Part 80 (2/2)
”Because I think I should be a fool to marry.” Ingpen tapping his front teeth with his finger-nail, spoke reflectively, persuasively, and with calm detachment.
”Why?” asked Edwin, persuasively also, but nervously, as though the spirit of adventure in the search for truth was pus.h.i.+ng him to fatal dangers.
”Marriage isn't worth the price--for me, that is. I daresay I'm peculiar.” Ingpen said this quite seriously, prepared to consider impartially the proposition that he was peculiar. ”The fact is, my boy, I think my freedom is worth a bit more than I could get out of any marriage.”
”That's all very well,” said Edwin, trying to speak with the same dispa.s.sionate conviction as Ingpen, and scarcely succeeding. ”But look what you miss! Look how you live!” Almost involuntarily he glanced with self-complacence round the unlovely, unseemly room, and his glance seemed to penetrate ceilings and walls, and to discover and condemn the whole charmless house from top to bottom.
”Why? What's the matter with it?” Ingpen replied uneasily; a slight flush came into his cheeks. ”n.o.body has a more comfortable bed or more comfortable boots than I have. How many women can make coffee as good as mine? No woman ever born can make first-cla.s.s tea. I have all I want.”
”No, you don't. And what's the good of talking about coffee, and tea, and beds?”
”Well, what else is there I want that I haven't got? If you mean fancy cus.h.i.+ons and draperies, no, thanks!”
”You know what I mean all right.... And then 'freedom' as you say.
What do you mean by freedom?”
”I don't specially mean,” said Ingpen, tranquil and benevolent, ”what I may call physical freedom. I'd give that up. I like a certain amount of untidiness, for instance, and I don't think an absence of dust is the greatest thing in the world; but I wouldn't in the least mind giving all that up. It wouldn't really matter to me. What I won't give up is my intellectual freedom. Perhaps I mean intellectual honesty. I'd give up even my intellectual freedom if I could be deprived of it fairly and honestly. But I shouldn't be. There's almost no intellectual honesty in marriage. There can't be. The entire affair is a series of compromises, chiefly base on the part of the man. The alternative is absolute subjection of the woman, which is offensive. No woman not absolutely a slave ever hears the truth except in anger. You can't say the same about men, and you know it. I'm not blaming; I'm stating. Even a.s.suming a married man gets a few advantages that I miss, they're all purely physical----”
”Oh no! Not at all.”
”My boy,” Ingpen insisted, sitting up, and gazing earnestly at Edwin.
”a.n.a.lyse them down, and they're all physical--all! And I tell you I won't pay the price for them. I won't. I've no grievance against women; I can enjoy being with women as much as anybody, but I won't--I will not--live permanently on their level. That's why I say I might have been fool enough to get married. It's quite simple.”
”Hm!”
Edwin, although indubitably one of those who had committed the vast folly of marriage, and therefore subject to Ingpen's indictment, felt not the least constraint, nor any need to offer an individual defence.
Ingpen's demeanour seemed to have lifted the argument above the personal. His a.s.sumption that Edwin could not be offended was positively inspiring to Edwin. The fear of truth was exorcised.
Freedom of thought existed in that room in England. Edwin reflected: ”If he's right and I'm condemned accordingly,--well, I can't help it.
Facts are facts, and they're extremely interesting.”
He also reflected:
”Why on earth can't Hilda and I discuss like that?”
He did not know why, but he profoundly and sadly knew that such discussion would be quite impossible with Hilda.
The red-hot coals in the grate subsided together.
”And I'll tell you another thing----” Ingpen commenced.
He was stopped by the entrance of Mrs. Dummer, a fat woman, with an old j.a.panned tray. Mrs. Dummer came in like a desperate forlorn hope. Her aged, grim, and yet somewhat hysterical face seemed to say: ”I'm going to clear this table and get on with my work, even if I die for it at the hands of a brutal tyrant.” Her gestures as she made a s.p.a.ce for the tray and set it down on the table were the formidable gestures of the persecuted at bay.
”Mrs. Dummer,” said Ingpen, in a weak voice, leaning back in his chair, ”would you mind fetching me my tonic off my dressing-table? I've forgotten it.”
”Bless us!” exclaimed Mrs. Dummer.
As she had hurried out, Ingpen winked placidly at Edwin in the room in which the shadows were already falling.
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