"When?"
"Last night. That was it." They now stood facing each other, at the crossroads. James did not speak for a moment, and Harry scanned his face through the dusk. Its expression was one of bewilderment, Harry thought. Strange, that James should be more embarrassed than he! But that was the way it went.
"Harry! See here, Harry—"
"Yes, James!"
"I ..." He stopped and then slowly raised his hand. "I congratulate you."
"Thanks, awfully. It does sort of take one's breath away, doesn't it?... I'm going there now. Why don't you come too? No? Well, I may be rather late, so leave the door on the latch. I'll walk home." And he walked off down the crossroad.
James knew, perfectly well, the moment Harry said he had something to tell him. His subsequent questions were prompted more by a desire to make the situation between them legally clear, as it were, than by real need of information. His first dominant impulse was to explain the situation to Harry and show him, frankly and convincingly, the utter impossibility of his engagement. The very words formed themselves in his mind:—"See here, Harry, you can't possibly marry Madge Elliston, because I'm in love with her myself—have been for years, before you ever thought of her!" He drew a long breath and actually started in on his speech. But the words would not come. As he looked at his brother standing happy and ignorant before him he realized in an instant that, come what might, he would never be able to utter those words.
There was nothing left to do but mumble his congratulations. As he lifted his hand to that of his brother the thought occurred to him that he might easily raise it higher and put Harry out of his way, once and for all. He knew that he could, with his bare hands, do him to death on the spot; knee on chest, fingers on throat—he knew the place. That was perhaps preferable to the other; kinder, certainly, but equally impossible. It was not even a temptation.
As he walked off he reflected that he had just come through one of the great crises of his whole life, and yet how commonplace, how utterly flat had been its outward guise! He had always vaguely wondered how people acted at such times; now the chance had come to him and he had shown less feeling than he would have at missing a trolley car. In him, at this present moment, were surging some of the most terrific passions that ever swayed human beings—love, jealousy, disappointment, hate of the order of things—and he could not find a physical vent for one of them! Not only that, but he never would be able to; he saw that clearly enough; people of his time and class and type never could. This was what civilization had brought men to! What was the use? What was the meaning of all civilization, all progress, all human development? Here he was, as perfect a physical specimen as his age produced, unable to do more than grit his teeth in the face of the most intolerable emotions known to mankind, under pain of suffering a debasement even more intolerable. Some people did give way to their passions, but that was only because they were less able to think clearly than he. They always regretted it in the end; they always suffered more that way; his knowledge of the world had taught him nothing if it had not taught him that.