The Belfry

by May Sinclair

Norah and I went down on Saturday to see him. (His leave was up on Sunday night.)

Without Reggie I don't think I should have realized Jevons in his final phase.

He had been happy, I know, at Hampstead in the first two years of his marriage; he had been happy most of the time in Edwardes Square; even in Mayfair he had had moments; and Amershott had been, on the whole, an improvement on Mayfair. And he had lived through his three weeks in Ghent in a sort of ecstasy. And before that, all the time, there had been his work, which I am always forgetting, and his fame, when he didn't forget it.

But there had always been something.

At first it had been the Thesigers. As long as Mrs. Thesiger—as long as one Thesiger—held out against him he had felt defeat. And then there had been Reggie's return and his appalling doubt. He had pretended not to see his doubt and not to mind it. And he had seen it, as he saw everything, and he had minded awfully. Then came Viola's illness, which you could put down to Reggie's doubt. And after that it had been Viola pretty nearly all the time. And even at Ghent, by the tortures of anxiety she had caused him, you may say that she had spoiled his ecstasy.

And now, without any effort, or any calculation or foresight, by a stupendous accident, he had found happiness and peace and certainty. The thing was so consummately done, and so timed to the minute, that when you saw him there enjoying it, you could have sworn that he had played for it and pulled it off. It was as if he had said to himself, "Give me time, and I'll bring all these people round, even Mrs. Thesiger, even Reggie. I'll make them love me. Wait, and you'll just see how I shall score."

And there he was scoring.

And it was as if he had said to himself long ago, "As for Viola, I know all about it. I know I do things that make the poor child shudder; but I can put that all right. I can make her forget it. I give myself three weeks." As if he said, "She thought she was going to leave me. I knew that, too, and I didn't care. She might have left me a thousand times and I should have brought her back."

I used to think it pathetic that Jevons should have wanted Mrs. Thesiger to love him—that he should have wanted Reggie to. But I must say his pathos was avenged. They were pathetic now. That big, hulking Major wasn't happy unless he was writing Jimmy's letters, or cutting up Jimmy's meat for him, or helping him in and out of his clothes. Mrs. Thesiger wasn't happy unless she was doing things for him. The Canon wasn't happy (though, like Norah, he had nothing on his conscience) and Mildred and Millicent and Victoria weren't happy, nor the Thesiger's friends in the Cathedral Close.

And then—after they had made a hero of him for six weeks—on that Saturday night when we were all together in the Canon's library, Jevons made his confession.