Section 4
"What are we to do?" asked Verrall.
Nettie drew a deep crimson carnation from the bowl before us, andbegan very neatly and deliberately to turn down the sepals of itscalyx and remove, one by one, its petals. I remember that wenton through all our talk. She put those ragged crimson shreds in along row and adjusted them and readjusted them. When at last I wasalone with these vestiges the pattern was still incomplete.
"Well," said I, "the matter seems fairly simple. You two"--Iswallowed it--"love one another."
I paused. They answered me by silence, by a thoughtful silence.
"You belong to each other. I have thought it over and looked at itfrom many points of view. I happened to want--impossible things.. . . I behaved badly. I had no right to pursue you." I turned toVerrall. "You hold yourself bound to her?"
He nodded assent.
"No social influence, no fading out of all this generous clearnessin the air--for that might happen--will change you back . . . ?"
He answered me with honest eyes meeting mine, "No, Leadford, no!"
"I did not know you," I said. "I thought of you as something verydifferent from this."
"I was," he interpolated.
"Now," I said, "it is all changed."
Then I halted--for my thread had slipped away from me.
"As for me," I went on, and glanced at Nettie's downcast face, andthen sat forward with my eyes upon the flowers between us, "sinceI am swayed and shall be swayed by an affection for Nettie, sincethat affection is rich with the seeds of desire, since to see heryours and wholly yours is not to be endured by me--I must turnabout and go from you; you must avoid me and I you. . . . We mustdivide the world like Jacob and Esau. . . . I must direct myselfwith all the will I have to other things. After all--this passionis not life! It is perhaps for brutes and savages, but for men.No! We must part and I must forget. What else is there but that?"
I did not look up, I sat very tense with the red petals printingan indelible memory in my brain, but I felt the assent of Verrall'spose. There were some moments of silence. Then Nettie spoke."But------" she said, and ceased.
I waited for a little while. I sighed and leant back in my chair."It is perfectly simple," I smiled, "now that we have cool heads."
"But IS it simple?" asked Nettie, and slashed my discourse out ofbeing.
I looked up and found her with her eyes on Verrall. "You see,"she said, "I like Willie. It's hard to say what one feels--but Idon't want him to go away like that."
"But then," objected Verrall, "how------?"
"No," said Nettie, and swept her half-arranged carnation petals backinto a heap of confusion. She began to arrange them very quicklyinto one long straight line.
"It's so difficult------ I've never before in all my life triedto get to the bottom of my mind. For one thing, I've not treatedWillie properly. He--he counted on me. I know he did. I washis hope. I was a promised delight--something, something to crownlife--better than anything he had ever had. And a secret pride. . . .He lived upon me. I knew--when we two began to meet together,you and I------ It was a sort of treachery to him------"
"Treachery!" I said. "You were only feeling your way through allthese perplexities."
"You thought it treachery."
"I don't now."
"I did. In a sense I think so still. For you had need of me."
I made a slight protest at this doctrine and fell thinking.
"And even when he was trying to kill us," she said to her lover,"I felt for him down in the bottom of my mind. I can understandall the horrible things, the humiliation--the humiliation! he wentthrough."
"Yes," I said, "but I don't see------"
"I don't see. I'm only trying to see. But you know, Willie, youare a part of my life. I have known you longer than I have knownEdward. I know you better. Indeed I know you with all my heart.You think all your talk was thrown away upon me, that I neverunderstood that side of you, or your ambitions or anything. I did.More than I thought at the time. Now--now it is all clear to me.What I had to understand in you was something deeper than Edwardbrought me. I have it now. . . . You are a part of my life, and Idon't want to cut all that off from me now I have comprehended it,and throw it away."
"But you love Verrall."
"Love is such a queer thing! . . . Is there one love? I mean, onlyone love?" She turned to Verrall. "I know I love you. I can speakout about that now. Before this morning I couldn't have done. It'sjust as though my mind had got out of a scented prison. But whatis it, this love for you? It's a mass of fancies--things aboutyou--ways you look, ways you have. It's the senses--and the sensesof certain beauties. Flattery too, things you said, hopes anddeceptions for myself. And all that had rolled up together and takento itself the wild help of those deep emotions that slumbered in mybody; it seemed everything. But it wasn't. How can I describe it?It was like having a very bright lamp with a thick shade--everythingelse in the room was hidden. But you take the shade off and therethey are--it is the same light--still there! Only it lights everyone!"
Her voice ceased. For awhile no one spoke, and Nettie, with a quickmovement, swept the petals into the shape of a pyramid.
Figures of speech always distract me, and it ran through my mindlike some puzzling refrain, "It is still the same light. . . ."
"No woman believes these things," she asserted abruptly.
"What things?"
"No woman ever has believed them."
"You have to choose a man," said Verrall, apprehending her beforeI did.
"We're brought up to that. We're told--it's in books, in stories,in the way people look, in the way they behave--one day there willcome a man. He will be everything, no one else will be anything.Leave everything else; live in him."
"And a man, too, is taught that of some woman," said Verrall.
"Only men don't believe it! They have more obstinate minds. . . .Men have never behaved as though they believed it. One need notbe old to know that. By nature they don't believe it. But a womanbelieves nothing by nature. She goes into a mold hiding her secretthoughts almost from herself."
"She used to," I said.
"You haven't," said Verrall, "anyhow."
"I've come out. It's this comet. And Willie. And because I neverreally believed in the mold at all--even if I thought I did. It'sstupid to send Willie off--shamed, cast out, never to see himagain--when I like him as much as I do. It is cruel, it is wickedand ugly, to prance over him as if he was a defeated enemy, andpretend I'm going to be happy just the same. There's no sense ina rule of life that prescribes that. It's selfish. It's brutish.It's like something that has no sense. I------" there was a sob inher voice: "Willie! I WON'T."
I sat lowering, I mused with my eyes upon her quick fingers.
"It IS brutish," I said at last, with a careful unemotionaldeliberation. "Nevertheless--it is in the nature of things. . . .No! . . . You see, after all, we are still half brutes, Nettie.And men, as you say, are more obstinate than women. The comethasn't altered that; it's only made it clearer. We have come intobeing through a tumult of blind forces. . . . I come back to whatI said just now; we have found our poor reasonable minds, our willsto live well, ourselves, adrift on a wash of instincts, passions,instinctive prejudices, half animal stupidities. . . . Here weare like people clinging to something--like people awakening--upona raft."
"We come back at last to my question," said Verrall, softly; "whatare we to do?"
"Part," I said. "You see, Nettie, these bodies of ours are notthe bodies of angels. They are the same bodies------ I have readsomewhere that in our bodies you can find evidence of the lowliestancestry; that about our inward ears--I think it is--and about ourteeth, there remains still something of the fish, that there arebones that recall little--what is it?--marsupial forebears--anda hundred traces of the ape. Even your beautiful body, Nettie,carries this taint. No! Hear me out." I leant forward earnestly."Our emotions, our passions, our desires, the substance of them,like the substance of our bodies,
is an animal, a competing thing, aswell as a desiring thing. You speak to us now a mind to minds--onecan do that when one has had exercise and when one has eaten, whenone is not doing anything--but when one turns to live, one turnsagain to matter."
"Yes," said Nettie, slowly following me, "but you control it."
"Only through a measure of obedience. There is no magic in thebusiness--to conquer matter, we must divide the enemy, and takematter as an ally. Nowadays it is indeed true, by faith a man canremove mountains; he can say to a mountain, Be thou removed and bethou cast into the sea; but he does it because he helps and trustshis brother men, because he has the wit and patience and courageto win over to his side iron, steel, obedience, dynamite, cranes,trucks, the money of other people. . . . To conquer my desire foryou, I must not perpetually thwart it by your presence; I must goaway so that I may not see you, I must take up other interests,thrust myself into struggles and discussions------"
"And forget?" said Nettie.
"Not forget," I said; "but anyhow--cease to brood upon you."
She hung on that for some moments.
"No," she said, demolished her last pattern and looked up at Verrallas he stirred.
Verrall leant forward on the table, elbows upon it, and the fingersof his two hands intertwined.
"You know," he said, "I haven't thought much of these things. Atschool and the university, one doesn't. . . . It was part of thesystem to prevent it. They'll alter all that, no doubt. We seem"--hethought--"to be skating about over questions that one came to atlast in Greek--with variorum readings--in Plato, but which it neveroccurred to any one to translate out of a dead language into livingrealities. . . ." He halted and answered some unspoken questionfrom his own mind with, "No. I think with Leadford, Nettie, that,as he put it, it is in the nature of things for men to be exclusive.. . . Minds are free things and go about the world, but only oneman can possess a woman. You must dismiss rivals. We are made forthe struggle for existence--we ARE the struggle for existence; thethings that live are the struggle for existence incarnate--and thatworks out that the men struggle for their mates; for each womanone prevails. The others go away."
"Like animals," said Nettie.
"Yes. . . ."
"There are many things in life," I said, "but that is the roughuniversal truth."
"But," said Nettie, "you don't struggle. That has been alteredbecause men have minds."
"You choose," I said.
"If I don't choose to choose?"
"You have chosen."
She gave a little impatient "Oh! Why are women always the slaves ofsex? Is this great age of Reason and Light that has come to alternothing of that? And men too! I think it is all--stupid. I do notbelieve this is the right solution of the thing, or anything butthe bad habits of the time that was. . . Instinct! You don't letyour instincts rule you in a lot of other things. Here am I betweenyou. Here is Edward. I--love him because he is gay and pleasant,and because--because I LIKE him! Here is Willie--a part of me--myfirst secret, my oldest friend! Why must I not have both? Am I nota mind that you must think of me as nothing but a woman? imagineme always as a thing to struggle for?" She paused; then she madeher distressful proposition to me. "Let us three keep together,"she said. "Let us not part. To part is hate, Willie. Why should wenot anyhow keep friends? Meet and talk?"
"Talk?" I said. "About this sort of thing?"
I looked across at Verrall and met his eyes, and we studied oneanother. It was the clean, straight scrutiny of honest antagonism."No," I decided. "Between us, nothing of that sort can be."
"Ever?" said Nettie.
"Never," I said, convinced.
I made an effort within myself. "We cannot tamper with the law andcustoms of these things," I said; "these passions are too closeto one's essential self. Better surgery than a lingering disease!From Nettie my love--asks all. A man's love is not devotion--it isa demand, a challenge. And besides"--and here I forced my theme--"Ihave given myself now to a new mistress--and it is I, Nettie, whoam unfaithful. Behind you and above you rises the coming Cityof the World, and I am in that building. Dear heart! you are onlyhappiness--and that------Indeed that calls! If it is only that mylife blood shall christen the foundation stones--I could almosthope that should be my part, Nettie--I will join myself in that."I threw all the conviction I could into these words. . . . "Noconflict of passion." I added a little lamely, "must distract me."
There was a pause.
"Then we must part," said Nettie, with the eyes of a woman onestrikes in the face.
I nodded assent. . . .
There was a little pause, and then I stood up. We stood up, allthree. We parted almost sullenly, with no more memorable words,and I was left presently in the arbor alone.
I do not think I watched them go. I only remember myself left theresomehow--horribly empty and alone. I sat down again and fell intoa deep shapeless musing.