Part 13

August 21.--I lay awake last night for several hours, unable to get this horrible story out of my head. I thought these were things that no longer happened, or only in Russia, perhaps; I thought we were at least so far civilised. It is the meanness of the revenge that horrifies me most in its atrocity. And that these two people, after that moment's revelation of the one to the other, should have gone on living together, under the same roof: it is incredible. There, I suppose, is civilisation, the hypocrisy of our conventions, which, if they cannot suppress the brute in the human animal, are prompt to cloak the thing once done, to pretend that it never was done, never could have been done.

Now, when I sit at table between that man and woman, I scarcely know whether I am judge, witness, or accuser. What had been instinctive in my distrust of the man has become a mental revulsion not less intense than the physical revulsion which I must always feel towards the woman. Only, towards her, I have a new feeling, a kind of sympathetic confidence, mingled with pity; and it pleases me that she has confidence in me. It would give me pleasure if I could aid her, in some way that I cannot even conjecture, to avenge herself on that diabolical tyrant, her husband.

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September 25.--As I look back over these pages it seems to me that I have lost the habit of writing down my thoughts about general questions, which my once wholly personal preoccupations brought constantly before me. How a journal changes with one's life, if it is really, as mine is, the confidant of one's moods, the secret witness of one's growth or decay! I suppose it is that, as I accustom myself to look for my interest outside the circle of my own brain, I become less personal, less sick with myself. My old terrors, my old preoccupations, have loosened their hold on me, I think; my brain is getting more quiescent, more conventional. If only the nerves do not break out again, as I find it so easy to realise their doing; if I can avoid excitement, that is, keep myself as I am now, an interested spectator of other people's lives, with no too eager interests of my own: that will at last set me wholly to rights. And, certainly, this divine Cornish air, half salt, half honey, will have done something for me, in helping to cure me of a too narrow, London philosophy.

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August 3.--It is almost exactly a year since I have written anything in my journal, which I find where I left it, forgotten in the corner of a drawer in the Cornish manor-house, to which we have gone back again this summer. I am glad to be here again, but, all the same, it is not quite as it was last year. The Baroness and I are better friends than ever. I am more accustomed to her, she is kindness itself. Ah yes, that is it. Her kindness begins to become fatiguing; I would prefer a little liberty. Why is it that good people forge chains with their kindness, adding link to link with the best intentions in the world, until one is tripped up and weighed down and held by the fetters of innumerable favours? To break so much as a link is held to be ingratitude. But one's liberty, then, is there anything comparable in the price one pays, and in the utmost one can receive in place of it?

Is it that a woman is unable to conceive of the fatigue of kindness? How incomprehensible to them must be that marvellous sentence in 'Adolphe': 'Je me reposais, pour ainsi dire, dans l'indifférence des autres, de la fatigue de son amour.' And, even if it is not love, the heaviest of all burdens when it comes unasked, there is still a fatiguing weight in that affectionate vigilance which is one long appeal for gratitude, in that sleepless solicitude which 'prevents,' in both senses of the word, all one's goings. I am beginning to find this with the Baroness, who would replace Providence for me, but with a more continual intervention.

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August 18.--O this intolerable demand on one's gratitude, this assumed right of all the world to receive back favour for favour, to be paid for giving! Must there be a market for kindness, and balances to weigh charity by the pound weight? I am not sure that the conventional estimation of gratitude as one of the main virtues, of gratitude in all circumstances and for all favours received, has not a profoundly bourgeois origin. I have never been able clearly to recognise the necessity, or even the possibility, of gratitude towards any one for whom I have not a feeling of personal affection, quite apart from any exchange of benefits. The conferring of what is called a favour, materially, and the prompt return of a delicate sentiment, gratitude, seems to me a kind of commercialism of the mind, a mere business transaction, in which an honest exchange is not always either possible or needful. The demand for gratitude in return for a gift comes largely from the respect which most people have for money; from the idea that money is the most 'serious' thing in the world, the symbol of a physical necessity, but a thing having no real existence in itself, no real importance to the mind which refuses to realise its existence. Only the miser really possesses it in itself, in any significant way; for the miser is an idealist, the poet of gold. To all others it is a kind of mathematics, and a synonym for being 'respected.' You may say it is necessary, almost as necessary as breathing, and I will not deny it. Only I will deny that any one can be actively grateful for the power of breathing. He cannot conceive of himself without that power. To conceive of oneself without money, that is to say, without the means of going on living, is at once to conceive of the right, the mere human right, to assistance. And when, instead of money, it is some unasked, necessary or unnecessary, gift which is laid before us, to be taken whether we choose or not, what more have we to do than to take it, silently, without thanks, without complaint, as we would pick up an apple that has dropped to us over an orchard hedge? I say all that to myself, and believe it, and yet some irrational obligation weighs upon me, whenever I think of breaking away from this woman and her affection.

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October 25.--Can it be possible, or am I falling into the most absurd of misapprehensions? What has happened, that I should seem to-day to be conscious of what I had not even dreamt of yesterday? Nothing has happened; she, her husband, and I have sat in our usual places at the table and in the garden; not a word different from our usual words has passed between us; and yet ... Why is it that no man can ever be friends with any woman? It is the woman, usually, who puts the question. And she, I am certain that she never wanted to be anything but my friend. Then she wanted to be my only friend; she wanted to make my mind her possession. I see it step by step, now that I think back. Then what we call nature came in to trouble the balance. She is a healthy, normal woman; she has all the natural affections. Why is it that tenderness in women must always take the fever? For there is no doubt about it, none. Once you have seen a certain look in a woman's eyes, once a certain thrill has come into her fingers, there is no mistaking. I have seen that look in her eyes, I can still feel the thrill of her fingers, as her hand touched mine, and seemed to forget to let go.

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October 26.--I awoke this morning in a cold sweat. I had been dreaming of Clare, I heard her footstep coming along the corridor, the door opened, I knew it was she, but she was veiled, and when she called my name her voice sounded far away, as if the veil muffled it; and I put up my hand to lift her veil, and she prayed me not to lift it, but I would not listen to her, and when I saw her face it was Clare, but with the cheek and eyelid of the Baroness. One of us shrieked, and I awoke trembling.

It is still early morning, but I have no mind to sleep again, and perhaps dream. I must try to put these ugly thoughts out of my head, and here is a morning which should help me, if anything in nature could. Is it that some sense, which other people have is lacking in me? I have never found that peace in nature of which I have heard so often, and which, on such a morning as this, when the light begins to glow softly over the world, and the wind comes in salt from the sea, and the leaves rustle as if at an imperceptible caress, should come to me as simple as to trees. There is a physical delight in it, certainly; but it goes no deeper than the skin of my forehead.

I remember, when I first met the Baroness, thinking how cruel, how ironical, it would be, if she were to fall in love again. I remember also, when I first knew her story, wishing that I could help her: yes, here it is written down, last August: 'if I could aid her, in some way that I cannot even conjecture, to avenge herself on that diabolical tyrant, her husband.' I certainly saw no connection between the two things, nor any relation of myself to either of them. And yet, see how both have come together, and how strangely I stand between them, touching both.

The notion seems to me, at present, incredible; and yet, why? Yet more improbable things have happened, and who am I, or who is she, after all, that, in the malice of nature, no such idea should enter into a woman's head?

I wrote here, not so long ago, 'I am more accustomed to her.' Shall I ever be able to say more than that? And it is terrible to be able to say no more than that.

I suppose, if I loved her, I should notice nothing. Is it that pity would come in to take up all the room? But I have never had any gift for pity; and then, all conjecture is idle, for I certainly do not love her.

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October 28.--Is it possible that I could have been mistaken, or is she conscious that she has betrayed her secret, and now hides it away again? To-day she has seemed really, not affectedly indifferent. Do I altogether wish that it were so? Have I not got used to being looked after not quite as a stranger, to a kindness on which it has seemed to me that I could always rely? Is there not something I should find myself missing, if it were taken away from me?

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October 29.--We are to go back to London in a day or two. It rains every day, and almost all day long. Every one stays indoors, and we seem always to find ourselves in different rooms. After dinner the Baron looks up sometimes from his newspaper; the talk is quite formal, because he joins in it. Can she have shown him some sign of encouragement, or is it he? And is she keeping back something, or am I wrong in all that I have conjectured? Nothing is as it was. I shall be glad when we are back in London.

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November 2.--We are back in London. I hardly see her now. For nearly a week she has avoided me, and I am astonished to find myself, I can hardly say piqued, and yet there is a little pique in it too. It is so evident to me that she is playing a part, but the part is well played, and I feel oddly disquieted. I hate change, uncertainty, that kind of uneasiness which women used to cause me, but which I have so long given up feeling. I miss the old freedom of her talk, her confidences to me, her faculty for taking an interest in one's ideas, one's personal sensations. How odd that this should have come to mean so much more to me than I knew! And there is something else that I miss, in her new reserve, now that it comes suddenly up between us as a barrier. I used to wish for just such a barrier. And now it annoys me to find it there. It is only restlessness on my part, I know, but it surprises me to find that I am capable of so near an approach to, after all, some kind of feeling. I thought I had buried all that quite securely, years ago.

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November 5.--To-day I have heard news of Clare for the first time during all these years since she went away. And it is not as I fancied; she is not happy, not even well off; she has been seen in poor lodgings at the seaside, and alone. Has the man, the turgid fop and brute, whom I criticised her and all her sex for caring about, left her, then? It looks like it. Could one imagine, on his part, anything else? I knew him so much better than she did! But I am horribly sorry; I do not want to see her again, but I should like, if I could, to help her. I wonder if she will write to me. I shall take it as a compliment if she writes.

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November 7.--She has written, and the letter has reached me here, after a little delay. She must think I am not going to write. She wants to see me, and it will perhaps be better for me to see her. She is in London; it would be kinder if I called; and heaven knows there is no danger. Her letter is full of dignity; she knows me and there are no tears in it; the regrets are duly temperate; she does not even ask to be forgiven. 'I am in trouble: you once cared for me: I have not forgotten that you can be kind: will you help me?' That is the substance of her letter. I will write to her to-night, and say that I will come and see her.

1 A.M.--Shall I never understand women? will nothing ever teach me wisdom? I was foolish enough to think that the Baroness would help me, that I could be open with her, as I have been till now. I had no secrets from her in regard to Clare, and she knows how much all that is in the past. I showed her the letter. She read it in silence, with her hand over her eyes. Then, not raising her head, she said, in a voice that seemed her ordinary voice: 'You will go and see her?' 'I think it would be best,' I said. She lifted her head suddenly, clenched the paper in her hand, and flung it on the carpet at my feet. For a moment I was too startled even to move. Her face was convulsed with rage; her face was terrible, more terrible than I have ever seen it. The scar seemed to whiten, the blood rushed to her other cheek and made her forehead purple; her eyes glowed. I stooped to pick up the letter, and began to smooth it out on my knee. I fixed my eyes on it, so as not to see her; and she knew why I did not look at her. She seemed to make a great effort to recover her self-control, and I saw her fingers clutch a fold of her skirt and clench tightly upon it. 'You want to see her?' she said, still in a low voice; and I said, what was quite the truth: 'No, I do not want to see her, I only want to help her, and I think it would be kinder, as well as more satisfactory, to go than to write.' 'I understand,' she said coldly; 'you want to see her again. I understand your feeling.' I was annoyed at her misinterpretation, and said nothing. 'You still care for her,' she said, 'I can see it, it is useless for you to deny it; you want to go back to her. Well, she is free now: go back to her.' I was going to protest, but she rose, and held up her hand to silence me. Tears were in her eyes, the anger was gone, she could hardly speak. 'Yes,' she said, 'go and see her; I will not keep you from her; if you still love her, there is nothing else to be done. I understand, I understand.' And she sank back in the chair again, with her hands over her face, weeping big tears.

When I saw her suffering, I was sorry, and I knelt down beside her and took away one of her hands from before her face, and kissed the hand still wet with tears. I assured her that Clare was nothing to me now, and I convinced her of my sincerity. She dried her eyes, smiled sadly, and said, 'Then you promise me you will not go and see her.' 'But no, I said, 'I have told you that it is best to go and see her; but you know the whole reason why I mean to do so.' She turned rigid in an instant, and I should have had to go through the whole scene over again, if I had not had the cowardice to say, 'I promise that I will not see her.' She begged me to show her the letter that I wrote. Why should I refuse?

After to-day there can be no further disguise between us. On her side everything has been said, and on mine everything has been understood. By what I have done to-day I have put myself into her hands, I have given her the right to arrange my life as she pleases; I have shown her my weakness, I have let her see her own strength. Does it matter how one gives way, or how a woman overcomes? To-day I honestly wanted to do the right thing, to be kind to a woman I had once cared for, and I am powerless to do it. These agitations, these restrictions, this sentimental ceremony, are too much for me. How is it that I did not sooner realise the way things were tending, and set a barrier, not only against this passionate foe without, but against this weakness, this kindness, that turn traitors within, and run so readily to the closed gates to open them?

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November 8.--The letter I wrote was cold; it was as if one were giving charity. Clare replies gratefully, as if to a benevolent stranger. I have spoilt the idea which she still had of me. I am sorry for it; the more so as I have no desire to see her; but I should like to have behaved at least instinctively. It is for another woman, always, that one is unjust to a woman. And why is it? Is it because I pity this woman so much, that I have been unjust to the other? I did not know till yesterday how much she cared for me. What is going to happen? I ask myself, not liking, or not daring, to wait for an answer. How one evades coming to a conclusion, precisely when too much depends on that conclusion! I have never understood myself, and just now the brain in me seems to sit aside and reserve judgment, while all manner of feelings, instincts, sensations, chatter among themselves. No, I will confess nothing to these pages, and chiefly because it would take a casuist to prepare my confession.

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November 9.--She loves me cruelly, with a dull passion that does not come till after youth and the years one calls the years of love are long past. I have had a terrible scene with her; terrible because, for the first time, a woman's love seems to me a wholly serious thing, and one's own feeling to matter less. My own feeling: what is it here? Shall I understand one woman, at last, when the desire to do so is over? Passions, then, are real things in women, and, if no one is responsible, at least one cannot always hold aloof from them, or go by on the other side. She loves me, and she can conceal it no longer; and she is ashamed that I should see her as she is, and she exults in her shame, and is reckless and timorous, and is at my mercy, and does not know that it is just this that holds me, and that I cannot, if I would, turn away from one now helpless, and a beggar. Something in her helplessness takes hold of me like a great force, breaks down my indifference; because, I think, it convinces me, to the roots of my mind, as no woman ever before convinced me, that what one calls love may be life itself, carrying away all the props of the world in its overflow. I am afraid of this horrible reality; but I cannot escape it.

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November 10.--I try to persuade myself that I have become her lover wholly out of pity; but the more intimate self which listens is not to be persuaded. Certainly I do not love her, but is it only because she loves me, and because she is the most unfortunate of women, that ... No, there is something else, some animal attraction, which comes to me in spite of my repugnance; a gross, unmistakable desire, which I would not admit even to myself if the consciousness of it were not forced upon me. What I should not have believed in another, I experience, beyond denial, in myself.

Shall a man never know what it is in him that responds, without love, to a woman's gesture? Is it a kind of animal vanity? Is it that love creates, not love, but a flattered readiness to be loved? Did I not think how terrible it would be if she fell in love again, and did I not mean, for the main part, because she could expect no return? And I was wrong. Something has taken hold of me, an appeal, a partly honest and partly perverse attraction; and I say to myself that it is pity, but though pity is part of it, it is not all pity; and I find myself, as I have always found myself, doing the exact opposite of what seems most natural and desirable. Why?

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November 20.--I have made a mistake, but it was inevitable. I have put back my shoulders under the yoke, and all the peace is over. I have had just time enough to rest, and to get ready for the old labour, and now I am troubled with all a woman's ingenuity of trouble: her nerves, her cares, her affections, her solicitudes, her whole minute and never-ceasing possession. How am I to explain myself? There was no choice; it is useless to regret what could but have been accepted. She has a calm will to love, she is like some force of nature against which it is useless to struggle.

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November 22.--I do not know why it is, but all my old nervous uneasiness is coming back on me again, against all sense or reason. I have that curious feeling that something is going to happen; I find myself listening to noises, unable to sit quiet, watching my own brain. All the restlessness has come back, and some of the fear. I am afraid of this woman's love. I could not leave her, but I am afraid of what will happen to me.

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December 3.--No, I shall never get accustomed to it; the same physical horror will always be there; it has been there when the attraction was strongest; it has never been out of my mind, or away from the eyes of my senses. She is aware of it, and suffers; and I am helpless before her suffering. And it is this, nothing but this, which turns my thoughts morbid, whenever I think over a situation which might otherwise have had nothing unusual in it. The husband studies me with a kind of curious and mocking interest, which he allows to remain on his face when he sees us together. Does he suspect, know, approve, or disapprove? Do I seem to him ... But in any case all that is beside the question: I once thought that it would be a generous revenge to make him suffer; now I am conscious how idle the thought was. Is it not all idle, is not everything more or less beside the question?

I am tired of writing in my journal, always the same things. I will shut the book, and perhaps not open it again.

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January 5.--I have not written anything in my journal for years (how many years is it?), and I do not know what impulse or what accident has led me to open it again, and to turn over some of the pages on which the dust has settled, and to begin to write there as I am doing, half mechanically. What is it that seems strange as I read what I have written here? I suppose that I should have considered, discussed, questioned the very things which are now as if they had always been. I do not dream of changing them, any more than I dream of changing the course of life itself, on its inevitable way. But a rage in me never quite dies out: against this woman who has taken me from myself, and against life that is wasting me daily. I have no happiness if I look either forward or backward. I have always succumbed to what I have most dreaded, and every reluctance has turned in me to an irresistible force of attraction. And now I am softly, stealthily entangled, held by loving hands, imprisoned in comfort; I do some good at last, for certainly I help to make a wronged and pitiable woman happy; I have no will to break any bond, and yet I am more desolately alone than I have ever been, more fretted by the old self, by apprehensions and memories, by the passing of time and the lack of hope or desire. I would welcome any change, though it brought worse things, if I could but end this monotony in which there is no rest; end it somehow, and rest a little, and be alone.