With Julia it was almost worse. She asked him to go and see her one evening. This was after she had heard, from Rosemary, of Mr Erksine's offer of a job. The dreadful thing with Julia was that she understood nothing, absolutely nothing, of his motives. All she understood was that a 'good' job had been offered him and that he had refused it. She implored him almost on her knees not to throw this chance away. And when he told her that his mind was made up, she wept, actually wept. That was dreadful. The poor goose–like girl, with streaks of grey in her hair, weeping without grace or dignity in her little Drage–furnished bed–sitting room! This was the death of all her hopes. She had watched the family go down and down, moneyless and childless, into grey obscurity. Gordon alone had had it in him to succeed; and he, from mad perverseness, would not. He knew what she was thinking; he had to induce in himself a kind of brutality to stand firm. It was only because of Rosemary and Julia that he cared. Ravelston did not matter, because Ravelston understood. Aunt Angela and Uncle Walter, of course, were bleating weakly at him in long, fatuous letters. But them he disregarded.
In desperation Julia asked him, what did he mean to DO now that he had flung away his last chance of succeeding in life. He answered simply, 'My poems.' He had said the same to Rosemary and to Ravelston. With Ravelston the answer had sufficed. Rosemary had no longer any belief in his poems, but she would not say so. As for Julia, his poems had never at any time meant anything to her. 'I don't see much sense in writing if you can't make money out of it,' was what she had always said. And he himself did not believe in his poems any longer. But he still struggled to 'write', at least at times. Soon after he changed his lodgings he had copied out on to clean sheets the completed portions of London Pleasures— not quite four hundred lines, he discovered. Even the labour of copying it out was a deadly bore. Yet he still worked on it occasionally; cutting out a line here, altering another there, not making or even expecting to make any progress. Before long the pages were as they had been before, a scrawled, grimy labyrinth of words. He used to carry the wad of grimy manuscript about with him in his pocket. The feeling of it there upheld him a little; after all it was a kind of achievement, demonstrable to himself though to nobody else. There it was, sole product of two years—of a thousand hours' work, it might be. He had no feeling for it any longer as a poem. The whole concept of poetry was meaningless to him now. It was only that if London Pleasures were ever finished it would be something snatched from fate, a thing created OUTSIDE the money–world. But he knew, far more clearly than before, that it never would be finished. How was it possible that any creative impulse should remain to him, in the life he was living now? As time went on, even the desire to finish London Pleasures vanished. He still carried the manuscript about in his pocket; but it was only a gesture, a symbol of his private war. He had finished for ever with that futile dream of being a 'writer'. After all, was not that too a species of ambition? He wanted to get away from all that, BELOW all that. Down, down! Into the ghost–kingdom, out of the reach of hope, out of the reach of fear! Under ground, under ground! That was where he wished to be.
Yet in a way it was not so easy. One night about nine he was lying on his bed, with the ragged counterpane over his feet, his hands under his head to keep them warm. The fire was out. The dust was thick on everything. The aspidistra had died a week ago and was withering upright in its pot. He slid a shoeless foot from under the counterpane, held it up, and looked at it. His sock was full of holes—there were more holes than sock. So here he lay, Gordon Comstock, in a slum attic on a ragged bed, with his feet sticking out of his socks, with one and fourpence in the world, with three decades behind him and nothing, nothing accomplished! Surely NOW he was past redemption? Surely, try as they would, they couldn't prise him out of a hole like this? He had wanted to reach the mud— well, this was the mud, wasn't it?
Yet he knew that it was not so. That other world, the world of money and success, is always so strangely near. You don't escape it merely by taking refuge in dirt and misery. He had been frightened as well as angry when Rosemary told him about Mr Erskine's offer. It brought the danger so close to him. A letter, a telephone message, and from this squalor he could step straight back into the money–world—back to four quid a week, back to effort and decency and slavery. Going to the devil isn't so easy as it sounds. Sometimes your salvation hunts you down like the Hound of Heaven.
For a while he lay in an almost mindless state, gazing at the ceiling. The utter futility of just lying there, dirty and cold, comforted him a little. But presently he was roused by a light tap at the door. He did not stir. It was Mother Meakin, presumably, though it did not sound like her knock.
'Come in,' he said.
The door opened. It was Rosemary.
She stepped in, and then stopped as the dusty sweetish smell of the room caught her. Even in the bad light of the lamp she could see the state of filth the room was in—the litter of food and papers on the table, the grate full of cold ashes, the foul crocks in the fender, the dead aspidistra. As she came slowly towards the bed she pulled her hat off and threw it on to the chair.
'WHAT a place for you to live in!' she said.
'So you've come back?' he said.
'Yes.'
He turned a little away from her, his arm over his face. 'Come back to lecture me some more, I suppose?'
'No.'
'Then why?'
'Because—'
She had knelt down beside the bed. She pulled his arm away, put her face forward to kiss him, then drew back, surprised, and began to stroke the hair over his temple with the tips of her fingers.
'Oh, Gordon!'
'What?'
'You've got grey in your hair!'
'Have I? Where?'
'Here—over the temple. There's quite a little patch of it. It must have happened all of a sudden.'
'"My golden locks time hath to silver turned,"' he said indifferently.
'So we're both going grey,' she said.
She bent her head to show him the three white hairs on her crown. Then she wriggled herself on to the bed beside him, put an arm under him, pulled him towards her, covered his face with kisses. He let her do it. He did not want this to happen—it was the very thing that he least wanted. But she had wriggled herself beneath him; they were breast to breast. Her body seemed to melt into his. By the expression of her face he knew what had brought her here. After all, she was virgin. She did not know what she was doing. It was magnanimity, pure magnanimity, that moved her. His wretchedness had drawn her back to him. Simply because he was penniless and a failure she had got to yield to him, even if it was only once.
'I had to come back,' she said.
'Why?'
'I couldn't bear to think of you here alone. It seemed so awful, leaving you like that.'
'You did quite right to leave me. You'd much better not have come back. You know we can't ever get married.'
'I don't care. That isn't how one behaves to people one loves. I don't care whether you marry me or not. I love you.'
'This isn't wise,' he said.
'I don't care. I wish I'd done it years ago.'
'We'd much better not.'
'Yes.'
'No.'
'Yes!'
After all, she was too much for him. He had wanted her so long, and he could not stop to weigh the consequences. So it was done at last, without much pleasure, on Mother Meakin's dingy bed. Presently Rosemary got up and rearranged her clothes. The room, though stuffy, was dreadfully cold. They were both shivering a little. She pulled the coverlet further over Gordon. He lay without stirring, his back turned to her, his face hidden against his arm. She knelt down beside the bed, took his other hand, and laid it for a moment against her cheek. He scarcely noticed her. Then she shut the door quietly behind her and tiptoed down the bare, evil–smelling stairs. She felt dismayed, disappointed, and very cold.