“Rot!” said Michael.
Wilfrid went on without heeding: “And yet my whole soul revolts against dying for a gesture that I don’t believe in. Legends and superstitions—I hate the lot. I’d sooner die to give them a death-blow than to keep them alive. If a man tried to force me to torture an animal, to hang another man, to violate a woman, of course I’d die rather than do it. But why the hell should I die to gratify those whom I despise for believing outworn creeds that have been responsible for more misery in the world than any other mortal thing? Why? Eh?”
Michael had recoiled before the passion in this outburst, and was standing miserable and glum.
“Symbol,” he muttered.
“Symbol! For conduct that’s worth standing for, honesty, humanity, courage, I hope I’d stand; I went through with the war, anyway; but why should I stand for what I look on as dead wood?”
“It simply mustn’t come out,” said Michael violently. “I loathe the idea of a lot of swabs looking down their noses at you.”
Wilfrid shrugged. “I look down my nose at myself, I assure you. Never stifle your instinct, Michael.”
“But what are you going to DO?”
“What does it matter what I do? Things will be as they will be. Nobody will understand, or side with me if they did understand. Why should they? I don’t even side with myself.”
“I think lots of people might nowadays.”
“The sort I wouldn’t be seen dead with. No, I’m outcast.”
“And Dinny?”
“I’ll settle that with her.”
Michael took up his hat.
“If there’s anything I can do, count on me. Good night, old man!”
“Good night, and thanks!”
Michael was out of the street before any thinking power returned to him. Wilfrid had been caught, as it were, in a snare! One could see how his rebellious contempt for convention and its types had blinded him to the normal view. But one could not dissociate this or that from the general image of an Englishman: betrayal of one feature would be looked on as betrayal of the whole. As for that queer touch of compassion for his would-be executioner, who would see that who didn’t know Wilfrid? The affair was bitter and tragic. The ‘yellow’ label would be stuck on indiscriminately for all eyes to see.
‘Of course,’ thought Michael, ‘he’ll have his supporters– egomaniacs, and Bolshies, and that’ll make him feel worse than ever.’ Nothing was more galling than to be backed up by people you didn’t understand, and who didn’t understand you. And how was support like that going to help Dinny, more detached from it even than Wilfrid? The whole thing was—!
And with that blunt reflection he crossed Bond Street and went down Hay Hill into Berkeley Square. If he did not see his father before he went home, he would not sleep.
At Mount Street his mother and father were receiving a special pale negus, warranted to cause slumber, from the hands of Blore.
“Catherine?” said Lady Mont: “Measles?”
“No, Mother; I want to have a talk with Dad.”
“About that young man—changin’ his religion. He always gave me a pain—defyin’ the lightnin’, and that.”
Michael stared. “It IS about Wilfrid.”
“Em,” said Sir Lawrence, “this is dead private. Well, Michael?”
“The story’s true; he doesn’t and won’t deny it. Dinny knows.”
“What story?” asked Lady Mont.
“He recanted to some fanatical Arabs on pain of death.”
“What a bore!”
Michael thought swiftly: ‘My God! If only everyone would take that view!’
“D’you mean, then,” said Sir Lawrence, gravely, “that I’ve got to tell Yule there’s no defence?”
Michael nodded.
“But if so, dear boy, it won’t stop there.”
“No, but he’s reckless.”
“The lightnin’,” said Lady Mont, suddenly.
“Exactly, Mother. He’s written a poem on it, and a jolly good one it is. He’s sending it in a new volume to his publisher tomorrow. But, Dad, at any rate, get Yule and Jack Muskham to keep their mouths shut. After all, what business is it of theirs?”
Sir Lawrence shrugged the thin shoulders which at seventy-two were only beginning to suggest age.
“There are two questions, Michael, and so far as I can see they’re quite separate. The first is how to muzzle club gossip. The second concerns Dinny and her people. You say Dinny knows; but her people don’t, except ourselves; and as she didn’t tell us, she won’t tell them. Now that’s not fair. And it’s not wise,” he went on without waiting for an answer, “because this thing’s dead certain to come out later, and they’d never forgive Desert for marrying her without letting them know. I wouldn’t myself, it’s too serious.”
“Agitatin’,” murmured Lady Mont. “Ask Adrian.”
“Better Hilary,” said Sir Lawrence.
Michael broke in: “That second question, Dad, seems to me entirely up to Dinny. She must be told that the story’s in the wind, then either she or Wilfrid will let her people know.”
“If only she’d let him drop her! Surely he can’t want to go on with it, with this story going about?”
“I don’t see Dinny droppin’ him,” murmured Lady Mont. “She’s been too long pickin’ him up. Love’s young dream.”
“Wilfrid said he knew he ought to give her up. Oh! damn!”
“Come back to question one, then, Michael. I can try, but I’m very doubtful, especially if this poem is coming out. What is it, a justification?”
“Or explanation.”
“Bitter and rebellious, like his early stuff?”
Michael nodded.
“Well, they might keep quiet out of charity, but they’ll never stomach that sort of attitude, if I know Jack Muskham. He hates the bravado of modern scepticism like poison.”
“We can’t tell what’s going to happen in any direction, but it seems to me we ought all to play hard for delay.”
“Hope the Hermit,” murmured Lady Mont. “Good night, dear boy; I’m goin’ up. Mind the dog—he’s not been out.”
“Well, I’ll do what I can,” said Sir Lawrence.
Michael received his mother’s kiss, wrung his father’s hand, and went.
He walked home, uneasy and sore at heart, for this concerned two people of whom he was very fond, and he could see no issue that was not full of suffering to both. And continually there came back to him the thought: ‘What should I have done in Wilfrid’s place?’ And he concluded, as he walked, that no man could tell what he would do if he were in the shoes of another man. And so, in the spring wind of a night not devoid of beauty, he came to South Square and let himself in.
CHAPTER 11
Wilfred sat in his rooms with two letters before him, one that he had just written to Dinny, and one that he had just received from her. He stared at the snapshots and tried to think clearly, and since he had been trying to think clearly ever since Michael’s visit of the previous evening, he was the less successful. Why had he chosen this particular moment to fall really in love, to feel that he had found the one person with whom he could bear to think of permanent companionship? He had never intended to marry, he had never supposed he would feel towards women anything but a transient urge that soon died in satisfaction. Even at the height of his infatuation with Fleur he had never supposed it would last. On the whole he was as profoundly sceptical about women as about religion, patriotism, or the qualities popularly attributed to the Englishman. He had thought himself armoured in scepticism, but in his armour was a joint so weak that he had received a fatal thrust. With bitter amusement he perceived that the profound loneliness left by that experience in Darfur had started in him an involuntary craving for spiritual companionship of which Dinny had, as involuntarily, availed herself. The thing that should have kept them apart had brought them together.
After Michael had left he had spent half the night going over and over it, and always coming back to the crude thought that, when all was said and done, he would be set down as a coward. And yet, but for Dinny, would even that matter? What did he care for society and its opinion? What did he care for England and the English? Even if they had prestige, was it deserved, any more than the prestige of any other country? The war had shown all countries and their inhabitants to be pretty much alike, capable of the same heroisms, basenesses, endurance, and absurdities. The war had shown mob feeling in every country to be equally narrow, void of discrimination, and generally contemptible. He was a wanderer by nature, and even if England and the nearer East were closed to him, the world was wide, the sun shone in many places, the stars wheeled over one, books could be read, women had beauty, flowers scent, tobacco its flavour, music its moving power, coffee its fragrance, horses and dogs and birds were the same seductive creatures, and thought and feeling brought an urge to rhythmic expression, almost wherever one went. Save for Dinny he could strike his tent and move out, and let tongues wag behind him! And now he couldn’t! Or could he? Was he not, indeed, in honour bound to? How could he saddle her with a mate at whom fingers were pointed? If she had inspired him with flaming desire, it would have been much simpler; they could have had their fling and parted, and no one the worse. But he had a very different feeling for her. She was like a well of sweet water met with in a desert; a flower with a scent coming up among the dry vegetation of the wilderness. She gave him the reverent longing that some tunes and pictures inspire; roused the same ache of pleasure as the scent of new-mown grass. She was a cool refreshment to a spirit sun-dried, wind-dried, and dark. Was he to give her up because of this damned business?