Retrospect made the most of both. It would have been hard to say which it found the more effectual weapon. There were moments when Betty could have caught at the sharp blade of one to escape the other, each was driven in alternately. Finally, in spite of all which she would have during these months foregone had she been taken at her word, in spite of all that retrospect with the search-light could not wholly spoil, she attained at times to endorsing the working principle of the entire withholder, as it had been once phrased by her—'One should quite withdraw.' Retrospect, on the whole, made it out a principle more honest, more kind.
Tommy, who was every day being shown a little more how Prudence Varley had from the beginning 'quite withdrawn,' concerned himself, not with the honesty or the kindness of the principle, but merely with its immediate basis.
So, coming to an understanding of its basis, he saw vividly his own hopelessly unachieved intimacy, his attempts so driven back upon themselves, yet gaily denying defeat, his battering at walls which had been built—not at all, as he had supposed, of abstraction, but of entire perception. He saw now more and more each day the impenetrability of those walls; retrospect illumined for him the unheeding detachment, the abrupt swerves from persons to things, so frequent because he had been so indomitable in his return to persons, perceiving them for gates in the impenetrable walls.
There had been times, there had been moments, when the gates had yielded a very little; one had, as it were, got sudden glimpses through. After all, the Crevequers had never failed, till now, to achieve any intimacy....
The half-conscious, vague knowledge of this made the shut gates the more significant; their barred faces were written over, large, with words. The Crevequers, having begun to learn to read, spelt them out.
Tommy's reading was perhaps attained to with greater slowness, greater difficulty—the fault of sex—than Betty's; but in the end the attainment was equally complete.
To Tommy one element in the business was all-important; before it the other elements shrivelled into nothing. But there were other elements which at times had their turn. There was the attitude of Venables, now realized as the basis of the embarrassment which had for some time been oddly, inexplicably, growing into their intercourse with each other. Wholly to absorb that attitude Tommy had to go back some years, to an old atmosphere—an atmosphere of discriminations between the things a man could do and the other things which he could not do. It is curious how environment can choke an atmosphere. This, of a certain social and moral decency, as evolved by youth in community, had been brought back to Tommy by Venables. Venables and the atmosphere reacted on each other; each explained the other. This was rather a question of the renewal of old things than of new acquirements. Four years—those four years—do not easily slip out of life. They had not slipped out of Tommy's; but it had needed Venables to make them stand and deliver their message. They delivered it, with whispers growing to clamour—a sordid recital of the things which a man cannot do. From the friendly inexpressiveness of Venables' eyes, Tommy gathered the classification 'just scum.' With a side glance at Betty's part in the business, he admitted that there were also, beyond doubt, the things which a girl cannot do—beyond doubt, too, Betty had done them; but here old atmosphere did not come to his help: his ignorance was as outer darkness. Those things were Betty's concern. He wondered a little what she made of them, if anything. He wondered a little also if he was angry with Venables; on the whole, it hardly seemed logical enough to be worth while. (Betty in this matter cut herself adrift from logic.)
Still nothing was said between them; still neither knew how it fared with the other. They, who shared all their thoughts, kept these thoughts locked from each other's sight.
Then, on the twenty-sixth of March, a letter was brought in to them as they sat over supper. They knew what it would say. The Venables had returned to Parker's—they would like to see the Crevequers at lunch the next day. Mrs. Venables was eager to resume the Intimate Contact with the People; she must have a talk with Betty about it.
Betty handed the note to Tommy, who was hunting in his pocket for matches to light his pipe. He glanced at it, then tore it neatly and with careful deliberation into strips, and folded them into lighters. Betty watched him; when he had done, he held one over the lamp and lit his pipe with it.