Chapter XIII: FREEDOM
It is not easy to convey in a few words the turmoil of Jim’s mind during the following days. One cannot say that he was the prey of his conscience, for he believed from the bottom of his heart that he was doing the best thing for Dolly, as well as for himself, in thus allowing the story of his murder to stand. His uncle had lived a double life, and thus had maintained a reputation for virtue. In Jim’s case, he could not long have hidden from the eyes of his neighbours the wretchedness of his marriage, and there was no likelihood that he would have ever set a shining example of nobility to the village; and therefore his supposed extinction could be regarded as one of those pretences which are the basis of society.
Had there been any likelihood of his deception being found out, the case would have been different; but his death had been accepted absolutely, and he did not suppose that there would be any penetrating inquiries or investigations by the police now that the innkeeper had made his lying confession. He was completely “dead,” nor would he ever have to come back to earth again, thereby upsetting any future arrangement of her life which his “widow” might make; for even if he were one day recognized by some English acquaintances he could always put any inquirer in the wrong by showing that he had been none other than “Jim Easton” these many years.
Yet the fear of detection, and the indefinite sense that he was acting in a manner violently opposed to those legalities which he did not understand, but whose existence he realized, kept him in a state of nervous tension and temporarily banished all peace from his mind. He was convinced that Dolly would not grieve for him; yet the manner of his death would be a shock to her, and there were two other persons—Mrs. Darling and Smiley-face—who would feel his loss. They would soon forget him, however.
He recalled Mrs. Spooner’s angry words to him after that day when he had inadvertently interrupted her bicycle-ride: “You haven’t much idea of obligation, have you?” This irresponsibility, of which people complained, was evidently growing upon him, he thought to himself; yet, viewing the matter from another angle, was he not now deliberately acting for the good of everybody concerned, in ending his unfortunate marriage and abandoning his inheritance?
His equanimity, however, gradually returned to him in some measure; and when at length he went back to Rome, and there settled himself comfortably in the obscure little hotel in the Trastevere quarter, he was already beginning at moments to feel a tremendous joy in his recovered liberty.
He knew that he was a deserter, and he was well aware that so he would be called by all nice-minded people. Yet that thought in itself did not trouble him; for the mental standpoint of the wanderer commands an outlook very different from that of the stout citizen. He saw clearly that he had not in him the stuff of which a constitutional state or a model household is made. He could not be a party to so many of the hypocrisies of social life. He was not a good disciple of the Great Sham, and was so often inclined to “give the show away” when most the illusion ought to have been maintained. He was not a respectable member of the community, nor was he gifted with those methodical and enduring qualities which shape wedlock into a salubrious routine. Perhaps it was that he had too much imagination to be a good citizen, too much finesse to be a good husband. In any case he knew that he would never have been of use to his country, except, perhaps, as a pioneer in a small way (for the world-power of the Anglo-Saxon has been established by the rover and the free lance); or possibly as a sort of intellectual bagman, unconsciously exhibiting the lighter side of the race to foreign and critical eyes.
As the days passed he gave ever less consideration to his attitude, and soon his thoughts of Dolly and his English life had become sporadic and fleeting. Once, as he loitered in the sunny Piazza di Spagna upon a certain Sunday morning, and watched the good folk mounting the hot steps to the church of the Trinita de’ Monti, he irritably argued the matter to himself as though anxious to exorcise it by arriving at some sort of finality. “Dolly will be far happier without me,” he mused. “If I had left her, and was known to be alive, I should harm her by placing upon her the stigma most hateful to her sex—that of the unsuccessful wife. But since I am supposed to be dead, she will benefit trebly: she is rid of a bad husband; she will have the pleasure, very real to her, of wearing mourning and nursing a fictitious sorrow; and she may set about the management of her life with a house and a comfortable fortune to add to her attractions. And then, again, from a public point of view, I have avoided the inevitable scandal of my married life by dying before I was driven to drink and debauchery. My memorial tablet in the church will be worth reading!”