Chapter VII Lapses
During early spring a new experience came to Myles Stapledon. Physically perfect, he had known no ache or ill until now; but chance for once found him vulnerable. From a heavy downpour upon the land he returned home, found matters to occupy him immediately, and so forgot to doff wet clothes at the earliest opportunity. A chill rewarded his carelessness, and a slight attack of pneumonia followed upon it. For the first time within his recollection the man had to stop in bed, but during the greater part of his illness Myles proved patient enough. Honor ministered to him untiringly; Mr. Endicott was much in the sick-room also; and from time to time, when the master was returning towards convalescence, Cramphorn or Churdles Ash would enter to see him with information concerning affairs.
Then, during one of the last wearisome days in his bed-chamber, at a season when the invalid was somewhat worn with private thoughts and heartily sick of such enforced idleness, an unfortunate misunderstanding threw him off his mental balance and precipitated such a catastrophe as those who knew Stapledon best had been the least likely to foresee. He was in fact forgotten for many hours, owing to a common error of his wife and uncle. Each thought the other would tend the sick man, so Honor departed to Newton Abbot with Christopher Yeoland, and Mark, quite ignorant of his niece’s plans, was driven by Tommy Bates to Okehampton. The pitiful mistake had not dwelt an hour in Stapledon’s memory under ordinary circumstances, but now, fretted by suffering and as ill able to bear physical trouble as any other man wholly unfamiliar with it, his lonely hours swelled and massed into a mountain of bitter grievance. He brooded and sank into dark ways of thought. Temptations got hold upon him; the ever-present thorn turned in his flesh and jealousy played with his weakness, like a cat with a mouse. Upon Honor’s return the man afforded his wife, a new sensation and one of the greatest surprises that experience had ever brought to her.
Unaware of his lonely vigil, she returned home in high good humour, kissed him, complimented him on the fact that this was to be his last day in bed, and remarked upon the splendour of the sunset.
“‘At eventide it shall be light,’” she said; “and Christo was so rapt in all the glory of gold and purple over Cosdon, as we drove home from Moreton, that he nearly upset me and his dog-cart and himself. Yet I wish you could see the sky. It would soothe you.”
“As winter sunshine soothes icicles—by making their points sharper. Nature’s softest moods are cruellest if your mind happens to be in torment.”
“My dear! Whatever is the matter? And your fire out—oh, Myles, how wrong!”
“Is it? Then blame yourself. Since my midday meal and before it I have seen no soul this day, and heard no voice but the clock. Here alone, suffering and chewing gall for six hours and more. But what does it matter so you were pleased with the sunset and your company?”
“Then where is uncle? Surely——? I am so sorry, dear one. We’ve muddled it between us, and each thought you were in the keeping of the other.”
“Don’t be sorry. What do I matter? Where have you been?”
“To Newton with Christo. And he sent you these lovely black grapes. I’m afraid I ate a few coming home, but I haven’t spoiled the bunch.”
“Eat the rest, then, or fling them into the fire. I don’t want them.”
“You’re angry, Myles; and you have a right to be; yet it was only a dismal accident. We must light the fire, and I’ll get you your tea, poor ill-used fellow. It was a shame, but I’m very, very penitent, and so will uncle be.”
“I wish I could get out of your way. Such a bother for you to come back to a sick-room; and a sick animal in a house is a bore always—especially to you, who don’t love animals.”
The woman’s eyes opened wide and she stared at him.
“Whatever do you mean?”
“You know well enough. I’m so exacting and my cough keeps you awake at night, and these drives in the fresh air behind Yeoland’s big trotter must be such a relief to you. Why don’t you ask him to drive you right away—to hell, and have done with it?”
Honor looked at him, then turned her back and knelt down by the fire. Presently she spoke.
“Your thoughts have been ugly company I’m afraid. This is a terrible surprise, Myles, for I know so well how much you must have suffered before you could say such things to me. Will you never understand your own wife?”
“I think I do—at last.”
“You’ll be sorry—very sorry that you could speak so, and let an unhappy accident be the spark to this. If you had but heard what Christopher said of you this very day driving home——”
“Don’t begin that folly. That he slights me enough to praise me—and you listen to him and pretend to think he is in earnest!”
She did not answer; then he sat up in bed and spoke again.
“I’m glad that weakness has torn this out of me. I shall be sorry to-morrow, but I’m glad to-night. Leave the fire and come here. I don’t want to shout. You see what you’ve dragged me down to; you see what a snarling cur with his bone stolen I look now. That’s your work. And I’ll thank you to put a period to it. I don’t live any longer in this purgatory, however greatly your fool’s paradise may please you. I’m weary of it. It’s poisoning me. Either you see too much of this man or not enough. That is what you have to determine. If too much, end it; if not enough, mend it, and go to him, body and soul, for good—the sooner the better.”
“Myles! You, of all men, to be so coarse! Are you mad? Are you dreaming to speak to your wife so? God knows that I’ve never done, or said, or thought anything to anger you to this, or shadow your honour for a second—nor has he.”
“‘He!’ Always ’he—he—he’—rooting at your heart-strings, I suppose, like a ——. What do you know of his thoughts and dreams? How comes it that you are so read in his life and mind that you can say whether my honour is so safe with him? I’d sooner trust it with my dogs. Then it would be safe. Who are you to know what this man’s mind holds?”
“I ought to know, if anybody does.”
“Then go back to him, for God’s sake, and let me come to the end of this road. Let all that is past sink to a memory, not remain a raw, present wound, that smarts from my waking moment until I sleep again.”
“You are weary of me?”
“I’m weary of half of you, or a quarter of you, or what particular proportion of you may still be supposed to belong to me.”
“I am all yours—heart and soul—and you know it; or if you do not, Christopher Yeoland does.”
“You love him too.”
“That question was answered years ago. I love him, and always shall. His welfare is much to me. I have been concerned with it to-day.”
“Yet you dare to say you belong heart and soul to me.”
“It is the truth. If you don’t understand that, I cannot help you. He does understand.”
“I lack his fine intellect. You must endeavour to sink to my level and make this truth apparent to your husband’s blunter perceptions. I must have more than words. Acts will better appeal to me. After to-day I forbid you to see or speak with Yeoland; and may you never suffer as you have made me suffer.”
“I will do what you wish. If you had only spoken sooner, Myles, some of this misery might have been escaped. I wish I had seen it.”
“Any woman who loved honestly would have seen it,” he said, hard to the end. Then, without answering, she left him; and while he turned restlessly upon himself and regret presently waxed to a deep shame at this ebullition, she went her way and came to tears leisurely along a path first marked by frank amazement. Honor’s surprise was unutterable. Never, since the moment of their meeting, had she dreamed or suspected that any imaginable disaster could thus reduce the high standard by which Myles conducted his mental life and controlled his temperament. That physical suffering and a sharp illness should have power to discover and reveal such a secret much surprised her. She remained incredulous that she had heard aright. It was as though she had dreamed the meeting and some nightmare Myles—grotesque, rude, a very Caliban—had taken shape while her mind ran riot in sleep. Yet it was true, for the measure of his lapse from customary high courtesy, was the measure of the months that he had suffered in silence, and the measure of his wrongs. Wholly imaginary she held them; all he had said was the outcome of a nature fretted by sickness and reduced below itself, like a drunken man—this Honor believed; but even so she remained in a stupor of astonishment. To see such a man with his armour off, to hear strange words in his mouth, to watch passion on his face, was an experience unutterably painful. And yet surprise transcended sorrow. She was almost stunned and dazed by this storm of thunder and lightning from a mind whose weather had never promised such a tempest. Now the moody fits and evasive humours could be read a little, for light fell every way. And Honor sat an hour with her thoughts; then passed from first emotions to others deeper and truer. She began to regret the past and blame her blindness. Unconventional enough, she had acted with no thought of any special significance being read into her actions—least of all by her husband. A woman of more common mind and nature had seen the danger and doubtfulness of such relations; but this was her first revelation of it; and the sudden, somewhat brutal disclosure opened her eyes widely indeed. She set herself to see and estimate from her husband’s standpoint, to gauge the extent of the justice that had launched his pent-up outburst, and, upon a paltry misunderstanding, loosed these tremendous charges, hugged up and hidden within his heart till now. She ignored the cruel manner of his assault, and felt her heart beat in fear at this shadow of a master passion. Jealousy was its name, and an accident of lonely hours with the demon had suffered it to overwhelm him, tear him, dominate him thus.
The thread of the woman’s thoughts need not be traced as she strove with these tangles, and slowly restored the ravelled skein. That Myles would regret this hurricane she knew; that he would ask her forgiveness, and probably desire her to disregard his demands she suspected. Self-control was a garment that her husband could scarcely discard for long, even in sickness; the amazing thing was that it should have proved a garment at all; for Honor always believed it as much a part of Myles as his other characteristics. Meantime she asked herself her duty, and justice spoke, while the woman listened without impatience.
She understood in some degree the strenuousness of many male characters upon the subject of ethics; she conceded that men of her husband’s stamp thought and felt more deeply than most women; and she knew that her own sense of proportion, or sense of humour—which often amounts to the same thing—had inclined her, rightly or wrongly, to view all relations of life from an impersonal standpoint, including even those affairs in which she herself participated.
She knew the absolute innocence of her inmost soul with respect to Christopher, and her face flamed here at the thought that her husband had dared to fear for her honour and his own. But she resolutely identified her thoughts with his attitude; she reminded herself that Myles was a bad student of character, and quite unable to see the real nature of Christopher Yeoland, or understand him as she did. Her brain grew tired at last, and pity led to tears; but the nature of the pity was uncertain, and whether she cried for herself, for her husband, or for both, Honor could not have declared with any certainty.
That evening, while Mark Endicott was with Myles and his wife sat alone in her parlour, Christopher Yeoland strolled up to the farm with a parcel forgotten and left in his vehicle. The master of Godleigh stayed for a brief chat, made inquiries after Stapledon, and very quickly discovered that his companion laboured under some secret emotion. Honor thereupon changed her mind. She had not intended to whisper a hint of her tragic discovery, but the other’s ready sympathy proved too much for her reserve. Moreover, there was a thought in her that perhaps the sooner Yeoland knew the truth the better. She told him a little of what had happened and attributed it to her husband’s great present weakness; yet the thing sounded graver spoken aloud, even in her very guarded version, and Christopher’s forehead showed that he, too, held it serious.
“Of course he didn’t mean it,” she concluded; “and to-morrow he will be sorry for having spoken so. But I’m afraid that dear Myles will never understand that we are different from other people.”
“You think we are?”
“I know we are. Surely we have proved that to one another, if not to the world.”
“We can’t expect people to take us at our own valuation. This row comes appositely in a way. God knows the truth, but all the same, perhaps the position is impracticable. The world would say that Myles was right, and that we were too—too original. Only what’s to be done? Of course he can’t forbid us to speak to one another—that’s absurd. But, for some reason, our friendship makes him a miserable man. He’s let that out to-night, poor dear chap.”
“I wish I could understand his attitude; but I must make myself understand it, Christo. It is my duty.”
“I believe I do know what he feels. It’s pride more than jealousy. His mind is too well hung to be jealous, but pride is the bait to catch all big natures. He doesn’t like to feel any other man has the power to please you.”
“But remember the basis of our friendship. It must make a difference. And I have always been so frank. He knew—none better—what we were each to the other once; and he knows that I am fond of you and always must be so.”
“Exactly; and that’s not knowledge to make him particularly happy. We have accentuated it of late, and hurt him. He sees perils and troubles ahead that don’t really exist—mere phantoms—yet, from his point of view, they look real enough. He cannot see, and so there’s probably a growing inclination on his part to kick me out of Little Silver, if such a thing could be done. Yes, I appreciate his attitude, though he can’t appreciate mine. It comes to this: my deep content in your society is making him very angry—and worse than angry. He’s turning by slow degrees into a volcano. To-day came the first little eruption—a mere nothing. Myles will regret it, and to-morrow bank up the fire again in his usual Spartan way; but he is powerless to prevent the sequel. There may be a regular Pompeii and Herculaneum presently. Your husband is built that way, though I never guessed it. If you were mine, and he was in my position, I should not turn a hair, knowing you and knowing him; but he is different. He doesn’t know me at all, and he doesn’t know you as well as I do. He must be blind to a nature like yours by the accident of his own personal temperament.”
“He understands me, I am sure—at least, I think so.”
“Not all round. But that’s beside the mark. The question is, What next?”
“No question at all. My whole life and soul must be devoted to making him happy in spite of himself.”
“And what must I do?”
She did not answer, and before need of a definite decision and the necessity for action, Christopher fell back upon his customary methods.
“Obviously I must do nothing. Least done soonest mended—a proverb quite as wise as the one I found it on; for deeds make more bother in the world than the loudest words. I shall let Time try his hand. It will probably come out all right when Myles gets well. He’s so sane in most things—only there’s my volcano theory, I tell you what; I’ll speak to your uncle and ask him if he sees any difficulty.”
“Can’t you make up your mind yourself?”
“No—unless you express a wish. Otherwise I shall go on as I am going. I’ll see Mr. Endicott, and when Myles is fit again I’ll see him. Yes, that’s the road of wisdom. I’ll meet him and say, ‘Now, old chap, explode and give me the full force of the discharge. Tell me what you mean and what you want.’”
Honor, for her part, found loyalty wakened rather than weakened by her husband’s remonstrances. She desired to return to him—to get back to his heart. Christopher wearied her just now, and when Mark Endicott entered from the sick-room, Honor bid Yeoland farewell and hastened to Myles.
Yeoland chatted awhile, shared some spirit and water with the blind man, and then, on a sudden, after private determination to do no such thing, broached the problem in his mind.
“Look here,” he said; “I’ve had a nasty jar to-night, Mr. Endicott, and I’m in no end of a muddle. You know that I’m a well-meaning brute in my way, even granted that the way is generally wrong. But I wouldn’t really hurt a fly, whereas now, in blissful ignorance, I’ve done worse. I’ve hurt a man—-a man I feel the greatest respect for—the husband of my best friend in the world. It’s jolly trying, because he and I are built so differently. There’s an inclination on his part to turn this thing into the three-volume form apparently. It’s such ghastly rot when you think of what I really am. In plain English, Stapledon doesn’t like his wife to see so much of me. She only discovered this deplorable fact to-day, and it bewildered her as much as it staggered me. Heaven’s my judge, I never guessed that he was looking at me so. Nor did Honor. Such kindred spirits as we are—and now, in a moment of weakness, the man bid her see me no more! Of course, he’s too big to go in for small nonsense of that kind, and he’ll withdraw such an absurd remark as soon as he’s cool again; but straws show which way the wind blows, and I want to get at my duty. Tell me that, and I’ll call you blessed.”
“What is Honor to you?”
“The best part of my life, if you must know—on the highest plane of it.”
“Don’t talk about ‘planes’! That’s all tom-foolery! You’re a wholesome, healthy man and woman—anyway, other people must assume so. I’ll give you credit for believing yourself, however. I’ll even allow your twaddle about planes does mean something to you, because honestly you seem deficient—degenerate as far as your flesh is concerned. All the same, Stapledon is right in resenting this arrangement with all his heart and soul. His patience has amazed me. Two men can’t share a woman under our present system of civilisation.”
“Which is to say a wife may not have any other intellectual kindred spirit but her husband. D’you mean that?”
“No, I don’t. I mean that when a man openly says that a woman is the best part of his life, her husband can’t be blamed for resenting it.”
“But what’s the good of lying about the thing? Surely circumstances alter cases? It was always so. He knew that Honor and I loved each other in our queer way long before he came on the scene. She can’t stop loving me because she has married him.”
“It isn’t easy to argue with you, Yeoland,” answered Mark quietly; “but this I see clearly: your very attitude towards the position proclaims you a man of most unbalanced mind. There’s a curious kink in your nature—that is if you’re not acting. Suppose Honor was your wife and she found greater pleasure in the society of somebody else, and gradually, ignorantly, quite unconsciously slipped away and away from you; imperceptibly, remember—so subtly that she didn’t know it herself—that nobody but you knew it. How much of that would you suffer without a protest?”
“I shouldn’t bother—not if she was happy. That’s the point, you see: her happiness. I constitute it in some measure—eh? Or let us say that I contribute to it. Then why need he be so savage? Surely her happiness is his great ambition too?”
“Granted. Put the world and common sense and seemliness on one side. They don’t carry weight with you. Her happiness then—her lasting happiness—not the trumpery pleasure of to-day and to-morrow.”
“Is it wise to look much beyond to-morrow when ‘happiness’ is the thing to be sought?”
“Perhaps not—as you understand it—so we’ll say ‘content.’ Happiness is a fool’s goal at best. You love Honor, and you desire for her peace of mind and a steadfast outlook founded on a basis strong enough to stand against the storms and sorrows of life. I assume that.”
“I desire for her the glory of life and the fulness thereof.”
“You must be vague, I suppose; but I won’t be, since this is a very vital matter. I don’t speak without sympathy for you either; but, in common with the two of you—Myles and yourself—this silly woman is uppermost in my mind—her and her good. So, since you ask, I tell you I’m disappointed with you; you’ve falsified my predictions of late, and your present relations with Honor have drifted into a flat wrong against her husband, though you may be on a plane as high as heaven, in your own flabby imagination. This friendship is not a thing settled, defined, marked off all round by boundaries. No friendship stands still, any more than anything else in the universe. Even if you’re built of uncommon mud, lack your share of nature, and can philander to the end of the chapter without going further, or thinking further, that is no reason why you should do so. The husband of her can’t be supposed to understand that you’re a mere curiosity with peculiar machinery inside you. He gives you the credit of being an ordinary man, or denies you the credit of being an extraordinary one, which you please. So it’s summed up in a dozen words: either see a great deal less of Honor, or, if you can’t breathe the same air with her apart from her, go away, as an honourable man must, and put the rim of the world between you. Try to live apart, and let that be the gauge of your true feeling. If you can bide at Godleigh happy from month to month without sight of her or sound of her voice, then I’ll allow you are all you claim to be and give you a plane all to yourself above the sun; but if you find you can do no such thing, then she’s more to you by far than the wife of another man ought to be, and you’re not so abnormal as you reckon yourself. This is going right back upon your renunciation in the beginning—as pitiful a thing as ever I heard tell about.”
“Stay here and never see her! How would you like it? I mean—you see and hear with the mind, though your eyes are dark. Of course I couldn’t do that. What’s Godleigh compared to her?”
“And still you say that sight of her and sound of her voice is all you want to round and complete your life?
“Emphatically.”
“You’re a fool to say so.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“Nor would any other body. Least of all her husband.”
“A man not soaked in earth would.”
“Find him, then. Human nature isn’t going to put off its garment at your bidding. If you’re only half-baked—that’s your misfortune, or privilege. You’ll have to be judged by ordinary standards nevertheless.”
“Then I must leave the land of my fathers—I must go away from Godleigh because a man misunderstands me?”
“You must go away from Godleigh because, on your own showing, you can’t stop in it without the constant companionship of another man’s wife.”
“What a brute you’d make me! That’s absolutely false in the spirit, if true in the letter. The letter killeth. You to heave such a millstone!”
“You’re a poorer creature than I thought,” answered Mark sternly, “much poorer. Yet even you will allow perhaps that it is to her relations with her husband, not her relations with you, that Honor Endicott must look for lasting peace—if she’s to have it.”
“Yet I have made her happier by coming back into her life.”
“It’s doubtful. In one way yes, because you did things by halves—went out of her life and then came back into it at the wrong moment. I won’t stop to point out the probable course of events if you had kept away altogether; that might not be fair to you perhaps, though I marvel you missed the lesson and have forgotten the punishment so soon. Coming back to her, ghost-haunted as she was, you did make her happier, for you lifted the horror of fear and superstition from her. But now her lasting content is the theme. How does your presence here contribute to that?”
“It would very considerably if Stapledon was different.”
“Or if he was dead—or if—a thousand ‘ifs.’ But Stapledon is Stapledon. So what are you going to do with the advice I’ve given you?”
“Not use it, I assure you. Consider what it means to drive me away from Godleigh!”
“For her lasting content.”
“I don’t know about that. Of course, if it could be proved.”
“You do know; and it has been proved.”
“Not to my satisfaction. I resent your putting me in a separate compartment, as if I was a new sort of beast or a quaint hybrid. I’m a very ordinary man—not a phenomenon—and there are plenty more people in the world who think and act as I do.”
“Go and join them, then,” said Mr. Endicott, “for your own peace of mind and hers. Get out of her life; and remember that there’s only one way—that leading from here. I’m sorry for you, but you’ll live to know I’ve spoken the truth, unless your conscience was forgotten, too, when the Lord fashioned you.”
Yeoland grumbled a little; then he brightened up.
“My first thought was best,” he said. “I should not have bothered you with all this nonsense, for it really is nonsense when you think of it seriously. I should have stuck to my resolve—to see Myles himself and thrash this out, man to man. And so I will the moment he’s up to it. The truth is, we’re all taking ourselves much too seriously, which is absurd. Good-night, my dear sir. And thank you for your wisdom; but I’ll see Stapledon—that is the proper way.”