Tono Bungay

Then presently we resumed our monstrous, momentous dialogue.  I can’t now make out how long that dialogue went on.  It spread itself, I know, in heavy fragments over either three days or four.  I remember myself grouped with Marion, talking sitting on our bed in her room, talking standing in our dining-room, saving this thing or that.  Twice we went for long walks.  And we had a long evening alone together, with jaded nerves and hearts that fluctuated between a hard and dreary recognition of facts and, on my part at least, a strange unwonted tenderness; because in some extraordinary way this crisis had destroyed our mutual apathy and made us feel one another again.

It was a dialogue that had discrepant parts that fell into lumps of talk that failed to join on to their predecessors, that began again at a different level, higher or lower, that assumed new aspects in the intervals and assimilated new considerations.  We discussed the fact that we two were no longer lovers; never before had we faced that.  It seems a strange thing to write, but as I look back, I see clearly that those several days were the time when Marion and I were closest together, looked for the first and last time faithfully and steadfastly into each other’s soul.  For those days only, there were no pretences, I made no concessions to her nor she to me; we concealed nothing, exaggerated nothing.  We had done with pretending.  We had it out plainly and soberly with each other.  Mood followed mood and got its stark expression.

Of course there was quarreling between us, bitter quarreling, and we said things to one another—­long pent-up things that bruised and crushed and cut.  But over it all in my memory now is an effect of deliberate confrontation, and the figure of Marion stands up, pale, melancholy, tear-stained, injured, implacable and dignified.

“You love her?” she asked once, and jerked that doubt into my mind.

I struggled with tangled ideas and emotions.  “I don’t know what love is.  It’s all sorts of things—­it’s made of a dozen strands twisted in a thousand ways.”

“But you want her?  You want her now—­when you think of her?”

“Yes,” I reflected.  “I want her—­right enough.”

“And me?  Where do I come in?”

“I suppose you come in here.”

“Well, but what are you going to do?”

“Do!” I said with the exasperation of the situation growing upon me.  “What do you want me to do?”

As I look back upon all that time—­across a gulf of fifteen active years—­I find I see it with an understanding judgment.  I see it as if it were the business of some one else—­indeed of two other people—­intimately known yet judged without passion.  I see now that this shock, this sudden immense disillusionment, did in real fact bring out a mind and soul in Marion; that for the first time she emerged from habits, timidities, imitations, phrases and a certain narrow will-impulse, and became a personality.

Her ruling motive at first was, I think, an indignant and outraged pride.  This situation must end.  She asked me categorically to give up Effie, and I, full of fresh and glowing memories, absolutely refused.

“It’s too late, Marion,” I said.  “It can’t be done like that.”

“Then we can’t very well go on living together,” she said.  “Can we?”

“Very well,” I deliberated “if you must have it so.”

“Well, can we?”

“Can you stay in this house?  I mean—­if I go away?”

“I don’t know….  I don’t think I could.”

“Then—­what do you want?”

Slowly we worked our way from point to point, until at last the word “divorce” was before us.

“If we can’t live together we ought to be free,” said Marion.

“I don’t know anything of divorce,” I said—­“if you mean that.  I don’t know how it is done.  I shall have to ask somebody—­or look it up….  Perhaps, after all, it is the thing to do.  We may as well face it.”

We began to talk ourselves into a realisation of what our divergent futures might be.  I came back on the evening of that day with my questions answered by a solicitor.

“We can’t as a matter of fact,” I said, “get divorced as things are.  Apparently, so far as the law goes you’ve got to stand this sort of thing.  It’s silly but that is the law.  However, it’s easy to arrange a divorce.  In addition to adultery there must be desertion or cruelty.  To establish cruelty I should have to strike you, or something of that sort, before witnesses.  That’s impossible—­but it’s simple to desert you legally.  I have to go away from you; that’s all.  I can go on sending you money—­and you bring a suit, what is it?—­for Restitution of Conjugal Rights.  The Court orders me to return.  I disobey.  Then you can go on to divorce me.  You get a Decree Nisi, and once more the Court tries to make me come back.  If we don’t make it up within six months and if you don’t behave scandalously the Decree is made absolute.  That’s the end of the fuss.  That’s how one gets unmarried.  It’s easier, you see, to marry than unmarry.”

“And then—­how do I live?  What becomes of me?”

“You’ll have an income.  They call it alimony.  From a third to a half of my present income—­more if you like—­I don’t mind—­three hundred a year, say.  You’ve got your old people to keep and you’ll need all that.”

“And then—­then you’ll be free?”

“Both of us.”

“And all this life you’ve hated”

I looked up at her wrung and bitter face.  “I haven’t hated it,” I lied, my voice near breaking with the pain of it all.  “Have you?”