No, not good enough! Hopelessly impossible on any basis of self-respect or decent comradeship, to say nothing of love. Yet tempting to a man who hated loneliness, and was alone; who, at the very sight of Joyce’s handwriting, felt the same thrill of passion for her which had come to him always at the touch of her finger-tips, or the quick toss of her head, or the whiteness of her neck. It was a temptation to his weakness, but he was stubborn as well as weak, and wouldn’t yield to such a miserable compact as this surrender would mean to his manhood.
He was in a wretched state of mind, which Joyce’s last letter intensified in wretchedness. Susan’s agony, Digby’s murder, his mother’s death, his father’s grief and rage—for he was raging now with more personal passion against the Irish rebels—had smitten him at a time when Joyce’s desertion would have been enough to cast him into the blackest depths. It seemed as though God, or fate, had a special grudge against him, and kicked him when he was down.
The last blow—a feeble tap, perhaps, yet overpowering for a while to his moral strength—befell him in a letter from a man named Heatherdew, into whose hands, as literary agent, Christy had placed the war-book.
My Dear Major Pollard [he wrote]:
For our friend Christy’s sake, as well as in the usual way of business, I have spared no trouble in trying to find a publisher for your book, “The Machine Gun Company,” which I may say I have read with the greatest interest and admiration. It has now been to eight publishers and all of them, without exception, express the opinion that, at the present time, there is no market for war books. The public, they say (I think incorrectly) wish to forget the war. My own opinion is that they are tired of war books which do not go to the heart of the business which you and I know. However, I consider it useless to make further effort, and I therefore return the manuscript, advising you to hold it for a year or two, when it may have a better chance.
It was a vital disappointment. Bertram had always clung to the hope of this book as a compensation for his failure to get “a job,” as a justification, even, of his life. He had put everything that was in him into this book, his secret agonies and fears, his quality of courage, his love of England, his understanding of the men, the ardour that was his in the beginning of war, the joy in comradeship, the later disillusion, the final disgust.
This was the war as it had passed through his own soul, and through the souls of all the men he knew. It was the Absolute Truth, as he had seen it and known it. It was, above all, his defence against Joyce’s accusations, and the general suspicion of her family and friends that he was a “slacker,” unpatriotic, and careless of his country’s honour. Janet Welford had spoken well of it. “It’s good!” she had said, and had praised it as “almost great.” Well, here it was back again, soiled by publishers’ readers, scrumpled through the post, condemned.
Bertram flung it into a drawer of the little old desk where, as a boy in his father’s house, he had written secret verses, youthful essays about London life, and, later, love-letters to Joyce Bellairs.
An immense gloom closed down upon his spirit. What was the use of anything? He had tried hard, and failed utterly, in every way. He had made a frightful mucker of life. His luck was out. Why kick against it? Why not face up to the futility of life—for him, anyhow? He hadn’t even had the decent luck of going out with the men who had met a bullet or a bit of shell. Those things had passed him by, though he hadn’t dodged them. That was a decent way of death, and honourable, the easiest way out of all difficulties. Even now, a bullet would solve a lot of problems, and answer that alternative which Joyce had put: “It must be one thing or the other.” He wondered if she would weep as much for him as for the Lely portrait of Rupert Bellairs. She might like the sentiment of being a widow for a little while. She would look beautiful in her weeds, with a little bit of white lace under the black round her gold-spun hair, almost as beautiful as Lady Martock. Kenneth Murless would say all kinds of consoling things in his gentlemanly way. All her friends would write, wire, send messages, flowers. The two Russian girls would utter extravagances in broken English, and the Countess Lydia would enquire whether Joyce’s husband had died a Bolshevik, or suggest that he had killed himself at the bidding of Lenin and Trotsky, “who have agents everywhere, ma chérie!” Well, he would provide a lot of pleasure to all kinds of people, and end his own misery at the same time.
He had left his old service revolver in the study at Holland Street. Quite easy to get, if Edith were still there, as parlour-maid.