe that before we died there would notbe a corner of the world in which any book of interest or value whateverwould not be easily attainable by any intelligent person who wanted toread it. And already we were taking up the more difficult and ambitiousphase of our self-appointed task, and considering the problem of usingthese channels we were mastering and deepening and supplementing for thestimulation and wide diffusion of contemporary thought. 

There we went outside the province of Alphabet and Mollentrave and intoan infinitely subtler system of interests. We wanted to give sincere andclear-thinking writers encouragement and opportunity, to improve thecritical tribunal and make it independent of advertising interests, sothat there would be a readier welcome for luminous thinking and writingand a quicker explosion of intellectual imposture. We sought to provideguides and intelligencers to contemporary thought. We had already set upor subsidized or otherwise aided a certain number of magazines andperiodicals that seemed to us independent-spirited, out-spoken and wellhandled, but we had still to devise our present scheme of financinggroups of men to create magazines and newspapers, which became their ownseparate but inalienable property after so many years of success. 

But all this I hope you will already have become more or less familiarwith when this story reaches your hands, and I hope by the time it doesso we shall be far beyond our present stage of experiment and that youwill have come naturally to play your part in this most fascinatingbusiness of maintaining an onward intellectual movement in the world, amovement not simply independent of but often running counter to allsorts of political and financial interests. I tell you this much herefor you to understand that already in 1909 and considering the businessside of my activities alone, I was a hard worker and very strenuouslyemployed. And in addition to all this huge network of enterprises I haddeveloped with Gidding, I was still pretty actively a student. Iwasn't--I never shall be--absolutely satisfied with my general ideas. Iwas enquiring keenly and closely into those problems of group and crowdpsychology from which all this big publishing work has arisen, andgiving particular attention to the war-panics and outbreaks ofinternational hostility that were then passing in deepening wavesacross Europe. I had already accumulated a mass of notes for the bookupon "Group Jealousy in Religious Persecution, Racial Conflicts and War"which I hope to publish the year after next, and which therefore I hopeyou will have read long before this present book can possibly come toyou. And moreover Rachel and I had established our home in London--inthe house we now occupy during the winter and spring--and both you andyour little sister had begun your careers as inhabitants of this earth. Your little sister had indeed but just begun. 

And then one morning at the breakfast-table I picked a square envelopeout of a heap of letters, and saw the half-forgotten and infinitelyfamiliar handwriting of Lady Mary Justin.... The sight of it gave me anodd mixture of sensations. I was startled, I was disturbed, I was alittle afraid. I hadn't forgiven her yet; it needed but this touch totell me how little I had forgotten.... 

§ 2

I sat with it in my hand for a moment or so before I opened it, hesitating as one hesitates before a door that may reveal a dramaticsituation. Then I pushed my chair a little back from the table andripped the envelope. 

It was a far longer letter than Mary had ever written me in the olddays, and in a handwriting as fine as ever but now rather smaller. Ihave it still, and here I open its worn folds and, except for a fewtrifling omissions, copy it out for you.... A few trifling omissions, Isay, --just one there is that is not trifling, but that I must needsmake.... 

You will never see any of these letters because I shall destroy them sosoon as this copy is made. It has been difficult--or I should havedestroyed them before. But some things can be too hard for us.... 

This first letter is on the Martens note-paper; its very heading wasfamiliar to me. The handwriting of the earlier sentences is a littlestiff and disjointed, and there are one or two scribbled obliterations;it is like someone embarrassed in speaking; and then it passes into herusual and characteristic ease.... 

And as I read, slowly my long-cherished anger evaporated, and the realMary, outspoken and simple, whom I had obscured by a cloud of fanciedinfidelities, returned to me.... 

"My dear Stephen, " she begins, "About six weeks ago I saw in the _Times_that you have a little daughter. It set me thinking, picturing you witha mite of a baby in your arms--what _little_ things they are, Stephen!--and your old face bent over it, so that presently I went to myroom and cried. It set me thinking about you so that I have at lastwritten you this letter.... I love to think of you with wife andchildren about you Stephen, --I heard of your son for the first timeabout a year ago, but--don't mistake me, --something wrings me too.... 

"Well, I too have children. Have you ever thought of me as a mother? Iam. I wonder how much you know about me now. I have two children and theyoungest is just two years old. And somehow it seems to me that now thatyou and I have both given such earnests of our good behavior, suchevidence that _that_ side of life anyhow is effectually settled for us, there is no reason remaining why we shouldn't correspond. You are mybrother, Stephen, and my friend and my twin and the core of myimagination, fifty babies cannot alter that, we can live but once andthen die, and, promise or no promise, I will not be dead any longer inyour world when I'm not dead, nor will I have you, if I can help it, acold unanswering corpse in mine.... 

"Too much of my life and being, Stephen, has been buried, and I am inrebellion. This is a breach of the tomb if you like, an irregularprivate premature resurrection from an interment in error. Out of myalleged grave I poke my head and say Hello! to you. Stephen, old friend!dear friend! how are you getting on? What is it like to you? How do youfeel? I want to know about you.... I'm not doing this at all furtively, and you can write back to me, Stephen, as openly as your heart desires. I have told Justin I should do this. I rise, you see, blowing my ownTrump. Let the other graves do as they please.... 

"Your letters will be respected, Stephen.... If you choose to rise alsoand write me a letter. 

"Stephen, I've been wanting to do this for--for all the time. If therewas thought-reading you would have had a thousand letters. But formerlyI was content to submit, and latterly I've chafed more. I think that aswhat they call passion has faded, the immense friendliness has becomemore evident, and made the bar less and less justifiable. You and I havehad so much between us beyond what somebody the other day--it was in areport in the _Times_, I think--was calling _Materia Matrimoniala_. Andof course I hear about you from all sorts of people, and in all sortsof ways--whatever you have done about me I've had a woman's sense ofhonor about you and I've managed to learn a great deal without askingforbidden questions. I've pricked up my ears at the faintest echo ofyour name. 

"They say you have become a publisher with an American partner, a sortof Harmsworth and Nelson and Times Book Club and Hooper and Jackson allrolled into one. That seems so extraordinary to me that for that alone Ishould have had to write to you. I want to know the truth of that. Inever see any advertisement of Stratton & Co. Or get any inkling of whatit is you publish. Are you the power behind the respectable Murgatroydand the honest Milvain? I know them both and neither has the slightestappearance of being animated by you. And equally perplexing is yourbeing mixed up with an American like that man Gidding in PeaceConferences and Social Reform Congresses and so forth. It'sso--Carnegieish. There I'm surer because I've seen your name in reportsof meetings and I've read your last two papers in the _Fortnightly_. Ican't imagine you of all people, with your touch of reserve, launchinginto movements and rubbing shoulders with faddists. What does it mean, Stephen? I had expected to find you coming back into Englishpolitics--speaking and writing on the lines of your old beginning, taking up that work you dropped--it's six years now ago. I've beenaccumulating disappointment for two years. Mr. Arthur, you see, on ourside, "--this you will remember was in 1909--"still steers our deviousparty courses, and the Tariff Reformers have still to capture us. WestonMassinghay was comparing them the other night, at a dinner at theClynes', to a crowded piratical galley trying to get alongside a goodseaman in rough weather. He was very funny about Leo Maxse in the poop, white and shrieking with passion and the motion, and all the capitalistsarmed to the teeth and hiding snug in the hold until the grappling-ironswere fixed.... Why haven't you come into the game? I'd hoped it if onlyfor the sake of meeting you again. What are you doing out beyond there?

"We are in it so far as I can contrive. But I contrive very little. Weare pillars of the Conservative party--on that Justin's mind is firmlysettled--and every now and then I clamor urgently that we must do morefor it. But Justin's ideas go no further than writing cheques--doingmore for the party means writing a bigger cheque--and there are momentswhen I feel we shall simply bring down a peerage upon our heads and burymy ancient courtesy title under the ignominy of a new creation. He wouldcertainly accept it. He writes his cheque and turns back at the earliestopportunity to his miniature gardens and the odd little freaks ofcollecting that attract him. Have you ever heard of chintz oil jars?'No, ' you will say. Nor has anyone else yet except our immediate circleof friends and a few dealers who are no doubt industriously increasingthe present scanty supply. We possess three. They are matronly shapedjars about two feet or a yard high, of a kind of terra-cotta with woodentops surmounted by gilt acorns, and they have been covered with whitepaint and on this flowers and birds and figures from some very rich oldchintz have been stuck very cunningly, and then everything has beenvarnished--and there you are. Our first and best was bought forseven-and-sixpence, brought home in the car, put upon a console tableon the second landing and worshipped. It's really a very pleasant mellowthing to see. Nobody had ever seen the like. Guests, sycophantic peopleof all sorts were taken to consider it. It was looked at with heads atevery angle, one man even kept his head erect and one went a littleupstairs and looked at it under his arm. Also the most powerful lenseshave been used for a minute examination, and one expert licked thevarnish and looked extremely thoughtful and wise at me as he turned thebooty over his gifted tongue. And now, God being with us, we mean topossess every specimen in existence--before the Americans get hold ofthe idea. Yesterday Justin got up and motored sixty miles to look at analleged fourth.... 

"Oh my dear! I am writing chatter. You perceive I've reached thechattering stage. It is the fated end of the clever woman in a goodsocial position nowadays, her mind beats against her conditions for thelast time and breaks up into this carping talk, this spume ofobservation and comment, this anecdotal natural history of therestraining husband, as waves burst out their hearts in a foam upon areef. But it isn't chatter I want to write to you. 

"Stephen, I'm intolerably wretched. No creature has ever been gladder tohave been born than I was for the first five and twenty years of mylife. I was full of hope and I was full, I suppose, of vanity and rashconfidence. I thought I was walking on solid earth with my head reachingup to the clouds, and that sea and sky and all mankind were mine for thesmiling. And I am nothing and worse than nothing, I am the ineffectualmother of two children, a daughter whom I adore--but of her I may nottell you--and a son, --a son who is too like his father for any fury ofworship, a stolid little creature.... That is all I have done in theworld, a mere blink of maternity, and my blue Persian who is scarcelytwo years old, has already had nine kittens. My husband and I have neverforgiven each other the indefinable wrong of not pleasing each other;that embitters more and more; to take it out of each other is our rôle;I have done my duty to the great new line of Justin by giving it theheir it needed, and now a polite and silent separation has fallenbetween us. We hardly speak except in company. I have not been so muchmarried, Stephen, I find, as collected, and since our tragicmisadventure--but there were beautiful moments, Stephen, unforgettableglimpses of beauty in that--thank God, I say impenitently for that--thedoor of the expensively splendid cabinet that contains me, when it isnot locked, is very discreetly--watched. I have no men friends, nosocial force, no freedom to take my line. My husband is my officialobstacle. We barb the limitations of life for one another. A littlewhile ago he sought to chasten me--to rouse me rather--through jealousy, and made me aware indirectly but a little defiantly of a young person ofartistic gifts in whose dramatic career he was pretending a conspicuousinterest. I was jealous and roused, but scarcely in the way he desired. 'This, ' I said quite cheerfully, 'means freedom for _me_, Justin, '--andthe young woman vanished from the visible universe with an incrediblecelerity. I hope she was properly paid off and not simply made away withby a minion, but I become more and more aware of my ignorance of agreat financier's methods as I become more and more aware of them.... 

"Stephen, my dear, my brother, I am intolerably unhappy. I do not knowwhat to do with myself, or what there is to hope for in life. I am likea prisoner in a magic cage and I do not know the word that will releaseme. How is it with you? Are you unhappy beyond measure or are you not;and if you are not, what are you doing with life? Have you found anysecret that makes living tolerable and understandable? Write to me, write to me at least and tell me that.... Please write to me. 

"Do you remember how long ago you and I sat in the old Park at Burnmore, and how I kept pestering you and asking you what is all this _for_? Andyou looked at the question as an obstinate mule looks at a narrow bridgehe could cross but doesn't want to. Well, Stephen, you've hadnearly--how many years is it now?--to get an answer ready. What _is_ itall for? What do you make of it? Never mind my particular case, or thecase of Women with a capital _W_, tell me _your_ solution. You areactive, you keep doing things, you find life worth living. Is publishinga way of peace for the heart? I am prepared to believe even that. Butjustify yourself. Tell me what you have got there to keep your soulalive. "

§ 3

I read this letter to the end and looked up, and there was my home aboutme, a room ruddy-brown and familiar, with the row of old pewter thingsupon the dresser, the steel engravings of former Strattons that came tome from my father, a convex mirror exaggerating my upturned face. AndRachel just risen again sat at the other end of the table, a youngmother, fragile and tender-eyed. The clash of these two systems ofreality was amazing. It was as though I had not been parted from Maryfor a day, as though all that separation and all that cloud of bitterjealousy had been a mere silence between two people in the same room. Indeed it was extraordinarily like that, as if I had been sitting at adesk, imagining myself alone, reading my present life as one reads in abook at a shaded lamp, and then suddenly that silent other had spoken. 

And then I looked at the page of my life before me and became again acharacter in the story. 

I met the enquiry in Rachel's eyes. "It's a letter from Mary Justin, " Isaid. 

She did not answer for a few moments. She became interested in the flameof the little spirit lamp that kept her coffee hot. She finished whatshe had to do with that and then remarked, "I thought you two were notto correspond. "

"Yes, " I said, putting the letter down; "that was the understanding. "

There was a little interval of silence, and then I got up and went tothe fireplace where the bacon and sausages stood upon a trivet. 

"I suppose, " said Rachel, "she wants to hear from you again. "

"She thinks that now we have children, and that she has two, we canconsider what was past, past and closed and done with, and she wants tohear--about me.... Apart from everything else--we were very greatfriends. "

"Of course, " said Rachel with lips a little awry, "of course. You musthave been great friends. And it's natural for her to write. "

"I suppose, " she added, "her husband knows. "

"She's told him, she says.... "

Her eye fell on the letter in my hand for the smallest fraction of asecond, and it was as if hastily she snatched away a thought from myobservation. I had a moment of illuminating embarrassment. So far we hadcontrived to do as most young people do when they marry, we had soughtto make our lives unreservedly open to one another, we had affected anentire absence of concealments about our movements, our thoughts. Ifperhaps I had been largely silent to her about Mary it was not so muchthat I sought to hide things from her as that I myself sought to forget. It is one of the things that we learn too late, the impossibility of anysuch rapid and wilful coalescences of souls. But we had maintained aconvention of infinite communism since our marriage; we had shown eachother our letters as a matter of course, shared the secrets of ourfriends, gone everywhere together as far as we possibly could. 

I wanted now to give her the letter in my hand to read--and to do so wasmanifestly impossible. Something had arisen between us that made out ofour unity two abruptly separated figures masked and veiled. Here werethings I knew and understood completely and that I could not evendescribe to Rachel. What would she make of Mary's "Write to me. Write tome"? A mere wish to resume.... I would not risk the exposure of Mary'smind and heart and unhappiness, to her possible misinterpretation.... 

That letter fell indeed like a pitiless searchlight into all thatregion of differences ignored, over which we had built the vaultedconvention of our complete mutual understanding. In my memory it seemsto me now as though we hung silent for quite a long time over theevasions that were there so abruptly revealed. 

Then I put the letter into my pocket with a clumsy assumption ofcarelessness, and knelt down to the fender and sausages. 

"It will be curious, " I said, "to write to her again.... To tell herabout things.... "

And then with immense interest, "Are these Chichester sausages you'vegot here, Rachel, or some new kind?"

Rachel roused herself to respond with an equal affectation, and we madean eager conversation about bacon and sausages--for after that startlinggleam of divergence we were both anxious to get back to thesuperficialities of life again. 

§ 4

I did not answer Mary's letter for seven or eight days. 

During that period my mind was full of her to the exclusion of everyother interest. I re-read all that she had to say many times, and witheach reading the effect of her personality deepened. It was all sointensely familiar, the flashes of insight, the blazing frankness, thequick turns of thought, and her absurd confidence in a sort of sanestupidity that she had always insisted upon my possessing. And herunembarrassed affectionateness. Her quick irregular writing seemed tobring back with it the changing light in her eyes, the intonations ofher voice, something of her gesture.... 

I didn't go on discussing with myself whether we two ought tocorrespond; that problem disappeared from my thoughts. Her challenge tome to justify myself took possession of my mind. That thrust towardsself-examination was the very essence of her ancient influence. How didI justify myself? I was under a peculiar compulsion to answer that toher satisfaction. She had picked me up out of my work and accumulatingroutines with that demand, made me look at myself and my world again asa whole.... I had a case. I have a case. It is a case of passionatefaith triumphing over every doubt and impossibility, a case real enoughto understand for those who understand, but very difficult to state. Itried to convey it to her. 

I do not remember at all clearly what I wrote to her. It has disappearedfrom existence. But it was certainly a long letter. Throughout this bookI have been trying to tell you the growth of my views of life and itspurpose, from my childish dreams and Harbury attitudes to those ideas ofhuman development that have made me undertake the work I do. It is notglorious work I know, as the work of great artists and poets and leadersis glorious, but it is what I find best suits my gifts and my want ofgifts. Greater men will come at last to build within my scaffoldings. Insome summary phrasing I must have set out the gist of this. I must haveexplained my sense of the supreme importance of mental clarification inhuman life. All this is manifest in her reply. And I think too I did mybest to tell her plainly the faith that was in me, and why life seemedworth while to me.... 

Her second letter came after an interval of only a few days from thedespatch of mine. She began abruptly. 

"I won't praise your letter or your beliefs. They are fine andlarge--and generous--like you. Just a little artificial (but you willadmit that), as though you had felt them _give_ here and there and hadmade up your mind they shouldn't. At times it's oddly like looking atthe Alps, the real Alps, and finding that every now and then themountains have been eked out with a plank and canvas Earl's Courtbackground.... Yes, I like what you say about Faith. I believe you areright. I wish I could--perhaps some day I shall--light up and _feel_ youare right. But--but---- That large, _respectable_ project, the increaseof wisdom and freedom and self-knowledge in the world, the calming ofwars, the ending of economic injustice and so on and so on----

"When I read it first it was like looking at a man in profile andfinding him solid and satisfactory, and then afterwards when I thoughtit all over and looked for the particular things that really matter tome and tried to translate it into myself--nothing is of the slightestimportance in the world that one cannot translate into oneself--then Ibegan to realize just how amazingly deficient you are. It was likewalking round that person in profile and finding his left side wasn'tthere--with everything perfect on the right, down to the buttons. A kindof intellectual Lorelei--sideways. You've planned out yourunderstandings and tolerances and enquiries and clearings-up as if theworld were all just men--or citizens--and nothing doing but racial andnational and class prejudices and the exacting and shirking of labor, and you seem to ignore altogether that man is a sexual animalfirst--first, Stephen, first--that he has that in common with all theanimals, that it made him indeed because he has it more than theyhave--and after that, a long way after that, he is thelabor-economizing, war-and feud-making creature you make him out to be. A long way after that.... 

"Man is the most sexual of all the beasts, Stephen. Half of him, womankind, rather more than half, isn't simply human at all, it'sspecialized, specialized for the young, not only naturally andphysically as animals are, but mentally and artificially. Womankindisn't human, it's reduced human. It's 'the sex' as the Victorians usedto say, and from the point of view of the Lex Julia and the point ofview of Mr. Malthus, and the point of view of biologists and saints andartists and everyone who deals in feeling and emotion--and from thepoint of view of all us poor specialists, smothered up in our clothesand restrictions--the future of the sex is the centre of the wholeproblem of the human future, about which you are concerned. All thisgreat world-state of your man's imagination is going to be wrecked by usif you ignore us, we women are going to be the Goths and Huns of anotherDecline and Fall. We are going to sit in the conspicuous places of theworld and _loot_ all your patient accumulations. We are going to abolishyour offspring and turn the princes among you into undignified slaves. Because, you see, specialized as we are, we are not quite specialized, we are specialized under duress, and at the first glimpse of a chance weabandon our cradles and drop our pots and pans and go for the vast andelegant side possibilities--of our specialization. Out we come, lookingfor the fun the men are having. Dress us, feed us, play with us! We'llpay you in excitement, --tremendous excitement. The State indeed! Allyour little triumphs of science and economy, all your littleaccumulations of wealth that you think will presently make the strugglefor life an old story and the millennium possible--_we spend_. And allyour dreams of brotherhood!--we will set you by the ears. We holdourselves up as my little Christian nephews--Philip's boys--do somecoveted object, and say _Quis?_ and the whole brotherhood shouts'_Ego!_' to the challenge.... Back you go into Individualism at the wordand all your Brotherhood crumbles to dust again. 

"How are you going to remedy it, how are you going to protect that GreatState of your dreams from this anti-citizenship of sex? You give nohint. 

"You are planning nothing, Stephen, nothing to meet this. You arefighting with an army all looting and undisciplined, frantic with theprivate jealousies that centre about _us_, feuds, cuts, expulsions, revenges, and you are giving out orders for an army of saints. You treatus as a negligible quantity, and we are about as negligible as a fire inthe woodwork of a house that is being built.... 

"I read what I have written, Stephen, and I perceive I have the makingsof a fine scold in me. Perhaps under happier conditions----... I shouldcertainly have scolded you, constantly, continually.... Never did a manso need scolding.... And like any self-respecting woman I see that I usehalf my words in the wrong meanings in order to emphasize my point. Ofcourse when I write woman in all that has gone before I don't meanwoman. It is a woman's privilege to talk or write incomprehensibly andinsist upon being understood. So that I expect you already to understandthat what I mean isn't that men are creative and unselfish and brotherlyand so forth and that women are spoiling and going to spoil thegame--although and notwithstanding that is exactly what I havewritten--but that humans are creative and unselfish et cetera and soforth, and that it is their sexual, egotistical, passionate side (whichis ever so much bigger relatively in a woman than in a man, and that iswhy I wrote as I did) which is going to upset your noble and beautifulapple-cart. But it is not only that by nature we are more largely andgravely and importantly sexual than men but that men have shifted theresponsibility for attraction and passion upon us and made us pay inservitude and restriction and blame for the common defect of thespecies. So that you see really I was right all along in writing of thisas though it was women when it wasn't, and I hope now it is unnecessaryfor me to make my meaning clearer than it is now and always has been inthis matter. And so, resuming our discourse, Stephen, which only mysense of your invincible literalness would ever have interrupted, whatare you going to do with us?

"I gather from a hint rather than accept as a statement that you proposeto give us votes. 

"Stephen!--do you really think that we are going to bring anything tobear upon public affairs worth having? I know something of thecontemporary feminine intelligence. Justin makes no serious objection toa large and various circle of women friends, and over my littlesitting-room fire in the winter and in my corners of our various gardensin the summer and in walks over the heather at Martens and in Scotlandthere are great talks and confessions of love, of mental freedom, ofambitions, and belief and unbelief--more particularly of unbelief. Ihave sometimes thought of compiling a dictionary of unbelief, a greatlist of the things that a number of sweet, submissive, value-above-rubies wives have told me they did not believe in. It wouldamaze their husbands beyond measure. The state of mind of women aboutthese things, Stephen, is dreadful--I mean about all thesequestions--you know what I mean. The bold striving spirits do air theirviews a little, and always in a way that makes one realize how badlythey need airing--but most of the nicer women are very chary of talk, they have to be drawn out, a hint of opposition makes them start back orprevaricate, and I see them afterwards with their husbands, prettysilken furry feathery jewelled _silences_. All their suppression doesn'tkeep them orthodox, it only makes them furtive and crumpled and creasedin their minds--in just the way that things get crumpled and creased ifthey are always being shoved back into a drawer. You have only to routabout in their minds for a bit. They pretend at first to be quitecorrect, and then out comes the nasty little courage of the darkness. Sometimes there is even an apologetic titter. They are quiteemancipated, they say; I have misunderstood them. Their emancipation islike those horrid white lizards that grow in the Kentucky caves out ofthe sunlight. They tell you they don't see why they shouldn't do this orthat--mean things, underhand things, cheap, vicious, sensual things.... Are there, I wonder, the same dreadful little caverns in men? I doubtit. And then comes a situation that really tries their quality.... Thinkof the quandary I got into with you, Stephen. And for my sex I'm rathera daring person. The way in which I went so far--and then ran away. Ihad a kind of excuse--in my illness. That illness! Such a queer untimelyfeminine illness.... 

"We're all to pieces, Stephen. That's what brought down Rome. The womenwent to pieces then, and the women are going to pieces to-day. What'sthe good of having your legions in the Grampians and marching up toPhilae, while the wives are talking treason in your houses? It's no goodtelling us to go back to the Ancient Virtues. The Ancient Virtueshaven't _kept_. The Ancient Virtues in an advanced state of decay iswhat was the matter with Rome and what is the matter with us. You can'ttell a woman to go back to the spinning-wheel and the kitchen and thecradle, when you have power-looms, French cooks, hotels, restaurants andmodern nurseries. We've overflowed. We've got to go on to a lot of NewVirtues. And in all the prospect before me--I can't descry one clearsimple thing to do.... 

"But I'm running on. I want to know, Stephen, why you've got nothing tosay about all this. It must have been staring you in the face ever sinceI spent my very considerable superfluous energies in wrecking yourcareer. Because you know I wrecked it, Stephen. I _knew_ I was wreckingit and I wrecked it. I knew exactly what I was doing all the time. I hadmeant to be so fine a thing for you, a mothering friend, to have thatdear consecutive kindly mind of yours steadying mine, to have seen yougrow to power over men, me helping, me admiring. It was to have been sofine. So fine! Didn't I urge you to marry Rachel, make you talk of her. Don't you remember that? And one day when I saw you thinking of Rachel, saw a kind of pride in your eyes!--suddenly I couldn't stand it. I wentto my room after you had gone and thought of you and her until I wantedto scream. I couldn't bear it. It was intolerable. I was violent to mytoilet things. I broke a hand-glass. Your dignified, selfish, self-controlled Mary _smashed_ a silver hand-mirror. I never told youthat. You know what followed. I pounced on you and took you. Wasn't I--asoft and scented hawk? Was either of us better than some creature ofinstinct that does what it does because it must? It was like a gust ofmadness--and I cared, I found, no more for your career than I cared forany other little thing, for honor, for Rachel, for Justin, that stoodbetween us.... 

"My dear, wasn't all that time, all that heat and hunger of desire, allthat secret futility of passion, the very essence of the situationbetween men and women now? We are all trying most desperately to behuman beings, to walk erect, to work together--what was yourphrase?--'in a multitudinous unity, ' to share what you call a commoncollective thought that shall rule mankind, and this tremendous forcewhich seizes us and says to us: 'Make that other being yours, bodilyyours, mentally yours, wholly yours--at any price, no matter the price, 'bars all our unifications. It splits the whole world into coupleswatching each other. Until all our laws, all our customs seem theservants of that. It is the passion of the body swamping the brain; it'san ape that has seized a gun, a beautiful modern gun. Here am I, Justin's captive, and he mine, he mine because at the first escapade ofhis I get my liberty. Here are we two, I and you, barred for ever fromthe sight of one another, and I and you writing--I at any rate--in spiteof the ill-concealed resentment of my partner. We're just two, peepingthrough our bars, of a universal multitude. Everywhere this prison ofsex. Have you ever thought just all that it means when every woman inthe world goes dressed in a costume to indicate her sex, her cardinalfact, so that she dare not even mount a bicycle in knickerbockers, shehas her hair grown long to its longest because yours is short, andeverything conceivable is done to emphasize and remind us (and you) ofthe fundamental trouble between us? As if there was need of reminding!Stephen, is there no way out of this? Is there no way at all? Because ifthere is not, then I had rather go back to the hareem than live as I donow imprisoned in glass--with all of life in sight of me and none inreach. I had rather Justin beat me into submission and mentaltranquillity and that I bore him an annual--probably deciduous--child. Ican understand so well now that feminine attitude that implies, 'Well, if I must have a master, then the more master the better. ' Perhaps thatis the way; that Nature will not let us poor humans get away from sex, and I am merely--what is it?--an abnormality--with whiskers of enquirysprouting from my mind. Yet I don't feel like that.... 

"I'm pouring into these letters, Stephen, the concentrated venom ofyears of brooding. My heart is black with rebellion against my lot andagainst the lot of woman. I have been given life and a fine position inthe world, I made one fatal blunder in marrying to make these thingssecure, and now I can do nothing with it all and I have nothing to dowith it. It astounds me to think of the size of our establishments, Stephen, of the extravagant way in which whole counties and greatcountries pay tribute to pile up the gigantic heap of wealth upon whichwe two lead our lives of futile entanglement. In this place alone thereare fourteen gardeners and garden helps, and this is not one of ourgarden places. Three weeks ago I spent a thousand pounds on clothes inone great week of shopping, and our yearly expenditure upon personaleffect, upon our magnificence and our margins cannot be greatly lessthan forty-five thousand pounds. I walk about our house and gardens, Itake one of the carriages or one of the automobiles and go to some largepointless gathering of hundreds and thousands and thousands of pounds, and we walk about and say empty little things, and the servants don'tlaugh at us, the butlers don't laugh at us, the people in the streettolerate us.... It has an effect of collective insanity.... You know thestory of one of those dear Barons of the Cinque Ports--a decentplumber-body from Rye or Winchelsea--one of the six--or eight--whoclaimed the privilege of carrying the canopy over the King"--she isspeaking of King Edward's coronation of course--"how that he wasdiscovered suddenly to be speaking quite audibly to the sacred presenceso near to him: 'It is very remarkable--we should be here, yourmajesty--very remarkable. ' And then he subsided--happily unheard--intohopeless embarrassment. That is exactly how I feel, Stephen. I feel Ican't stand it much longer, that presently I shall splutter and spoilthe procession.... 

"Perhaps I don't properly estimate our position in the fabric, but Ican't get away from the feeling that everything in social life leads upto this--to us, --the ridiculous canopy. If so, then the universemeans--_nothing_; it's blowing great forms and shapes as a swamp blowsbubbles; a little while ago it was megatheriums and plesiosauriums--ifthat's the name for them--and now it is country-houses and motor-carsand coronation festivals. And in the end--it is all nonsense, Stephen. It is utter nonsense. 

"If it isn't nonsense, tell me what it is. For me at any rate it'snonsense, and for every intelligent woman about me--for I talk to someof them, we indulge in seditious whisperings and wit--and there isn'tone who seems to have been able to get to anything solider than I havedone. Each of us has had her little fling at maternity--about as much asa washerwoman does in her odd time every two or three years--and that isour uttermost reality. All the rest, --trimmings! We go about the world, Stephen, dressing and meeting each other with immense ceremony, we haveour seasonal movements in relation to the ritual of politics and sport, we travel south for the Budget and north for the grouse, we play gamesto amuse the men who keep us--not a woman would play a game for its ownsake--we dabble with social reform and politics, for which few of uscare a rap except as an occupation, we 'discover' artists or musiciansor lecturers (as though we cared), we try to believe in lovers or, stillharder, try to believe in old or new religions, and most of us--Idon't--do our best to give the gratifications and exercise thefascinations that are expected of us.... 

"Something has to be done for women, Stephen. We are the heart of life, birth and begetting, the home where the future grows, and your schemesignore us and slide about over the superficialities of things. We arespoiling the whole process of progress, we are turning all theachievements of mankind to nothingness. Men invent, create, do miracleswith the world, and we translate it all into shopping, into a glitter ofdresses and households, into an immense parade of pride and excitement. We excite men, we stir them to get us and keep us. Men turn from theirideas of brotherhood to elaborate our separate cages.... 

"I am Justin's wife; not a thing in my heavens or my earth that is notsubordinated to that. 

"Something has to be done for women, Stephen, something--urgently--andnothing is done until that is done, some release from their intolerablesubjection to sex, so that for us everything else in life, respect, freedom, social standing, is entirely secondary to that. But what has tobe done? We women do not know. Our efforts to know are among the mostdesolating of spectacles. I read the papers of those suffrage women; theeffect is more like agitated geese upon a common than anything human hasa right to be.... That's why I turn to you. Years ago I felt, and now Iknow, there is about you a simplicity of mind, a foolishness of faith, that is stronger and greater than the cleverness of any woman alive. Youare one of those strange men who take high and sweeping views--as larkssoar. It isn't that you yourself are high and sweeping.... No, but stillI turn to you. In the old days I used to turn to you and shake your mindand make you think about things you seemed too sluggish to think aboutwithout my clamor. Once do you remember at Martens I shook you by theears.... And when I made you think, you thought, as I could never do. Think now--about women. 

"Stephen, there are moments when it seems to me that this futility ofwomen, this futility of men's effort _through_ women, is a fatedfutility in the very nature of things. We may be saddled with it as weare with all the animal infirmities we have, with appendixes andsuchlike things inside of us, and the passions and rages of apes and atail--I believe we have a tail curled away somewhere, haven't we?Perhaps mankind is so constituted that badly as they get along now theycouldn't get along at all if they let women go free and have their ownway with life. Perhaps you can't have _two_ sexes loose together. Youmust shut up one. I've a horrible suspicion that all these anti-suffragemen like Lord Cromer and Sir Ray Lankester must know a lot about lifethat I do not know. And that other man Sir Something-or-other Wright, who said plainly that men cannot work side by side with women becausethey get excited.... And yet, you know, women have had glimpses of afreedom that was not mischievous. I could have been happy as a LadyAbbess--I must have space and dignity, Stephen--and those women hadthings in their hands as no women have things in their hands to-day. They came to the House of Lords. But they lost all that. Was there somesort of natural selection?... 

"Stephen, you were made to answer my mind, and if you cannot do itnobody can. What is your outlook for women? Are we to go back toseclusion or will it be possible to minimize sex? If you are going tominimize sex how are you going to do it? Suppression? There is plenty ofsuppression now. Increase or diminish the pains and penalties? Mynephew, Philip's boy, Philip Christian, was explaining to me the otherday that if you boil water in an open bowl it just boils away, and thatif you boil it in a corked bottle it bangs everything to pieces, andyou have, he says, 'to look out. ' But I feel that's a bad image. Boiling-water isn't frantically jealous, and men and women are. Butstill suppose, suppose you trained people not to make such an awful fussabout things. _Now_ you train them to make as much fuss as possible.... 

"Oh bother it all, Stephen! Where's your mind in these matters? Whyhaven't you tackled these things? Why do you leave it to _me_ to digthese questions into you--like opening a reluctant oyster? Aren't theypatent? You up and answer them, Stephen--or this correspondence willbecome abusive.... "

§ 5

It was true that I did ignore or minimize sexual questions as much as Icould. I was forced now to think why I did this. That carried me back tothose old days of passion, memories I had never stirred for many years. And I wrote to Mary that there was indeed no reason but a reasonablefear, that in fact I had dismissed them because they had been beyond mypatience and self-control, because I could not think very much aboutthem without an egotistical reversion to the bitterness of my own case. And in avoiding them I was only doing what the great bulk of men inbusiness and men in affairs find themselves obliged to do. They trainthemselves not to think of the rights and wrongs of sexual life, not totolerate liberties even in their private imaginations. They know it islike carrying a torch into a powder magazine. They feel they cannottrust their own minds beyond the experience, tested usages, andconventions of the ages, because they know how many of those who haveventured further have been blinded by mists and clouds of rhetoric, lostin inexplicable puzzles and wrecked disastrously. There in those halfexplored and altogether unsettled hinterlands, lurk desires that stinglike adders and hatreds cruel as hell.... 

And then I went on--I do not clearly remember now the exact line ofargument I adopted--to urge upon her that our insoluble puzzles were notnecessarily insoluble puzzles for the world at large, that no onesoldier fights anything but a partial battle, and that it wasn't anabsolute condemnation of me to declare that I went on living and workingfor social construction with the cardinal riddles of social order, sofar as they affected her, unsolved. Wasn't I at any rate preparingapparatus for that huge effort at solution that mankind must ultimatelymake? Wasn't this dredging out and deepening of the channels of thoughtabout the best that we could hope to do at the present time, seeing thatto launch a keel of speculation prematurely was only to strand oneselfamong hopeless reefs and confusions? Better prepare for a voyageto-morrow than sail to destruction to-day. 

Whatever I put in that forgotten part of my letter was put lessstrikingly than my first admissions, and anyhow it was upon these thatMary pounced to the disregard of any other point. "There you are, " shewrote, with something like elation, "there is a tiger in the garden andyou won't talk or think about it for fear of growing excited. That is mygrievance against so much historical and political and socialdiscussion; its hopeless futility because of its hopeless omissions. Youplan the world's future, taking the women and children for granted, withEgotistical Sex, as you call it, a prowling monster upsettingeverything you do.... "

But I will not give you that particular letter in its order, nor itssuccessors. Altogether she wrote me twenty-two letters, and I one or twomore than that number to her, and--a thing almost inevitable in adiscussion by correspondence--there is a lot of overlapping andrecapitulation. Those letters spread over a space of nearly two and ahalf years. Again and again she insists upon the monstrous exaggerationof the importance of sex in human life and of the need of some reductionof its importance, and she makes the boldest experimental suggestionsfor the achievement of that end. But she comes slowly to recognize thatthere is a justification for an indirect attack, that sex and theposition of women do not constitute the primary problem in thatbristling system of riddles that lies like a hostile army across thepath of mankind. And she realized too that through art, through scienceand literature and the whole enquiring and creative side of man'snature, lies the path by which those positions are to be outflanked, andthose eternal-looking impossibles and inconceivables overcome. Here is afragment--saturated with the essence of her thought. Three-quarters ofher earlier letters are variations on this theme.... 

"What you call 'social order, ' Stephen, all the arrangements seem to meto be _built_ on subjection to sex even more than they are built (as yousay) on labor subjection. And this is an age of release, you say it isan age of release for the workers and they know it. And so do the women. Just as much. 'Wild hopes' indeed! The workers' hopes are nothing to thewomen's! It is not only the workers who are saying let us go free, manage things differently so that we may have our lives relieved fromthis intolerable burthen of constant toil, but the women also are sayinglet us go free. They are demanding release just as much from theirintolerable endless specialization as females. The tramp on the roadswho won't work, the swindler and the exploiter who contrive not to work, the strikers who throw down their tools, no longer for twopences andsixpences as you say but because their way of living is no longertolerable to them, and we women, who don't bear children or work orhelp; we are all in one movement together. We are part of the GeneralStrike. I have been a striker all my life. We are doing nothing--by thehundred thousand. Your old social machine is working without us and inspite of us, it carries us along with it and we are sand in thebearings. I'm not a wheel, Stephen, I'm grit. What you say about thereactionaries and suppressionists who would stifle the complaints oflabor and crush out its struggles to be free, is exactly true about thereactionaries and suppressionists who would stifle the discussion of thewoman's position and crush out her hopes of emancipation.... "

And here is a page of the peculiar doubt that was as characteristic ofher as the quick changes of her eyes. It gives just that pessimistictouch that tempered her valiant adventurousness, that gave a color atlast to the tragedy of her death.... 

"Have you ever thought, Stephen, that perhaps these (repressionist)people are righter than you are--that if the worker gets free he _won't_work and that if the woman gets free she won't furl her sex and stopdisturbing things? Suppose she _is_ wicked as a sex, suppose she _will_trade on her power of exciting imaginative men. A lot of these newwomen run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, beguile some poorinnocent of a man to ruin them and then call in fathers, brother, husbands, friends, chivalry, all the rest of it, and make the best ofboth sides of a sex. Suppose we go on behaving like that. After we'vegot all our emancipations. Suppose that the liberation of common peoplesimply means loafing, no discipline, nothing being done, an end to laborand the beginning of nothing to replace it, and that the liberation ofwomen simply means the elaboration of mischief. Suppose that it is so. Suppose you are just tumbling the contents of the grate into the middleof the room. Then all this emancipation _is_ a decay, even asconservative-minded people say, --it's none the less a decay because wewant it, --and the only thing to stop it is to stop it, and to have morediscipline and more suppression and say to women and the common people:'Back to the Sterner Virtues; Back to Servitude!' I wish I hadn't thesereactionary streaks in my thoughts, but I have and there you are.... "

And then towards the second year her letters began to break away fromher preoccupation with her position as a woman and to take up newaspects of life, more general aspects of life altogether. It had aneffect not of her having exhausted the subject but as if, despairing ofa direct solution, she turned deliberately to the relief of otherconsiderations. She ceased to question her own life, and taking that forgranted, wrote more largely of less tangible things. She remembered thatshe had said that life, if it was no more than its present appearances, was "utter nonsense. " She went back to that. "One says things likethat, " she wrote "and not for a moment does one believe it. I grumbleat my life, I seem to be always weakly and fruitlessly fighting my life, and I love it. I would not be willingly dead--for anything. I'd ratherbe an old match-woman selling matches on a freezing night in the streetsthan be dead. Nothing nonsensical ever held me so tightly or kept me sointerested. I suppose really I am full of that very same formless faithon which you rely. But with me it's not only shapeless butintangible.... I nibble at religion. I am immensely attracted. I standin the doorway. Only when they come out to persuade me to come in I amlike a shy child and I go away. The temples beguile me and the music, but not the men. I feel I want to join _it_ and they say 'join _us_. 'They are--like vergers. Such small things! Such dreadful little_arguing_ men! They don't let you come in, they want you to say they areright. All the really religious people seem to be outside nowadays andall the pretending, cheating, atheistical, vain and limited peoplewithin.... 

"But the beautiful things religion gives! The beauty! Do you know SaintPaul's, Stephen? Latterly I have been there time after time. It is themost beautiful interior in all the world, so great, so sombrelydignified, so perfectly balanced--and filled with such wonderful music, brimming with music just as crystal water brims in a bowl of crystal. The other day I went there, up into a little gallery high up under thedome, to hear Bach's Passion Music, the St. Matthew Passion. One hangshigh and far above the little multitudes below, the white-robed singers, the white-robed musicians, ranks and ranks, the great organ, the rowsand rows and rows of congregation, receding this way, that way, into thehaze of the aisle and the transepts, and out of it all streams thesound and the singing, it pours up past you like a river, a river thatrushes upward to some great sea, some unknown sea. The whole place ismusic and singing.... I hang on to the railings, Stephen, and weep--Ihave to weep--and I wonder and wonder.... 

"One prays then as naturally as one drinks when one is thirsty and coldwater comes to hand. I don't know whom I pray to, but I pray;--of courseI pray. Latterly, Stephen, I have been reading devotional works andtrying to catch that music again. I never do--definitely. Never. But attimes I put down the book and it seems to me that surely a moment ago Iheard it, that if I sit very still in a moment I shall hear it again. And I can feel it is there, I know it is there, like a bat's cry, pitched too high for my ears. I know it is there, just as I should stillknow there was poetry somewhere if some poor toothless idiot with noroof to his mouth and no knowledge of any but the commonest words triedto read Shelley to me.... 

"I wish I could pray with you, Stephen; I wish I could kneel downsomewhere with you of all people and pray. "

§ 6

Presently our correspondence fell away. The gaps between our letterslengthened out. We never wrote regularly because for that there must bea free exchange upon daily happenings, and neither of us cared to dwelltoo closely on our immediate lives. We had a regard for one another thatleft our backgrounds vague and shadowy. She had made her appeal acrossthe sundering silences to me and I had answered, and we had poured outcertain things from our minds. We could not go on discussing. I was avery busy man now, and she did not write except on my replies. 

For a gap of nearly four months neither of us had anything to say in aletter at all. I think that in time our correspondence might havealtogether died away. Then she wrote again in a more familiar strain totell me of certain definite changes of relationship and outlook. Shesaid that the estrangement between herself and Justin had increasedduring the past year; that they were going to live practically apart;she for the most part in the Surrey house where her two children livedwith their governesses and maids. But also she meant to snatch weeks andseasons for travel. Upon that they had been disputing for some time. "Iknow it is well with the children, " she wrote; "why should I be inperpetual attendance? I do nothing for them except an occasional kiss, or half-an-hour's romping. Why should one pretend? Justin and I havewrangled over this question of going away, for weeks, but at lastfeminine persistence has won. I am going to travel in my own fashion andsee the world. With periodic appearances at his side in London andScotland. We have agreed at least on one thing, and that is upon acompanion; she is to be my secretary in title, my moral guarantor infact, and her name which is her crowning glory is Stella SummersleySatchel. She is blonde, erect, huffy-mannered and thoroughly up to bothsides of her work. I partly envy her independence and rectitude--partlyonly. It's odd and quite inconsistent of me that I don't envy heraltogether. In theory I insist that a woman should not have charm, --itis our undoing. But when I meet one without it----!

"I shall also trail a maid, but I guess that young woman will learn whatit is to be left behind in half the cities of Europe before I have donewith her. I always lose my maids. They are so much more passive andforgettable than luggage--abroad that is. And Justin usually in the olddays used to remember about them. And his valet used to see afterthem, --a most attentive man. Justin cannot, he says, have his wifeabroad with merely a companion; people would talk; maid it must be aswell. And so in a week or less I shall start, unusually tailor-made, forSouth Germany and all that jolly country, companioned and maided. Ishall tramp--on the feet God has given me--in stout boots. MissSummersley Satchel marches, I understand, like the British infantry buton a vegetarian 'basis, '--fancy calling your nourishment a 'basis'!--themaid and so forth by _Èilgut_.... "

§ 7

After the letter containing that announcement she wrote to me twiceagain, once from Oban and then after a long interval from Siena. Theformer was a scornfully minute description of the English at theirholidays and how the conversation went among the women after dinner. "They are like a row of Japanese lanterns, all blown out long ago andswinging about in a wind, " she wrote--an extravagant image that yetconveys something of the large, empty, unilluminating effect of a sortof social intercourse very vividly. In the second letter she wasconcerned chiefly with the natural beauty of Italy and how latterly shehad thrice wept at beautiful things, and what this mystery of beautycould be that had such power over her emotions. 

"All up the hillside before the window as I write the herbage is thickwith anemones. They aren't scattered evenly and anyhow amongst the otherthings but in little clusters and groups that die away and begin again, like the repetitions of an air in some musical composition. I have beensitting and looking at them for the better part of an hour, loving themmore and then more, and the sweet sunlight that is on them and in amongthem.... How marvellous are these things, Stephen! All these littleexquisite things that are so abundant in the world, the gleaming lightsand blossoms, the drifting scents! At times these things bring me toweeping.... I can't help it. It is as if God who is so stern and high, so terrible to all our appeals, took pity for a moment and saw fit tospeak very softly and tenderly.... "

That was the last letter I was ever to have from her. 

CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH

THE LAST MEETING

§ 1

In the summer of 1911 immediately after the coronation of King Georgethere came one of those storms of international suspicion that ever andagain threaten Europe with war. It seems to have been brewed by someGerman adepts at Welt-Politik, those privileged makers of giant bombswho sit at the ears of foreign ministers suggesting idiotic wickedness, and it was brewed with a sublime ignorance of nearly every reality inthe case. A German warship without a word of notice seized Agadir on theAtlantic coast of Morocco, within the regions reserved to Frenchinfluence; an English demand for explanations was uncivilly disregardedand England and France and presently Germany began vigorous preparationsfor war. All over the world it was supposed that Germany had at lastflung down the gauntlet. In England the war party was only too eager tograsp what it considered to be a magnificent opportunity. Heaven knowswhat the Germans had hoped or intended by their remarkable coup; theamazing thing to note is that they were not prepared to fight, they hadnot even the necessary money ready and they could not get it; they hadperhaps never intended to fight, and the autumn saw the danger disperseagain into diplomatic bickerings and insincerely pacific professions. But in the high summer the danger had not dispersed, and in common withevery reasonable man I found myself under the shadow of an impendingcatastrophe that would have been none the less gigantic and tragicbecause it was an imbecility. It was an occasion when everyone needsmust act, however trivially disproportionate his action may be to thedanger. I cabled Gidding who was in America to get together whateverinfluences were available there upon the side of pacific intervention, and I set such British organs as I could control or approach in the samedirection. It seemed probable that Italy would be drawn into anyconflict that might ensue; it happened that there was to be a Conferenceof Peace Societies in Milan early in September, and thither I decided togo in the not very certain hope that out of that assemblage some form ofEuropean protest might be evolved. 

That August I was very much run down. I had been staying in Londonthrough almost intolerably hot weather to attend a Races Congress thathad greatly disappointed me. I don't know particularly now why I hadbeen disappointed nor how far the feeling was due to my being generallyrun down by the pressure of detailed work and the stress of thinkingabout large subjects in little scraps of time. But I know that a kind ofdespair came over me as I sat and looked at that multicolored assemblyand heard in succession the heavy platitudes of white men, the slick, thin cleverness of Hindoos, the rich-toned florid rhetoric of negroes. Ilost sight of any germ of splendid possibility in all those people, andsaw all too plainly the vanity, the jealousy, the self-interests thatshow up so harshly against the professions of every altruistic movement. It seemed all such a windy business against the firm prejudices, thevast accumulated interests that grind race against race. We had nocommon purpose at all at that conference, no proposal to hold ustogether. So much of it was like bleating on a hillside.... 

I wanted a holiday badly, and then came this war crisis and I feltunable to go away for any length of time. Even bleating it seemed to mewas better than acquiescence in a crime against humanity. So to getheart to bleat at Milan I snatched at ten days in the Swiss mountains enroute. A tour with some taciturn guide involving a few middling climbsand glacier excursions seemed the best way of recuperating. I had neverhad any time for Switzerland since my first exile there years ago. Itook the advice of a man in the club whose name I now forget--if ever Iknew it, a dark man with a scar--and went up to the Schwarzegg Hut aboveGrindelwald, and over the Strahlegg to the Grimsel. I had never been upinto the central mass of the Bernese Oberland before, and I was amazedand extraordinarily delighted by the vast lonely beauty of thoseinterminable uplands of ice. I wished I could have lingered up there. But that is the tragedy of those sunlit desolations; one may not stay;one sees and exclaims and then looks at a watch. I wonder no one hasever taken an arctic equipment up into that wilderness, and had a goodhealing spell of lonely exaltation. I found the descent from theStrahlegg as much of a climb as I was disposed to undertake; for an hourwe were coming down frozen snow that wasn't so much a slope as aslightly inclined precipice.... 

From the Grimsel I went over the Rhone glacier to the inn on the FurkaPass, and then, paying off my guide and becoming frankly a pedestrian, Imade my way round by the Schöllenen gorge to Goeschenen, and over theSusten Joch to the Susten Pass and Stein, meaning to descend toMeiringen. 

But I still had four days before I went on to Italy, and so I decided totake one more mountain. I slept at the Stein inn, and started in themorning to do that agreeable first mountain of all, the Titlis, whoseshining genial head attracted me. I did not think a guide necessary, buta boy took me up by a track near Gadmen, and left me to my Siegfried mapsome way up the great ridge of rocks that overlooks the Engstlen Alp. Ia little overestimated my mountaineering, and it came about that I wasbenighted while I was still high above the Joch Pass on my descent. Someof this was steep and needed caution. I had to come down slowly with myfolding lantern, in which a reluctant candle went out at regularintervals, and I did not reach the little inn at Engstlen Alp until longafter eleven at night. By that time I was very tired and hungry. 

They told me I was lucky to get a room, only one stood vacant; I shouldcertainly not have enjoyed sleeping on a billiard table after my day'swork, and I ate a hearty supper, smoked for a time, meditated emptily, and went wearily to bed. 

But I could not sleep. Usually, I am a good sleeper, but ever and againwhen I have been working too closely or over-exerting myself I havespells of wakefulness, and that night after perhaps an hour's heavyslumber I became thinly alert and very weary in body and spirit, and Ido not think I slept again. The pain in my leg that the panther had tornhad been revived by the day's exertion. For the greater part of my lifeinsomnia has not been disagreeable to me. In the night, in thestillness, one has a kind of detachment from reality, one floats therewithout light, without weight, feeling very little of one's body. Onehas a certain disembodiment and one can achieve a magnanimity ofthought, forgiveness and self-forgetfulness that are impossible whilethe body clamors upon one's senses. But that night, because, I suppose, I was so profoundly fatigued, I was melancholy and despondent. I couldfeel again the weight of the great beast upon me as he clawed me downand I clung--desperately, in that interminable instant before he losthis hold.... 

Yes, I was extraordinarily wretched that night. I was filled withself-contempt and self-disgust. I felt that I was utterly weak and vain, and all the pretensions and effort of my life mere florid, fruitlesspretensions and nothing more. I had lost all control over my mind. Things that had seemed secondary before became primary, difficult thingsbecame impossible things. I had been greatly impeded and irritated inLondon by the manoeuvres of a number of people who were anxious to makecapital out of the crisis, self-advertising people who wanted at anycost to be lifted into a position of unique protest.... You see, thatunfortunate Nobel prize has turned the advocacy of peace into a highlyspeculative profession; the qualification for the winner is so vaguelydefined that a vast multitude of voluntary idealists has been createdand a still greater number diverted from the unendowed pursuit of humanwelfare in other directions. Such a man as myself who is known tocommand a considerable publicity is necessarily a prey to those moral_entrepreneurs_. All sorts of ridiculous and petty incidents had forcedthis side of public effort upon me, but hitherto I had been able to say, with a laugh or sigh as the case warranted, "So much is dear oldhumanity and all of us"; and to remember the great residuum of nobilitythat remained. Now that last saving consideration refused to becredible. I lay with my body and my mind in pain thinking these peopleover, thinking myself over too with the rest of my associates, thinkingdrearily and weakly, recalling spites, dishonesties and vanities, feudsand absurdities, until I was near persuaded that all my dreams of widerhuman understandings, of great ends beyond the immediate aims andpassions of common everyday lives, could be at best no more than therefuge of shy and weak and ineffective people from the failure of theirpersonal lives.... 

We idealists are not jolly people, not honest simple people; the straintells upon us; even to ourselves we are unappetizing. Aren't the burly, bellowing fellows after all righter, with their simple natural hostilityto everything foreign, their valiant hatred of everything unlikethemselves, their contempt for aspiring weakness, their beer and lushsentiment, their here-to-day-and-gone-tomorrow conviviality andfellowship? Good fellows! While we others, lost in filmy speculations, in moon-and-star snaring and the chase of dreams, stumble where eventhey walk upright.... 

You know I have never quite believed in myself, never quite believed inmy work or my religion. So it has always been with me and always, Isuppose, will be. I know I am purblind, I know I do not see my wayclearly nor very far; I have to do with things imperfectly apprehended. I cannot cheat my mind away from these convictions. I have a sort ofhesitation of the soul as other men have a limp in their gait. God, Isuppose, has a need for lame men. God, I suppose, has a need for blindmen and fearful and doubting men, and does not intend life to bealtogether swallowed up in staring sight. Some things are to be reachedbest by a hearing that is not distracted by any clearer senses. But soit is with me, and this is the innermost secret I have to tell you. 

I go valiantly for the most part I know, but despair is always near tome. In the common hours of my life it is as near as a shark may be neara sleeper in a ship; the thin effectual plank of my deliberate faithkeeps me secure, but in these rare distresses of the darkness the plankseems to become transparent, to be on the verge of dissolution, a senseof life as of an abyssmal flood, full of cruelty, densely futile, blackly aimless, penetrates my defences.... 

I don't think I can call these stumblings from conviction unbelief; thelimping man walks for all his limping, and I go on in spite of my falls. "Though he slay me yet will I trust in him.... "

I fell into an inconsecutive review of my life under this light thattouched every endeavor with the pale tints of failure. And as that flowof melancholy reflection went on, it was shot more and more frequentlywith thoughts of Mary. It was not a discursive thinking about Mary but adefinite fixed direction of thought towards her. I had not so thought ofher for many years. I wanted her, I felt, to come to me and help me outof this distressful pit into which my spirit had fallen. I believed shecould. I perceived our separation as an irreparable loss. She had aharder, clearer quality than I, a more assured courage, a readier, surermovement of the mind. Always she had "lift" for me. And then I had acurious impression that I had heard her voice calling my name, as onemight call out in one's sleep. I dismissed it as an illusion, and then Iheard it again. So clearly that I sat up and listened--breathless.... 

Mixed up with all this was the intolerable uproar and talking of alittle cascade not fifty yards from the hotel. It is curious howdistressing that clamor of running water, which is so characteristic ofthe Alpine night, can become. At last those sounds can take the likenessof any voice whatever. The water, I decided, had called to me, and nowit mocked and laughed at me.... 

The next morning I descended at some late hour by Swiss reckoning, anddiscovered two ladies in the morning sunlight awaiting breakfast at alittle green table. One rose slowly at the sight of me, and stood andsurveyed me with a glad amazement. 

§ 2

There she stood real and solid, a little unfamiliar in her tweeds andwith her shining eyes intimate and unforgettable, as though I had neverceased to see them for all those intervening years. And bracing us bothand holding back our emotion was, quite unmistakably, Miss SummersleySatchel, a blonde business-like young woman with a stumpy nose verycruelly corrugated and inflamed by a pince-nez that savagely did muchmore than its duty by its name. She remained seated, tilting her chaira little, pushing herself back from the table and regardingme--intelligently. 

It was one of those moments in life when one is taken unawares. I thinkour common realization of the need of masking the reality of ourencounter, the hasty search in our minds for some plausible face uponthis meeting, must have been very obvious to the lady who observed us. Mary's first thought was for a pseudonym. Mine was to make it plain wemet by accident. 

"It's Mr. --Stephen!" said Mary. 

"It's you!"

"Dropped out of the sky!"

"From over there. I was benighted and go there late. "

"Very late?"

"One gleam of light--and a yawning waiter. Or I should have had to breakwindows.... And then I meet you!"

Then for a moment or so we were silent, with our sense of the immensegravity of this position growing upon us. A little tow-headed waiter-boyappeared with their coffee and rolls on a tray poised high on his hand. 

"You'll have your coffee out here with us?" said Mary. 

"Where else?" said I, as though there was no conceivable alternative, and told the tow-headed waiter. 

Belatedly Mary turned to introduce me to her secretary: "My friend MissSummersley Satchel. Mr. --Stephen. " Miss Satchel and I bowed to eachother and agreed that the lake was very beautiful in the morning light. "Mr. Stephen, " said Mary, in entirely unnecessary explanation, "is anold friend of my mother's. And I haven't seen him for years. How isMrs. Stephen--and the children?"

I answered briefly and began to tell of my climb down the Titlis. Iaddressed myself with unnecessary explicitness to Miss Satchel. I didperhaps over-accentuate the extreme fortuitousness of my appearance.... From where I stood, the whole course of the previous day after I hadcome over the shoulder was visible. It seemed a soft little shiningpathway to the top, but the dangers of the descent had a romanticintensification in the morning light. "The rule of the game, " said I, "is that one stops and waits for daylight. I wonder if anyone keeps thatrule. "

We talked for a time of mountains, I still standing a little aloof untilmy coffee came. Miss Summersley Satchel produced that frequent and mostunpleasant bye-product of a British education, an intelligent interestin etymology. "I wonder, " she said, with a brow of ruffled omniscienceand eyeing me rather severely with a magnified eye, "why it is _called_Titlis. There must be _some_ reason.... "

Presently Miss Satchel was dismissed indoors on a transparent excuse andMary and I were alone together. We eyed one another gravely. Perhaps allthe more gravely because of the wild excitement that was quickening ourpulse and breathing, and thrilling through our nerves. She pushed backthe plate before her and put her dear elbows on the table and droppedher chin between her hands in an attitude that seemed all made of littlememories. 

"I suppose, " she said, "something of this kind was bound to happen. "

She turned her eyes to the mountains shining in the morning light. "I'mglad it has happened in a beautiful place. It might havebeen--anywhere. "

"Last night, " I said, "I was thinking of you and wanting to hear yourvoice again. I thought I did. "

"I too. I wonder--if we had some dim perception.... "

She scanned my face. "Stephen, you're not much changed. You're lookingwell.... But your eyes--they're dog-tired eyes. Have you been workingtoo hard?"

"A conference--what did you call them once?--a Carnegieish conference inLondon. Hot weather and fussing work and endless hours of weak greydusty speeches, and perhaps that clamber over there yesterday was toomuch. It _was_ too much. In India I damaged a leg.... I had meant torest here for a day. "

"Well, --rest here. "

"With you!"

"Why not? Now you are here. "

"But---- After all, we've promised. "

"It's none of our planning, Stephen. "

"It seems to me I ought to go right on--so soon as breakfast is over. "

She weighed that with just the same still pause, the same quiet momentof lips and eyes that I recalled so well. It was as things had alwaysbeen between us that she should make her decision first and bring me toit. 

"It isn't natural, " she decided, "with the sun rising and the day stillfreshly beginning that you should go or that I should go. I've wanted tomeet you like this and talk about things, --ten thousand times. And asfor me Stephen I _won't_ go. And I won't let you go if I can help it. Not this morning, anyhow. No. Go later in the day if you will, and letus two take this one talk that God Himself has given us. We've notplanned it. It's His doing, not ours. "

I sat, yielding. "I am not so sure of God's participation, " I said. "ButI know I am very tired, and glad to be with you. I can't tell you howglad. So glad---- I think I should weep if I tried to say it.... "

"Three, four, five hours perhaps--even if people know. Is it so muchworse than thirty minutes? We've broken the rules already; we've beenflung together; it's not our doing, Stephen. A little while longer--addsso little to the offence and means to us----"

"Yes, " I said, "but--if Justin knows?"

"He won't. "

"Your companion?"

There was the briefest moment of reflection. "She's discretion itself, "she said. 

"Still----"

"If he's going to know the harm is done. We may as well be hung for asheep as a lamb. And he won't know. No one will know. "

"The people here. "

"Nobody's here. Not a soul who matters. I doubt if they know my name.... No one ever talks to me. "

I sat in the bright sunshine, profoundly enervated and quite convinced, but still maintaining out of mere indolence a show of hesitation.... 

"You take the good things God sends you, Stephen--as I do. You stay andtalk with me now, before the curtain falls again. We've tired ofletters. You stay and talk to me. 

"Here we are, Stephen, and it's the one chance that is ever likely tocome to us in all our lives. We'll keep the point of honor; and youshall go to-day. But don't let's drive the point of honor into thequick. Go easy Stephen, old friend.... My dear, my dear! What hashappened to you? Have you forgotten? Of course! Is it possible for youto go, mute, with so much that we can say.... And these mountains andthis sunlight!... "

I looked up to see her with her elbows on the table and her handsclasped under her chin; that face close to mine, her dear blue eyeswatching me and her lips a little apart. 

No other human being has ever had that effect upon me, so that I seem tofeel the life and stir in that other body more than I feel my own. 

§ 3

From the moment when I confessed my decision to stay we gave no furtherthought to the rightfulness or wisdom of spending the next few hourstogether. We thought only of those hours. Things lent themselves to us. We stood up and walked out in front of the hotel and there moored to astake at the edge of the water was a little leaky punt, the one vesselon the Engstlen See. We would take food with us as we decided and rowout there to where the vast cliffs came sheer from the water, out ofearshot or interference and talk for all the time we had. And I remembernow how Mary stood and called to Miss Satchel's window to tell her ofthis intention, and how I discovered again that exquisite slender graceI knew so well. 

You know the very rowing out from the shore had in it something sweetand incredible. It was as if we were but dreaming together and might atany moment awaken again, countless miles and a thousand things apart. Irowed slowly with those clumsy Swiss oars that one must thrust forward, breaking the smooth crystal of the lake, and she sat sideways lookingforward, saying very little and with much the same sense I think ofenchantment and unreality. And I saw now for the first time as I watchedher over my oars that her face was changed; she was graver and, Ithought, stronger than the Mary I had known. 

Even now I can still doubt if that boat and lake were real. And yet Iremember even minute and irrelevant details of the day's impressionswith an extraordinary and exquisite vividness. Perhaps it is that veryluminous distinctness which distinguishes these events from the commonexperiences of life and puts them so above the quality of things thatare ordinarily real. 

We rowed slowly past a great headland and into the bay at the upper endof the water. We had not realized at first that we could row beyond therange of the hotel windows. The rock that comes out of the lake is aclear dead white when it is dry, and very faintly tinted, but when it iswetted it lights warmly with flashes and blotches of color, and is seento be full of the most exquisite and delicate veins. It splintersvertically and goes up in cliffs, very high and sculptured, with aquality almost of porcelain, that at a certain level suddenly becomemore rude and massive and begin to overhang. Under the cliffs the wateris very deep and blue-green, and runs here and there into narrow clefts. This place where we landed was a kind of beach left by the recession ofthe ice, all the rocks immediately about us were ice-worn, and the placewas paved with ice-worn boulders. Two huge bluffs put their foreheadstogether above us and hid the glacier from us, but one could feel thenear presence of ice in the air. Out between them boiled a littletorrent, and spread into a hundred intercommunicating channels amidstthe great pebbles. And those pebbles were covered by a network ofmarvellously gnarled and twisted stems bearing little leaves andblossoms, a network at once very ancient and very fresh, giving apeculiar gentleness and richness to the Alpine severity that had dwarfedand tangled them. It was astounding that any plant could findnourishment among those stones. The great headland, with patches ofyellowish old snow still lingering here and there upon its upper masses, had crept insensibly between us and the remote hotel and now hid italtogether. There was nothing to remind us of the world that hadseparated us, except that old and leaky boat we had drawn up upon thestones at the limpid water's edge. 

"It is as if we had come out of life together, " she whispered, giving avoice to my thought. 

She sat down upon a boulder and I sat on a lower slab a yard or so away, and we looked at one another. "It's still unreal, " she said. 

I felt awkward and at a loss as I sat there before her, as a man unusedto drawing-rooms might feel in the presence of a strange hostess. 

"You are so _you_, " I said; "so altogether my nearest thing--and sostrange too, so far off, that I feel--shy.... 

"I'm shy, " I repeated. "I feel that if I speak loudly all this willvanish.... "

I looked about me. "But surely this is the most beautiful place in thewhole world! Is it indeed in the world?"

"Stephen, my dear, " she began presently, "what a strange thing life is!Strange! The disproportions! The things that will not fit together. Thelittle things that eat us up, and the beautiful things that might saveus and don't save us, don't seem indeed to have any meaning in regard toordinary sensible affairs.... This _beauty_.... 

"Do you remember, Stephen, how long ago in the old park you and I talkedabout immortality and you said then you did not want to know anything ofwhat comes after life. Even now do you want to know? You are too busyand I am not busy enough. I want to be sure, not only to know, but toknow that it is so, that this life--no, not _this_ life, but that life, is only the bleak twilight of the morning. I think death--just deaddeath--after the life I have had is the most impossible of ends.... Youdon't want--particularly? I want to passionately. I _want_ to liveagain--out of this body, Stephen, and all that it carves with it, to befree--as beautiful things are free. To be free as this is free--anexquisite clean freedom.... 

"I can't believe that the life of this earth is all that there is forus--or why should we ever think it strange? Why should we still find theordinary matter-of-fact things of everyday strange? We do--because theyaren't--_us_.... Eating. Stuffing into ourselves thin slices of whatwere queer little hot and eager beasts.... The perpetual need to do suchthings. And all the mad fury of sex, Stephen!... We don't live, wesuffocate in our living bodies. They storm and rage and snatch; it isn't_us_, Stephen, really. It can't be us. It's all so excessive--if it isanything more than the first furious rush into existence of beings thatwill go on--go on at last to quite beautiful real things. Like thisperhaps. To-day the world is beautiful indeed with the sun shining andlove shining and you, my dear, so near to me.... It's so incredible thatyou and I must part to-day. It's as if--someone told me the sun was alittle mad. It's so perfectly natural to be with you again.... "

Her voice sank. She leant a little forward towards me. "Stephen, supposethat you and I were dead to-day. Suppose that when you imagined you wereclimbing yesterday, you died. Suppose that yesterday you died and thatyou just thought you were still climbing as you made your way to me. Perhaps you are dead up there on the mountain and I am lying dead in myroom in this hotel, and this is the Great Beginning.... 

"Stephen, I am talking nonsense because I am so happy to be with youhere.... "

§ 4

For a time we said very little. Then irregularly, disconnectedly, webegan to tell each other things about ourselves. 

The substance of our lives seemed strangely objective that day; we hadas it were come to one another clean out of our common conditions. Shetold me of her troubles and her secret weaknesses; we bared our spiritsand confessed. Both of us had the same tale of mean and angry and hastyimpulses, both of us could find kindred inconsistencies, both had anexalted assurance that the other would understand completely and forgiveand love. She talked for the most part, she talked much more than I, with a sort of wonder at the things that had happened to her, and forlong spaces we did not talk at all nor feel the need of talking, andwhat seems very strange to me now, seeing that we had been impassionedlovers, we never kissed; we never kissed at all; I do not even rememberthat I thought of kissing her. We had a shyness between us that kept usa little apart, and I cannot remember that we ever touched one anotherexcept that for a time she took me and led me by the hand towards alittle place of starry flowers that had drawn her eyes and which shewished me to see. Already for us two our bodies were dead and gone. Wewere shy, shy of any contact, we were a little afraid of one another, there was a kind of awe between us that we had met again. 

And in that strange and beautiful place her fancy that we were deadtogether had a fitness that I cannot possibly convey to you. I cannotgive you by any writing the light and the sweet freshness of that highdesolation. You would need to go there. What was lovely in our talk, being said in that setting, would seem but a rambling discourse were Ito write it down, --as I believe that even now I could write itdown--word for word almost, every thought of it, so fresh does it remainwith me.... 

My dear, some moments are eternal. It seems to me that as I write totell you of this I am telling you not of something that happened twoyears ago but of a thing immortal. It is as if I and Mary were togetherthere holding the realities of our lives before us as though they werelittle sorry tales written in books upon our knees.... 

§ 5

It was still in the early afternoon that we came down again across themeandering ice-water streams to our old boat, and pushed off and rowedslowly out of that magic corner back to every-day again.... 

Little we knew to what it was we rowed. 

As we glided across the water and rounded the headland and came slowlyinto view of the hotel again, Mary was reminded of our parting and for alittle while she was disposed to make me remain. "If you could stay alittle longer, " she said, --"Another day? If any harm is done, it'sdone. "

"It has been beautiful, " I said, "this meeting. It's just as if--when Iwas so jaded and discouraged that I could have put my work aside anddespaired altogether, --some power had said, 'Have you forgotten thefriendship I gave you?' ... But we shall have had our time. We'vemet, --we've seen one another, we've heard one another. We've hurt noone.... "

"You will go?"

"To-day. Before sunset. Isn't it right that I should go?"

"Stay, " she whispered, with a light in her eyes. 

"No. I dare not. "

She did not speak for a long time. 

"Of course, " she said at last, "you're right. You only said--I wouldhave said it for you if you had not. You're so right, Stephen.... Isuppose, poor silly little things, that if you stayed we shouldcertainly begin making love to each other. It would be--necessary. Weshould fence about a little and then there it would be. No barrier--tostop us. And neither of us wants it to happen. It isn't what we want. You would become urgent, I suppose, and I should be--coquettish. Inspite of ourselves that power would make us puppets. As if already wehadn't made love.... I could find it in my heart now.... Stephen I could_make_ you stay.... 

"Oh! Why are we so tormented, Stephen? In the next world we shall meet, and this will trouble us no longer. The love will be there--oh, the lovewill be there, like something that has at last got itself fully born, got itself free from some queer clinging seed-case.... 

"We shall be rid of jealousy, Stephen, that inflammation of the mind, that bitterness, that pitiless sore, so that I shan't be tormented bythe thought of Rachel and she will be able to tolerate me. She was sosweet and wonderful a girl--with those dark eyes. And I've never doneher justice--never. Nor she me. I snatched you from her. I snatchedyou.... 

"Someday we shall be different.... All this putting oneself roundanother person like a fence, against everyone else, almost againsteverything else; it's so wicked, so fierce. 

"It's so possible to be different. Sometimes now, sometimes for longparts of a day I have no base passions at all--even in this life. To belike that always! But I can't see clearly how these things can be; onedreams of them in a kind of luminous mist, and if one looks directly atthem, they vanish again.... "

§ 6

And at last we came to the landing, and moored the little boat andwalked up the winding path to the hotel. The dull pain of separation wasalready upon us. 

I think we had forgotten Miss Summersley Satchel altogether. But sheappeared as we sat down to tea at that same table at which we hadbreakfasted, and joined us as a matter of course. Conceivably she foundthe two animated friends of the morning had become rather taciturn. Indeed there came a lapse of silence so portentous that I roused myselfto effort and told her, all over again, as I realized afterwards, thedifficulties that had benighted me upon Titlis. Then Miss Satchelregaled Mary with some particulars of the various comings and goings ofthe hotel. I became anxious to end this tension and went into the inn topay my bill and get my knapsack. When I came out Mary stood up. 

"I'll come just a little way with you, Stephen, " she said, and I couldhave fancied the glasses of the companion flashed to hear the surname ofthe morning reappear a Christian name in the afternoon.... 

"Is that woman behind us safe?" I asked, breaking the silence as we wentup the mountain-side. 

Mary looked over her shoulder for a contemplative second. 

"She's always been--discretion itself. "

We thought no more of Miss Satchel. 

"This parting, " said Mary, "is the worst of the price we have topay.... Now it comes to the end there seem a thousand things one hasn'tsaid.... "

And presently she came back to that. "We shan't remember this so muchperhaps. It was there we met, over there in the sunlight--among thoserocks. I suppose--perhaps--we managed to say something.... "

As the ascent grew steeper it became clear that if I was to reach theMelch See Inn by nightfall, our moment for parting had come. And with a"Well, " and a white-lipped smile and a glance at the Argus-eyed hotel, she held out her hand to me. "I shall live on this, brother Stephen, "she said, "for years. "

"I too, " I answered.... 

It was wonderful to stand and face her there, and see her real andliving with the warm sunlight on her, and her face one glowingtenderness. We clasped hands; all the warm life of our hands met andclung and parted. 

I went on alone up the winding path, --it zigzags up the mountain-side infull sight of the hotel for the better part of an hour--climbingsteadily higher and looking back and looking back until she was just alittle strip of white--that halted and seemed to wave to me. I wavedback and found myself weeping. "You fool!" I said to myself, "Go on";and it was by an effort that I kept on my way instead of running back toher again. Presently the curvature of the slope came up between us andhid her altogether, hid the hotel, hid the lakes and the cliffs.... 

It seemed to me that I could not possibly see her any more. It was as ifI knew that sun had set for ever. 

§ 7

I lay at the Melch See Inn that night, and rose betimes and started downthat wild grey gorge in the early morning light. I walked to Sachseln, caught an early train to Lucerne and went on in the afternoon to Como. And there I stayed in the sunshine taking a boat and rowing alone far upthe lake and lying in it, thinking of love and friendship and theaccidents and significance of my life, and for the most part notthinking at all but feeling, feeling the glow of our meeting and thefinality of our separation, as one feels the clear glow of a sunset whenthe wind rises and the cold night draws near. Everything was pervaded bythe sense of her. Just over those mountains, I thought, is Mary. I wasalone in my boat, but her presence filled the sky. It seemed to me thatat any moment I could go to her. And the last vestige of any cloudbetween us for anything we had done or failed to do in these crises ofdistress and separation, had vanished and gone altogether. 

In the afternoon I wrote to Rachel. I had not written to her for threedays, and even now I told her nothing of my meeting with Mary. I had notwritten partly because I could not decide whether I should tell her ofthat or not; in the end I tried to hide it from her. It seemed a littlething in regard to her, a thing that could not hurt her, a thing asdetached from her life and as inconsecutive as a dream in my head. 

Three days later I reached Milan, a day before the formal opening of thePeace Congress. But I found a telegram had come that morning to thePoste Restante to banish all thought of my pacific mission from mymind. It came from Paris and its blue ribbon of text ran:

 _"Come back at once to London. Justin has been told of our meeting and is resolved upon divorce. Will do all in my power to explain and avert but feel you should know at once. "_

There are some things so monstrously destructive to all we hold dearthat for a time it is impossible to believe them. I remember now that asI read that amazing communication through--at the first reading it was alittle difficult to understand because the Italian operator had guessedat one or two of the words, no real sense of its meaning came to me. That followed sluggishly. I felt as one might feel when one opens someoffensive anonymous letter or hears some preposterous threat. 

"What _nonsense_!" I said, faint-heartedly. I stood for a time at mybedroom window trying to shake this fact altogether off my mind. But itstayed, and became more and more real. Suddenly with a start I perceivedit was real. I had to do things forthwith. 

I rang the bell and asked for an _Orario_. "I shan't want these rooms. Ihave to go back to England, " I said. "Yes, --I have had bad news. " ... 

§ 8

"We've only got to explain, " I told myself a hundred times during thatlong sleepless journey. The thundering wheels so close beneath my headechoed: "Explain. Oh yes! Explain! Explain! Explain!"

And something, a voice to which I would not listen, urged: "Supposethey do not choose to believe what you explain. "

When I sat face to face with Maxwell Hartington, my solicitor, in hisink-splashed, dirty, yellow-grained room with its rows of black tinboxes, I could no longer ignore that possibility. Maxwell Hartington satback in his chair after his fashion, listening to my story, breathingnoisily through his open mouth, perspiring little beads and looking moreout of condition than ever. I never knew a man so wine-sodden and sosharp-witted. 

"That's all very well, Stratton, " he said, "between ourselves. Veryunfortunate and all that sort of thing. But it doesn't satisfy Justinevidently; and we've got to put a different look on it if we can, beforewe go before a jury: You see----" He seemed to be considering andrejecting unpalatable phrases "They won't understand. "

"But, " I said, "after all--, a mere chance of the same hotel. There mustbe more evidence than that. "

"You spent the night in adjacent rooms, " he said dryly. 

"Adjacent rooms!" I cried. 

He regarded me for a moment with something bordering on admiration. "Didn't you know?" he said. 

"No. "

"They've routed that out. You were sleeping with your two heads within ayard of one another anyhow. Thirty-six you had, and she hadthirty-seven. "

"But, " I said and stopped. 

Maxwell Hartington's admiration gave place I think to a slightresentment at my sustained innocence. "And Lady Mary changed rooms withher secretary two nights before--to be near the vacant room. Thesecretary went into number 12 on the floor below, --a larger room, atthirteen francs a day, and one not exposed to the early daylight.... "

He turned over a paper on his desk. "You didn't know, of course, " hesaid. "But what I want to have"--and his voice grew wrathful--"is sureevidence that you didn't know. No jury on earth is going to believe youdidn't know. No jury!---- Why, "--his mask dropped--"no man on earth isgoing to believe a yarn like that! If that's all you have, Stratton----"

§ 9

Our London house was not shut up--two servants were there on board-wagesagainst the possibility of such a temporary return as I was nowmaking--Rachel was away with you three children at Cromingham. I had nottold her I was returning to London, and I had put up at one of my clubs. Until I had had a second interview with Maxwell Hartington I still wouldnot let myself think that it was possible that Mary and I would failwith our explanations. We had the common confidence of habituallyunchallenged people that our word would be accepted. I had hoped indeedto get the whole affair settled and abolished without anything of itcoming to Rachel's ears. Then at my leisure I should be able to tell herexactly how things had come about. But each day made it clearer thatthings were not going to be settled, that the monstrous and theincredible was going to happen and that Justin had set his mindimplacably upon a divorce. My sense of complete innocence had alreadybeen shaken by Maxwell Hartington; I had come to perceive that we hadbeen amazingly indiscreet, I was beginning to think we had beencriminally indiscreet. 

I saw Maxwell Hartington for a second time, and it became clear to me Imust abandon any hope of keeping things further from Rachel. I took myluggage round to my house, to the great astonishment of the twoservants, --they had supposed of course that I was in Italy--and thenwent down on the heels of a telegram to Rachel. I forget the wording ofthat telegram, but it was as little alarming as possible; I think I saidsomething about "back in London for documents; shall try to get down toyou. " I did not specify any particular train or indeed state definitelythat I was coming that day. 

I had never been to Cromingham before. I went to the house you occupiedon the Esplanade and learnt that you were all upon the beach. I walkedalong the sea-wall scrutinizing the various bright groups of childrenand nursemaids and holiday people that were scattered over the sands. Itwas a day of blazing sunshine, and, between the bright sky and thesilver drabs of the sand stretched the low levels of a sea that had itscustomary green-grey touched for once with something of the sapphireglow of the Mediterranean. Here and there were gay little umbrella tentsor canvas shelters, and a bather or so and pink and white wadingchildren broke the dazzling edge of foam. And I sought you with a kindof reluctance as though finding you would bring nearer the blackirrational disaster that hung over us all. 

And when I found you at last you were all radiantly happy and healthy, the prettiest of families, and only your mother was touched with anygravity deeper than the joy of sunshine and sea. You and MademoisellePotin--in those days her ministrations were just beginning--were busyconstructing a great sea-wall that should really and truly stop theadvancing tide. Rachel Two was a little apart, making with infinitecontentment an endless multitude of conical sand pies with her littletin pail. Margaret, a pink inarticulate lump, scrabbled in the warm sandunder Jessica's care. Your mother sat and watched you--thoughtfully. Andbefore any of you knew that I was there my shadow fell across you all. 

You accepted my appearance when I ought to have been in Italy with theunquestioning confidence with which you still take all my comings andgoings. For you, Italy, America, any place is just round the corner. Iwas kissed with affection but haste, and you got back to your sand-worksas speedily as possible. I inspected Rachel Two's mounds, --she wasgiving them the names of her various aunts and uncles--and patted thecrowing Margaret, who ignored me. Rachel had sprung to her feet andkissed me and now hovered radiant over me as I caressed you youngsters. It was all so warm, so real, that for an instant the dark threat thathung over us all vanished from my skies, to return with the force of ablow. 

"And what has brought you back?" said Rachel. "I had expected a month ofwidowhood. What can have brought you back?"

The dancing gladness in her eyes vanished swiftly as she waited for ananswer to her question. She caught the note of tragedy from my face. "Why have you come back from Italy?" she asked in an altered voice. 

"Rachel, " I said taking her arm, with a desolating sense of thefutility in my gesture of protection; "let us walk along the beach. Iwant to tell you something---- Something rather complicated. "

"Is there going to be war, Stephen?" she asked abruptly. 

It seemed then that this question which merely concerned the welfare ofa hundred million people or so and pain, destruction and disaster beyondmeasure, was the most trivial of digressions. 

"No, " I said. "I haven't thought about the war. "

"But I thought--you were thinking of nothing else. "

"This has put it out of my head. It's something---- Something disastrousto us. "

"Something has happened to our money?"

"I wish that was all. "

"Then what is it?" Her mind flashed out. "It has something to do withMary Justin. "

"How did you know that?"

"I guessed. "

"Well. It is. You see--in Switzerland we met. "

"You _met_!"

"By accident. She had been staying at the hotel on Engstlen Alp. "

"You slept there!" cried Rachel. 

"I didn't know she was in the hotel until the next day. "

"And then you came away!"

"That day. "

"But you talked together?"

"Yes. "

"And for some reason---- You never told me, Stephen! You never told me. And you met. But---- Why is this, disaster?"

"Because Justin knows and he means to divorce her--and it may be hewill succeed.... "

Rachel's face had become white, for some time she said nothing. Thenslowly, "And if he had not known and done that--I should never haveknown. "

I had no answer to make to that. It was true. Rachel's face was verystill, and her eyes stared at the situation laid bare to her. 

"When you began, " she choked presently, "when she wrote--I knew--Ifelt----"

She ceased for fear she might weep, and for a time we walked in silence. 

"I suppose, " she said desperately at last, "he will get his divorce. "

"I am afraid he will. "

"There's no evidence--you didn't.... "

"No. "

"And I never dreamt----!"

Then her passion tore at her. "Stephen my dear, " she wept, "you didn't?you didn't? Stephen, indeed you didn't, did you? You kept faith with meas a husband should. It was an accident--a real accident--and there wasno planning for you to meet together. It was as you say? I've neverdoubted your word ever--I've never doubted you. "

Well, at any rate I could answer that plainly, and I did. 

"And you know, Stephen, " she said, "I believe you. And I _can't_ believeyou. My heart is tormented. Why did you write to her? Why did you twowrite and go on writing? And why did you tell me nothing of thatmeeting? I believe you because I can't do anything but believe you. Itwould kill me not to believe you in a thing that came so near to us. Andyet, there it is, like a knife being twisted in my heart--that you met. Should I have known of your meeting, Stephen--ever? I know I'm talkingbadly for you.... But this thing strikes me suddenly. Out of this clearbeautiful sky! And the children there--so happy in the sunshine! I wasso happy. So happy. With you coming.... It will mean shames andlaw-courts and newspapers, losses of friends, losses of money andfreedom.... My mother and my people!... And you and all the work youdo!... People will never forget it, never forgive it. They will say youpromised.... If she had never written, if she had kept to herbargain----"

"We should still have met. "

"Stephen!... Stephen, you must bear with me.... "

"This is a thing, " I said, "that falls as you say out of the sky. Itseemed so natural--for her to write.... And the meeting ... It is likesome tremendous disaster of nature. I do not feel I have deserved it. Itis--irrational. But there it is, little Rachel of my heart, and we haveto face it. Whatever happens we have to go on. It doesn't alter the workwe have to do. If it clips our wings--we have to hop along with clippedwings.... For you--I wish it could spare you. And she--she too is avictim, Rachel. "

"She need not have written, " said Rachel. "She need not have written. And then if you had met----"

She could not go on with that. 

"It is so hard, " I said, "to ask you to be just to her--and me. I wish Icould have come to you and married you--without all that legacy--ofthings remembered.... I was what I was.... One can't shake off a thingin one's blood. And besides--besides----"

I stopped helplessly. 

§ 10

And then Mary came herself to tell me there would be no divorce. 

She came to me unexpectedly. I had returned to town that evening, andnext morning as I was sitting down in my study to answer someunimportant questions Maxwell Hartington had sent me, my parlormaidappeared. "Can you speak, " she asked, "to Lady Mary Justin?"

I stood up to receive my visitor. 

She came in, a tall dark figure, and stood facing me in silence untilthe door had closed behind her. Her face was white and drawn and verygrave. She stooped a little, I could see she had had no sleep, neverbefore had I seen her face marked by pain. And she hesitated.... "Mydear!" I said; "why have you come to me?"

I put a chair for her and she sat down. 

For a moment she controlled herself with difficulty. She put her handover her eyes, she seemed on the verge of bitter weeping.... 

"I came, " she said at last.... "I came. I had to come ... To see you. "

I sat down in a chair beside her. 

"It wasn't wise, " I said. "But--never mind. You look so tired, my dear!"

She sat quite still for a little while. 

Then she moved her arm as though she felt for me blindly, and I put myarms about her and drew her head to my shoulder and she wept.... 

"I knew, " she sobbed, "if I came to you.... "

Presently her weeping was over. 

"Get me a little cold water, Stephen, " she said. "Let me have a littlecold water on my face. I've got my courage now again. Just then, --I wasdown too low. Yes--cold water. Because I want to tell you--things youwill be glad to hear. "

"You see, Stephen, " she said--and now all her self-possession hadreturned; "there mustn't be a divorce. I've thought it all out. Andthere needn't be a divorce. "

"Needn't be?"

"No. "

"What do you mean?"

"I can stop it. "

"But how?"

"I can stop it. I can manage---- I can make a bargain.... It's verysweet, dear Stephen, to be here talking to you again. "

She stood up. 

"Sit at your desk, my dear, " she said. "I'm all right now. That waterwas good. How good cold things can be! Sit down at your desk and let mesit here. And then I will talk to you. I've had such a time, my dear. Ah!"

She paused and stuck her elbows on the desk and looked me in the eyes. And suddenly that sweet, frank smile of hers swept like sunshine acrossthe wintry desolation of her face. "We've both been having a time, " shesaid. "This odd little world, --it's battered us with its fists. For sucha little. And we were both so ridiculously happy. Do you remember it, the rocks and the sunshine and all those twisted and tangled littleplants? And how the boat leaked and you baled it out! And the parting, and how you trudged up that winding path away from me! A grey figurethat stopped and waved--a little figure--such a virtuous figure! Andthen, this storm! this _awful_ hullabaloo! Lawyers, curses, threats----. And Stella Summersley Satchel like a Fury of denunciation. What hatredthat woman has hidden from me! It must have accumulated.... It'sterrible to think, Stephen, how much I must have tried her.... Oh! howfar away those Alps are now, Stephen! Like something in another life.... And here we are!--among the consequences. "

"But, --you were saying we could stop the divorce. "

"Yes. We can. I can. But I wanted to see you, --before I did. Somehow Idon't feel lonely with you. I had to see you.... It's good to see you. "

She looked me in the face. Her tired eyes lit with a gleam of her formerhumor. 

"Have you thought, " she asked, "of all that will happen if there is adivorce?"

"I mean to fight every bit of it. "

"They'll beat you. "

"We'll see that. "

"But they will. And then?"

"Why should one meet disaster half way?"

"Stephen!" she said; "what will happen to you when I am not here to makeyou look at things? Because I shan't be here. Not within reach ofyou.... There are times when I feel like a mother to you. Never morethan now.... "

And then with rapid touches she began to picture the disaster beforeme. She pictured the Court and our ineffectual denials, she made merealize the storm of hostility that was bound to burst over us. "Andthink of me, " she said. "Stripped I shall be and outcast. "

"Not while I live!"

"But what can you do for me? You will have Rachel. How can you stand byme? You can't be cruel to Rachel. You know you can't be cruel to Rachel. Look me in the face, Stephen; tell me. Yes.... Then how can you stand byme?"

"Somehow!" I cried foolishly and stopped. 

"They'll use me to break your back with costs and damages. There'll bethose children of yours to think of.... "

"My God!" I cried aloud. "Why do you torment me? Haven't I thoughtenough of those things?... Haven't I seen the ruin and the shame, thehopeless trap, men's trust in me gone, my work scattered and endedagain, my children growing up to hear this and that exaggeration of ourstory. And you----. All the bravery of your life scattered and wasted. The thing will pursue us all, cling to us. It will be all the rest ofour lives for us.... "

I covered my face with my hands. 

When I looked up, her face was white and still, and full of a strangetenderness. "I wouldn't have you, Stephen--I wouldn't have you be cruelto Rachel.... I just wanted to know--something.... But we're wandering. We're talking nonsense. Because as I said, there need be no divorce. There will be no divorce at all. That's what I came to tell you. I shallhave to pay--in a way, Stephen.... Not impossibly. Don't think it isanything impossible.... "

Then she bit her lips and sat still.... 

"My dear, " I whispered, "if we had taken one another at thebeginning.... "

But she went on with her own thoughts. 

"You love those little children of yours, " she said. "And that trustinggirl-wife.... Of course you love them. They're yours. Oh! they're sodeeply--yours.... Yours.... "

"Oh my dear! don't torture me! I do love them. But I love you too. "

"No, " she said, "not as you do them. "

I made a movement of protest. 

"No, " she said, whitely radiant with a serenity I had never seen beforein her face. "You love me with your brain. With your soul if you like. I_know_, my poor bleeding Stephen!--Aren't those tears there? Don't mindmy seeing them, Stephen.... Poor dear! Poor dear!.... You love _them_with your inmost heart. Why should you mind that I see you do?... All mylife I've been wrong, Stephen, and now I know too late. It's the thingswe own we love, the things we buy with our lives.... Always I have beenhard, I've been a little hard.... Stephen, my dear, I loved you, alwaysI have loved you, and always I have tried to keep myself.... It's toolate.... I don't know why I am talking like this.... But you see I canmake a bargain now--it's not an impossible bargain--and save you andsave your wife and save your children----"

"But how?" I said, still doubting. 

"Never mind how, Stephen. Don't ask me how now. Nothing very difficult. Easy. But I shall write you no more letters--see you--no more. Never. And that's why I had to come, you see, why I was able to come to you, just to see you and say good-bye to you, and take leave of you, dearLove that I threw away and loved too late.... "

She bit her lip and faced me there, a sweet flushed living thing, with atear coursing down her cheek, and her mouth now firm and steady. 

"You can stop this divorce?" I said, "But how, Mary?"

"No, don't ask me how. At a price. It's a bargain. No, no! Don't thinkthat, --a bargain with Justin, but not degrading. Don't, my dear, let thethought of it distress you. I have to give earnests.... Never, dear, never through all the dusty rest of life again will you and I speaktogether. Never! Even if we come face to face once more--no word.... "

"Mary, " I said, "what is it you have to do? You speak as if---- What isit Justin demands?"

"No! do not ask me that.... Tell me--you see we've so much to talkabout, Stephen--tell me of all you are going to do. Everything. BecauseI've got to make a great vow of renunciation--of you. Not to thinkagain--not even to think of you again.... No, no. I'm not even to lookfor you in the papers any more. There's to be no tricks this time. Andso you see I want to fill up my mind with you. To store myself with you. Tell me your work is worth it--that it's not like the work of everyone. Tell me, Stephen--_that_. I want to believe that--tremendously. Don't bemodest now. That will be cruel. I want to believe that I am at last todo something that is worth doing, something not fruitless.... "

"Are you to go into seclusion, " I asked suddenly, "to be a nun----?"

"It is something like that, " she said; "very like that. But I havepromised--practically--not to tell you that. Tell me your soul, Stephen, now. Give me something I may keep in my mind through--through all thoseyears of waiting.... "

"But where?" I cried. "What years of waiting?"

"In a lonely place, my dear--among mountains. High and away. Verybeautiful, but lonely. A lake. Great rocks.... Yes, --like that place. Soodd.... I shall have so much time to think, and I shall have nopapers--no news. I mustn't talk to you of that. Don't let me talk to youof that. I want to hear about this world, this world I am going toleave, and how you think you are going on fighting in the hot and dustystruggle--to make the world cool and kind and reasonable, to train mindsbetter, to broaden ideas ... All those things you believe in. All thosethings you believe in and stick to--even when they are dull. Now I amleaving it, I begin to see how fine it is--to fight as you want tofight. A tiresome inglorious lifelong fight.... You really believe, Stephen?"

§ 11

And then suddenly I read her purpose. 

"Mary, " I cried, and stood up and laid my hand upon her arm, "Tell mewhat is it you mean to do. What do you mean to do?"

She looked up at me defensively and for a moment neither of us spoke. 

"Mary, " I said, and could not say what was in my thoughts. 

"You are wrong, " she lied at last.... 

She stood up too and faced me. I held her shoulder and looked into hereyes. 

The gong of my little clock broke the silence. 

"I must go, Stephen, " she said. "I did not see how the time was slippingby. "

I began to entreat her and she to deny. "You don't understand, " shesaid, "you don't understand. Stephen!--I had hoped you would understand. You see life, --not as I see it. I wanted--all sorts of splendid thingsand you--begin to argue. You are shocked, you refuse to understand.... No. No. Take your hands off me, Stephen dear, and let me go. Let me go!"

"But, " I said, stupid and persistent, "what are you going to do?"

"I've told you. Stephen. I've told you. As much as I can tell you. Andyou think--this foolish thing. As though I could do that! Stephen, if Ipromise, will you let me go?... "

§ 12

My mind leaps from that to the moment in the afternoon, when torn byintolerable distresses and anxiety I knocked and rang, and again knockedat the door of the house she occupied in South Street, with theintention of making one last appeal to her to live--if, indeed, it wasdeath she had in mind. I had let her go from me and instantly a hundredneglected things had come into my head. I could go away with her, Icould threaten to die with her; it seemed to me that nothing in all theworld mattered if only I could thrust back the dark hand of death towhich she had so manifestly turned. I knew, I knew all along that herextorted promise would not bind her. I knew and I let the faintestshadow of uncertainty weaken and restrain me. And I went to her toolate. I saw instantly that I was too late when the door opened andshowed me the scared face of a young footman whose eyes were red withtears. 

"Are you Doctor----?" he asked of my silence. 

"I want----" I said. "I must speak to Lady Mary. "

He was wordless for a moment. "She--she died, sir, " he said. "She's diedsuddenly. " His face quivered, he was blubbering. He couldn't sayanything more; he stood snivelling in the doorway. 

For some moments I remained confronting him as if I would dispute hiswords. Some things the mind contests in the face of invincibleconviction. One wants to thrust back time.... 

CHAPTER THE TWELFTH

THE ARRAIGNMENT OF JEALOUSY

§ 1

I sit here in this graciously proportioned little room which I shallleave for ever next week, for already your mother begins to pack forEngland again. I look out upon the neat French garden that I havewatched the summer round, and before me is the pile of manuscript thathas grown here, the story of my friendship and love for Mary and of itstragic end, and of all the changes of my beliefs and purposes that havearisen out of that. I had meant it to be the story of my life, but howlittle of my life is in it! It gives, at most, certain acute points, certain salient aspects. I begin to realize for the first time how thinand suggestive and sketchy a thing any novel or biography must be. Howwe must simplify! How little can we convey the fullness of life, theglittering interests, the interweaving secondary aspects, the dawns anddreams and double refractions of experience! Even Mary, of whom I havelabored to tell you, seems not so much expressed as hidden beneath thesecorrected sheets. She who was so abundantly living, who could love likea burst of sunshine and give herself as God gives the world, is she hereat all in this pile of industrious inexpert writing?

Life is so much fuller than any book can be. All this story can beread, I suppose, in a couple of hours or so, but I have been living andreflecting upon and reconsidering the substance of it for over fortyyears. I do not see how this book can give you any impression but thatof a career all strained upon the frame of one tragic relationship, yetno life unless it is a very short young life can have that simplicity. Of all the many things I have found beautiful and wonderful, Mary wasthe most wonderful to me, she is in my existence like a sunlit lake seenamong mountains, of all the edges by which life has wrought me she wasthe keenest. Nevertheless she was not all my life, nor the form of allmy life. For a time after her death I could endure nothing of my home, Icould not bear the presence of your mother or you, I hated thepossibility of consolation, I went away into Italy, and it was only byan enormous effort that I could resume my interest in that scheme ofwork to which my life is given. But it is manifest I still live, I liveand work and feel and share beauty.... 

It seems to me more and more as I live longer, that most poetry and mostliterature and particularly the literature of the past is discordantwith the vastness and variety, the reserves and resources andrecuperations of life as we live it to-day. It is the expression of lifeunder cruder and more rigid conditions than ours, lived by people wholoved and hated more naïvely, aged sooner and died younger than we do. Solitary persons and single events dominated them as they do notdominate us. We range wider, last longer, and escape more and more fromintensity towards understanding. And already this astounding blow beginsto take its place among other events, as a thing strange and terribleindeed, but related to all the strangeness and mystery of life, part ofthe universal mysteries of despair and futility and death that havetroubled my consciousness since childhood. For a time the death of Maryobscured her life for me, but now her living presence is more in my mindagain. I begin to see that it is the reality of her existence and notthe accidents of her end that matter most. It signifies less that sheshould have flung out of life when it seemed that her living could onlyhave meant disaster to herself and to all she loved, than that all herlife should have been hampered and restricted. Through all her life thisbrave and fine and beautiful being was for the most part of herpossibilities, wasted in a splendid setting, magnificently wasted if youwill, but wasted. 

§ 2

It was that idea of waste that dominated my mind in a strange interviewI had with Justin. For it became necessary for me to see Justin in orderthat we should stamp out the whispers against her that followed herdeath. He had made it seem an accidental death due to an overdose of thenarcotic she employed, but he had not been able to obliterate altogetherthe beginnings of his divorce proceedings. There had been talk on thepart of clerks and possible witnesses. But of all that I need not tellyou here; what matters is that Justin and I could meet without hatred orviolence. I met a Justin grey-haired and it seemed to me physicallyshrunken, more than ever slow-speaking, with his habit of attentivesilences more marked and that dark scar spread beyond his brows. 

We had come to our parting, we had done our business with anaffectation of emotional aloofness, and then suddenly he gripped me bythe arm. "Stratton, " he said, "we two---- We killed her. We tore her topieces between us.... "

I made no answer to this outbreak. 

"We tore her to pieces, " he repeated. "It's so damned silly. One getsangry--like an animal. "

I became grotesquely anxious to assure him that, indeed, she and I hadbeen, as they say, innocent throughout our last day together. "You werewrong in all that, " I said. "She kept her faith with you. We neverplanned to meet and when we met----. If we had been brother andsister----. Indeed there was nothing. "

"I suppose, " he said, "I ought to be glad of that. But now it doesn'tseem to matter very much. We killed her.... What does that matter to menow?"

§ 3

And it is upon this effect of sweet and beautiful possibilities, caughtin the net of animal jealousies and thoughtless motives and ancientrigid institutions, that I would end this writing. In Mary, it seems tome, I found both womanhood and fellowship, I found what many have dreamtof, love and friendship freely given, and I could do nothing but clutchat her to make her my possession. I would not permit her to live exceptas a part of my life. I see her now and understand her better than whenshe was alive, I recall things that she said and wrote and it is clearto me, clearer perhaps than it ever was to her, that she, with herresentment at being in any sense property, her self-reliant thought, herindependence of standard, was the very prototype of that sister-loverwho must replace the seductive and abject womanhood, owned, mastered anddeceiving, who waste the world to-day. And she was owned, she wasmastered, she was forced into concealment. What alternative was therefor her? What alternative is there for any woman? She might perhaps havekept her freedom by some ill-paid work and at the price of every otherimpulse in her swift and eager nature. She might have become one ofthose poor neuters, an independent woman.... Life was made impossiblefor her and she was forced to die, according to the fate of all untimelythings. She was destroyed, not merely by the unconsidered, undisciplinedpassions of her husband and her lover, but by the vast tradition thatsustains and enforces the subjugation of her sex. What I had from her, and what she was, is but a mere intimation of all that she and I mighthave made of each other and the world. 

And perhaps in this story I have said enough for you to understand whyMary has identified herself with something world-wide, has added toherself a symbolical value, and why it is I find in the whole crowdedspectacle of mankind, a quality that is also hers, a sense of finethings entangled and stifled and unable to free themselves from theancient limiting jealousies which law and custom embody. For I know thata growing multitude of men and women outwear the ancient ways. Theblood-stained organized jealousies of religious intolerance, thedelusions of nationality and cult and race, that black hatred whichsimple people and young people and common people cherish against allthat is not in the likeness of themselves, cease to be the undisputedruling forces of our collective life. We want to emancipate our livesfrom this slavery and these stupidities, from dull hatreds andsuspicion. The ripening mind of our race tires of these boorish andbrutish and childish things. A spirit that is like hers, arises andincreases in human affairs, a spirit that demands freedom and graciousliving as our inheritance too long deferred, and I who loved her soblindly and narrowly now love her spirit with a dawning understanding. 

I will not be content with that compromise of jealousies which is theestablished life of humanity to-day. I give myself, and if I can I willgive you, to the destruction of jealousy and of the forms and sheltersand instruments of jealousy, both in my own self and in the thought andlaws and usage of the world. 

THE END

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