But even this sharp anguish and the horror of the dark were welcome to her, since they brought to her again something of the poignancy of life and the desire to live. Into her benumbed self as into a benumbed limb there came the prickings of returning sensation: it was beginning to be usable again, capable of grasping and of feeling. But there was a certain change already perceptible to herself in the quality of the life that was beginning to flow through it.
Hitherto, pleasure-seeking, self-centred, self-indulgently extravagant though her life had been, it had yet had this redeeming feature that she delighted in the delights of others, glowed with their joys, and gave herself to their pleasures. Though she never had risen to that higher altruism which equally rejoices in being associated with the troubles and sorrows of those it loves, and mourns for those who mourn even more sincerely than it plays for those who dance, she had always taken pleasure in spending her time, her money and herself on the enjoyment of others, and had found her reward in such application. The gem-like brilliance of her life had ever been undimmed by the softer fires of pity and compassion: she had had no use for the failures and the ineffectives of this world. She was sorry—vaguely—for any who were not soaked in success, but they had never received from her more than a dropped “Poor thing,” and an averted gaze: people in pain and distress had much better go away and hide themselves, as she herself would undoubtedly have done in similar circumstances, and not bring their damping and depressing influence among those whose privilege it was to live in sunlight....
But now the quality of her reviving desire for life was changed infinitely for the worse: little as she had previously cared for the sorrows of others, now she found herself awaking to an equal indifference to their joys. The great point was to extract for oneself all that life could possibly hold of pleasurable experience, and no longer to find pleasure in giving it. Robin had rejected the fruits of her efforts for his well-being; another had returned her gift with outrageous contumely.
Here were the rewards of the well-wisher! And more paramount than ever was the necessity of turning the back on all that was painful and distressing. Life did not last long, nor was she desirous that it should, but while the burden of consciousness was there, it was the only sanity to make it as light a weight as possible. It would soon be removed altogether, and for that interval, reason and feeling alike advised the decking of it with ribands and flowers. It mattered not from where they came: the flowers could be plucked, if need be, from the wreaths left on graves. It was only necessary that they should hide the burden of life.
A more immediate necessity was to shut out from herself all that reminded her of this horror of war. She hated and deplored it, and already she saw it, in some future not far off, assuming an aspect much more intimately menacing. It was out of her power (already she had done her vain best) to avert that, and now the only possibility of avoiding that this awakening of hers should be but the awakening from stupor into nightmare lay in banishing from her mind and from her sight all that could recall to her the grim reality. It was in a sort of self-protection that she framed her House of Life afresh: pity had long been banished from it, and now she must veil the face of love.
She had lived far too cosmopolitan a life to have much sense of patriotism, if by patriotism is implied the blind preference for one country above the sum of all other countries. The roots of her culture were too widely planted to enable her to say, “It is from here my life comes, or from there.” Though in a very different sense to that in which John Wesley spoke, the world was her parish: she found that in all the enthusiasms of her life there had been no touchstone applied that would record a permanent nationality. Just as she had never cared for class, so she had never cared for blood. It only mattered that it beat, and in her roused a beat in answer.
London in these psychical circumstances had become impossible. Wherever you went, war in some form confronted you or pounced out on you screaming: whether in Robin’s khaki, or in Gracie’s knitting establishment, or in the headlines of a paper, or in the innumerable appeals that, still unopened, littered her table.
What sense of patriotism had Gracie until Germany announced her most reasonable intention of invading France by the shortest possible route? That was a mere matter of common sense: the politics of a nation were exactly those of an individual. Certainly Germany had promised not to do so, but so for that matter had every married woman (herself included) promised to love, honour and obey her husband. But what in each case did that promise mean? It only meant that for convenience of a contract of international or personal importance, you declared yourself ready to enter into obligations without which no contract would have been possible. It fitted the facts for the moment, but if the facts changed, you acted as if you denied the authenticity of your signature. You felt like that then, or otherwise you would not have signed. But if you felt differently afterwards, if a question of national existence or of private happiness were at stake, naturally you said, “I feel so no longer.” Contracts only bound such as were willing to observe them. If a godfather vowed that his godchild renounced the devil and all his works, was he responsible, or for that matter was the unconscious godchild responsible, for the complete observance of that contract?
How did the jargon run? “The pomps and vanities of this wicked world and all the sinful lusts of the flesh.” All that had been renounced for her, very solemnly. Surely her poor godmother had not perjured herself in guaranteeing these things. She had only hoped for the best, just in the same way as Germany had done when she promised not to invade Belgium. She hoped the necessity might not arise for her doing so, just as H.R.H., who had been so pleasant a guest at Lady Gurtner’s party the other day, had hoped for the best in promising that Helen Grote should renounce all the pomps and vanities of this wicked world. For both an internal necessity had arisen: it had become a condition of life that the promises, written or spoken, should become waste paper or wasted breath. It was ridiculous to keep a promise that was made in other circumstances. And it was over this that England had gone to war, that Moloch’s fires were heated. And yet it was this, neither more nor less, that had turned Robin into that grave-gay boy who had preferred to face shot and shell rather than be sensible and stay at home, and live at ease like a few other fortunate contemporaries who had taken advantage of the facilities which influence had procured for them.
Well: she had done her best for him, and now she must look after herself a little, and learn to enjoy and to be alive again. It was no use, so she had lately ascertained, to care too much for other people; they left you and went after their own devices, and brought upon you this intolerable sense of loneliness and of absolute indifference to the manifold joys of the world. But in order to appreciate these she must put away from her the thought of the war, which spoiled every hour into which it was permitted to intrude. Her own individuality was the final court of appeal: she must satisfy its imperious need of banishing the things that wearied and distressed it. Surely there must be other people of intelligence, who, realizing their impotence to help or hinder, had got away from the ugliness of turmoil and the waste of profitless and anxious hours.