Since then there’s been only one question—what ought I to do?
Apart from my own feeling for Roger—supposing he was only the friend he used to be—should I let him give his heart and his name to a woman, whom, if he knew the truth, he would put away from him like a leper? Every ideal and instinct that make up the sum of his being would revolt, if he knew about Lizzie and John Masters. I know this, I don’t just think it because I want to. According to his code all women must be chaste and all men honest, and if they’re not, he doesn’t want to have anything to do with them. It may not be generous, but that’s not to the point. He is so made and so will remain. He has been kinder to me than any one in the world—kind and just, as far as he knew. Should I, who could prevent it, stand by and watch him—the illustration isn’t flattering but it’s apt—rushing toward the precipice like the Gadarene swine?
And then Lizzie is entirely unfitted to be the wife of such a man. She belongs to another world that he doesn’t understand and couldn’t tolerate. He would think the people she foregathers with were savages. He hasn’t seen her with them, he doesn’t know how blind she is to the niceties of manners and breeding that to him are essentials. I try to fit her into his environment, put her up in a niche beside Mrs. Ashworth—Lizzie, with her tempests, her careless insults, her impossible friends! Suppose there had never been any John Masters, that she was as pure as Diana, could she ever be tamed to the Clements’ standard?
Memories of her keep coming up, throwing oranges out of the window, listening hungrily to Mrs. Stregazzi (fancy Mrs. Stregazzi at Mrs. Ashworth’s tea table talking about her corsets and her cigarettes!) facing Masters like an enraged lioness, weeping against his shoulder and pleading with him to come back. Good heavens, if no man had even touched her hand except in the clasp of friendship, she is not the woman for Roger. And she lived, willingly, proudly, without a twinge of conscience, with John Masters!
That’s one side and here’s the other:
Lizzie’s happiness, Lizzie placed beyond all need, Lizzie the wife of a man so high-thinking and right-doing that everything in her that was fine must answer to his call. Under his influence she might change, become what he now imagines her to be. Women have done that often, grown to love the man they marry and molded themselves to his ideal. Have I the right to stand between her and such a future, bar the way to Eden, an angel with a flaming sword?
I can’t.
In utter abandon she told me the story that I can now use against her. She trusted me and I answered her trust with a promise that I would never tell, unless she asked me to. It is true that she said she didn’t care if I did tell. But does it matter what she said? Wouldn’t I, if I used the permission given in sickness of heart and body, be meaner than the meanest thing that crawls? Am I to buy my happiness at such a price?
I can’t.
If she still had her career it would be different. I could see her going forward in it, certain it was the best thing for her. But her career is over. She is to settle down as a singing teacher, plod on patiently, watch others making for the goal that was once to be hers. She can’t do it any more than she can fly.