He walked at a moderate pace down Trafalgar Road. He did not know where he was going. Certainly he was not going to see Maggie. He had invented the visit to Maggie instantly in answer to George's question, and he could not understand why he had invented it. Maggie would be at Clara's; and, in a misfortune, he would never go to Clara's; only when he was successful and triumphant could he expose himself to the Benbows.
The weather was damp and chill without rain. The chilliness was rather tonic and agreeable to his body, and he felt quite warm, though on getting down from the dog-cart a few minutes earlier he had been cold almost to the point of numbness. He could not remember how, nor when, the change had occurred.
Every street lamp was the centre of a greenish-grey sphere, which presaged rain as though the street-lamp were the moon. The pavements were greasy with black slime, the road deep in lamp-reflecting mire through which the tram-lines ran straight and gleaming. Far down the slope a cage of light moving obscurely between the glittering avenue of lamps indicated the steam-tram as it lifted towards the further hill into the heart of the town. Where the lamps merged together and vanished, but a little to the left, the illuminated dial of the clock in the Town Hall tower glowed in the dark heavens. The street was deserted; no Signal boys, no ragged girls staring into sweet shops, no artisans returning from work, no rattling carts, no vehicles of any kind save the distant tram. All the little shops were shut; even the little greengrocer's shop, which never closed, was shut now, and its customary winter smell of oranges and apples withdrawn. The little inns, not yet open, showed through their lettered plate windows one watching jet of gas amid blue-and-red paper festoons and bunches of holly. The gloomy fronts of nearly all the houses were pierced with oblongs of light on which sometimes appeared transient shadows of human beings. A very few other human beings, equally mysterious, passed furtive and baffling up and down the slope. Melancholy, familiar, inexplicable, and piteous--the melancholy of existence itself--rose like a vapour out of the sodden ground, ennobling all the scene. The lofty disc of the Town Hall clock solitary in the sky was somehow so heart-rending, and the lives of the people both within and without the houses seemed to be so woven of futility and sorrow, that the menace of eternity grew intolerable.
Edwin's brain throbbed and shook like an engine-house in which the machinery was his violent thoughts. He no longer saw his marriage as a chain of disconnected episodes; he saw it as a drama the true meaning of which was at last revealed by the climax now upon him. He had had many misgivings about it, and had put them away, and they all swept back presenting themselves as a series of signs that pointed to inevitable disaster. He had been blind, from wilfulness or cowardice. He now had vision. He had arrived at honesty. He said to himself, as millions of men and women have said to themselves, with awestruck calm: "My marriage was a mistake." And he began to face the consequences of the admission. He was not such a fool as to attach too much importance to the immediate quarrel, nor even to the half-suppressed but supreme dissension concerning a place of residence. He assumed, even, that the present difficulties would somehow, with more or less satisfaction, be adjusted. What, however, would not and could not be adjusted was the temperament that produced them. Those difficulties, which had been preceded by smaller difficulties, would be followed by greater. It was inevitable. To hope otherwise would be weakly sentimental, as his optimism during the vigil in Auntie Hamps's bedroom had been weakly sentimental. He must face the truth: "She won't alter her ways--and I shan't stand them." No matter what their relations might in future superficially appear to be, their union was over. Or, if it was not actually over, it soon would be over, for the forces to shatter it were uncontrollable and increasing in strength.
"Of course she can't help being herself!" he said impartially. "But what's that got to do with me?"
His indictment of his wife was terrific and not to be answered. She had always been a queer girl. On the first night he ever saw her, she had run after him into his father's garden, and stood with him in the garden-porch that he had since done away with, and spoken to him in the strangest manner. She was abnormal. The dismal and perilous adventure with George Cannon could not have happened to a normal woman. She could not see reason, and her sense of justice was non-existent. If she wanted a thing she must have it. In reality she was a fierce and unscrupulous egotist, incapable of understanding a point of view other than her own. Imagine her bursting out like that about Auntie Hamps's will! It showed how her mind ran. That Auntie Hamps had an absolute right to dispose of her goods as she pleased; that there was a great deal to be said for Auntie Hamps's arrangements; that in any case the Benbows were not to blame; that jealousy was despicable and the mark of a mean mind; that the only dignified course for himself was to execute the trust imposed upon him without complaining,--these things were obvious; but not to her! No human skill could ever induce her to grant them. She did not argue,--she felt; and the disaster was that she did not feel rightly.... Imagine her trying to influence Ingpen's housekeeping, to worry the man,--she the guest and he the host! What would she say if anybody played the same game on her?...
She could not be moderate. She expected every consideration from others, but she would yield none. She had desired a horse and trap. She had received it. And how had she used the gift? She had used it in defiance of the needs of the works. She had upset everybody and everything, and assuredly Unchpin had a very legitimate grievance.... She had said that she could not feel at home in her own house while the house belonged to Maggie. Edwin had obediently bought the house,--and now she wanted another house. She scorned her husband's convenience and preferences, and she wanted a house that was preposterously inaccessible. The satisfaction of her caprice for a dog-cart had not in the slightest degree appeased her egotism. On the contrary it had further excited her egotism and sharpened its aggressiveness. And by what strange infantile paths had she gone about the enterprise of shifting Edwin into the country! Not a frank word to Edwin of the house she had found and decided upon! Silly rumours of a "surprise!" And she had counted upon the presence of Ingpen to disarm Edwin and to tie his hands. The conspiracy was simply childish. And because Edwin had at once shown his distaste for her scheme, she had taken offence. Her acrimony had gradually increased throughout the day, hiding for a time under malicious silences and enigmatic demeanours, darting out in remarks to third persons and drawing back, and at last displaying itself openly, cruelly, monstrously. The injustice of it all passed belief. There was no excuse for Hilda, and there never would be any excuse for her. She was impossible; she would be still more impossible. He did not make her responsible; he admitted that she was not responsible. But at the same time, with a disdainful and cold resentment, he condemned and hated her.
He recalled Ingpen's: "I won't pay the price."
"And I won't!" he said. "The end has come!"
He envied Ingpen.