“I thought I was until lately—the last—oh, it is hard to say exactly. But I never was intended for quite such hard and fast routine. I feel positive that in certain conditions I should not mind being a mere second self to Cecil. When you love a man nothing much matters up to a certain point; and after that, nothing would matter at all if the nerves could be made to hum occasionally to something like uncertainty. This cut-and-dried life of England’s leisure class, which reminds me of a grandfather’s clock in magnificent running order, may suit many temperaments, but not mine. As you say, the old civilisations fascinate us who are two-thirds made up of the unruly instincts of the new, but they don’t satisfy, and they certainly do pall. Three years more of this and I shall be a machine without a nerve, or—I shall hate Cecil Maundrell. I’ve been horribly upset ever since you came; you actually brought an earthquake with you, and I’ve thought and thought and thought——”
“Well?” he said gently.
“If I’ve relapsed into the national monologue it’s your fault.”
“Have you been fashioning your mental habits on an up-to-date novelette? People always monologue in private life. Do go on.”
“You know I never had a morbid nor a hysterical moment; but there must come a time to all strong natures when all they have inherited and all they have been in their plastic years finds itself in violent conflict with an alien present. The problem would be solved if we could get away, if Cecil’s genius could make a leap into other lines. If I could only have had a finger in the moulding of our two destinies Cecil would have been a great pioneer, an ‘Empire-maker,’ like Cecil Rhodes. There would have been no stagnation then; I should have felt all the stimulation of trampling down obstacles and defying the prejudices of a million little minds in opening up a new and savage country by the sheer insolent force of one great man’s personality. And then the excitement of not knowing what would happen next, where we or the whole country would be this time next year! And in a new country, where civilisation is still in the making, man is greater than the State, and he is much more alive and individual, much more primitive and at the same time many-sided than when he is the slow and logical result of a rounded and fagged civilisation which has caught him fast. But there is no hope.... Even if Cecil discovered the instinct of the pioneer in him he would not listen to it, for he is very proud and very ambitious. When a man towers in an isolated field like Mr. Rhodes, every man who plants his heels in the same field in the same epoch is a moon to Jupiter. And no two men in a century will ever have all the gifts of the Empire-maker united in one brain. Cecil is highly gifted, and he has enormous energy, but his gifts are on the old conservative lines.”
Randolph, who had been absently tearing up the heather by the roots, his eyes apparently absorbed in his task, extended himself at her feet.
“What are you going to do about it?” he asked.
“What can I do? It has been an unspeakable relief to talk to you—have I bored you?”
“I’ll not answer such a foolish question. Do you still love your husband?”
“Oh, I’m sure I do, down deep; but my brain is in a chaotic state; the whole of me in an ugly rebellious temper. We’ve had our first real misunderstanding these last two days, and Cecil is so absorbed in grouse he doesn’t even know it.”