“Besides, I never meant it to become serious, I thought it would merely be a relaxation.”
Once more the note of injury crept into his voice. The weak man, the injured man. He had never “thought” about this, he had never “meant” any harm. Impotent stock-phrases, my brother.
“Everything seemed to combine to force us together,” he protested. “I assure you I made no definite move, but opportunities occurred—these things have to happen, it’s human nature. And I’m so damned sensitive to beauty.”
One by one his little weapons fell from him, and his words helped him not at all.
“Things went on like this for about six weeks, and then Kate found out. I can’t go into this, or how she discovered. It’s too sordid, too horrible. There was a terrible scene, and she threatened to make a scandal. I was terrified of the result of all this upon Nan, and the general breakup of things. For two days Kate and I never slept at all, we discussed the question from every point of view, arriving nowhere, going over and over the same old ground.
“By the third day I was too tired to argue any more, the position was hopeless, I was ready to accept any conditions. Kate suddenly seemed to possess the energy which I was lacking. I felt ashamed of myself, I had treated her badly. And now that it had come to the point I was uneasy at the thought of a divorce, of making some sort of a life with Nan, of another failure perhaps—anyway, I was unable to cope. So I agreed to Kate’s suggestion—I threw up my job—I wrote a wretched farewell letter to Nan—and that was the end of it.”
His eyes seemed to feel mine, in search of sympathy, of possible disapproval. Then he looked away, and began to tug uncomfortably at his little moustache.
“We then came up to London, and lived in rooms near Holland Park.”
His sentence seemed to suggest that this was the outcome of every adventure that has no end, of all broken romances.
“A fiend of Kate’s told me I ought to go on the films. I’ve always photographed fairly well, but I felt there must be more in it than that. Still, Kate was keen, she had heard glorified accounts of the money they paid, I suppose, and it didn’t make much difference to me what I did.
“This friend introduced me to a chap who was starting a company. I made a fair test, and to my surprise they engaged me, for small-part work. This went on for about a year. My heart was never in it for a moment, but it kept me from thinking. Then the company went bust—and I was once more without a job. It was the day after this happened, and I was feeling pretty desperate I can tell you, when Kate chose the moment to tell me she was going to have a baby. It was absolutely the last straw.”
The vivid scene came before me of him sitting in a chair in the drab rooms near Holland Park, and his wife breaking her news to him, tired, a little afraid, but perhaps daring to hope for a word of sympathy, a smile—a suspicion of tenderness. And he, rising from his chair, irritable, impatient, and clenching his hands, “This is the last straw.”
“There was another scene, naturally,” he told me, “but I was firm for once. I had no job, no settled income, I could not possibly provide for a child. I made her go back to her mother. I think she was relieved, and it was the only thing to do under the circumstances.
“I was determined to break away, to start with a clean page. I felt I just had to get away from England, to begin afresh. I longed for new faces, new people. I had just enough money to pay my passage to Canada, first-class.”
Yes, he would travel first-class. He would arrive in the: Colonies without the prospect of a job, with no money in his pockets; but at least, according to his code, he would have kept his self-respect. He would travel first-class.
“I met a woman on the boat who seemed really to understand me. She had the most amazing ideas on life; we had conversations—God, the things we discussed. We were both utterly in sympathy with one another. She was very rich apparently; anyway, she took me under her wing, and we went to Montreal together.
“For a couple of months I was perfectly happy. Of course I was a fool, I threw away many opportunities of jobs, for the mere pleasure of being with her, talking to her, exchanging ideas.”
“Then, I don’t know how it was, whether she grew bored or what, she was an extraordinary woman, but she went away one day and never came back. Left a note saying goodbye, and it had been fun and all that, and she had gone to California. Queer, wasn’t it? I’ve never understood it at all. The next few years I rather went to pieces. I mucked about in Canada looking for jobs, I tried one thing, and then another. I was on the stage for a while, I used to play the leading man in third-rate tours! One-night stands, and repertory stuff. What a crowd!”
He leant back in his chair, a puzzled frown on his face.
“One gets so awfully lonely,” he explained. “I can rub along with most people, but there’s something underneath all the time that keeps alive in spite of one’s efforts to kill it—a pain, a reminder. I tried drinking, but it wasn’t any use. It didn’t ease me, or even give me any pleasure, but I hoped it would help me to forget, you know—vaguely.”
His wisdom seemed infinite. The
