He had always been quiet, but in the days of his power it had been the quietness, trained and confident, of a high functionary, the quietness of Hector Rose. Now it had changed; it had the special quality that you see in one who has learned something from life and who has lost his high spirits during the lesson. His interest had become passive. Sitting in the darkness of his room, looking out of the window at the court brilliant in the rain-clear sunlight, he had none of the authority of action that men like Luke carried on their brow.
But he was happy. It was a curious kind of happiness that had come upon him almost without his knowing it. It occurred to me that I had seen others make renunciations similar in kind to his: in each case they gained happiness. It might have been otherwise, it might have been one of the ironies of the human condition that, when you throw away the game with a chance of winning it, you regret it ever after: but, in the cases I had seen, it proved the contrary.
I was glad that he should be happy. Suddenly I thought that, hoping so much for him, with the fraternal concern that identified myself in him, I had worried little about his happiness. Even now — in the room where he had first mentioned the proof of fission, which had led us both to the fringe of such events as had darkened our consciences and given him the chance of secret power — he could not, now that he had resigned the power and found his happiness, share any part of it with me.
My concern for him had, in the midst of those convulsions, shown the flaw which exists in any of its kind, which, if we had been luckier, might not have come out so clear.
If we had been luckier, if events had not taken hold of us, there might have been no occasion for him to tell me, as he had done in St James’s Street, when I said that I had wanted much for him:
‘No. You have wanted a good deal for yourself.’
It was the truth; it was the reason why the most sacrificial of human affections twist into the most self-seeking of all. It can cripple those who receive it, and those who give can never find anything of what they seek.
I had looked to him to go the way I chose for him. In the Sawbridge affair, he had done the opposite, and, whichever of us was right in the abstract, that was why I had felt it like a betrayal. It was clear now. As men went, we were sensible and did not expect over much from human beings: but events had taken hold of us, and had shown up the nature of my concern.
As Irene perceived, with the insight of jealousy, the time came when he had to cut himself quite free.
If you identify yourself in another, however tough the tie between you, he cannot feel as you do, and then you go through (you who have been living your life in another) a state for which the old Japanese found a name, which they used to describe the sadness of a parent’s love: a darkness of the heart.
I ought to have known it, for my mother had tried to relive her life in me; and I had not been able to return that kind of love. I too had been compelled to cut myself quite free.
It was a little thing, the human price that Martin and I had paid, as a result of those events which Hector Rose called ‘too big for men’ — and yet that was what I thought of sitting in that dark room, the sky brilliant over the roofs opposite, waiting for the college bell. Through being forced together in our corner of those events, I had out of the nature of my affection done him harm. I had brought some sadness on myself. We were both too realistic to expect that our intimacy could be complete again.
The dinner bell began to toll, Martin gave an indrawn, sarcastic smile. As we stood up I was thinking that, though we had paid our modest price, we had regained most of the ease of old habit in each other’s company. We were on our way to repairing something of what had happened between us. Of the human relations I had so far known, I had found, despite our mistakes, none more steady and comforting than that with my brother; I hoped that in time he would feel the same.