“If I look at myself,” he said, “I think I am another person altogether.”
“You have changed,” she agreed, looking at him sadly. “There is a great change — but you are not another person. I often think — there is one of his old looks, he is just the same at the bottom!”
They embarked on a barge of gloomy recollections and drifted along the soiled canal of their past.
“The worst of it is,” he said, “I have got a miserable carelessness, a contempt for things. You know I had such a faculty for reverence. I always believed in things.”
“I know you did,” she smiled. “You were so humblyminded — too humbly-minded, I always considered. You always thought things had a deep religious meaning, somewhere hidden, and you reverenced them. Is it different now?”
“You know me very well,” he laughed. “What is there left for me to believe in, if not in myself?”
“You have to live for your wife and children,” she said with firmness.
“Meg has plenty to secure her and the children as long as they live,” he said, smiling. “So I don’t know that I’m essential.”
“But you are,” she replied. “You are necessary as a father and a husband, if not as a provider.”
“I think,” said he, “marriage is more of a duel than a duet. One party wins and takes the other captive, slave, servant — what you like. It is so, more or less.”
“Well?” said Lettie.
“Well!” he answered. “Meg is not like you. She wants me, part of me, so she’d kill me rather than let me go loose.”
“Oh, no!” said Lettie, emphatically.
“You know nothing about it,” he said quietly.
“In the marital duel Meg is winning. The woman generally does; she has the children on her side. I can’t give her any of the real part of me, the vital part that she wants — I can’t, any more than you could give kisses to a stranger. And I feel that I’m losing — and don’t care.”
“No,” she said, “you are getting morbid.”
He put the cigarette between his lips, drew a deep breath, then slowly sent the smoke down his nostrils.
“No,” he said.
“Look here!” she said. “Let me sing to you, shall I, and make you cheerful again?”
She sang from Wagner. It was the music of resignation and despair. She had not thought of it. All the time he listened he was thinking. The music stimulated his thoughts and illuminated the trend of his brooding. All the time he sat looking at her his eyes were dark with his thoughts. She finished the “Star of Eve” from Tannhäuser and came over to him.
“Why are you so sad tonight, when it is my birthday?” she asked plaintively.
“Am I slow?” he replied. “I am sorry.”
“What is the matter?” she said, sinking onto the small sofa near to him.
“Nothing!” he replied —“You are looking very beautiful.”
“There, I wanted you to say that! You ought to be quite gay, you know, when I am so smart tonight.”
“Nay,” he said, “I know I ought. But the tomorrow seems to have fallen in love with me. I can’t get out of its lean arms.”
“Why!” she said. “Tomorrow’s arms are not lean. They are white, like mine.” She lifted her arms and looked at them, smiling.
“How do you know?” he asked, pertinently.
“Oh, of course they are,” was her light answer.
He laughed, brief and sceptical.
“No!” he said. “It came when the children kissed us.”
“What?” she asked.
“These lean arms of tomorrow’s round me, and the white arms round you,” he replied, smiling whimsically. She reached out and clasped his hand.
“You foolish boy,” she said.
He laughed painfully, not able to look at her.
“You know,” he said, and his voice was low and difficult “I have needed you for a light. You will soon be the only light again.”
“Who is the other?” she asked.
“My little girl!” he answered. Then he continued, “And you know, I couldn’t endure complete darkness, I couldn’t. It’s the solitariness.”
“You mustn’t talk like this,” she said. “You know you mustn’t.” She put her hand on his head and ran her fingers through the hair he had so ruffled.
“It is as thick as ever, your hair,” she said.
He did not answer, but kept his face bent out of sight. She rose from her seat and stood at the back of his low armchair. Taking an amber comb from her hair, she bent over him, and with the translucent comb and her white fingers she busied herself with his hair.
“I believe you would have a parting,” she said softly.
He laughed shortly at her playfulness. She continued combing, just touching, pressing the strands in place with the tips of her fingers.
“I was only a warmth to you,” he said, pursuing the same train of thought. “So you could do without me. But you were like the light to me, and otherwise it was dark and aimless. Aimlessness is horrible.”
She had finally smoothed his hair, so she lifted her hands and put back her head.
“There!” she said. “It looks fair fine, as Alice would say. Raven’s wings are raggy in comparison.”
He did not pay any attention to her.
“Aren’t you going to look at yourself?” she said, playfully reproachful. She put her finger-tips under his chin. He lifted his head and they looked at each other, she smiling, trying to make him play, he smiling with his lips, but not with eyes, dark with pain.
“We can’t go on like this, Lettie, can we?” he said softly. “Yes,” she answered him, “Yes; why not?”
“It can’t!” he said, “it can’t, I couldn’t keep it up, Lettie.”
“But don’t think about it,” she answered. “Don’t think of it.”
“Lettie,” he said. “I have to set my teeth with loneliness.”
“Hush!” she said. “No! There are the children. Don’t say anything — do not be serious, will you?”
“No, there are the children,” he replied, smiling dimly.
“Yes! Hush now! Stand up and look what a fine parting I have made in your hair. Stand up, and see if my style becomes you.”
“It is no good, Lettie,” he said, “we can’t go on.”
“Oh, but come, come, come!” she exclaimed. “We are not talking about going on; we are considering what a fine parting I have made down the middle, like two wings of a spread bird —” she looked down, smiling playfully on him, just closing her eyes slightly in petition.
He rose and took a deep breath, and set his shoulders.
“No,” he said, and at the sound of his voice, Lettie went pale and also stiffened herself.
“No!” he repeated. “It is impossible. I felt as soon as Fred came into the room — it must be one way or another.”
“Very well then,” said Lettie, coldly. Her voice was “muted” like a violin.