Part 27 (1/2)

As I look back upon all that time--across a gulf of fifteen active years--I find I see it with an understanding judgment. I see it as if it were the business of some one else--indeed of two other people--intimately known yet judged without pa.s.sion. I see now that this shock, this sudden immense disillusionment, did in real fact bring out a mind and soul in Marion; that for the first time she emerged from habits, timidities, imitations, phrases and a certain narrow will-impulse, and became a personality.

Her ruling motive at first was, I think, an indignant and outraged pride. This situation must end. She asked me categorically to give up Effie, and I, full of fresh and glowing memories, absolutely refused.

”It's too late, Marion,” I said. ”It can't be done like that.”

”Then we can't very well go on living together,” she said. ”Can we?”

”Very well,” I deliberated ”if you must have it so.”

”Well, can we?”

”Can you stay in this house? I mean--if I go away?”

”I don't know.... I don't think I could.”

”Then--what do you want?”

Slowly we worked our way from point to point, until at last the word ”divorce” was before us.

”If we can't live together we ought to be free,” said Marion.

”I don't know anything of divorce,” I said--”if you mean that. I don't know how it is done. I shall have to ask somebody--or look it up....

Perhaps, after all, it is the thing to do. We may as well face it.”

We began to talk ourselves into a realisation of what our divergent futures might be. I came back on the evening of that day with my questions answered by a solicitor.

”We can't as a matter of fact,” I said, ”get divorced as things are.

Apparently, so far as the law goes you've got to stand this sort of thing. It's silly but that is the law. However, it's easy to arrange a divorce. In addition to adultery there must be desertion or cruelty.

To establish cruelty I should have to strike you, or something of that sort, before witnesses. That's impossible--but it's simple to desert you legally. I have to go away from you; that's all. I can go on sending you money--and you bring a suit, what is it?--for Rest.i.tution of Conjugal Rights. The Court orders me to return. I disobey. Then you can go on to divorce me. You get a Decree Nisi, and once more the Court tries to make me come back. If we don't make it up within six months and if you don't behave scandalously the Decree is made absolute. That's the end of the fuss. That's how one gets unmarried. It's easier, you see, to marry than unmarry.”

”And then--how do I live? What becomes of me?”

”You'll have an income. They call it alimony. From a third to a half of my present income--more if you like--I don't mind--three hundred a year, say. You've got your old people to keep and you'll need all that.”

”And then--then you'll be free?”

”Both of us.”

”And all this life you've hated”

I looked up at her wrung and bitter face. ”I haven't hated it,” I lied, my voice near breaking with the pain of it all. ”Have you?”

IX

The perplexing thing about life is the irresolvable complexity of reality, of things and relations alike. Nothing is simple. Every wrong done has a certain justice in it, and every good deed has dregs of evil.

As for us, young still, and still without self-knowledge, resounded a hundred discordant notes in the harsh angle of that shock. We were furiously angry with each other, tender with each other, callously selfish, generously self-sacrificing.

I remember Marion saying innumerable detached things that didn't hang together one with another, that contradicted one another, that were, nevertheless, all in their places profoundly true and sincere. I see them now as so many vain experiments in her effort to apprehend the crumpled confusions of our complex moral landslide. Some I found irritating beyond measure. I answered her--sometimes quite abominably.