queer thing to spring on a man,” he said, in a ghastly parody of his ordinary conversational voice, “but you must bear with me, Alain. You are the perfect confidant, you know: you will be thousands of miles away very soon, so I can speak with as much freedom as if you were a stranger in a train; yet I do not have to explain the background.”
Alain made an assenting murmur.
“I suppose you think I am mad?”
“No. No, I don’t think that at all. But I will say that I am surprised that your idea of damnation is so immediately real. You mean it literally, if I understand you rightly?”
“Of course I do. It is as real and immediate as this table. I mean nothing figurative: but of course it surprises you: with your nature and your manner of life I do not suppose that you have ever been face to face with it in all your days. I envy you, as I was saying just now.” He was fiddling nervously with a match, grinding its stub on the table with a noise that set all Alain’s teeth on edge. “What I do not understand,” he said, snapping the match in two, “is how I come to be in this position. You may say that I have gained the whole world and lost my soul. Well, it is true that I have been a successful man: I have accomplished every material ambition that I set out to accomplish. I have not got a home or a family, but I have everything else. But all the time I have been honest; quixotically honest sometimes: I could have been a rich man ten years ago if I had chosen to be no more than a little supple.
“No; that does not make sense or justice. Sometimes I have thought that it is merely an affair of temperament—glandular secretion, isn’t it?—and that it never was within my control. X has a sanguine temperament; Y has a melancholy temperament: one sees that every day. But to be damned for having a cold, phlegmatic nature—no, that is utterly repugnant to all doctrine or sense of equity.
“I wish I could point to some dramatic treachery on my part; some clear-cut gross offense against my own integrity, a crime even—I mean a legal crime—that would justify this present state. I could repent of that. But there is nothing. Nothing but a lifelong course of small, unloving selfishness; and how can a man repent for a million trifles, for a habit of mind? I do not know that you could call me an unusually selfish man now: I do not think so, for upon my word I am not very fond of myself. But I certainly was when I was an adolescent. I passed through my period of mysticism then. Even then I was frightened of damnation; and I was told (and thoroughly believed) that a man’s first duty was to save his soul—his primary, imperative need. There may be a more selfish doctrine, but I do not think that I have ever met with one. No doubt I misinterpreted it, but it seemed to me to mean Save yourself, save yourself above all things, and let the rest go to the devil and to everlasting torment . . .”
A LAIN : Xavier, I can’t hear you.
X AVIER : Oh, I beg your pardon. I was wandering—mumbling to myself about the origin of . . . I was trying to trace it back. But I will tell you, Alain, how it came to strike me first so terribly hard. You did not see much of Georgette: you were abroad nearly all the time of our marriage. If you had been here more you would have gathered that it was an unexceptionable marriage, reasonably happy in a quiet, uneventful way: and you would have thought that the sudden breaking of it in a few years would have been terribly painful for me—you did think so, indeed, to judge from the very kind letter you sent me. Well, it was not. The only pain I experienced was at the absence of my pain. The only emotion that I felt was irritation: I felt that she could have recovered if she had tried (poor thing, poor thing; she had little cause to try) and that now I should be exposed to all the fuss of the burial, and then to the inconvenience of living without someone to look after the house and the child.
Alain made an assenting murmur.
“I suppose you think I am mad?”
“No. No, I don’t think that at all. But I will say that I am surprised that your idea of damnation is so immediately real. You mean it literally, if I understand you rightly?”
“Of course I do. It is as real and immediate as this table. I mean nothing figurative: but of course it surprises you: with your nature and your manner of life I do not suppose that you have ever been face to face with it in all your days. I envy you, as I was saying just now.” He was fiddling nervously with a match, grinding its stub on the table with a noise that set all Alain’s teeth on edge. “What I do not understand,” he said, snapping the match in two, “is how I come to be in this position. You may say that I have gained the whole world and lost my soul. Well, it is true that I have been a successful man: I have accomplished every material ambition that I set out to accomplish. I have not got a home or a family, but I have everything else. But all the time I have been honest; quixotically honest sometimes: I could have been a rich man ten years ago if I had chosen to be no more than a little supple.
“No; that does not make sense or justice. Sometimes I have thought that it is merely an affair of temperament—glandular secretion, isn’t it?—and that it never was within my control. X has a sanguine temperament; Y has a melancholy temperament: one sees that every day. But to be damned for having a cold, phlegmatic nature—no, that is utterly repugnant to all doctrine or sense of equity.
“I wish I could point to some dramatic treachery on my part; some clear-cut gross offense against my own integrity, a crime even—I mean a legal crime—that would justify this present state. I could repent of that. But there is nothing. Nothing but a lifelong course of small, unloving selfishness; and how can a man repent for a million trifles, for a habit of mind? I do not know that you could call me an unusually selfish man now: I do not think so, for upon my word I am not very fond of myself. But I certainly was when I was an adolescent. I passed through my period of mysticism then. Even then I was frightened of damnation; and I was told (and thoroughly believed) that a man’s first duty was to save his soul—his primary, imperative need. There may be a more selfish doctrine, but I do not think that I have ever met with one. No doubt I misinterpreted it, but it seemed to me to mean Save yourself, save yourself above all things, and let the rest go to the devil and to everlasting torment . . .”
A LAIN : Xavier, I can’t hear you.
X AVIER : Oh, I beg your pardon. I was wandering—mumbling to myself about the origin of . . . I was trying to trace it back. But I will tell you, Alain, how it came to strike me first so terribly hard. You did not see much of Georgette: you were abroad nearly all the time of our marriage. If you had been here more you would have gathered that it was an unexceptionable marriage, reasonably happy in a quiet, uneventful way: and you would have thought that the sudden breaking of it in a few years would have been terribly painful for me—you did think so, indeed, to judge from the very kind letter you sent me. Well, it was not. The only pain I experienced was at the absence of my pain. The only emotion that I felt was irritation: I felt that she could have recovered if she had tried (poor thing, poor thing; she had little cause to try) and that now I should be exposed to all the fuss of the burial, and then to the inconvenience of living without someone to look after the house and the child.
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