BOOK FOUR: THE DESTRUCTION OF LIONEL (continued 2)

Oh, even she couldn’t explain that away, couldn’t make him swallow that! He might be contemptible, a tool in her hands, but there was a limit, an end! He walked beside the innocent other man in the dark, smiling grimly to himself, filled with a curiously impersonal thirst for revenge. That woman must be exposed, disgraced, crushed. He was savagely delighted to do it. A long repressed and unrecognised wish came struggling to the surface of his mind, the wish to be free of her and her domination. So long as she loved him and was faithful to him, worked and schemed for him, he couldn’t even wish to be rid of her. Only falseness in her could justify him, and he rejoiced now in finding her false.

“It’s the end of her,” he reflected, “of her and her beastly trickery!”

But it was not. When he got to the house, and actually saw her, ill, tortured with anxiety, when he once more heard her voice, his resolution failed him. It was not so much through pity or affection, either; it was the woman’s uncanny plausibility, the preposterous air of respectability she threw over all she did. He could not see her as a criminal.

Fate had reserved curious sufferings for him, unique pains. To live through that night, with honest Mr. Petersen, to be in his house, while Minnie bore his child.... And then, still at Mr. Petersen’s side, to go in to her, and look at her son....

He was in a state of utter chaos. His little girl didn’t know him. In a year and a half she had quite forgotten him, was growing up contentedly under another man’s roof. It hurt him beyond measure. He had no idea how he had changed, what with his beard, and the ravages of his illness. It gave him a sensation of being already dead and buried and forgotten.

He couldn’t make himself feel as he believed he should feel. He could not hate Minnie, and he actually liked Mr. Petersen. And pitied them both. He thought, more seriously than he had ever thought before in his life, and came to a conclusion which was quite at variance with his tradition.

“I’m no good to Minnie or Sandra,” he said to himself, “I’ll go away, and leave them to the man who can take care of them.”

And above all, he wished to consider Mr. Petersen. He was more anxious to spare him than to spare Minnie. His one comfort was that he was not “wronging” that honest man, that he was, in fact, making an honourable and terribly difficult sacrifice for him, in thus giving up to him not only Minnie but little Sandra. He would leave Mr. Petersen undisturbed in his fool’s Paradise. He wanted passionately, with all his soul, to do this one decent thing, to atone for Minnie’s sins and his own by this restitution. It saved him in his own eyes.

Minnie did not oppose him. But she begged him to wait until she was a little better. She was so heart-broken over the separation and so docile that he yielded, and waited there in Mr. Petersen’s house during the days of her convalescence.

But, no sooner had she begun to grow well again than she began shamelessly to—as the novels say—persecute him with her attentions. He was immeasurably shocked; he told her plainly what he thought of such conduct. Under Mr. Petersen’s very roof!

“But you’re my own husband,” said Minnie.

“Do you mean to say you’re so depraved that you can’t see? That you’d deceive that fine fellow again?”

“He’s nothing to me,” said Minnie, “I never even pretended to love him.”

And added:

“I only did it for Sandra’s sake.”

“Didn’t you know it was criminal? You’re a bigamist. You——”

She began to cry.

“I know it! But a mother will do anything in the world for her child. If she’s a true woman.”

She was not to be convinced of wrong-doing. It wasn’t nice to have two husbands; that she conceded: it was a painful and disagreeable necessity, her only means of providing for her child.

“And Chris never need know,” she said. “It’s not doing him any harm. In fact, he’s very happy.”

“Then you intend to go on like this forever?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” she cried, impatiently, “one has to be guided by circumstances.”

And they were all the guide she had. Or could they be called a guide, when she so deliberately manufactured them, and distorted them? Even the poor chap’s love for Sandra she tried to utilise, in order to keep him near her. She was continually throwing them together, fostering the child’s affection for her “uncle.”

“She didn’t recognise you,” she said. “Poor little baby! But she knows you. She feels differently toward you.”

She was conscious that her own spell had waned; she could do nothing with him. No matter how she clung to him, how she implored him, he would not so much as say he loved her. He was absolutely impervious to her seductions, although he was touched by her blind love for him. She would have caused any suffering to Mr. Petersen if it would have benefited Lionel. He was, as she said, and he well knew, the only man she had ever cared for, the first and the last. She would even go so far as to admit that she regretted having been obliged to marry Mr. Petersen. Not because it was wrong, but because it hurt Lionel. She acknowledged that it had not been an altogether loyal act, although, like so very many of her sex, she couldn’t see that a merely physical infidelity really mattered much. An idea that men have, which must be submitted to, because of its importance to them.

“But in my heart,” she insisted, “there’s never been anyone but you.”

The war seemed to offer Lionel a remarkable opportunity for carrying out his plan with dignity and nobility. He might even get himself killed, which, according to his tradition, rights every wrong, wipes out every offense. He resisted Minnie’s objections with firmness.

Then, so cruelly, before he had made his great renunciation, came Frances and the shameful and horrible revelation. He was forced to go away with Minnie; he couldn’t desert her then, when she was so utterly alone. He tried to comfort her a little, and found it only too easy. She wasn’t really very much ashamed or grieved. She was willing, eager, to take up life with him again, the same slipshod and futile life of their former years. She looked forward happily to another little house, more amazing financial adventures, and, quite frankly, a subsidy from Mr. Petersen.

“He’d be glad!” she told Lionel, “On account of little Robert. And he has plenty of money. He could easily spare two or three thousand a year.”

That was the final straw. Lionel said nothing against her scheme; he saw her decently settled in a respectable boarding-house, well-supplied with money salvaged from Mr. Petersen’s housekeeping allowance; then he went away, disappeared. He left her a note, to say that he was going to enlist, but she never quite knew what became of him.