Man is a strange creature, Mr Wexford. He has lifted himself so far above his fellow animals that Darwin’s Theory seems fantastic to him, a monstrous libel. And yet he still shares with them his strongest instinct, selfpreservation. The whole world may lie in ruins about him.
but still he looks for a corner to run into and clings to his hope that it can never, no matter what bombardment he has suffered, be too late.
At that moment I loathed Georgina. I could have beaten her to death. But I told myself that what had happened was my fault. I had done it. I did it when I went to that party so many years ago. So, instead of doing violence to her, I took her in my arms and smelt Elizabeth’s blood in her hair and under her fingernails.
I washed the torch myself and threw away the wet batteries. I ran a bath for Georgina and told her to wash her hair. The skirt she had been wearing and her shirt I burned on the kitchen boiler.
I could not see why you should suspect Georgina, for she had no apparent motive, and that is why I grew hysterical when you brought us the news of the will. To arrest my wife and convict her for the wrong motive! That would have been the ultimate irony.
She was very nervous, very bad at countering your attacks. When we were alone she told me she would like to confess, for you or any right-thinking person would understand. I prevented her. I thought we still had a chance. Then you quoted Lara to me and I began to make notes in preparation for this statement.
It is all over now.
You will, I am sure, be gentle with Georgina, and I know that during her trial every newspaper reader in this country will be for her heart and soul, as well as those more significant arbiters, the judge and jury. She will go to prison for two or three years and then one day she will marry again, have the children she needs and the normal quiet life she wants.
June re-married long ago. Soon Quentin will have his little Dutch girl as chatelaine of Myfleet and, if she is unfaithful to him, it will be a natural run-of-the-mill infidelity that my kind brother will bear with a perhaps not too painful fortitude. As for Elizabeth, she died at the height of her love and her triumph and just in time to avoid the bitterness of growing old.
Indeed, one might say with Wilde that the good ended happily and the bad unhappily, for that is the meaning of fiction. Perhaps it should also be the meaning of fact. In other words, I have my deserts. I have no idea what I shall do, but I think it unlikely that after the trial any authority will wish to employ me on its teaching staff.
I care very little about that. I think I can bear scandal without too much distress, and if people shun me I can do without people. The one person I cannot do without I shall never see again, and this thing which is unbearable I must bear. I shall never again kiss her in the dark forest or among the shadows of the Old House or see her dressed in white velvet or hear her name spoken with admiration. She is dead and her death is for me the ultimate irreparable mutilation.
Your inspector asked me what I wanted and nothing has happened to make me change my answer. I want to die.