Yet for one week in those two years Malory and I were linked by the thread of a story he told me, sitting out under a clump of stone-pines overlooking the village. It linked us, indeed, not for that week alone, but, though interruptedly and at long intervals, for many years out of our lives. Neither of us foresaw at the time the far-reaching sequel of his confidences. He, when he told me the story, thought that he was telling me a completed thing, an incident revived in its entirety out of the past; I, when I later went to investigate for myself, went with no thought of continuance; and finally, I, when I departed, did so in the belief that the ultimate word was spoken. Our error, I suppose, arose from our delusion that in this affair, which we considered peculiarly our own, we held in some measure the levers of control. Our conceit, I see it now, was absurd. We were dealing with a force capricious, incalculable, surprising, a force that lurked at the roots of nature, baffling alike the onlooker and the subject whose vagaries it prompted.
I should like to explain here that those who look for facts and events as the central points of significance in a tale, will be disappointed. On the other hand, I may fall upon an audience which, like myself, contend that the vitality of human beings is to be judged less by their achievement than by their endeavour, by the force of their emotion rather than by their success; if this is my lot I shall be fortunate. Indeed, my difficulty throughout has been that I laboured with stones too heavy for my strength, and tried to pierce through veils too opaque for my feeble eyes. Little of any moment occurs in my story, yet behind it all I am aware of tremendous forces at work, which none have rightly understood, neither the actors nor the onlookers.
It was less of a story that Malory told me, than a quiet meditative reminiscence, and he wove into it a great deal which, I begin to suspect, as I think over it, without extracting from my granary of words and impressions any very definite image, was little more than the fleeting phantom of his own personality. I could wish that fate had been a little kinder to me in regard to Malory. I am sure now that he was a man in whom I could have rejoiced as a friend.
When I think of him now, he stands for me as the type of the theorist, who, when confronted with realities, strays helplessly from the road. He had theories about love, but he passed love by unseen; theories about humour, but was himself an essentially unhumorous man; theories about friendship between men, but was himself the loneliest being upon earth. At the same time, I sometimes think that he had something akin to greatness in him; a wide horizon, and a generous sweep of mind. But I may be mistaking mere earnestness for force, and in any case I had better let the man speak for himself.
He said to me as we smoked, “Do you know the Weald of Kent?” and as he spoke he indicated with his pipe stem a broad half-circle, and I had a glimpse of flattened country lying in such a half-circle beneath my view.
His words gave me a strong emotional shock; from those gaunt mountains, that clattering stream, I was suddenly projected into a world of apple-blossom and other delicate things. The mountains vanished; the herd of goats, which moved near us cropping at the scant but faintly aromatic grass of the hill-side, vanished; and in their place stood placid cows, slowly chewing the cud in lush English meadows.
“I fancied once that I would take up farming as a profession,” said Malory. “I have touched and dropped many occupations in my life,” and I realised then that never before in the now eighteen months of our acquaintance had he made to me a remark even so remotely personal. “Many occupations, that have all fallen from me, or I from them. I am an inconstant man, knowing that no love can hold me long. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why I have never married. Such people should not marry, or, if they do, should at least choose a partner as inconstant as themselves. When I say inconstant, I mean of course the temperamentally, not the accidentally, inconstant. It is a new kind of eugenics, a sort of moral eugenics.
“So at one period of my life I had a fancy that I would try my hand at farming. I think perhaps it was one of my most successful experiments. I have a great love for the country people; they are to me like the oaks of the land, enduring and indigenous, beautiful with the beauty of strong, deep-rooted things, without intention of change. I love in them the store of country knowledge which they distil as resin from a pine, in natural order, with the revolving seasons. I love the unconsciousness of them, as they move unheeding, bent only on the practical business of their craft. I revere the simplicity of their traditional ideals. Above all, I envy them the balance and the stability of their lives.”
I wasn’t very much surprised; I had always thought him a dreamy, sensitive sort of fellow. I said,—
“But you surely don’t want to change with them?”