Scarlet and Hyssop: A Novel

by E. F. Benson

"Yes, one's mistakes," she said—"all the occasions on which one has failed to grasp the true import of what one was doing, and, in particular, all the mistakes one has seen other people making and their consequences. I always think that one's experience means much more what one has observed in other people than what one has done one's self. Of course, all observation passes through the crucible of one's personality, whether one observes things in one's self or other people, and that certainly transforms it, crystallizes it, what you will. But if one has a grain of imagination, other people's experiences are as vivid to one's self as one's own, and as potentially profitable. Don't you think so?"

She rose as she spoke, trembling slightly, and brushed the fallen petals from her dress. She was just enough not to blame him for what he had said; she was, indeed, just enough to commend him for his reticence, since her words had necessarily for him such a significance, and the need to stop him saying more was imperative. She could see what inward excitement moved him, and in her soul she thanked him for the love he bore her; but that any word of it should pass between them was impossible—merely, it could not be. This being so, she desired with a fervency of desire that she had not known for years not to lose her friend, and words of such a kind as she knew were rising to his lips would have meant this loss. Indeed, at this moment the world seemed to hold for her nothing so desired as that friendship, which a word might rob her of.

To him, her reply was both sobering and bracing. It showed him how close he had been walking to the edge of a precipice. As Marie had just told him, he was old-fashioned; he believed that "good" and "bad," "noble" and "wicked," were not yet words of obsolete meaning, words like "arquebus," which had no significance in the vocabulary of the day. A temptation had come and gripped him by the throat—the temptation to suggest to her that she should say that her marriage with Jack was, among her experiences, a mistake. He knew also—and was honest enough to confess that his desire to hear her say this was due to the fact that her confession would necessarily open certain vistas—it would be the first step, at any rate, down a path that a certain part of him had during his past fortnight longed to tread with a fervour and a passion that shook his whole nature, as a wind shakes and tosses a curtain. He knew in what sort Jack had kept his marriage vow, and he had begun to ask himself whether such conduct did not give emancipation, so to speak, to the wife—had begun to tell himself that it was no use setting up exceptional codes of morality. One lived in the world, the world did this and that; but this douche of cold water was bracing. It recalled him to sanity, to his better and his normal self, and he replied in a voice still shaken with his own overwhelming though momentary tumult.

"So you advised her not to marry him?" he asked. "Do you think she will take your advice?"

"Yes; because it showed her clearly what her own bias really was. One often does not know what one really thinks till some one expresses a strong opinion on one side or the other. Then one hears it with strong repugnance or strong sympathy, which reveals to one's self what one's true opinion is."

Jim smiled, a regurgitation of bitterness swelling up in his breast.

"Have you ever formulated to yourself what your own strongest passion is?" he asked.

"No, never. It is the most difficult thing in the world to say what one likes best until one is forty or thereabouts. All one's youth—which, I take it, extends to about forty—is passed experimentally in determining what one likes best, and one does not know till it is crystallized. By then also it is probably unattainable."

Jim laughed again bitterly.

"Oh, you need not be afraid," he said, his rebuff now beginning to sting. "I tell you that your chief passion is analysis. You do not care so much what people do, as why they do it. If a Hooligan knocked you down and began stamping on you, I can imagine you saying, 'Stop just a moment to tell me why you are doing this. Does giving pain to me give pleasure to you, or do you personally feel a grudge against me?' Then, when he had told you, you would say, 'Thank you very much. Go on stamping again.'"