CHAPTER XXVII.
CONCERNING A QUARREL.
It was late in September that this particular quarrel occurred. Almostall the roseate tints seemed gone by this time, for the Lewishams hadbeen married six months. Their financial affairs had changed from thecatastrophic to the sordid; Lewisham had found work. An army crammernamed Captain Vigours wanted someone energetic for his mathematicalduffers and to teach geometrical drawing and what he was pleased tocall "Sandhurst Science." He paid no less than two shillings an hourfor his uncertain demands on Lewisham's time. Moreover, there was aclass in lower mathematics beginning at Walham Green where Lewishamwas to show his quality. Fifty shillings a week or more seemedcredible--more might be hoped for. It was now merely a case of tidingover the interval until Vigours paid. And meanwhile the freshness ofEthel's blouses departed, and Lewisham refrained from the repair ofhis boot which had cracked across the toe.
The beginning of the quarrel was trivial enough. But by the end theygot to generalities. Lewisham had begun the day in a bad temper andunder the cloud of an overnight passage of arms--and a little incidentthat had nothing to do with their ostensible difference lent it awarmth of emotion quite beyond its merits. As he emerged through thefolding doors he saw a letter lying among the sketchily laid breakfastthings, and Ethel's attitude suggested the recoil of a quick movement;the letter suddenly dropped. Her eyes met his and she flushed. He satdown and took the letter--a trifle awkwardly perhaps. It was from MissHeydinger. He hesitated with it halfway to his pocket, then decided toopen it. It displayed an ample amount of reading, and he read. On thewhole he thought it rather a dull sort of letter, but he did not allowthis to appear. When it was read he put it carefully in his pocket.
That formally had nothing to do with the quarrel. The breakfast wasalready over when the quarrel began. Lewisham's morning was vacant,and be proposed to occupy it in the revision of certain notes bearingupon "Sandhurst Science." Unhappily the search for his note-bookbrought him into collision with the accumulation of Ethel'snovelettes.
"These things are everywhere," he said after a gust of vehementhandling, "I _wish_ you'd tidy them up sometimes."
"They were tidy enough till you began to throw them about," Ethelpointed out.
"Confounded muck! it's only fit to be burnt," Lewisham remarked to theuniverse, and pitched one viciously into the corner.
"Well, you tried to write one, anyhow," said Ethel, recalling acertain "Mammoth" packet of note-paper that had come on an evil endbefore Lewisham found his industrial level. This reminiscence alwaysirritated him exceedingly.
"Eh?" he said sharply.
"You tried to write one," repeated Ethel--a little unwillingly.
"You don't mean me to forget that."
"It's you reminded me."
He stared hostility for a space.
"Well, the things make a beastly litter anyhow; there isn't a tidycorner anywhere in the room. There never is."
"That's just the sort of thing you always say."
"Well--_is_ there?"
"Yes, there is."
"_Where_?"
Ethel professed not to hear. But a devil had possession of Lewishamfor a time. "It isn't as though you had anything else to do," heremarked, wounding dishonourably.
Ethel turned. "If I _put_ those things away," she said with tremendousemphasis on the "_put_," "you'd only say I'd hidden them. What _is_the good of trying to please you?"
The spirit of perversity suggested to Lewisham, "None apparently."
Ethel's cheeks glowed and her eyes were bright with unshedtears. Abruptly she abandoned the defensive and blurted out the thingthat had been latent so long between them. Her voice took a note ofpassion. "Nothing I can do ever does please you, since that MissHeydinger began to write to you."
There was a pause, a gap. Something like astonishment took themboth. Hitherto it had been a convention that she knew nothing of theexistence of Miss Heydinger. He saw a light. "How did you know?" hebegan, and perceived that line was impossible. He took the way of thenatural man; he ejaculated an "Ugh!" of vast disgust, he raised hisvoice. "You _are_ unreasonable!" he cried in angry remonstrance."Fancy saying that! As though you ever tried to please me! Just asthough it wasn't all the other way about!" He stopped--struck by amomentary perception of injustice. He plunged at the point he hadshirked, "How did you know it _was_ Miss Heydinger--?"
Ethel's voice took upon itself the quality of tears. "I wasn't_meant_ to know, was I?" she said.
"But how?"
"I suppose you think it doesn't concern me? I suppose you think I'mmade of stone?"
"You mean--you think--?"
"Yes--I _do_."
For a brief interval Lewisham stared at the issue she had laidbare. He sought some crashing proposition, some line of convincingreasoning, with which to overwhelm and hide this new aspect ofthings. It would not come. He found himself fenced in on every side. Asurging, irrational rage seized upon him.
"Jealousy!" he cried. "Jealousy! Just as though--Can't I haveletters about things you don't understand--that you _won't_understand? If I asked you to read them you wouldn't--It's justbecause--"
"You never give me a _chance_ to understand."
"Don't I?"
"No!"
"Why!--At first I was always trying. Socialism, religion--all thosethings. But you don't care--you won't care. You won't have that I'vethought over these things at all, that I care for these things! Itwasn't any _good_ to argue. You just care for me in a way--and all therest of me--doesn't matter! And because I've got a friend ..."
"Friend!"
"Yes--_friend!_"
"Why!--you hide her letters!"
"Because I tell you you wouldn't understand what they are about. But,pah! I won't argue. I _won't!_ You're jealous, and there's the end ofthe matter!"
"Well, who _wouldn't_ be jealous?"
He stared at her as if he found the question hard to see. The themewas difficult--invincibly difficult. He surveyed the room for adiversion. The note-book he had disinterred from her novelettes layupon the table and reminded him of his grievance of rained hours. Hisrage exploded. He struck out abruptly towards fundamental things. Hegesticulated forcibly. "This can't go on!" he cried, "this can't goon! How can I work? How can I do anything?"
He made three steps and stood in a clear space.
"I won't _stand_, it--I won't go on at this!Quarrels--bickerings--discomfort. Look there! I meant to work thismorning. I meant to look up notes! Instead of which you start aquarrel--"
The gross injustice raised Ethel's voice to an outcry. "_I_ didn'tstart the quarrel--"
The only response to this was to shout, and Lewisham shouted. "Youstart a quarrel!" he repeated. "You make a shindy! You spring adispute--jealousy!--on me! How can I do anything? How can one stop ina house like this? I shall go out. Look here!--I shall go out. I shallgo to Kensington and work there!"
He perceived himself wordless, and Ethel was about to speak. He glaredabout him, seeking a prompt climax. Instant action was necessary. Heperceived Huxley's _Vertebrata_ upon the side-table. He clutched it,swayed it through a momentous arc, hurled it violently into the emptyfireplace.
For a second he seemed to be seeking some other missile. He perceivedhis hat on the chest of drawers, seized it, and strode tragically fromthe room.
He hesitated with the door half closed, then opened it wide andslammed it vehemently. Thereby the world was warned of the justice ofhis rage, and so he passed with credit into the street.
He went striding heedless of his direction through the streets dottedwith intent people hurrying to work, and presently habit turned hisfeet towards the Brompton Road. The eastward trend of the morningtraffic caught him. For a time, save for a rebellious ingredient ofwonder at the back of his mind, he kept his anger white and pure. Whyhad he married her? was the text to which he clung. Why in the name ofdestiny had he married her? But anyhow he had said the decisivething. He would not stand it! It must end. Things were intolerable andthey mus
t end. He meditated devastating things that he might presentlysay to her in pursuance of this resolution. He contemplated acts ofcruelty. In such ways he would demonstrate clearly that he would notstand it. He was very careful to avoid inquiring what it was he wouldnot stand.
How in the name of destiny had he come to marry her? The quality ofhis surroundings mingled in some way with the quality of histhoughts. The huge distended buildings of corrugated iron in which theArt Museum (of all places!) culminates, the truncated Oratory allaskew to the street, seemed to have a similar quarrel with fate. Howin the name of destiny? After such high prolusions!
He found that his thoughts had carried him past the lodge of themuseum. He turned back irritably and went through the turnstile. Heentered the museum and passed beneath the gallery of Old Iron on hisway to the Education Library. The vacant array of tables, the bays ofattendant books had a quality of refuge....
So much for Lewisham in the morning. Long before midday all the vigourof his wrath was gone, all his passionate conviction of Ethel'sunworthiness. Over a pile of neglected geological works he presented aface of gloom. His memory presented a picture of himself as noisy,overbearing, and unfair. What on earth had it all been about?
By two o'clock he was on his way to Vigours', and his mood was acuteremorse. Of the transition there can be no telling in words, forthoughts are more subtle than words and emotions infinitelyvaguer. But one thing at least is definite, that a memory returned.
It drifted in to him, through the glass roof of the Library farabove. He did not perceive it as a memory at first, but as anirritating obstacle to attention. He struck the open pages of the bookbefore him with his flat hand. "Damn that infernal hurdy-gurdy!" hewhispered.
Presently he made a fretful movement and put his hands over his ears.
Then he thrust his books from him, got up, and wandered about theLibrary. The organ came to an abrupt end in the middle of a bar, andvanished in the circumambient silence of space.
Lewisham standing in a bay closed a book with a snap and returned tohis seat.
Presently he found himself humming a languid tune, and thinking againof the quarrel that he had imagined banished from his mind. What inthe name of destiny had it all been about? He had a curious sense thatsomething had got loose, was sliding about in his mind. And as if byway of answer emerged a vision of Whortley--a singularly vividvision. It was moonlight and a hillside, the little town lay lit andwarm below, and the scene was set to music, a lugubriously sentimentalair. For some reason this music had the quality of a barrelorgan--though he knew that properly it came from a band--and itassociated with itself a mystical formula of words, drawing words:--
"Sweet dreamland fa--ces, passing to and fro, Bring back to mem'ry days of long ago--oh!"
This air not only reproduced the picture with graphic vividness, butit trailed after it an enormous cloud of irrational emotion, emotionthat had but a moment before seemed gone for ever from his being.
He recalled it all! He had come down that hillside and Ethel had beenwith him....
Had he really felt like that about her?
"Pah!" he said suddenly, and reverted to his books.
But the tune and the memory had won their footing, they were with himthrough his meagre lunch of milk and scones--he had resolved at theoutset he would not go back to her for the midday meal--and on his wayto Vigours' they insisted on attention. It may be that lunching onscone and milk does in itself make for milder ways of thinking. Asense of extraordinary contradiction, of infinite perplexity, came tohim.
"But then," he asked, "how the devil did we get to _this_?"
Which is indeed one of the fundamental questions of matrimony.
The morning tumults had given place to an almost scientific calm. Verysoon he was grappling manfully with the question. There was nodisputing it, they had quarrelled. Not once but several times latelythey had quarrelled. It was real quarrelling;--they had stood upagainst one another, striking, watching to strike, seeking towound. He tried to recall just how things had gone--what he had saidand what she had replied. He could not do it. He had forgottenphrases and connexions. It stood in his memory not as a sequence ofevents but as a collection of disconnected static sayings; each sayingblunt, permanent, inconsecutive like a graven inscription. And of thescene there came only one picture--Ethel with a burning face and hereyes shining with tears.
The traffic of a cross street engaged him for a space. He emerged onthe further side full of the vivid contrast of their changedrelations. He made a last effort to indict her, to show that for thetransition she was entirely to blame. She had quarrelled with him, shehad quarrelled deliberately because she was jealous. She was jealousof Miss Heydinger because she was stupid. But now these accusationsfaded like smoke as he put them forth. But the picture of two littlefigures back there in the moonlit past did not fade. It was in thenarrows of Kensington High Street that he abandoned herarraignment. It was beyond the Town Hall that he made the newstep. Was it, after all, just possible that in some degree he himselfrather was the chief person to blame?
It was instantly as if he had been aware of that all the time.
Once he had made that step, he moved swiftly. Not a hundred pacesbefore the struggle was over, and he had plunged headlong into theblue abyss of remorse. And all these things that had been so dramaticand forcible, all the vivid brutal things he had said, stood no longergraven inscriptions but in letters of accusing flame. He tried toimagine he had not said them, that his memory played him a trick;tried to suppose he had said something similar perhaps, but much lessforcible. He attempted with almost equal futility to minimise his ownwounds. His endeavour served only to measure the magnitude of hisfall.
He had recovered everything now, he saw it all. He recalled Ethel,sunlit in the avenue, Ethel, white in the moonlight before they partedoutside the Frobisher house, Ethel as she would come out of Lagune'shouse greeting him for their nightly walk, Ethel new wedded, as shecame to him through the folding doors radiant in the splendour hisemotions threw about her. And at last, Ethel angry, dishevelled andtear-stained in that ill-lit, untidy little room. All to the cadenceof a hurdy-gurdy tune! From that to this! How had it been possible toget from such an opalescent dawning to such a dismal day? What was ithad gone? He and she were the same two persons who walked so brightlyin his awakened memory; he and she who had lived so bitterly throughthe last few weeks of misery!
His mood sank for a space to the quality of groaning. He implicatedher now at most as his partner in their failure--"What a mess we havemade of things!" was his new motif. "What a mess!"
He knew love now for what it was, knew it for something more ancientand more imperative than reason. He knew now that he loved her, andhis recent rage, his hostility, his condemnation of her seemed to himthe reign of some exterior influence in his mind. He thoughtincredulously of the long decline in tenderness that had followed thefirst days of their delight in each other, the diminution ofendearment, the first yielding to irritability, the evenings he hadspent doggedly working, resisting all his sense of her presence. "Onecannot always be love-making," he had said, and so they were slippingapart. Then in countless little things he had not been patient, he hadnot been fair. He had wounded her by harshness, by unsympatheticcriticism, above all by his absurd secrecy about Miss Heydinger'sletters. Why on earth had he kept those letters from her? as thoughthere was something to hide! What was there to hide? What possibleantagonism could there be? Yet it was by such little things thattheir love was now like some once valued possession that had been inbrutal hands, it was scratched and chipped and tarnished, it was onits way to being altogether destroyed. Her manner had changed towardshim, a gulf was opening that he might never be able to close again.
"No, it _shall_ not be!" he said, "it shall not be!"
But how to get back to the old footing? how to efface the things hehad said, the things that had been done?
Could they get back?
For a moment he faced a new possibili
ty. Suppose they could not getback! Suppose the mischief was done! Suppose that when he slammed thedoor behind him it locked, and was locked against him for ever!
"But we _must_!" said Lewisham, "we must!"
He perceived clearly that this was no business of reasonedapologies. He must begin again, he must get back to emotion, he mustthrust back the overwhelming pressure of everyday stresses andnecessities that was crushing all the warmth and colour from theirlives. But how? How?
He must make love to her again. But how to begin--how to mark thechange? There had been making-up before, sullen concessions andtreaties. But this was different. He tried to imagine something hemight say, some appeal that he might make. Everything he thought ofwas cold and hard, or pitiful and undignified, or theatrical andfoolish. Suppose the door _was_ closed! If already it was too late!In every direction he was confronted by the bristling memories ofharsh things. He had a glimpse of how he must have changed in hereyes, and things became intolerable for him. For now he was assured heloved her still with all his heart.
And suddenly came a florist's window, and in the centre of it aglorious heap of roses.
They caught his eye before they caught his mind. He saw white roses,virginal white, roses of cream and pink and crimson, the tints offlesh and pearl, rich, a mass of scented colour, visible odours, andin the midst of them a note of sullen red. It was as it were the verycolour of his emotion. He stopped abruptly. He turned back to thewindow and stared frankly. It was gorgeous, he saw, but why soparticularly did it appeal to him?
Then he perceived as though it was altogether self-evident what he hadto do. This was what he wanted. This was the note he had tostrike. Among other things because it would repudiate the accursedworship of pinching self-restraint that was one of the incessantstresses between them. They would come to her with a pureunexpectedness, they would flame upon her.
Then, after the roses, he would return.
Suddenly the grey trouble passed from his mind; he saw the world fullof colour again. He saw the scene he desired bright and clear, sawEthel no longer bitter and weeping, but glad as once she had alwaysseemed glad. His heart-beats quickened. It was giving had been needed,and he would give.
Some weak voice of indiscreet discretion squeaked and vanished. Hehad, he knew, a sovereign in his pocket. He went in.
He found himself in front of a formidable young lady in black, andunprepared with any formula. He had never bought flowers before. Helooked about him for an inspiration. He pointed at the roses. "I wantthose roses," he said....
He emerged again with only a few small silver coins remaining out ofthe sovereign he had changed. The roses were to go to Ethel, properlypacked; they were to be delivered according to his express directionat six o'clock.
"Six o'clock," Lewisham had reiterated very earnestly.
"We quite understand," the young lady in black had said, and hadpretended to be unable to conceal a smile. "We're _quite_ accustomedto sending out flowers."