“Wouldn’t you like to have children like these?”
She had flushed, then paled as from a sudden hurt.
“They are sweet.” She avoided his question. “So completely natural and unspoiled.”
Why—why—why should she refuse his love, the children he could give her, and all the immense advantages of his wealth and position? Above all, what could the alternative offer? That same afternoon, when they took their favourite walk along the high ridge of the Riesenthal, he kept asking himself these questions with a kind of brooding, desperate despondency induced for the first time by a gleam, a breaking through so to speak, a compelled recognition that there must be something in her point of view. And although a truce had been declared between them, as they strode along the high path between the silver-dusted pine trees he could hold back no longer.
“Dearest Kathy, I’ve no wish to reopen our wounds, but it would help to—to soothe mine, if only I could get a fuller understanding of your motives. Are you leaving me mainly because you have pledged your word?”
“Partly for that reason,” she answered, walking with lowered head. “But also for another.”
“What other?”
“As I told you, because of what I believe is demanded of all of us. We’re living at a terrible time, David. We just seem to be drifting towards self-destruction, moral and physical. Beneath the surface we’re all terrified. Yet the world keeps moving away from God. We’ll never get through unless everyone, every single person does something about it, each his own part, no matter how small. Oh, I’m not clever, but it’s so obvious, what Uncle Willie says—that we must prove love is stronger than hatred—show that courage, self-denial, and above all charity, can defeat brutality, selfishness and fear.”
Mentally he had made the state of the world taboo, except to reflect that it would see him out. But in spite of this he was impressed—who wouldn’t have been by such ingenuous fervour?
“So because of your ideas of—of duty and service, you condemn yourself to a life of hardship and misery.”
“Misery?” Quickly she raised her head in protest. “You can’t imagine the personal rewards of such a life.”
“A life of self-sacrifice.”
“It’s the only way life can be lived. Nowadays especially.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I was never more in earnest. Wait till you see Uncle Willie. He’s had what you might think of as a miserable time, and a great deal of illness, but he’s the happiest person in the world.”
He was silent. This hitherto had been beyond him, something outside his conception of life. Could one really be happy out there, doing good, in that confounded wilderness? He asked himself the question with a sense of growing agitation.
“And there’s more than happiness,” she went on, with difficulty, still striving to express herself. “There’s contentment and peace of mind and a sense of accomplishment. One can never get these by enjoying oneself, by running after pleasure all the time, shutting one’s eyes to the agony of others. And they certainly can’t be bought. But if one does a really fine job, something to benefit other people—people in need . . . Oh, I’m no good at explaining things, but surely you understand what I mean . . .”. She broke off. “If you had practised as a doctor you would know . . . and I think—please forgive me, David—I’m sure you would have been a much happier man.”
Again he kept silence, biting his lip, and switching with his steel-pointed stick at the iced lumps of snow turned back by the passage of farm wagons. She was enunciating, naively, a humanitarian cliché. And yet, wasn’t there more than a grain of truth in what she said? In the pursuit of the rewards of this world, had he found anything but heartache, ennui, recurrent dissatisfactions and regrets, and a bunch of neurotic complexes which had more than once brought him to the verge of a breakdown?
“Dear Kathy!” With sudden self-pity and a rush of sentiment. “I’ve always wanted to be good, and to do good, but circumstances have been too much for me.”
“You are good,” she said earnestly. “It’s—it’s looking out of your face. You only need the opportunity to prove it to yourself.”
“Do you honestly believe that?”
“With all my heart.”
“My God, Kathy—if you knew what my life had been, what I’ve endured until . . . well, virtually, until I met you.” Emotionally, he went on: “As a young man, in India, trapped—yes, literally trapped—into a disastrous marriage and then, for years, the American treadmill, trying to get on . . . on . . . on, finding some refuge in the arts, but only a temporary respite, make-believe, really never achieving true satisfaction though deluding myself that I had. It all springs from my poor unwanted childhood. The whole tree of my life, roots, stem, and branch, was formed then. I’ve been told,” he refrained from mentioning Wilenski, “I know it too, all my present being comes from those early years when I had nobody but myself.”
“All that you’ve said only convinces me that you still can do great things.”
He was too moved to reply and they continued in constrained silence. But her words vibrated in his mind and he felt that she was right—the potential for high achievement still lay within him. What was that line? “Do noble deeds, not dream them all day long.” He remembered suddenly the last advice Wilenski had given him on leaving New York: “When you get over there, for heaven’s sake find yourself something worthwhile to do, something to do with other people, that’ll take your mind off yourself.” Why had he ignored, forgotten this? It had taken Kathy to remind him. Her sweetness and goodness, the purity of her being—he did not shrink from the phrase—had worked on him unconsciously, affected him without his knowing it. How could it have been otherwise?
He was about to speak when, looking up, he saw they had reached the mountain hut where on a previous occasion they had stopped for coffee. It was a poor brew made from some inferior powder, but it was hot, Kathy had appeared to like it, and the peasant woman, skirt kilted over her striped petticoat, was already welcoming them. They sat down on the wooden terrace, in the cold sunshine, both conscious of something momentous and unavoidable developing between them. Nervously, he began drumming on the table, took a quick incautious sip of coffee, spilling it slightly, for his hand shook, then said suddenly:
“I do admit, Kathy, that everyone ought to have some worthy objective in life. I had hoped to find it in devoting myself to you here. But now—it begins to seem as though something more is being demanded of me.”
“What, David?” Her lips were trembling.
“Can’t you guess? You’re the one who’s made me feel it, not only by speaking out now, but simply by your presence. Kathy,” he murmured, in a low, reaching-out voice, “all other considerations apart, do you really need me?”
She looked at him, drawn beyond endurance.
“How can you ask that?” Then with a sudden weakening of control, pitifully avoiding his eyes: “I need you so much . . . I want you to come with me.”
It was out at last, she had been forced to say it, the unspoken longing that until now she had kept locked up within her breast. He gazed at her in a shaken silence of revelation, realising that he had wanted and waited for that plea through all these recent days of strain.