Lover's Leap (10 page)

‘Don't try to see me again, Phil, I beg of you. Why should we meet only to give ourselves the pain of parting? Some day, perhaps, when you have regained possession of yourself, we may be able to take up our friendship again.'

That is Rose's letter. I have read it over and over again, arguing, contradicting, refuting, torturing myself by trying to detect in every phrase the feeling that prompted it, and at every reading my interpretation has been different from the last, till in the end I remained utterly confused. During this last day and a half I have ceased to be a rational human being and have become the
slave of my emotions. I have no settled convictions, no fixed attitude of mind; my thoughts and feelings and moods twist and turn and contradict themselves like weathercocks in a storm. I struggle frantically against my fate: I cannot accept the inevitable, cannot believe that it is inevitable. What a fool I was to offer yesterday to set her free and so give her the opportunity of which she has taken advantage. My heart is full of resentment against her. The phrases of her letter sting and infuriate me. It is a priggish letter. This idiotic theory that she is bad for me and that she—she, if you please—must take it upon herself to rescue me from her, is simply an attempt to shift her responsibility for our separation on to my shoulders and to pretend that she is being magnanimous in shaking me off. O God! O God! I hate her; hate her and love her at the same time, that is the torment of it. I sit here imprisoned in this treadmill of incoherent thoughts and feelings, plunging relentlessly on and yet never moving, never advancing, accomplishing nothing. Her letter still lies on my knee. Shall I crumple it up and throw it into the fire, and so make it impossible for me to read it again? No, I must keep it. I must see her and go over it with her, sentence by sentence, explaining away all her mad theories, all her misunderstandings. I will put it away in my desk and go out, escape from it and from the turmoil it has roused in me. If I sit still here the treadmill will never stop till it has driven me crazy. Yes, I will go out and walk till I am too tired to think or feel.

What a strange day it has been, more like a timeless, restless dream than the conventional day made up of morning, afternoon and evening. All morning, all afternoon I have prowled about, taking a brief rest only when walking demanded too painful an effort. When first I started out I was almost driven back indoors by the sudden
sense, as I emerged into the square, of the publicity and hostility of the world. It seemed to me that I should be exhibiting my misery to every soul I met, and I shrank from human contact as from a harsh touch on an open wound. I actually turned to go indoors again, but instantly a vivid impression of the empty loneliness of my flat checked me and I turned away and hurried across the square.

The thought of Southampton Row, Kingsway, Oxford Street and all the wide, open spaces filled with people, where I might at any moment run across a friend or acquaintance, was too terrible to face, and I made for the by-streets and less frequented places.

In Gray's Inn the leaves of the plane trees had turned yellow and it seemed in the bright autumn sunshine that the boughs had burst into tropical bloom, every leaf a great yellow flower. Their beauty gave a new stab to my heart, and when I had crossed Holborn I avoided Lincoln's Inn Fields, where I should see more plane trees and green lawns, and turned down Chancery Lane. I was making instinctively for the river: for some obscure reason I must have felt that the river would soothe me.

I joined it near the Temple Station and from there I followed the Embankment to Westminster, skirted the Houses of Parliament and then followed the river again all the way to Battersea Bridge. Where I went after that I don't remember, but I think I must have walked the same way back, because some time later in the morning, too tired to walk any further, I went into Westminster Abbey and sat down. I did not think. My mind was numbed into inertia and my feet were so tired that the business of resting was sufficient occupation. But by degrees I began to notice the things about me, or rather, as it seemed to me, the things about me began to notice me and impose themselves upon me for good or ill. The tall pointed arches, the triforium, the clerestory, the beautiful brown stone carved into mouldings and sober
patterns soothed me, but the choir-stalls and windows and the crowd of monuments began to attack me, prey upon me until I could face them no longer and left the Abbey.

Again I joined the river, but this time I walked east, under Hungerford Bridge and Waterloo Bridge, past the Temple, to Blackfriars Bridge which I crossed. But why should I go over my miserable wanderings again? They are best forgotten, and parts of them are forgotten already.

After another gap in my memory I recall myself walking slowly down the nave of St. Paul's, across the south transept and into the choir where I paused in front of the grim figure of John Donne in his winding-sheet. That figure shows death, as Donne loved to do in his sermons, in all its ghastly indignity. The shroud is gathered into a topknot over the dead face with an accidental coquetry that shocks one. But what does it matter what his effigy looks like? Donne is dead, safely dead with all his troubles over. I turned away, wishing that I too were dead, liberated from this vicious circle of thinking and feeling.

I returned to the nave and sat down to follow my thoughts about death. No, I didn't really wish to die. What I really wished to do was to go to sleep and not wake up till all was well again. But to die, to leave the world while Rose was still in it—every sense, every feeling rebelled against that.

Everything will come right in the end: it must. Even now I feel that. Yes, I feel it, but if I dare to examine the foundation of my conviction, I see—God help me—that it is based not on reason but merely on desperate longing.

I returned home about four o'clock, tired and feeble. I had eaten nothing since I started out and so I put on the kettle and cut some bread. I must have walked a long way, for I had been out about six hours and nearly all that time I had spent on my feet. But what was I to do now? I thought of work but dismissed the idea instantly. To
work, in the state I was in, would be an impossibility. No, there was nothing to do but sit still and suffer.

When I had had some tea I got out Rose's letter and read it again, and it seemed to me now as clear as day that everything she said was based on a misunderstanding. If we could have a long, quiet talk with no arguments, no recriminations, everything could be mended. How should it not, when I am ready not merely to meet her half-way, but to go all the way, to accept any mode of life that she may desire? It is only a matter of our understanding one another. We have never so much as spoken together of this strange disunion that has come upon us. No wonder we have been more and more at cross-purposes lately. When nothing is explained on either side, the most monstrous assumptions may come to be accepted as facts. If only we had each been frank and spoken out at the first sign of trouble, the thing would have been nipped in the bud and we would never have reached this pitch of antagonism. I ought to have talked to her at tea yesterday, instead of sitting mute as a fish I ought to have had it out with her. But even now it is not too late. But it soon will be. Already I have wasted precious hours since her letter came, mooning about London instead of doing something. I must go to her at once, take her letter with me, and have a long talk. We must be completely frank, without reticence or shame. We must make a clean breast of everything.

I got out of my chair, took my hat and set off for her flat.

Old Martha, stern and expressionless, opened the door and, when I asked to see Rose, showed me without a word into the empty sitting-room. I stood there, too agitated to sit down, staring sightlessly at the picture over the mantelpiece, the picture I had painted for her. I had to clench my teeth to prevent their chattering. Round and round in my mind went the phrases I had prepared for
the opening of our talk, phrases intended to show her that I was calm and reasonable, to show her at the outset that I was not going to make a scene or load her with reproaches. ‘Rose, you mustn't mind my coming in spite of your asking me not to.' ‘I have come to ask one last favour, Rose, that you will listen to me patiently.' ‘Rose, if we have to part, I want to be quite certain—and so, I'm sure, do you—that there is no misunderstanding between us.'

But, now that I was here, all my confidence had vanished. What was the use of trying? Nothing, nothing would be of the slightest avail. How lame, how fatuous those carefully prepared phrases sounded to me now. ‘Rose, you mustn't mind my coming …' ‘Rose, if we have to part …' I blushed with shame as I repeated them to myself. They sounded to me now like the meaningless chatter of an automatic puppet.

Out in the hall a door closed and every nerve in my body began dancing like a whole peal of bells jangling at once. Already I saw her face, the face that I should be looking into in a moment, empty of all its old warmth and kindness. Ah, the door-handle rattled, the door opened. But it was Jennifer who entered; Jennifer, hard, practical, cold, even colder than usual.

‘Hallo, Philip; I'm afraid Rose is away.'

‘Away?' I faltered.

‘Yes, she went away this morning.'

The news came upon me as a fresh disaster for which I was totally unprepared.

‘But … but Martha didn't …' I stammered.

‘No, Martha didn't tell you because I wanted to tell you myself. In fact, I wanted to have a few words with you.'

Jennifer's calm voice instantly roused me to hostility and that restored the self-control which her news had almost shattered. ‘It's something new that you should want to speak to me, Jennifer,' I said bitterly.

She ignored my sarcasm and went on calmly: ‘Perhaps it is. But you can guess the reason.'

‘No,' I said, ‘I have no idea what your reason is, unless perhaps you have a message from Rose.'

‘No, Rose left no message,' said Jennifer. ‘But it is about Rose that I want to speak to you. You must let her alone, Philip. You mustn't bother her any more.'

‘Bother her?' I said. ‘What do you mean? I haven't bothered her.'

‘Yes, you have. She's been worried and unhappy lately, and now that she is … now that she has gone away, you must leave her in peace.'

Jennifer's extraordinary attitude stung me to the quick. ‘Are you talking like this,' I asked, ‘as a result of things that Rose has said to you?'

Her eyes hardened. ‘Rose has said nothing to me except that your engagement is off. I am speaking on my own responsibility and simply and solely with an eye to Rose's happiness.'

I felt hatred boil up in me. ‘No, you're not,' I said; ‘you're speaking with an eye to your own happiness. You've been against me from the first. You guessed that I loved Rose and made up your mind I shouldn't get her. And why? Because if I did, it would be inconvenient to you, it would break up your snug little household. And now that you've got your way and succeeded in setting her against me, you're going to pose as the noble, self-sacrificing friend who thinks only of Rose's happiness. Well, it's very beautiful, Jennifer, but unfortunately it doesn't work—anyhow, not on me.'

Jennifer's face had become colder and harder as I spoke, but her voice did not lose its calmness. ‘If I wanted to pay you back in your own coin, Philip, I might say that you too were thinking only of yourself. You were in love with Rose and wanted to get her, that's all.'

‘Yes, you could say it,' I replied, ‘but it wouldn't be true.'

‘I might have said the same to you, Philip, but you wouldn't have believed me, and if we do nothing but contradict each other we shan't get much further.'

‘How much further do you want to get?'

‘I see no hope now of getting any further. What I hoped to do, as I said at the start, was to persuade you not to try to get Rose back. If you really love her and want to do what's best for her, leave her alone now that she's free.'

‘I don't know what you're driving at, Jennifer. You seem to think that by asking Rose to marry me I have imprisoned her against her will.'

‘I'll tell you what I'm driving at, Philip. When Rose was first engaged to you (that is, after the first night), she seemed thoroughly happy; but lately she has changed completely. You must have noticed it yourself. She's been worried and depressed and irritable. That's all I know.'

‘And you blame me?'

‘Yes, I blame you.'

‘And what, if I may ask, am I supposed to have done?' ‘O, nothing deliberately.'

‘Well, what, accidentally?'

She hesitated and then said: ‘Well, Philip, you're a bit of a leaner, you know.'

‘A leaner? What do you mean?'

‘What's the good of my telling you? You won't believe me. But what I mean is that your kind of loving demands much more than it gives. You want to be loved rather than to love, and that must in the end become a great burden to … well, to whoever you happen to bestow your affections on. I'm not trying to be beastly: I'm simply telling you frankly and shamelessly what I think. I don't expect you to agree, but if you thought it worth while looking into, you might find it helpful.'

I laughed grimly. ‘Suppose it proved so helpful, Jennifer, that Rose and I became engaged again?'

‘Then you would perhaps believe that I hadn't been such a swine about you and Rose as you seem to think. But I've said enough. You look on what I've said as malicious bosh, don't you?'

I turned to go. ‘The only snag is that, being what you tell me I am, I should have offered yesterday to set Rose free.'

Jennifer raised her thick, black brows in surprise. ‘You did? That was generous of you, Philip.'

‘You took it for granted that she made the first move?'

‘I certainly did. Good for you, Philip.'

Her praise made me still angrier and I repelled it with a sour smile. ‘Doesn't this detail upset your neat little diagnosis?' I asked.