Part 9 (1/2)

-- 6

I cannot reproduce with any greater exactness than this the quality and gist of our day-long conversation. Between us was a deep affection, and instinctive attraction, and our mental temperaments and our fundamental ideas were profoundly incompatible. We were both still very young in quality, we had scarcely begun to think ourselves out, we were greatly swayed by the suggestion of our circ.u.mstances, complex, incoherent and formless emotions confused our minds. But I see now that in us there struggled vast creative forces, forces that through a long future, in forms as yet undreamt of, must needs mould the destiny of our race. Far more than Mary I was accepting the conventions of our time. It seemed to me not merely reasonable but necessary that because she loved me she should place her life in my youthful and inexpert keeping, share my struggles and the real hards.h.i.+ps they would have meant for her, devote herself to my happiness, bear me children, be my inspiration in imaginative moments, my squaw, helper and possession through the whole twenty-four hours of every day, and incidentally somehow rear whatever family we happened to produce, and I was still amazed in the depths of my being that she did not reciprocate this simple and comprehensive intention. I was ready enough I thought for equivalent sacrifices. I was prepared to give my whole life, subordinate all my ambitions, to the effort to maintain our home. If only I could have her, have her for my own, I was ready to pledge every hour I had still to live to that service. It seemed mere perversity to me then that she should turn even such vows as that against me.

”But I don't want it, Stevenage,” she said. ”I don't want it. I want you to go on to the service of the empire, I want to see you do great things, do all the things we've talked about and written about. Don't you see how much better that is for you and for me--and for the world and our lives? I don't want you to become a horrible little specialist in 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 s.p.a.ce and freedom. I want to have clothes--and be as splendid as your career is going to be. I want to be a great and s.h.i.+ning lady in your life. I can't always live as I do now, dependent on my mother, whirled about by her movements, living in her light. Why should I be just a hard-up Vestal Virgin, Stephen, in your honor? You will not be able to marry me for years and years and years--unless you neglect your work, unless you throw away everything that is worth having between us in order just to get me.”

”But I want _you_, Mary,” I cried, drumming at the little green table with my fist. ”I want you. I want nothing else in all the world unless it has to do with you.”

”You've got me--as much as anyone will ever have me. You'll always have me. Always I will write to you, talk to you, watch you. Why are you so greedy, Stephen? Why are you so ign.o.ble? If I were to come now and marry you, it wouldn't help you. It would turn you into--a wife-keeper, into the sort of uninteresting preoccupied man one sees running after and gloating over the woman he's bought--at the price of his money and his dignity--and everything.... It's not proper for a man to live so for a woman and her children. It's dwarfish. It's enslaving. It's--it's indecent. Stephen! I'd hate you so.” ...

-- 7

We parted at last at a cab-rank near a bridge over the Ca.n.a.l at the western end of Park Village. I remember that I made a last appeal to her as we walked towards it, and that we loitered on the bridge, careless of who might see us there, in a final conflict of our wills. ”Before it is too 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 make things 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 without speaking. 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 affectation of an everyday separation, and I turned to the cabman with her instructions.

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 I turned about to a world that had become very large and empty and meaningless.

-- 8

I struggled feebly to arrest the course of events. I wrote Mary some violent and bitter letters. I treated her as though she alone were responsible 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 power of expression, will understand that impulse to write, to pour out a pa.s.sionately unjust interpretation of some nearly intolerable situation, and it is not the least of all the things I owe to Mary that she understood my pa.s.sion and forgave those letters and forgot them. I tried twice 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 is none the less a pitiful man because he is injurious. The hope that had held together all the project of my life was gone, and all my thoughts and emotions lay scattered in confusion....