“But how do you mean? We shall have to be engaged sometime, shan’t we?”
“Oh, of course, yes. But there’s no need for a long engagement, is there? What I mean is that we could easily get engaged now if we wanted to. But it would be a long business, and oh, I don’t know! Once we’re engaged our affairs cease to be our own. People will be asking us ‘When’s the happy day?’ and all that sort of thing. Our love won’t be our own any longer.”
“It’s just as you like, dear.”
It was so nice to sit there against his knee, with his fingers against her face. Why should they worry about things? It would be nice to be engaged, of course, and to have a pretty ring, but it didn’t matter. “It’s just as you like,” she had said, and they had left it at that over two years ago and there had been no reason to rediscuss it. But he knew that now the whole matter would have to be brought up. It had been decided that he was to remain in London for a couple of years in charge of the Continental branch; he would have to go abroad occasionally, but there would be no more long trips. He was in a position to marry if he wanted to. His family would expect him to, those of his friends who had heard of the “understanding” would expect him to, Mrs. Curtis would expect him to, and he owed it to April that he should marry her. For years now he had kept her waiting. There was not the slightest doubt as to what was his duty.
Nothing, however, could alter the fact that there was nothing in the world that he wanted less than this marriage. It would mean an end to all those pleasant week-ends at Hogstead. It was one thing to invite a young bachelor who was no trouble to look after and who was amusing company; it was quite another thing to entertain a married couple. He would no longer be able to throw into his business that undivided energy of his. He would not be free; he would have to play for safety. As his friendship with the Marstons began to wane, he would become increasingly every year an employee and not an associate. He would belong to the ruled class. And it would be the end, too, of his pleasant little dinner parties with Gerald. He would have to be very careful with his money. They would be fairly comfortable in a small house for the first year or so, but from the birth of their first child their life would become complicated with endless financial worries and would begin to resemble that of his own father and mother, till, finally, he would lose interest in himself and begin to live in his children. What a world! The failure of the parent became forgotten in the high promise of the child, and that child grew up only to meet and be broken by the conspiracy of the world’s wisdom and, in its turn, to focus its thwarted ambitions on its children, and then its children’s children. That was the eternal cycle of disillusion; whatever happened he must break that wheel.
But the battle appeared hopeless. The forces were so strong that were marshaled against him. What chance did he stand against that mingled appeal of sentiment and habit? All that spring he felt himself standing upon a rapidly crumbling wall. Whenever he went down to Hogstead he kept saying to himself: “Yes, I’m safe now, secure within time and space. But it’s coming. Nothing can stop it. Night follows day, winter summer; one can’t fight against the future, one can’t anticipate it. One has to wait; it chooses its own time and its own place.” At the office he was fretful and absent-minded.
“What’s the matter with you?” Gerald asked him once.
“Nothing.”
“Oh, but there must be, you’ve been awfully queer the last week or so.”
Roland did not answer, and there was an awkward silence.