what I’m saying. . . . Oh, I won’t press you now to decide. We’ll wait, Rome. You’ll see, in a month or so, how things have arranged themselves—how easy it will all be. Olga will have recovered her balance by then; she changes from hour to hour, like all Russians. In a few weeks she will be tired of me and want to be in Paris, or back in Russia. She doesn’t really want me; it’s only that she is unstrung by trouble. Upset; that’s what she is. All I ask you to do is to wait.”
“No, Frank. It can never be, unless she goes, sometime, to live with some one else, some other man.Otherwise she would be liable, even if she left you for a time, to want you again at intervals. I can’t make a third. . . . You see, whatever happens now, your family must always be a real fact to me, not an abstraction. I’ve seen them . . . Katya is just like you—your chin and eyes. . . . The children love you very much; I saw that. . . . And she loves you too. . . .”
“She does not. That’s not love—not as I know love.”
“As to that, we all know love in different ways, I suppose. . . . Truly, Francis, I have quite decided. I can’t live with you. . . . No, no, don’t . . .”
He was holding her in his arms and kissing her face, her lips, her eyes, muttering entreaties.
“If you loved me you’d do it.”
“I do love you, and I shan’t do it.”
“I’m asking nothing dishonourable of you. You don’t think it wrong on general principles; yesterday you were willing to consider it. You’re just refusing life for a quixotic whim . . . refusing, denying life. . . . Rome, you can’t do it. Don’t you know, now you’re in my arms, that you can’t, that it would be to deny the best in us?”
“What’s the best, what’s the worst? I don’t know, and nor do you. I’m not an ethicist. All I know is that your wife, while she wants you, or thinks she wants you, has first claim. . . . It’s a question of fairness and decent feeling . . . or bring it down, if you like, to a question of taste. Perhaps that is the only basis there really is for decisions of this sort for people like us.”
“Taste. That’s a fine cry to mess up two lives by. I’d almost rather you were religious, and talked of the will of God. One could respect that, at least.”
“I can’t do that, as I happen not to be sure whetherGod exists. And it would make nothing simpler really, since one would then have to discover what one believed the will of God to be. Don’t do religious people the injustice of believing that anything is simpler or easier for them; it’s more difficult, since life is more exacting. . . . But it comes to the same thing; all these processes of thought lead to the same result if applied by the same mind. It depends on the individual outlook. And this is mine. . . . Oh, don’t make it so damnably difficult for us both, my dearest. . . .”
Miss Garden, who never swore and never wept, here collapsed into tears, all her urbane breeding broken at last. He consoled her so tenderly, so pitifully, so mournfully, that she wept the more for love of him.
“Go now,” she said at last. “We mustn’t meet again till we can both do it quietly, without such pain. Papa and I are going back to London next week. Write to me sometimes and let me know how you do and where you are. My dearest Frank . . .”
8
Foundered
Rome was alone. She sat in a hard Italian chair, quite still, and felt cold and numb, and as if she had died. Drowned she felt, under deep, cold seas of passion and of pain. Wrecked and foundered and drowned, at the bottom of gray seas. Something cried, small and weak and hurt within her, and it was the voice of love, or (as Mr. Jayne would have it) of life; life which she had denied and slain. Never had she greatly loved before; never would she greatly love again; and the great love she now had she was slaying. That was what the hurt voice cried in heras she sat alone in the great, bare, chilly room, the
“No, Frank. It can never be, unless she goes, sometime, to live with some one else, some other man.Otherwise she would be liable, even if she left you for a time, to want you again at intervals. I can’t make a third. . . . You see, whatever happens now, your family must always be a real fact to me, not an abstraction. I’ve seen them . . . Katya is just like you—your chin and eyes. . . . The children love you very much; I saw that. . . . And she loves you too. . . .”
“She does not. That’s not love—not as I know love.”
“As to that, we all know love in different ways, I suppose. . . . Truly, Francis, I have quite decided. I can’t live with you. . . . No, no, don’t . . .”
He was holding her in his arms and kissing her face, her lips, her eyes, muttering entreaties.
“If you loved me you’d do it.”
“I do love you, and I shan’t do it.”
“I’m asking nothing dishonourable of you. You don’t think it wrong on general principles; yesterday you were willing to consider it. You’re just refusing life for a quixotic whim . . . refusing, denying life. . . . Rome, you can’t do it. Don’t you know, now you’re in my arms, that you can’t, that it would be to deny the best in us?”
“What’s the best, what’s the worst? I don’t know, and nor do you. I’m not an ethicist. All I know is that your wife, while she wants you, or thinks she wants you, has first claim. . . . It’s a question of fairness and decent feeling . . . or bring it down, if you like, to a question of taste. Perhaps that is the only basis there really is for decisions of this sort for people like us.”
“Taste. That’s a fine cry to mess up two lives by. I’d almost rather you were religious, and talked of the will of God. One could respect that, at least.”
“I can’t do that, as I happen not to be sure whetherGod exists. And it would make nothing simpler really, since one would then have to discover what one believed the will of God to be. Don’t do religious people the injustice of believing that anything is simpler or easier for them; it’s more difficult, since life is more exacting. . . . But it comes to the same thing; all these processes of thought lead to the same result if applied by the same mind. It depends on the individual outlook. And this is mine. . . . Oh, don’t make it so damnably difficult for us both, my dearest. . . .”
Miss Garden, who never swore and never wept, here collapsed into tears, all her urbane breeding broken at last. He consoled her so tenderly, so pitifully, so mournfully, that she wept the more for love of him.
“Go now,” she said at last. “We mustn’t meet again till we can both do it quietly, without such pain. Papa and I are going back to London next week. Write to me sometimes and let me know how you do and where you are. My dearest Frank . . .”
8
Foundered
Rome was alone. She sat in a hard Italian chair, quite still, and felt cold and numb, and as if she had died. Drowned she felt, under deep, cold seas of passion and of pain. Wrecked and foundered and drowned, at the bottom of gray seas. Something cried, small and weak and hurt within her, and it was the voice of love, or (as Mr. Jayne would have it) of life; life which she had denied and slain. Never had she greatly loved before; never would she greatly love again; and the great love she now had she was slaying. That was what the hurt voice cried in heras she sat alone in the great, bare, chilly room, the
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