Told by an Idiot Read online

  “I ought never to have made them. I was a fool. The wrong was in the vows, not in their breach.”

  “Granted that they were wrong, that does not settle the further point of whether, having been made, with every circumstance of deliberation, they should not be kept.”

  “Oh, God,” said Mr. Jayne. “You talk, my dearest dear, like a pedant, a prig, or a book of logic. Don’t you care, Rome?”

  “You know,” said Miss Garden, “that I do. . . . No, don’t touch me. I must think it out. I am a pedant and a prig, if you like, and I must think it out, not only feel. But now I will think of the other side. Oh, yes, I know there is another side. We love one another, and we can neither of us be happy, or fully ourselves, without being together. Without one another we shall be incomplete, unhappy, and perhaps (not certainly) morally and mentally stunted and warped. Indeed, I see that as clearly as you can. Further, our being together may, as you say, not hurt your wife; she may not care in the least. As to that, I simply don’t know. How could I? She may even let you still have a share in your children. Russian points of view are so different from ours. But one should be certain of that before taking any step. . . . Then there are still points on the other side, that we have to think of. Any children we might have would be illegitimate. That would be hard on them.”

  “In point of fact,” said Mr. Jayne, “it is largely illusory, that hardship. And in this case they (if they should ever exist) needn’t even know. You would take my name. Who is to go on remembering that I have a Russian wife? Very few people in England even know it. We should soon live down any talk there might be.”

  “And then,” went on Rome, ticking off another point on her fingers, “there are my papa and mamma, whom we should hurt very badly. In their eyes what we are discussing isn’t a thing to be discussed at all; it is a deadly sin, and there’s an end of it. They are very fond of me, and they would be terribly unhappy. That, too, is a point to be considered.”

  “Perhaps. But not to be given much weight to. It’s damnable to have to hurt the people we love—but, after all, we can’t let our parents rule our lives. We’re living in the eighteen nineties; we’re not mid-Victorians. And we have to make up our own minds what to do with our lives. We can’t be tied up by any one else’s views, either those of our relations or of society in general. We have to make our own judgments and choices, all along. And parents shouldn’t be hurt by their children’s choices, even if they do think them wrong; they should live and let live. All this judging for other people, and being hurt, is poisonous. It’s a relic of the patriarchal system,—or the matriarchal.”

  Miss Garden smiled.

  “Possibly. I should say, rather, that it was incidental to parental affection, and always will be. Anyhow, there it is. . . . They don’t, of course, even believe that divorce is right, let alone adultery.” Her cool, thoughtful enunciation of the last word gave it its uttermost value. Miss Garden never slurred or shirked either words or facts.

  “But that,” she added, “doesn’t, of course, dispose of our lives. That’s only one point out of many. The question is, what is, now and ultimately, the right and best thing for me and you to do. You’ve decided. Well, I haven’t—yet. Give me a week, Francis. I promise I won’t take more.”

  “You are so beautiful,” said Mr. Jayne, changing the subject and speaking inaccurately, and lifted her hands to his face. “You are so beautiful. There is no one like you. You are like the golden sickle moon riding over the world. You hold my life in your two hands. Be kind to it, Rome. I love you, I love you, I love you. If we deny our love we shall be blaspheming. Love like ours transcends all barriers, and well you know it. Take your week, if you must, only decide rightly at the end of it, my heart’s glory. The fine thing we shall make of life together, you and I, the fine, precious, lovely thing. It’s been so poor and common—full of bickerings and jars and commonness and discontents. . . .

  “Oh, Rome. . . .”

  6

  Russian Tragedy

  The Russian woman, with her two beautiful children and her stout, dazed, unhappy mamma, waited in the hall of the flat of Mr. Jayne. They were weary, having travelled across Russia and from Russia to London, to find Mr. Jayne, and then, having learnt that he was in Rome, straight from London thither, spending two nights in the train and arriving this morning, more alive than dead (for who, this side of the grave, is not?) but very tired. The two children were so tired that they whimpered disagreeably, and their mother often wiped their noses with her travel-grimed handkerchief, but not so often as they required it.

  Olga Petrushka was a beautiful woman, square-headed, with a fair, northern skin and large, deep blue eyes, black-lashed, and massive plaits of flaxen hair. Her eyes looked wild and haunted, for Russians have such dreadful experiences, and her cheeks were hollowed; she looked like a woman who has seen death and worse too close, and indeed she had. She was shabbily dressed in an old fur dolman over a scarlet dress, and a fur cap. The two children were bundled up in bearskin coats, like little animals. Her little dancing bears, she would call them in lighter moments. Ever and anon she would fling them sweet cakes out of her reticule, and they would gobble them greedily.

  But Nina Naryshkin, their grandmother, sat and rocked to and fro, to and fro, and said nothing but, “Aie, aie, aie.”

  The hall porter turned on the little family a beaming and kindly eye. They were, in all probability, thieves, and not, as the Russian lady asserted, the family of Signor Jayne, so he would not admit them into Signor Jayne’s room, but he liked to see their gambols.

  Every now and then the younger lady would say in Russian, “Cheer up, then, little children. Your father will soon be here, and he will give you more sweet cakes. Aha, how your dirty little mouths water to hear it I Boris, you rascal, don’t pull your sister’s pig-tail. What children! They drive me to despair.”

  And then Mr. Jayne arrived. He came in at the open hall door, with a tall, fair, English lady, and he was saying to her, “If you don’t mind coming in for a moment, I will get you the book.”

  The hall porter stepped forward with a bow, and indicated in the background Mrs. Jayne and the little Jaynes.

  What a moment for Mr. Jayne! What a moment for Mrs. Jayne, her mamma, and the little Jaynes. What a moment for Miss Garden! What a moment for the hall porter, who loved both domestic re-unions and quarrels, and was as yet uncertain which this would be (it might even be both), but, above all, loved moments, and that it would certainly be.

  And so it proved. Where Russians are, there, one may say, moments are, for these live in moments.

  Olga Petrushka stepped forward with a loud cry and outstretched arms, and exclaimed in Russian, “Ah, Franya Stefanovitch “(one of the names she had for him, for Russians give one another hundreds of names each, and this accounts in part for the curious, confused state in which this nation is often to be found), “I have found you at last.”

  Mr. Jayne, always composed, retained his calm. He shook hands with his wife and mother-in-law, and addressed them in French.

  “How are you, my dear Olga? Why did you not tell me you wanted to see me? I would have come to Moscow. It is a long way to have come, with your mother and the children too. How are you, my little villains?”

  “Ah, my God,” said Mrs. Jayne, also now in French, which she spoke with rapidity and violence, “how could I stay another day in Russia? The misery I have been through! Poor little papa—Nicolai Nicolaivitch—they have arrested him for revolutionary propaganda and sent him to Siberia, with my brother, Feodor. They had evidence also against mamma and myself, and would have arrested us, and only barely we escaped in time, with the little bears. The poor cherubs—kiss them, Franya. They have been crying for their little father and the love and good food and warm house he will give them. For now they and we have no one but you. ‘Go to England, Olga,’ papa said as they took him. It is the one safe country. The English are good to Russian exiles, and your husband will take care of you and mamma and th
e little ones. . . .’ But you are with a lady, Franya. Introduce us.”

  “I beg your pardon. Miss Garden, my wife, and Mme Naryskhin, her mother. Miss Garden and her father are great friends of mine. . . . If you will go into my rooms and wait for me for a moment, Olga, I will see Miss Garden to her pension and return.”

  “No,” said Miss Garden, in her fluent and exquisite French. “No, I beg of you. I will go home alone; indeed, it is no way. Good-evening, Madame Jayne and Madame Naryskhin.”

  Mr. Jayne went out into the street with her. His unhappy eyes met hers.

  “To-morrow morning,” he muttered, “I shall call. . . . This alters nothing. . . . I will come to-morrow morning, and we will talk.”

  “Yes,” said Miss Garden. “We must talk.”

  Mr. Jayne went back into the hall, and escorted his family upstairs to his rooms.

  “Aie, aie, aie,” shuddered Olga Petrushka, flinging off her fur coat and cap, and leaping round the room in her red dress, like a Russian in a novel. “Let’s get warm. Come, little bears”—she spoke German now—“to your papa’s arms. Kiss him, Katya; hug him, Boris. Tell him we have come across Europe to be with him, now that all else is gone. Forgive and forget, eh, Franya Maryavitch? You and I must keep one another warm. . . . Aie, aie, aie, my poor papa,” she wailed in Russian. “I keep seeing his face as they took him, and my poor Feodor’s. As to mamma, she is dazed; she will never get over it. We must keep her always with us, poor little mamma. . . . Tea at once, Franya. I am going to be sick,” she added in Magyar, and was.

  Mr. Jayne laid his wife on his bed and took off her shoes and bathed her forehead, while she moaned in Polish. Then he made tea for her and the children and his mother-in-law, who sat heavily in a chair and drank five cups, and looked at him with drowsy, inimical eyes, saying never a word. He felt like a dead man, in a world full of ghosts. Who were these, who had this claim upon him? Their clinging hands were pulling him down, out of life into a tomb. The February evening shadows lay coldly on his heart. These poor, distraught women, these little children—he must take infinite care of them, and let them lack for nothing, but he must not let them come close into his life; they would throttle it. His life, his true life, was with Rome. Rome, the gallant, fastidious dandy, with her delicate poise, her pride, her cool wit and grace. Not with this violent, unhappy, inconsequent Slav, chattering in several tongues upon his bed.

  To-morrow he would go and talk to Rome . . . explain to Rome. . . .

  7

  English Tragedy

  Miss Garden received Mr. Jayne. Neither had slept much, for Mr. Jayne had given his bed to his family and lain himself on a horsehair couch, and Miss Garden had been troubled by her thoughts. Their faces were pale and shadowed and heavy-eyed.

  Miss Garden said, “This is the end, of course. I shan’t need a week now. Fate has intervened very opportunely.”

  “No,” said Mr. Jayne, with passion. “No. Nothing is changed. For God’s sake, don’t think that our situation is changed. It is not. She wants protection and security and a home, and I will provide all those for her and her mother and the children. Me she does not want. They shall have everything they want. But I shall not live with them.”

  “You still think that you and I can live together?” Miss Garden was sceptical of his optimism. “I don’t think your wife would tolerate that. No, Frank, it’s no use. They belong to you. They need you. I can’t come between you. It would be heartless and selfish. Imagine the situation for a moment . . . it is impossible.”

  They both imagined it. Mr. Jayne shuddered, like a man very cold.

  “You don’t want to be involved in such a—such a melodrama,” he said, bitterly.

  “Put it at that if you like. I take it we are neither of us fond of melodrama. But, apart from that, I said all along, and meant it, that if your wife wants you I can’t take you. She has first claim.”

  “I shall not live with Olga Petrushka and her mother.”

  “That’s your own affair, of course. You are very likely right, since you don’t get on well together. But you must see that you and I can’t . . .”

  Miss Garden stopped, for her voice began to shake. How she loved him! She pressed her hands together in her lap till the rings bruised her fingers.

  Mr. Jayne gazed at her gloomily, observing her lightly poised body, slim and elegant in a dark blue taffeta dress which stood out behind below the waist in a kind of shelf, and made her shape rather like that of a swan. He saw her slight, anguished hands that hurt each other, and the pale tremor of her face.

  “She’s been through hell, and she wants you,” said Miss Garden, trying to keep control.

  “I tell you I can’t live with her, nor she with me. Do you want to turn my life into a tragi-comic opera?”

  “Most life is a tragi-comic opera,” said Rome, trying to smile. “Perhaps all.”

  “But you’re resolved anyhow to keep yours clear of my tragi-comedies,” he flung at her.

  Then he apologised.

  “I don’t mean that; I don’t know what I’m saying. . . . Oh, I won’t press you now to decide. We’ll wait, Rome. You’ll see, in a month or so, how things have arranged themselves—how easy it will all be. Olga will have recovered her balance by then; she changes from hour to hour, like all Russians. In a few weeks she will be tired of me and want to be in Paris, or back in Russia. She doesn’t really want me; it’s only that she is unstrung by trouble. Upset; that’s what she is. All I ask you to do is to wait.”

  “No, Frank. It can never be, unless she goes, sometime, to live with some one else, some other man. Otherwise she would be liable, even if she left you for a time, to want you again at intervals. I can’t make a third. . . . You see, whatever happens now, your family must always be a real fact to me, not an abstraction. I’ve seen them . . . Katya is just like you—your chin and eyes. . . . The children love you very much; I saw that. . . . And she loves you too. . . .”

  “She does not. That’s not love—not as I know love.”

  “As to that, we all know love in different ways, I suppose. . . . Truly, Francis, I have quite decided. I can’t live with you. . . . No, no, don’t . . .”

  He was holding her in his arms and kissing her face, her lips, her eyes, muttering entreaties.

  “If you loved me you’d do it.”

  “I do love you, and I shan’t do it.”

  “I’m asking nothing dishonourable of you. You don’t think it wrong on general principles; yesterday you were willing to consider it. You’re just refusing life for a quixotic whim . . . refusing, denying life. . . . Rome, you can’t do it. Don’t you know, now you’re in my arms, that you can’t, that it would be to deny the best in us?”

  “What’s the best, what’s the worst? I don’t know, and nor do you. I’m not an ethicist. All I know is that your wife, while she wants you, or thinks she wants you, has first claim. . . . It’s a question of fairness and decent feeling . . . or bring it down, if you like, to a question of taste. Perhaps that is the only basis there really is for decisions of this sort for people like us.”

  “Taste. That’s a fine cry to mess up two lives by. I’d almost rather you were religious, and talked of the will of God. One could respect that, at least.”

  “I can’t do that, as I happen not to be sure whether God exists. And it would make nothing simpler really, since one would then have to discover what one believed the will of God to be. Don’t do religious people the injustice of believing that anything is simpler or easier for them; it’s more difficult, since life is more exacting. . . . But it comes to the same thing; all these processes of thought lead to the same result if applied by the same mind. It depends on the individual outlook. And this is mine. . . . Oh, don’t make it so damnably difficult for us both, my dearest. . . .”

  Miss Garden, who never swore and never wept, here collapsed into tears, all her urbane breeding broken at last. He consoled her so tenderly, so pitifully, so mournfully, that she wept the more for l
ove of him.

  “Go now,” she said at last. “We mustn’t meet again till we can both do it quietly, without such pain. Papa and I are going back to London next week. Write to me sometimes and let me know how you do and where you are. My dearest Frank . . .”

  8

  Foundered

  Rome was alone. She sat in a hard Italian chair, quite still, and felt cold and numb, and as if she had died. Drowned she felt, under deep, cold seas of passion and of pain. Wrecked and foundered and drowned, at the bottom of gray seas. Something cried, small and weak and hurt within her, and it was the voice of love, or (as Mr. Jayne would have it) of life; life which she had denied and slain. Never had she greatly loved before; never would she greatly love again; and the great love she now had she was slaying. That was what the hurt voice cried in her as she sat alone in the great, bare, chilly room, the sad little scaldino on the floor at her feet.

  She was dry-eyed now that she was alone, and had no more to face Mr. Jayne’s love and pain. Her own she could bear. Harder and harder, and cooler and more cynical she would grow, as she walked the world alone, leaving love behind. Was that the choice? Did one either do the decent, difficult thing, and wither to bitterness in doing it, or take the easy road, the road of joy and fulfilment, and be thereby enriched and fulfilled? And what was fulfilment, and what enrichment? What, ah, what, was this strange tale that life is; what its meaning, what its purpose, what its end?

  Rome did not know. She knew one thing only. Frustration, renunciation, death—whether you called your criterion the will of God, or social ethics, or a quixotic whim, or your own private standards of decency and taste, it led you to these; led you to the same sad place, where you lay drowned dead beneath bitter seas.