Then I laughed.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘You are my bird in hand—’
‘I wonder if maman’s asleep?’
‘I hope so.’
‘I wonder what Gustave is doing?’ she said.
‘I hope he’s asleep too.’
‘I’m his bird in the bush.’
How queer! We had at long last succeeded in escaping from the others, in being alone, we two by ourselves; and apparently we could find nothing better to do than to talk of the others. And we were still sad, sad in our meeting, as though we had not met at all. She had only me to talk to. I had only her to talk to. And we did not talk. Happiness is always somewhere else. It is one of the failings of our common nature that our pleasures are chiefly prospective or retrospective.
‘Darling, go into the dining-room and bring me the playing-cards out of the drawer in the little table by the window.’
I went, but could not find them. I can never find anything. She slipped on her pink dressing-gown, and returning, brought the cards, and, spreading them on the quilt, began to play patience with herself, and afterwards telling her own and my fortunes, cooing the while like a pigeon. There was a fair lady who would come into my life; a long voyage; an early death — and the usual prophecies of this kind. I took no heed. Now, it would seem, was the time, the love climax, for which we had always waited, which palpably is the real note on which a novel should be ended: instead Sylvia looked preoccupied with her pack of cards which she had laid out over the quilt, and speculated on what happiness there lay in store for us in years to come.
I watched her comb her hair and wash her face and brush her teeth; then get into bed — so trustfully. She sat there, a dark-curled, large-eyed, long-limbed little girl. Quickly she raised herself on her knees, and bringing her fingers together and closing her eyes — like an angel child — hurriedly mumbled her prayers; then fell back on to the pillows and pulled the sheet to her chin. Because tomorrow morning we should have to part, we felt that night as though tomorrow morning one of us was going to be hanged. Sylvia lay there, listless, the sheet drawn to her chin, looking at me — so serious, so demure — and as I watched her and heard the clock ticking away the æons, visualized the liner which would relentlessly take me away from her, farther and farther away — until one evening, standing at the rail, I would see the lights of England in the distance as the rolling liner hooted shrilly in the gloom; and at these farthest points apart upon earth’s girth we shall indeed have parted to all eternity!
‘Darling,’ she said, ‘you have come to me.’
I was grateful. Somehow I could never make myself believe that another human being loves me. She looked at me whimsically:
‘I’m your wife?’
‘Yes.’
She was warm; she lay there all in a bundle, purring, ‘Mrr-mrr-mrr …’
‘I told you you could cuddle me, but you are pinching me.’
‘It’s all right — it’s all right — it’s all right,’ I reassured her.
‘Fairy!’ she said.
‘My darling, my angel, why did you torture me then? Why?’ The wedding-dinner now appeared a happy, happy thing! ‘Why did you torture me?’
But she purrs, having bundled tightly around me, ‘Mrr-mrr-mrr …’
And we never gave a thought to Gustave!
I lay there, surrounded by a mysterious, inexplicable, utterly puzzling universe, and reflected on what it could all mean. What the deuce could it all mean? The moon had gone; and the street was discernible only by its string of lights. I thought of life and love and what they have to offer, and how shamelessly they emulate the methods of commercial advertising. The alluring posters and signboards. The promise of what-not revelations! And what does love reveal! That concavities are concave, and convexities convex. Son of man! Is that all there is for you? Will it ever be so? There is little to choose between hunger and satiety. And as I lay there, the trees now only visible in silhouette behind the glass bowed to me their respects, and the leaves, moving like fingers—‘Tral-la-la!’—beckoned playfully as if to say: ‘There you are on the summits!’ Silly things.
‘Love. Either it is a remnant of something degenerating, something which once has been immense, or it is a particle of what will in the future develop into something immense; but in the present it is unsatisfying, it gives much less than one expects—’ Chekhov once noted down in his notebook. And I agree. I am a serious young man, an intellectual. I am so constituted that at these moments when it would seem most proper to expand, to drink life purple, to invoke brass trumpets, I suddenly lose heart. My thoughts went back to my Record of the Stages in the Evolution of an Attitude, which was the central thing round which the world revolved. All this other was — well, inevitable rather than overwhelming — and just a little silly. We two had been separated, had withheld from each other that which, when it had grown into a grievance, seemed nothing less than Paradise lost. And now that we had remedied our grievous deprivation, we found that when we had given all we had to offer, perhaps it was not so very much. The night was long, and sleep was a good thing. Perhaps the great point about these things is that they restore your sense of balance; that unless you have them you will store too high a value of them. And you will think you haven’t lived.
She was with me — altogether mine; I was assuaged; and I could think of other things. I lay still, and my soul went out to the world. That surging passion in me of a while ago was torn out by the roots, and the memory of it was now no more than of an eaten sweet. Released at last, my soul went forward with another, finer, passion of the mind, and I could see things, near and distant, with a minute acumen teeming in a pool of quivering sunlight. I suddenly perceived the difference between the subjective and objective aspects at the succeeding stages in the evolution of an attitude. And thinking of this difference between two aspects, I just as suddenly fell asleep.
‘Oh, my goodness,’ she said, waking me.
‘What?’
‘You are—you are—’
‘What?’
‘Oh! But you are leaving, Alexander, tomorrow, and — oh!’
‘The best of friends must part.’ I rubbed my eyes.
‘Perhaps we shall never see each other again.’
‘As your father says, “Que voulez-vous? C’est la vie!” It can’t be helped. But I am awfully sleepy, you know. And tomorrow morning I must be off.’
‘Oh! You know you are—you are—’
‘What?’
‘Well, never mind,’ she said, and turned her back to me. ‘Well, if one can’t sleep then one must do the next best thing — think.’
I was silent, thinking.
‘What are you thinking of?’ she asked, without turning round.
‘Well, I was reading this evening — just before I came here — a book that, to my way of thinking, defines very clearly the difference between the subjective and objective attitudes in life and letters.’
But when I spoke to Sylvia of the confusion of the terms ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’, she looked as though she thought that it was a confusion which I succeeded in confusing further still in my painstaking efforts to elucidate the difference; and I think she felt sorry for me. The trouble was that Sylvia, with all her charm, was not an intellectual; but though I felt that my endeavour to raise the level of our conversation was doomed to failure in advance, I nevertheless went on: ‘What is the meaning of “better”, unless it be “better fitted to survive”? Obviously “better”, on this interpretation of its meaning, is in no sense a “subjective” conception, but is as “objective” as any conception can be. But yet all those who object to a subjective view of “goodness”, and insist upon its “objectivity”, would object just as strongly to this interpretation of its meaning as to any “subjective” interpretation. Obviously, therefore,’ I continued, looking at Sylvia, who only blinked repeatedly the while, ‘Obviously, what they are really anxious to contend for is not merely that goodness is “objective”, since they are here objecting to a theory which is “objective”; but something else. But something else,’ I said, looking at Sylvia.