And I couldn’t get her to take any money.
“Let me roll you a few more cigarettes, at any rate,” I said.
“Very well. You may do that.”
I rolled her a dozen or more, as many as I had tobacco for, and she took them with a friendly nod.
“You’re young,” she said. “Don’t let your wife put upon you, now.”
“Indeed, it’s all the other way. It’s I that put upon her.”
“Don’t you believe it. You’re not the sort. Any woman could fool you.”
It wasn’t unkindly said: and anyway, hadn’t she the right, with death in her face.
“That may be,” I told her. “But the fact remains that I left my wife for another woman, and she forgave me, and I’m going back to her thankfully, now, this very day.”
She shook her head, her eyes still on me.
“You’ll live to be sorry. She’ll never let you forget it.”
“You don’t understand,” I said: and I got up, and slung on my pack.
She still looked at me, and nodded.
“I see her, and I see you. And I’ve done it myself. Stay away from her. It’s good advice I’m giving you.”
I smiled, and shook my head.
“Good-bye now, and good luck.”
“Good-bye. And thank you.”
I went away, and presently, lookingback, I saw her standing there, waiting for the chance of a lift from a passing cart, shabby, derelict, past all injury. A shadow had fallen over the afternoon: I could not recover my mood of an hour ago. The shock of finding her condition seemed to combine with what she had said about going back to Muriel, and reinforce some small cold thing at the bottom of my own mind. I stopped angrily. This is not the point, I told myself. The point was that I had resolved to give up my life to making Muriel happy, at whatever cost to myself, and I was going to do it.
I reached the station at last, and found there was no train to Dublin till half past eight. The signal man was a nice friendly sort: I had some food with me, and he had a little, and we made a meal together in his cabin and talked before I got the train. When it came in, he spoke to the guard for me, and arranged that I should be let sleep on in one of the compartments after the train was put in a siding in Dublin. So I had a goodish night’s rest, turning out at six or thereabouts, and having a spruce up at a wash house and a cup of tea and a piece of bread and butter before I set out for home. And, honestly, I was glad at the thought of it. My step quickened, and a glow filled my heart. A great affection for Muriel possessed me. She had handled me tenderly and lovingly, she had shown forbearance, she had saved me, and here I was, hers, to do as she wished, and find happiness in our new life together. It was a lovely morning. The milkmen were clattering and whistling and talking to their horses. I exchanged words with every one of them. Dogs, newly let out, frisked on the pavements. I could hardly keep from running. I loved the world, and my heart was washed clean.
I came into our road, and looked at the house. It was shut, and the blinds drawn, as was natural: yet something looked wrong. I stared for a few seconds before I saw what it was. Our bedroom window—Muriel always had the top open the exact amount that her parents kept theirs. It was shut.
I unlocked the door, and it opened with an unnatural slither: I looked down, and saw half a dozen letters scattered on the floor. It was too early for the morning’s post. These were yesterday’s: and the day before’s: and one from the day before that. I put my pack down, and ran up the stairs three at a time. Our room was empty, the coverlet stiff and cold on the bed. I called “Muriel” softly, then out loud, and the mad thought struck me that this was like looking for Mary.
Nonsense, I said to myself. She has gone to stay with her parents. What a fool you are. I laughed, and went down the stairs. That was it, of course. I stood in the open doorway, wondering what to do, whether to go and let her know I was back, and have breakfast there, or to make myself some in the kitchen and go on later. I didn’t much want the Travers to be in on this. What had Muriel told them, anyway? She wasn’t good at keeping things from them. Suppose they had got it out of her, and talked her round, as they so often did before? Suppose they had turned her against me?
I looked up, and saw the milkman, in the road outside the gate, staring at me as if I were a ghost.
“Good morning,” I called to him.
He opened and shut his mouth. He took a step towards me, then stopped. I walked down to the gate.
“I’ve been away on a holiday,” I said. “Got back sooner than I thought.”
Ought I to know that Muriel wasn’t there? Would it be a breach of etiquette, “giving myself away”, to ask? That was the sort of thing I never knew. I decided to risk it.
The man was still staring at me like a fish.
“Has Mrs. Mangan been away long?” I asked him.
The question had a terrible effect on him. His face flushed a dull colour: he backed away from me.
“My God, sir, do you not know?” he said hoarsely. “It’s dead she is.”
As I received this blow—it was just like a blow on the side of the head—I saw the road and the houses give a sideways jump and settle into their new position. I looked at them to see would they do it again. Then my eyes came back to the milkman, and my mind to what he had said.
I shook my head at him.
“No,” I said, “No, no. That can’t be true. You see-”
He began to blubber. “It is true, God help ye, sir. Sure I wouldn’t tell ye a thing like that if——” He couldn’t go on.
I knew it was true then.
“What happened?” I asked him.
He began to choke out something about an accident, but the whole thing was too much for him. He turned and ran to his cart, and drove away.
I got the full story later. The account of the inquest was in the paper of the day before. It had happened on the second night I was away, the night of the rain. Muriel had been to see her mother, and, on her way home, went down into the city. She was walking along in Nassau Street, and stepped out on the edge of the kerb to give room to an old gentleman who was being helped along by his niece. They both said, at the inquest, how kindly she smiled as she stepped aside. The kerb was slippery after the rain, and, as she stood on the edge of it, a man hurried by and knocked against her. Her feet slid away from under her, and she fell flat in the road. Before she had time to stir, the wheel of a coal cart ran over her neck, killing her instantly.
I will not describe to you my state of mind for the next forty-eight hours. I felt—let me be quite honest—no depth of personal grief for Muriel. What horrified me, and made me most deeply conscious of guilt, was that I found the real grief I felt was for myself. I realised, in those terrible hours, that when I thought I was going to devote my life to making Muriel happy, the truth was that I was going to put myself right with my own conscience. That glow of virtue was not the generous altruism it pretended to be: it was the zeal of a man anxious to make amends, and using someone else for the purpose. I had a genuine affection for Muriel, and it has always given me real pleasure to make anyone else happy, even for two minutes: but, there was no dodging the fact, what I proposed to do was to make one woman my penance for another and do the best I could for myself in the process. It is never pleasant to uncover one’s own efforts at self-deception, and as I hate and loathe the very thought of self-deception, my humiliation was severe.
And, to be fair to myself, I did realise with a depth of shame and remorse that I had failed two women who, but for me, might have been alive. About Mary I cannot say, but there is no doubt—I got it out of Lucy, and I haven’t yet been able to set it down, even here, in this record, which is as honest as I know how to make it, for my own sake, if no one else’s—there is no doubt that she resisted being sent off to the hospital till the last possible minute, in the hope that I would come. I daresay it made no difference, but it might have done. Anyway, if it didn’t, it was no thanks to me. The fact remained that, after a
nd partly because o my association with them, two women had suffered and had lost their lives. I don’t exaggerate the part that one human being can play in another’s destiny, nor do I think that at any time I was Byronic or egoistic about any influence I had. But I had done them little if any good, they were dead, and my life was a rubbish heap.
I saw my mother-in-law, who was ill with crying, and showed a sort of affection for me. Mr. Travers had locked himself into his room, and would see no one. She was worried to distraction about him, for he had eaten practically nothing for three days. I told her to get the doctor, and went away. That evening I moved into my old lodgings. They had a student for six months since I left, and that was all.
Agony of mind is like a snake that is frantically swallowing his own tail. Each savage gulp and bite tortures his own body, and in revenge he bites even more savagely, and suffers worse. Soon he is engorged with his own body, his agony is both inside and outside, and draws ever closer, till it can come no nearer, and he is rigid and helpless, full of himself, a circle of inescapable and maddening pain.
At the end of forty-eight hours I was in such a state that I feared I might become unaccountable. I went wandering, and on an impulse sought the church where I used to go before I was married. The old priest was there, hearing confession. I waited for him, and, when he came out, asked if I might speak to him. He knew me at once.
“I haven’t seen you for a long time,” he said, without reproof.
I told him I’d been married, and gone to my wife’s church. Then I said I was in desperate trouble, and must see him.
He took me home with him, and, sitting opposite him in a little bare-sitting-room with a paper fan and a flowerpot in the fireplace, I told him everything. I told him I could not be sorry about Mary, or look on our love as sin, for such great good had come from it. I emphasised that I did not say that to excuse myself,*that I had no desire to hide or minimise any sin I had committed, but that I felt in the depths of my heart that she was the best thing that had ever happened to me, that she was my true wife, and that, if I hadn’t fallen into the hideous mistake of marrying Muriel, we should have been married and there would have been nothing that anybody could call sin.
I cannot hope to tell you of the gentleness, the pity, the sweetness of that good old man. He let me say everything, helping me with a question here and there, seeing into the very depth of my soul. When I had quite finished, he told me that I had been trying to live my life by my own light, without God. He said God’s laws seemed often to bear hard on the individual will, but that the only true happiness lay in keeping them, and that those who broke them must suffer always. And from his lips these things were no longer platitudes but living truth. He understood everything. We talked for a long time, I made my confession, he gave me my penance, and bade me come back to him in three days’ time. I went back, and told him I would submit my life to his advice, but that what I wanted most was to give it up to making someone happy. I would marry a girl who, but for me, would have a hard life, and give her the best home I could.
He looked at me for a long time, and saw that what I said was egoism no longer, but came from my heart. I no longer needed to put myself right. That was all over.
I asked him would he find me someone. He twinkled at me.
“You are responsible for your own life,” he said. “This mood of submission will not last. Oh, I know you. You will bob up again and ask questions soon.”
I grinned at him, but I had meant what I said.
“I know you know me, Father. That’s why I ask you to choose for me.”
“But you will not marry without love! You cannot make a girl happy unless you truly love her.”
I looked surprised, for that came queerly in a country where there are so many arranged marriages.
“All men are not of the same pattern, my son. We are talking about you, not about the man next door.”
“I shall never be able to love anyone as I loved Mary.”
“Go away now, and don’t be impatient.”
“But you will, Father?”
“I’ll make no promises, my son.”
He tested me thoroughly. He gave me work to do in his parish: hard work, and plenty of it. It came easy to me, for it was among the sort of people I knew best. For two and a half years I worked away, three evenings a week, and attended the church. I grew a great deal in that time: and, as the old man foretold, I soon bobbed up again and asked questions. For good or bad, I’ve always had an independent mind, and under him it grew more independent, rather than less.
Then one day he told me he had found a girl for me. She was eighteen years of age, the eldest of a big family. The father was dead, the mother worked hard to keep the home together, but was not strong in health, and the bulk of the work and care fell on the girl.
“They’re poor,” said the old priest, “but the house is spotless, the children are neat and well clothed, and little Kathleen keeps the whole place together.”
“If she leaves them, how will they get on?”
“That will be your care.”
“Damn it all, Father! Am I not to have a family of my own?”
“I hope that God will grant you many children, my son. But these will not need you for long. The youngest is six, and the rest will soon be out in the world. Come, my son: you said that I knew you, and you asked me to choose for you.”
I squared my shoulders.
“Right, Father. I’m ready.”
I went expecting some plain honest little thing, all scrubbed and cheerful, with rough hands and big feet. Kathleen was little, and cheerful, and honest—and absolutely lovely. She was slender, and dark, with violet eyes, and a heavenly little straight nose with a dust of tiny freckles. The children were grand: clean, direct, well-behaved, and full of fun. I was able to make a real difference in their lives. A few pennorth of sweets and a toy or two gave them joy that touched your heart to see.
I fell in love with Kathleen from the first. Steadily and soberly I waited for her to get to know me and to love me. She gave me her confidence at once, telling me all about her cares and struggles with the simplest candour. At first I could hardly get her to take anything from me. She thought of everything in terms of what it would bring them. But by degrees she eased up, and I was able to take her out to tea and to the theatre. It made me happier than I had been for ages to go about with her, and see her great power of enjoyment, and hear her comments on things. And, for all her lack of experience, she was shrewd, and uncanny in her judgment of people.
At last, one autumn evening, I asked her to marry me. She stared into my face, her lips parting, her eyes opening wide. Then she burst out crying, and got up to run from the room.
I caught her. Grief and dismay made me rough.
“What is it?” I cried. “Don’t you like me enough?”
She wouldn’t answer, she hid her face, she said I was being unkind to her. I shook her, hard.
“Will you talk sense!” I shouted, exasperated. “What is wrong? Why won’t you marry me?”
Then I found she was thinking of her brothers and sisters.
“You little idiot,” I said. “Is that all? Don’t you know I’ll look after them, and see them through? It’s conceit, that’s what it is,” I went on, hardly able to bear for very joy the shine of hope in her face and eyes. “You think you’re indispensable.”
A sudden doubt clouded her face.
“You want me, really? You’re not just being kind?”
“I can’t get on without you. So they’ll have to. At least, they’ll have to make do with both of us.”
Next instant I was smothering her, kissing the face off her. That took some time. At last she got free, and blew her nose, and laughed unsteadily: and then she was on my lap, rumpling my hair. She announced that she was coming round to my lodging and going through all my clothes, to see which wanted mending.
“Will you indeed,” said I.
“I will so. And you’re not to wea
r that old blue coat any more. That one with the belt. It doesn’t suit you.”
“So you’ll bully me, will you? You’ll order me about?”
“I will so.” She snuggled close to me. “You poor old pelthers,” she said. “I’ll look after you.”
Epilogue
Will-there you have the whole story. And now that I’ve got it out of my system, I’ve no resentment left in me. At first, if you remember, I was putting all the blame for my not being a writer and a poet on the Travers and those devils at the office. Now I see that it was not they who put a stopper on me, but I myself. It’s a surprise to me to find that writing my story has not only cleared my mind, but shown me how often I had forgotten the way things really were. I decided that I owed something in return for messing up the lives of two women, and that I must pay it. But, for years, that simple fact had been covered up by the feeling of disappointment at what had to go. I suppose I wouldn’t face the truth that I had deprived myself of it voluntarily, by an act of renunciation. I had to find someone to blame —the more so as my life has been so happy. I’m a lot of other things, but I don’t think I’m consciously a hypocrite. I became a wage slave, I settled down, I raised a large family, so large that it has always been a problem how to make ends meet: and I did it not as a penance, but because I wanted to, and because it’s what suited me best. The fact that I’m not a writer is not because I was oppressed and stamped on, nor because I nobly chose a better thing, but because I hadn’t in me that peculiar core of hard pertinacity which makes a writer. I was dramatising myself— unconsciously—when I began this story. Now that it’s written, I’m easy and content. Though, mind you, I don’t for one moment abate my detestation of what was done to me, and the way I was choked off what I burned to do. I probably would have done no good—but that doesn’t excuse my boss, nor Mr. Travers.
I have had a happy life, and it’s still happy. My Kathie turned out all that I expected of her, and much that I didn’t. If she lost a touch of poetry, she more than made up for it in other ways. She had it, it was genuine, I did not sentimentally drape it on her. It was a product of youth and adversity: and, when both went from her, she settled into a material comfort both of mind and body. She became more commonplace, but she grew new virtues. She spoiled me (and I spoiled her), she looked after her brothers and sisters, she had eight children without losing her figure, and she brought them up, and is bringing them up grandly. She’s one of the youngest grandmothers I have ever seen, and if she’s naïve intellectually, that suits me, for, as you will have Seen before this, I am always curmudgeonly with my inward thoughts.
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