第52章 THE EIGHTH(1)

FULL MOON

Section 1

Sir Richmond had talked in the moonlight and shadows of having found such happiness as he could not have imagined.

But when he awoke in the night that happiness had evaporated.

He awoke suddenly out of this love dream that had lasted now for nearly four days and he awoke in a mood of astonishment and dismay.

He had thought that when he parted from Dr.Martineau he had parted also from that process of self-exploration that they had started together, but now he awakened to find it established and in full activity in his mind.Something or someone, a sort of etherealized Martineau-Hardy, an abstracted intellectual conscience, was demanding what he thought he was doing with Miss Grammont and whither he thought he was taking her, how he proposed to reconcile the close relationship with her that he was now embarked upon with, in the first place, his work upon and engagements with the Fuel Commission, and, in the second place, Martin Leeds.

Curiously enough Lady Hardy didn't come into the case at all.

He had done his utmost to keep Martin Leeds out of his head throughout the development of this affair.Now in an unruly and determined way that was extremely characteristic of her she seemed resolute to break in.

She appeared as an advocate, without affection for her client but without any hostility, of the claims of Miss Grammont to be let alone.The elaborate pretence that Sir Richmond had maintained to himself that he had not made love to Miss Grammont, that their mutual attraction had been irresistible and had achieved its end in spite of their resolute and complete detachment, collapsed and vanished from his mind.He admitted to himself that driven by a kind of instinctive necessity he had led their conversation step by step to a realization and declaration of love, and that it did not exonerate him in the least that Miss Grammont had been quite ready and willing to help him and meet him half way.She wanted love as a woman does, more than a man does, and he had steadily presented himself as a man free to love, able to love and loving.

"She wanted a man to love, she wanted perfected fellowship, and you have made her that tremendous promise.That was implicit in your embrace.And how can you keep that promise?"It was as if Martin spoke; it was her voice; it was the very quality of her thought.

"You belong to this work of yours, which must needs be interrupted or abandoned if you take her.Whatever is not mortgaged to your work is mortgaged to me.For the strange thing in all this is that you and I love one another--and have no power to do otherwise.In spite of all this.

"You have nothing to give her but stolen goods," said the shadow of Martin."You have nothing to give anyone personally any more....

"Think of the love that she desires and think of this love that you can give....

"Is there any new thing in you that you can give her that you haven't given me? You and I know each other very well;perhaps I know YOU too well.Haven't you loved me as much as you can love anyone? Think of all that there has been between us that you are ready now, eager now to set aside and forget as though it had never been.For four days you have kept me out of your mind in order to worship her.Yet you have known I was there--for all you would not know.No one else will ever be so intimate with you as I am.We have quarrelled together, wept together, jested happily and jested bitterly.

You have spared me not at all.Pitiless and cruel you have been to me.You have reckoned up all my faults against me as though they were sins.You have treated me at times unlovingly--never was lover treated so unlovingly as you have sometimes treated me.And yet I have your love--as no other woman can ever have it.Even now when you are wildly in love with this girl's freshness and boldness and cleverness I come into your mind by right and necessity.""She is different," argued Sir Richmond.

"But you are the same," said the shadow of Martin with Martin's unsparing return."Your love has never been a steadfast thing.It comes and goes like the wind.You are an extravagantly imperfect lover.But I have learnt to accept you, as people accept the English weather....Never in all your life have you loved, wholly, fully, steadfastly--as people deserve to be loved--,not your mother nor your father, not your wife nor your children, nor me, nor our child, nor any living thing.Pleasant to all of us at times--at times bitterly disappointing.You do not even love this work of yours steadfastly, this work to which you sacrifice us all in turn.You do not love enough.That is why you have these moods and changes, that is why you have these lassitudes.So it is you are made....

"And that is why you must not take this brave young life, so much simpler and braver than your own, and exalt it--as you can do--and then fail it, as you will do...."Sir Richmond's mind and body lay very still for a time.

"Should I fail her?..."

For a time Martin Leeds passed from the foreground of his mind.

He was astonished to think how planless, instinctive and unforeseeing his treatment of Miss Grammont had been.It had been just a blind drive to get hold of her and possess her....

Suddenly his passion for her became active in its defence again.