4
Capes made no answer for a time.
“My mind is full of confused stuff,” he said at length.
“I've been thinking —all the afternoon. Oh, and
weeks and months of thought and feeling there are
bottled up too. . . . I feel a mixture of beast and uncle.
I feel like a fraudulent trustee. Every rule is against
me — Why did I let you begin this? I might have
told —”
“I don't see that you could help —”
“I might have helped —”
“You couldn't.”
“I ought to have —all the same.
“I wonder,” he said, and went off at a tangent.
“You know about my scandalous past?”
“Very little. It doesn't seem to matter. Does it?”
“I think it does. Profoundly.”
“How?”
“It prevents our marrying. It forbids —all sorts
of things.”
“It can't prevent our loving.”
“I'm afraid it can't. But, by Jove! it's going to
make our loving a fiercely abstract thing.”
“You are separated from your wife?”
“Yes, but do you know how?”
“Not exactly.”
“Why on earth —? A man ought to be labelled.
You see, I'm separated from my wife. But she doesn't
and won't divorce me. You don't understand the fix
I am in. And you don't know what led to our separation.
And, in fact, all round the problem you don't
know and I don't see how I could possibly have told you
before. I wanted to, that day in the Zoo. But I trusted
to that ring of yours.”
“Poor old ring!” said Ann Veronica.
“I ought never have gone to the Zoo, I suppose.
I asked you to go. But a man is a mixed creature. . . .
I wanted the time with you. I wanted it badly.”
“Tell me about yourself,” said Ann Veronica.
“To begin with, I was —I was in the divorce court.
I was —I was a co-respondent. You understand that
term?”
Ann Veronica smiled faintly. “A modern girl does
understand these terms. She reads novels —and history
—and all sorts of things. Did you really doubt if I knew?”
“No. But I don't suppose you can understand.”
“I don't see why I shouldn't.”
“To know things by name is one thing; to know
them by seeing them and feeling them and being them
quite another. That is where life takes advantage
of youth. You don't understand.”
“Perhaps I don't.”
“You don't. That's the difficulty. If I told you the
facts, I expect, since you are in love with me, you'd
explain the whole business as being very fine and
honorable for me —the Higher Morality, or something
of that sort. . . . It wasn't.”
“I don't deal very much,” said Ann Veronica, “in
the Higher Morality, or the Higher Truth, or any of
those things.”
“Perhaps you don't. But a human being who is
young and clean, as you are, is apt to ennoble —or
explain away.”
“I've had a biological training. I'm a hard young
woman.”
“Nice clean hardness, anyhow. I think you are
hard. There's something —something adult
about you.
I'm talking to you now as though you had all the
wisdom and charity in the world. I'm going to tell
you things plainly. Plainly. It's best. And then you
can go home and think things over before we talk again.
I want you to be clear what you're really and truly up to, anyhow.”
“I don't mind knowing,” said Ann Veronica.
“It's precious unromantic.”
“Well, tell me.”
“I married pretty young,” said Capes. “I've got —
I have to tell you this to make myself clear —a streak
of ardent animal in my composition. I married —I
married a woman whom I still think one of the most
beautiful persons in the world. She is a year or so older
than I am, and she is, well, of a very serene and proud
and dignified temperament. If you met her you would,
I am certain, think her as fine as I do. She has never
done a really ignoble thing that I know of —never.
I met her when we were both very young, as young as
you are. I loved her and made love to her, and I don't
think she quite loved me back in the same way.”
He paused for a time. Ann Veronica said nothing.
“These are the sort of things that aren't supposed
to happen. They leave them out of novels —these
incompatibilities. Young people ignore them until
they find themselves up against them. My wife doesn't
understand, doesn't understand now. She despises me,
I suppose. . . . We married, and for a time we were happy.
She was fine and tender. I worshipped her and subdued
myself.”
He left off abruptly. “Do you understand what I
am talking about? It's no good if you don't.”
“I think so,” said Ann Veronica, and colored. “In
fact, yes, I do.”
“Do you think of these things —these matters —as
belonging to our Higher Nature or our Lower?”
“I don't deal in Higher Things, I tell you,” said
Ann Veronica, “or Lower, for the matter of that. I
don't classify.” She hesitated. “Flesh and flowers are
all alike to me.”
“That's the comfort of you. Well, after a time
there came a fever in my blood. Don't think it was
anything better than fever —or a bit beautiful. It
wasn't. Quite soon, after we were married —it was just
within a year —I formed a friendship with the wife of
a friend, a woman eight years older than myself. . . .
It wasn't anything splendid, you know. It was just
a shabby, stupid, furtive business that began between
us. Like stealing. We dressed it in a little music. . . .
I want you to understand clearly that I was indebted
to the man in many small ways. I was mean to him. . . .
It was the gratification of an immense necessity. We
were two people with a craving. We felt like thieves.
We were thieves. . . . We
liked each other well enough.
Well, my friend found us out, and would give no
quarter. He divorced her. How do you like the
story?”
“Go on,” said Ann Veronica, a little hoarsely, “tell
me all of it.”
“My wife was astounded —wounded beyond measure.
She thought me —filthy. All her pride raged at me.
One particularly humiliating thing came out —humiliating
for me. There was a second co-respondent. I
hadn't heard of him before the trial. I don't know why
that should be so acutely humiliating. There's no
logic in these things. It was.”
“Poor you!” said Ann Veronica.
“My wife refused absolutely to have anything more
to do with me. She could hardly speak to me; she
insisted relentlessly upon a separation. She had money
of her own —much more than I have —and there was
no need to squabble about that. She has given herself
up to social work.”
“Well —”
“That's all. Practically all. And yet — Wait a
little, you'd better have every bit of it. One doesn't
go about with these passions allayed simply because
they have made wreckage and a scandal. There one is!
The same stuff still! One has a craving in one's blood,
a craving roused, cut off from its redeeming and guiding
emotional side. A man has more freedom to do evil
than a woman. Irregularly, in a quite inglorious and
unromantic way, you know, I am a vicious man. That's
—that's my private life. Until the last few months.
It isn't what I have been but what I am. I haven't
taken much account of it until now. My honor has been
in my scientific work and public discussion and the
things I write. Lots of us are like that. But, you see,
I'm smirched. For the sort of love-making you think
about. I've muddled all this business. I've had my
time and lost my chances. I'm damaged goods. And
you're as clean as fire. You come with those clear eyes
of yours, as valiant as an angel. . . .”
He stopped abruptly.
“Well?” she said.
“That's all.”
“It's so strange to think of you —troubled by such
things. I didn't think — I don't know what I thought.
Suddenly all this makes you human. Makes you
real.”
“But don't you see how I must stand to you? Don't
you see how it bars us from being lovers — You can't
—at first. You must think it over. It's all outside
the world of your experience.”
“I don't think it makes a rap of difference, except
for one thing. I love you more. I've wanted you —
always. I didn't dream, not even in my wildest dreaming,
that —you might have any need of me.”
He made a little noise in his throat as if something
had cried out within him, and for a time they were both
too full for speech.
They were going up the slope into Waterloo Station.
“You go home and think of all this,” he said, “and
talk about it to-morrow. Don't, don't say anything
now, not anything. As for loving you, I do. I do —
with all my heart. It's no good hiding it any more. I
could never have talked to you like this, forgetting
everything that parts us, forgetting even your age, if
I did not love you utterly. If I were a clean, free man —
We'll have to talk of all these things. Thank goodness
there's plenty of opportunity! And we two can talk.
Anyhow, now you've begun it, there's nothing to keep
us in all this from being the best friends in the world.
And talking of every conceivable thing. Is there?”
“Nothing,” said Ann Veronica, with a radiant face.
“Before this there was a sort of restraint —a make-believe. It's gone.”
“It's gone.”
“Friendship and love being separate things. And
that confounded engagement!”
“Gone!”
They came upon a platform, and stood before her
compartment.
He took her hand and looked into her eyes and spoke,
divided against himself, in a voice that was forced and
insincere.
“I shall be very glad to have you for a friend,” he
said, “loving friend. I had never dreamed of such a
friend as you.”
She smiled, sure of herself beyond any pretending,
into his troubled eyes. Hadn't they settled that
already?
“I want you as a friend,” he persisted, almost as if he
disputed something.
