“In those days I was sentimental. I minded. For two pins I’d write to him this afternoon. Why shouldn’t he know he’s my brother? What’s all this ridiculous mystery?”
She became incoherent.
“But WHY not? A reason why he shouldn’t know.”
“A reason why he SHOULD know,” she retorted. “I never heard such rubbish! Give me a reason why he should know.”
“Because the lie we acted has ruined our lives.”
She looked in bewilderment at the well-appointed room.
“It’s been like a poison we won’t acknowledge. How many times have you thought of my brother? I’ve thought of him every day—not in love; don’t misunderstand; only as a medicine I shirked. Down in what they call the subconscious self he has been hurting me.” His voice broke. “Oh, my darling, we acted a lie then, and this letter reminds us of it and gives us one more chance. I have to say ‘we’ lied. I should be lying again if I took quite all the blame. Let us ask God’s forgiveness together. Then let us write, as coldly as you please, to Stephen, and tell him he is my father’s son.”
Her reply need not be quoted. It was the last time he attempted intimacy. And the remainder of their conversation, though long and stormy, is also best forgotten.
Thus the first effect of Varden’s letter was to make them quarrel. They had not openly disagreed before. In the evening he kissed her and said, “How absurd I was to get angry about things that happened last year. I will certainly not write to the person.” She returned the kiss. But he knew that they had destroyed the habit of reverence, and would quarrel again. On his rounds he looked in at Varden and asked nonchalantly for the letter. He carried it off to his room. It was unwise of him, for his nerves were already unstrung, and the man he had tried to bury was stirring ominously. In the silence he examined the handwriting till he felt that a living creature was with him, whereas he, because his child had died, was dead. He perceived more clearly the cruelty of Nature, to whom our refinement and piety are but as bubbles, hurrying downwards on the turbid waters. They break, and the stream continues. His father, as a final insult, had brought into the world a man unlike all the rest of them, a man dowered with coarse kindliness and rustic strength, a kind of cynical ploughboy, against whom their own misery and weakness might stand more vividly relieved. “Born an Elliot—born a gentleman.” So the vile phrase ran. But here was an Elliot whose badness was not even gentlemanly. For that Stephen was bad inherently he never doubted for a moment and he would have children: he, not Rickie, would contribute to the stream; he, through his remote posterity, might mingled with the unknown sea.
Thus musing he lay down to sleep, feeling diseased in body and soul. It was no wonder that the night was the most terrible he had ever known. He revisited Cambridge, and his name was a grey ghost over the door. Then there recurred the voice of a gentle shadowy woman, Mrs. Aberdeen, “It doesn’t seem hardly right.” Those had been her words, her only complaint against the mysteries of change and death. She bowed her head and laboured to make her “gentlemen” comfortable. She was labouring still. As he lay in bed he asked God to grant him her wisdom; that he might keep sorrow within due bounds; that he might abstain from extreme hatred and envy of Stephen. It was seldom that he prayed so definitely, or ventured to obtrude his private wishes. Religion was to him a service, a mystic communion with good; not a means of getting what he wanted on the earth. But tonight, through suffering, he was humbled, and became like Mrs. Aberdeen. Hour after hour he awaited sleep and tried to endure the faces that frothed in the gloom—his aunt’s, his father’s, and, worst of all, the triumphant face of his brother. Once he struck at it, and awoke, having hurt his hand on the wall. Then he prayed hysterically for pardon and rest.