He wondered where she was now, in some unimaginable abode of bliss with her other man. He could not think of her as belonging to this world and inhabiting the same space as himself. He pictured her enclosed in some kind of radiant extragalactic egg, some strange fold of the space-time continuum which wrapped her absolutely away. This vague image was necessary to him to soothe what would otherwise have been a crippling degree of jealousy and desire. If there was no place for possibility there was no place for yearning. Lisa had been a vision, an apparition, not a possibility. Yet however much he tried to refuse the knowledge, he knew that what he had seen and, oh God, touched was a real woman who might have loved him.
Danby thought that he might soon start to cry. For years he had been incapable of tears. Now quite lately, he had found himself weeping in the late evening and the early morning. The tears were strange, sweetly soothing and a little unnerving, as if his body were suffering some weird physical change. He must be careful not to let Bruno see him crying. He got up and went to the door for a moment to listen. There was no sound from upstairs. Then he thought that he had better go up and check that he had locked the front door, and he went up the stairs on tiptoe. Thank God poor Bruno slept at night.
A letter, which must have come by the second post, was lying on the mat. Danby saw at once that the writing was unfamiliar and it instantly seemed to him that the letter must be from Lisa. In trembling haste he tore it open. It was rather long and appeared to be from Nigel. Danby locked the door and fixed the chain and went slowly down the stairs again. He sat for a while staring sadly at nothing and holding Nigel’s letter crumpled in his hand. If only there were not these vain ghostly hopes, these sudden inane shadows of possibilities, these unfulfilled conditionals of hopeless desire. He closed his eye and a tear trickled down his cheek. Then he began to read Nigel’s letter.
My Dearest Danby,
I hope you will try to forgive me for my dereliction of duty, my unannounced departure, my taking of leave without consultation or permission. I am sorry to leave Bruno and had not intended to do so before the end. I hope he is calm and I would send my love if I thought he still remembered Nigel, only I trust that mercifully he does not. Since in a sense Nigel never really existed, he probably casts no memory image as he casts no shadow. I write to speak to you, just once, since it is a delicious joy to do so (see below) and because I feel I should try to explain why I went away. That, and other things. Love is a strange thing. There is no doubt at all that it and only it makes the world go round. It is our only significant activity. Everything else is dust and tinkling cymbals and vexation of spirit. Yet on the other hand what a trouble-maker it is to be sure. What a dreamer-upper of the impossible, what an embracer of the feet of the unattainable. It is a weird thought that anyone is permitted to love anyone and in any way he pleases. Nothing in nature forbids it. A cat may look at a king, the worthless can love the good, the good the worthless, the worthless the worthless, and the good the good. Hey presto: and the great light flashes on revealing perhaps reality or perhaps illusion. And alas how very often, dearest Danby, does one love alone, in solipsism, in vain encapsulation, while concealment feeds upon the substance of the heart. It is not a matter of conventions. Love knows no conventions. Anything can happen, so that in a way, a terrible terrible way, there are no impossibilities. Ah, I have thought of this too, my dear, and it has not been the least part of my suffering. You might have loved me. It was, alas, logically possible. But what made me go away was not simply my sense of the improbability of the conceivable, but my knowledge that my very great love was a very great destroyer. If I had been the saint that I could be I would have loved you and let you know it and stayed near you and done you no harm at all, surrounding you like the harmless air and making you almost not notice how much I loved you. As it is, the unpredictable force of that immense angelic thing, once let loose from its dark concealment, would have dragged us-where? I know not, but down. You would have had to act a hateful part. And I-The other great love of my life is, well you can guess who. To have you both before me pointing loaded pistols at each other was the acting out of a fantasy. And how absolutely, when it came to it, you were both of you clay in my hands. How easy it proved to make you do exactly what I wanted! But I must not think about my godlike power-that way lies the possible-impossible torment which I have determined to end. It was a great happening, was it not, our duel? Not knowing the outcome was heavenly pain, was Russian roulette of the soul. Forgive me.
I have decided that the only way to deal with myself as I now am is to leave England. A friend has told me how I can get a job in India, with the Save the Children Fund, and I am going to Calcutta. I leave no address and I sign no name. I am a spirit that wished you well and will wish you well for however long or short a time it preserves your memory. I kiss your feet.
Danby stared at the letter. It caused him an extraordinary and novel kind of pain. He wished he had known that Nigel loved him. Yet what on earth would he have done about it? Would he have acted that “hateful part”? Yes, what a trouble maker it was. Every manjack craving for love, and how rarely it all worked out. Nigel loved Danby who loved Lisa who loved-How sad and crazy it all was. Oh God, I feel so bloody lonely, he thought. The voice of love, even though it was not the right one, came to him with such an unmistakable accent out of that inaccessible real world. His eyes seemed to be filling with tears again. “Oh hell,” said Danby aloud. He shook the tears away and took off his jacket and his tie. Better go to bed and drown all this self-pity in decent oblivion. Misery and drink made him a sound sleeper. He stood for a moment listening to the rain, which had grown fiercer and listening to the wind, which was rattling the windowpane. He undid the front of his shirt.
Suddenly there was a strange sharp regular noise very close to him. Danby stood paralyzed, clutching his shirt. In a moment the sound came again, loud and several times repeated. Someone was tapping urgently upon the window. Will! Danby thought, it’s Will for sure, come to do me properly. He stood perfectly still. The tapping came again, insistent, demanding, violent. He’ll break the glass in a minute, thought Danby. Whatever shall I do? Call the police? Pretend not to be here? Can he see me through the chink in the curtain? Oh God, why did this have to happen. Danby felt tired and old. He wanted to go to bed. He did not want to be forced to fight with a half-crazy young man. It was all ridiculous. He called out, “Who’s there?” There was no answer, only the tapping on the window, once more repeated, fierce and sharp. Danby hesitated. Then he moved silently out of the room and into the kitchen. He picked up a long carving knife and then laid it down again. He returned and went up to the window. “Who is it?” Tap, tap, tap, tap. Danby pulled back the curtains. He could not see out into the darkness and the rain. Then he violently pulled up the sash of the window and re treated across the room.
At once a long leg with an extremely muddy shoe appeared over the window ledge. But it was a woman’s leg. “Help me, would you?” said Lisa.
Danby closed the window and pulled the curtain again. Lisa was sitting on the bed. She had taken off her mackintosh and was removing her shoes. Her hair, which had been un covered, was plastered to her head and curled in wet arabesques down her neck.
She said, “I’m sorry to come in this way and I wouldn’t have done so if I’d known how much mud I would bring in with me. I didn’t like to ring the bell because of Bruno. Would you mind getting me a towel?”