§ 9
In every life there are crucial moments, turning points, and not infrequently it is just such a thing as this, a report, a sudden waking in the night, a flash upon the road to Damascus, that marks and precipitates the accumulating new. Vehemence is not concentration. The headlong violence of the Captain had been no expression of a single-minded purpose, of a soul all gathered together to an end. Far less a pursuit had it been than a flight, a flight from his own dissensions. And now—now he was held.
After he had attempted a few plausible repairs and found the tyre obdurate, after he had addressed ill-chosen remonstrances to some unnamed hearer, after he had walked some way along the road and back in an indecision about repair shops in some neighbouring town, the last dregs of his resistance were spent. He perceived that he was in the presence of a Lesson. He sat down by the roadside, some twenty feet from the disabled motor bicycle and, impotent for further effort, frankly admitted himself overtaken. He had not reckoned with punctures.
The pursuing questions came clambering upon him and would no longer be denied; who he was and what he was and how he was, and the meaning of this Rare Bate he had been in, and all those deep questions that are so systematically neglected in the haste and excitement of modern life.
In short, for the first time in many headlong days he asked himself simply and plainly what he thought he was up to?
Certain things became clear, and so minutely and exactly clear that it was incredible that they had ever for a moment been obscure. Of course Bealby had been a perfectly honest little boy, under some sort of misconception, and of course he ought to have been carefully coached and prepared and rehearsed before he was put before the Lord Chancellor. This was so manifest now that the Captain stared aghast at his own inconceivable negligence. But the mischief was done. Nothing now would ever propitiate Moggeridge, nothing now would ever reconcile Uncle Chickney. That was—settled. But what was not settled was the amazing disorder of his own mind. Why had he been so negligent, what had come over his mind in the last few weeks?
And this sudden strange illumination of the Captain’s mind went so far as perceiving that the really important concern for him was not the accidents of Shonts but this epilepsy of his own will. Why now was he rushing back to Madeleine? Why? He did not love her. He knew he did not love her. On the whole, more than anything else he resented her.
But he was excited about her, he was so excited that these other muddles, fluctuations, follies, came as a natural consequence from that. Out of this excitement came those wild floods of angry energy that made him career about—
“Like some damned Cracker,” said the Captain.
“For instance,” he asked himself, “now! what am I going for?
“If I go back she’ll probably behave like an offended Queen. Doesn’t seem to understand anything that does not focus on herself. Wants a sort of Limelight Lover....
“She relies upon exciting me!
“She relies upon exciting everyone!—she’s just a woman specialized for excitement.”
And after meditating through a profound minute upon this judgment, the Captain pronounced these two epoch-making words: “I won’t!”