Tono-Bungay

She shook her head without looking up.

We were still for a long time. “Marry me!” I whispered.

She looked up, twined back a whisp of hair, and answered dispassionately —

“I wish I could. Anyhow, we have had this time. It has been a fine time – has it been – for you also? I haven’t nudged you all I had to give. It’s a poor gift – except for what it means and might have been. But we are near the end of it now.”

“Why?” I asked. “Marry me! Why should we two – ”

“You think,” she said, “I could take courage and come to you and be your everyday wife – while you work and are poor?”

“Why not?” said I.

She looked at me gravely, with extended finger. “Do you really think that – of me? Haven’t you seen me – all?”

I hesitated.

“Never once have I really meant marrying you,” she insisted. “Never once. I fell in love with you from the first. But when you seemed a successful man, I told myself I wouldn’t. I was love-sick for you, and you were so stupid, I came near it then. But I knew I wasn’t good enough. What could I have been to you? A woman with bad habits and bad associations, a woman smirched. And what could I do for you or be to you? If I wasn’t good enough to be a rich man’s wife, I’m certainly not good enough to be a poor one’s. Forgive me for talking sense to you now, but I wanted to tell you this somehow.”

She stopped at my gesture. I sat up, and the canoe rocked with my movement.

“I don’t care,” I said. “I want to marry you and make you my wife!”

“No,” she said, “don’t spoil things. That is impossible!”

“Impossible!”

“Think! I can’t do my own hair! Do you mean you will get me a maid?”

“Good God!” I cried, disconcerted beyond measure, “won’t you learn to do your own hair for me? Do you mean to say you can love a man – ”

She flung out her hands at me. “Don’t spoil it,” she cried. “I have given you all I have, I have given you all I can. If I could do it, if I was good enough to do it, I would. But I am a woman spoilt and ruined, dear, and you are a ruined man. When we are making love we’re lovers – but think of the gulf between us in habits and ways of thought, in will and training, when we are not making love. Think of it – and don’t think of it! Don’t think of it yet. We have snatched some hours. We still may have some hours!”

She suddenly knelt forward toward me, with a glowing darkness in her eyes. “Who cares if it upsets?” she cried. “If you say another word I will kiss you. And go to the bottom clutching you.

“I’m not afraid of that. I’m not a bit afraid of that. I’ll die with you. Choose a death, and I’ll die with you – readily. Do listen to me! I love you. I shall always love you. It’s because I love you that I won’t go down to become a dirty familiar thing with you amidst the grime. I’ve given all I can. I’ve had all I can… Tell me,” and she crept nearer, “have I been like the dusk to you, like the warm dusk? Is there magic still? Listen to the ripple of water from your paddle. Look at the warm evening light in the sky. Who cares if the canoe upsets? Come nearer to me. Oh, my love! come near! So.”

She drew me to her and our lips met.

III

I asked her to marry me once again.

It was our last morning together, and we had met very early, about sunrise, knowing that we were to part. No sun shone that day. The sky was overcast, the morning chilly and lit by a clear, cold, spiritless light. A heavy dampness in the air verged close on rain. When I think of that morning, it has always the quality of greying ashes wet with rain.

Beatrice too had changed. The spring had gone out of her movement; it came to me, for the first time, that some day she might grow old. She had become one flesh with the rest of common humanity; the softness had gone from her voice and manner, the dusky magic of her presence had gone. I saw these things with perfect clearness, and they made me sorry for them and for her. But they altered my love not a whit, abated it nothing. And when we had talked awkwardly for half a dozen sentences, I came dully to my point.

“And now,” I cried, “will you marry me?”

“No,” she said, “I shall keep to my life here.”

I asked her to marry me in a year’s time. She shook her head.

“This world is a soft world,” I said, “in spite of my present disasters. I know now how to do things. If I had you to work for – in a year I could be a prosperous man.”

“No,” she said, “I will put it brutally, I shall go back to Carnaby.”

“But – !” I did not feel angry. I had no sort of jealousy, no wounded pride, no sense of injury. I had only a sense of grey desolation, of hopeless cross-purposes.

“Look here,” she said. “I have been awake all night and every night. I have been thinking of this – every moment when we have not been together. I’m not answering you on an impulse. I love you. I love you. I’ll say that over ten thousand times. But here we are – ”

“The rest of life together,” I said.

“It wouldn’t be together. Now we are together. Now we have been together. We are full of memories I do not feel I can ever forget a single one.”

“Nor I.”

“And I want to close it and leave it at that. You see, dear, what else is there to do?”

She turned her white face to me. “All I know of love, all I have ever dreamt or learnt of love I have packed into these days for you. You think we might live together and go on loving. No! For you I will have no vain repetitions. You have had the best and all of me. Would you have us, after this, meet again in London or Paris or somewhere, scuffle to some wretched dressmaker’s, meet in a cabinet particulier?”

“No,” I said. “I want you to marry me. I want you to play the game of life with me as an honest woman should. Come and live with me. Be my wife and squaw. Bear me children.”

I looked at her white, drawn face, and it seemed to me I might carry her yet. I spluttered for words.

“My God! Beatrice!” I cried; “but this is cowardice and folly! Are you afraid of life? You of all people! What does it matter what has been or what we were? Here we are with the world before us! Start clean and new with me. We’ll fight it through! I’m not such a simple lover that I’ll not tell you plainly when you go wrong, and fight our difference out with you. It’s the one thing I want, the one thing I need – to have you, and more of you and more! This love-making – it’s love-making. It’s just a part of us, an incident – ”

She shook her head and stopped me abruptly. “It’s all,” she said.

“All!” I protested.

“I’m wiser than you. Wiser beyond words.” She turned her eyes to me and they shone with tears.

“I wouldn’t have you say anything – but what you’re saying,” she said. “But it’s nonsense, dear. You know it’s nonsense as you say it.”

I tried to keep up the heroic note, but she would not listen to it.

“It’s no good,” she cried almost petulantly. “This little world has made us what we are. Don’t you see – don’t you see what I am? I can make love. I can make love and be loved, prettily. Dear, don’t blame me. I have given you all I have. If I had anything more – I have gone through it all over and over again – thought it out. This morning my head aches, my eyes ache.

“The light has gone out of me and I am a sick and tired woman. But I’m talking wisdom – bitter wisdom. I couldn’t be any sort of helper to you, any sort of wife, any sort of mother. I’m spoilt.

“I’m spoilt by this rich idle way of living, until every habit is wrong, every taste wrong. The world is wrong. People can be ruined by wealth just as much as by poverty. Do you think I wouldn’t face life with you if I could, if I wasn’t absolutely certain I should be down and dragging in the first half-mile of the journey? Here I am – damned! Damned! But I won’t damn you. You know what I am! You know. You are too clear and simple not to know the truth. You try to romance and hector, but you know the truth. I am a little cad – sold and done. I’m – . My dear, you think I’ve been misbehaving, but all these days I’ve been on my best behaviour… You don’t understand, because you’re a man.

“A woman, when she’s spoilt, is SPOILT. She’s dirty in grain. She’s done.”

She walked on weeping.

“You’re a fool to want me,” she said. “You’re a fool to want me – for my sake just as much as yours. We’ve done all we can. It’s just romancing – ”