“Oh, are you! And sail without a flag? Just like you, destroy, destroy, and nothing to put in its place.”
“Yes, I want to put in its place this crowned phœnix rising from the nest in flames. I want to set fire to our bark, Harriet and Lovat, and out of the ashes construct the frigate Hermes, which name still contains the same reference, her and me, but which has a higher total significance.”
She looked at him speechless for some time. Then she merely said:
“You’re mad,” and left him with his flag in his hands.
Nevertheless he was a determined little devil, as she knew to her cost, and once he’d got an idea into his head not heaven nor hell nor Harriet would ever batter it out. And now he’d got into his head this idea of being lord and master, and Harriet’s acknowledging him as such. Not just verbally. No. Not under the flag of perfect love. No. Obstinate and devilish as he was, he wanted to haul down the flag of perfect love, to set fire to the bark Harriet and Lovat, to seat himself in glory on the ashes, like a resurrected phœnix, with an imaginary crown on his head. And she was to be a comfortable nest for his impertinence.
In short, he was to be the lord and master, and she the humble slave. Thank you. Or at the very best, she was to be a sort of domestic Mrs Gladstone, the Mrs Gladstone of that old chestnut—who, when a female friend was lamenting over the terrible state of affairs, in Ireland or somewhere, and winding up her lament with: “Terrible, terrible. But there is One above”—replied: “Yes, he’s just changing his socks. He’ll be down in a minute.” Mr Lovat was to be the One above, and she was to be happy downstairs thinking that this lord, this master, this Hermes cum Dionysus wonder, was comfortably changing his socks. Thank you again. The man was mad.
Yet he stuck to his guns. She was to submit to the mystic man and male in him, with reverence, and even a little awe, like a woman before the altar of the great Hermes. She might remember that he was only human, that he had to change his socks if he got his feet wet, and that he would make a fool of himself nine times out of ten. But—and the but was emphatic as a thunderbolt—there was in him also the mystery and lordship of—of Hermes, if you like—but the mystery and the lordship of the forward-seeking male. That she must emphatically realise and bow down to. Yes, bow down to. You can’t have two masters of one ship: neither can you have a ship without a master. The Harriet and Lovat had been an experiment of ten years’ endurance. Now she was to be broken up, or burnt, so he said, and the non-existent Hermes was to take her place.
You can’t have two masters to one ship. And if it is a ship: that is, if it has a voyage to sail, a port to make, even a far direction to take, into the unknown, then a master it must have. Harriet said it wasn’t a ship, it was a houseboat, and they could lie so perfectly here by the Pacific for the rest of time—or be towed away to some other lovely spot to house in. She could imagine no fairer existence. It was a houseboat.
But he with his no, no, he almost drove her mad. The bark of their marriage was a ship that must sail into uncharted seas, and he must be the master, and she must be the crew, sworn on. She was to believe in his adventure and deliver herself over to it; she was to believe in his mystic vision of a land beyond this charted world, where new life rose again.
And she just couldn’t. His land beyond the land men knew, where men were more than they are now: she couldn’t believe in it. “Then believe in me,” he said desperately. “I know you too well,” she replied. And so, it was an impasse.