I do not think I spoke again till we got to Oakley Street. I was consumed with rage and contemptuous impatience. I had done the best I knew and had failed. Why? I had no idea. I have never known why he refused to come. I don't think he knew himself. Such resignation I had never dreamt of. It was utterly new to me. I used to think of resignation in a vague way as of something rather beautiful; ever since, I have thought of it with impatience: resignation is the courage of the irresolute. Oscar's obstinacy was the obverse of his weakness. It is astonishing how inertia rules some natures. The attraction of waiting and doing nothing is intense for those who live in thought and detest action. As we turned into Oakley Street, Oscar said to me:
"You are not angry with me, Frank?" and he put out his hand.
"No, no," I said, "why should I be angry? You are the master of your fate.
I can only offer advice."
"Do come and see me soon," he pleaded.
"My bolt is shot," I replied; "but I'll come in two or three days' time, as soon as I have anything of importance to say. . . . . Don't forget, Oscar, the yacht is there and will be there waiting until the 20th; the yacht will always be ready and the brougham."
"Good night, Frank," he said, "good night, and thank you."
He got out and went into the house, the gloomy sordid house where the brother lived who would sell his blood for a price!
. . . . . . .
Three or four days later we met again, but to my amaze Oscar had not changed his mind. To talk of him as cast down is the precise truth; he seemed to me as one who had fallen from a great height and lay half conscious, stunned on the ground. The moment you moved him, even to raise his head, it gave him pain and he cried out to be left alone. There he lay prone, and no one could help him. It was painful to witness his dumb misery: his mind even, his sunny bright intelligence, seemed to have deserted him.
Once again he came out with me to lunch. Afterwards we drove through Regent's
Park as the quietest way to Hampstead and had a talk. The air and swift motion
did him good. The beauty of the view from the heath seemed to revive him.
I tried to cheer him up.