Delphi Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham (Illustrated)

by William Somerset Maugham

  “It is with the greatest sorrow that I broke off my engagement with Mary Clibborn. It seemed to me the only honest thing to do since I no longer loved her. I can imagine nothing in the world so horrible as a loveless marriage.”

  “Of course, it’s unfortunate; but the first thing is to keep one’s word.”

  “No,” answered James, “that is prejudice. There are many more important things.”

  Colonel Parsons stopped the pretence of his game.

  “Do you know that Mary is breaking her heart?” he asked in a low voice.

  “I’m afraid she’s suffering very much. I don’t see how I can help it.”

  “Leave this to me, Richmond,” interrupted the Major, impatiently. “You’ll make a mess of it.”

  But Colonel Parsons took no notice.

  “She looked forward with all her heart to marrying you. She’s very unhappy at home, and her only consolation was the hope that you would soon take her away.”

  “Am I managing this or are you, Richmond? I’m a man of the world.”

  “If I married a woman I did not care for because she was rich, you would say I had dishonoured myself. The discredit would not be in her wealth, but in my lack of love.”

  “That’s not the same thing,” replied Major Forsyth. “You gave your word, and now you take it back.”

  “I promised to do a thing over which I had no control. When I was a boy, before I had seen anything of the world, before I had ever known a woman besides my mother, I promised to love Mary Clibborn all my life. Oh, it was cruel to let me be engaged to her! You blame me; don’t you think all of you are a little to blame as well?”

  “What could we have done?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me not to be hasty? Why didn’t you say that I was too young to become engaged?”

  “We thought it would steady you.”

  “But a young man doesn’t want to be steadied. Let him see life and taste all it has to offer. It is wicked to put fetters on his wrists before ever he has seen anything worth taking. What is the virtue that exists only because temptation is impossible!”

  “I can’t understand you, Jamie,” said Mrs. Parsons, sadly. “You talk so differently from when you were a boy.”

  “Did you expect me to remain all my life an ignorant child. You’ve never given me any freedom. You’ve hemmed me in with every imaginable barrier. You’ve put me on a leading-string, and thanked God that I did not stray.”

  “We tried to bring you up like a good man, and a true Christian.”

  “If I’m not a hopeless prig, it’s only by miracle.”

  “James, that’s not the way to talk to your mother,” said Major Forsyth.

  “Oh, mother, I’m sorry; I don’t want to be unkind to you. But we must talk things out freely; we’ve lived in a hot-house too long.”

  “I don’t know what you mean. You became engaged to Mary of your own free will; we did nothing to hinder it, nothing to bring it about. But I confess we were heartily thankful, thinking that no influence could be better for you than the love of a pure, sweet English girl.”

  “It would have been kinder and wiser if you had forbidden it.”

  “We could not have taken the responsibility of crossing your affections.”

  “Mrs. Clibborn did.”

  “Could you expect us to be guided by her?”

  “She was the only one who showed the least common sense.”

  “How you have changed, Jamie!”

  “I would have obeyed you if you had told me I was too young to become engaged. After all, you are more responsible than I am. I was a child. It was cruel to let me bind myself.”

  “I never thought you would speak to us like that.”

  “All that’s ancient history,” said Major Forsyth, with what he flattered himself was a very good assumption of jocularity. It was his idea to treat the matter lightly, as a man of the world naturally would. But his interruption was unnoticed.

  “We acted for the best. You know that we have always had your interests at heart.”

  James did not speak, for his only answer would have been bitter. Throughout, they had been unwilling to let him live his own life, but desirous rather that he should live theirs. They loved him tyrannically, on the condition that he should conform to all their prejudices. Though full of affectionate kindness, they wished him always to dance to their piping — a marionette of which they pulled the strings.

  “What would you have me do?”

  “Keep your word, James,” answered his father.

  “I can’t, I can’t! I don’t understand how you can wish me to marry Mary Clibborn when I don’t love her. That seems to me dishonourable.”

  “It would be nothing worse than a mariage de convenance,” said Uncle William. “Many people marry in that sort of way, and are perfectly happy.”

  “I couldn’t,” said James. “That seems to me nothing better than prostitution. It is no worse for a street-walker to sell her body to any that care to buy.”

  “James, remember your mother is present.”

  “For God’s sake, let us speak plainly. You must know what life is. One can do no good by shutting one’s eyes to everything that doesn’t square with a shoddy, false ideal. On one side I must break my word, on the other I must prostitute myself. There is no middle way. You live here surrounded by all sorts of impossible ways of looking at life. How can your outlook be sane when it is founded on a sham morality? You think the body is indecent and ugly, and that the flesh is shameful. Oh, you don’t understand. I’m sick of this prudery which throws its own hideousness over all it sees. The soul and the body are one, indissoluble. Soul is body, and body is soul. Love is the God-like instinct of procreation. You think sexual attraction is something to be ignored, and in its place you put a bloodless sentimentality — the vulgar rhetoric of a penny novelette. If I marry a woman, it is that she may be the mother of children. Passion is the only reason for marriage; unless it exists, marriage is ugly and beastly. It’s worse than beastly; the beasts of the field are clean. Don’t you understand why I can’t marry Mary Clibborn?”

  “What you call love, James,” said Colonel Parsons, “is what I call lust.”

  “I well believe it,” replied James, bitterly.

  “Love is something higher and purer.”

  “I know nothing purer than the body, nothing higher than the divine instincts of nature.”

  “But that sort of love doesn’t last, my dear,” said Mrs. Parsons, gently. “In a very little while it is exhausted, and then you look for something different in your wife. You look for friendship and companionship, confidence, consolation in your sorrows, sympathy with your success. Beside all that, the sexual love sinks into nothing.”

  “It may be. The passion arises for the purposes of nature, and dies away when those purposes are fulfilled. It seems to me that the recollection of it must be the surest and tenderest tie between husband and wife; and there remains for them, then, the fruit of their love, the children whom it is their blessed duty to rear till they are of fit age to go into the world and continue the endless cycle.”

  There was a pause, while Major Forsyth racked his brain for some apposite remark; but the conversation had run out of his depth.

  Colonel Parsons at last got up and put his hands on Jamie’s shoulders.

  “And can’t you bring yourself to marry that poor girl, when you think of the terrible unhappiness she suffers?”

  James shook his head.

  “You were willing to sacrifice your life for a mere stranger, and cannot you sacrifice yourself for Mary, who has loved you long and tenderly, and unselfishly?”

  “I would willingly risk my life if she were in danger. But you ask more.”

  Colonel Parsons was silent for a little, looking into his son’s eyes. Then he spoke with trembling voice.

  “I think you love me, James. I’ve always tried to be a good father to you; and God knows I’ve done all I could to make you happy. If I did wr
ong in letting you become engaged, I beg your pardon. No; let me go on.” This he said in answer to Jamie’s movement of affectionate protest. “I don’t say it to reproach you, but your mother and I have denied ourselves in all we could so that you should be happy and comfortable. It’s been a pleasure to us, for we love you with all our hearts. You know what happened to me when I left the army. I told you years ago of the awful disgrace I suffered. I could never have lived except for my trust in God and my trust in you. I looked to you to regain the honour which I had lost. Ah! you don’t know how anxiously I watched you, and the joy with which I said to myself, ‘There is a good and honourable man.’ And now you want to stain that honour. Oh, James, James! I’m old, and I can’t live long. If you love me, if you think you have cause for gratitude to me, do this one little thing I ask you! For my sake, my dear, keep your word to Mary Clibborn.”

  “You’re asking me to do something immoral, father.”

  Then Colonel Parsons helplessly dropped his hands from Jamie’s shoulders, and turned to the others, his eyes full of tears.

  “I don’t understand what he means!” he groaned.

  He sank on a chair and hid his face.

  XIV

  Major Forsyth was not at all discouraged by the issue of his intervention.

  “Now I see how the land lies,” he said, “it’s all plain sailing. Reconnoitre first, and then wire in.”

  He bravely attacked James next day, when they were smoking in the garden after breakfast. Uncle William smoked nothing but gold-tipped cigarettes, which excited his nephew’s open scorn.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday, James,” he began.

  “For Heaven’s sake, Uncle William, don’t talk about it any more. I’m heartily sick of the whole thing. I’ve made up my mind, and I really shall not alter it for anything you may say.”

  Major Forsyth changed the conversation with what might have been described as a strategic movement to the rear. He said that Jamie’s answer told him all he wished to know, and he was content now to leave the seeds which he had sown to spring up of their own accord.

  “I’m perfectly satisfied,” he told his sister, complacently. “You’ll see that if it’ll all come right now.”

  Meanwhile, Mary conducted herself admirably. She neither avoided James nor sought him, but when chance brought them together, was perfectly natural. Her affection had never been demonstrative, and now there was in her manner but little change. She talked frankly, as though nothing had passed between them, with no suspicion of reproach in her tone. She was, indeed, far more at ease than James. He could not hide the effort it was to make conversation, nor the nervous discomfort which in her presence he felt. He watched her furtively, asking himself whether she still suffered. But Mary’s face betrayed few of her emotions; tanned by exposure to all weathers, her robust colour remained unaltered; and it was only in her eyes that James fancied he saw a difference. They had just that perplexed, sorrowful expression which a dog has, unjustly beaten. James, imaginative and conscience-stricken, tortured himself by reading in their brown softness all manner of dreadful anguish. He watched them, unlit by the smile which played upon the lips, looking at him against their will, with a pitiful longing. He exaggerated the pain he saw till it became an obsession, intolerable and ruthless; if Mary desired revenge, she need not have been dissatisfied. But that apparently was the last thing she thought of. He was grateful to hear of her anger with Mrs. Jackson, whose sympathy had expressed itself in round abuse of him. His mother repeated the words.

  “I will never listen to a word against Captain Parsons, Mrs. Jackson. Whatever he did, he had a perfect right to do. He’s incapable of acting otherwise than as an honourable gentleman.”

  But if Mary’s conduct aroused the admiration of all that knew her, it rendered James still more blameworthy.

  The hero-worship was conveniently forgotten, and none strove to conceal the dislike, even the contempt, which he felt for the fallen idol. James had outraged the moral sense of the community; his name could not be mentioned without indignation; everything he did was wrong, even his very real modesty was explained as overweening conceit.

  And curiously enough, James was profoundly distressed by the general disapproval. A silent, shy man, he was unreasonably sensitive to the opinion of his fellows; and though he told himself that they were stupid, ignorant, and narrow, their hostility nevertheless made him miserable. Even though he contemned them, he was anxious that they should like him. He refused to pander to their prejudices, and was too proud to be conciliatory; yet felt bitterly wounded when he had excited their aversion. Now he set to tormenting himself because he had despised the adulation of Little Primpton, and could not equally despise its censure.

  Sunday came, and the good people of Little Primpton trooped to church. Mrs Clibborn turned round and smiled at James when he took his seat, but the Colonel sat rigid, showing by the stiffness of his backbone that his indignation was supreme.

  The service proceeded, and in due course Mr. Jackson mounted the pulpit steps. He delivered his text: “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate.”

  The Vicar of Little Primpton was an earnest man, and he devoted much care to the composition of his sermons. He was used to expound twice a Sunday the more obvious parts of Holy Scripture, making in twenty minutes or half an hour, for the benefit of the vulgar, a number of trite reflections; and it must be confessed that he had great facility for explaining at decorous length texts which were plain to the meanest intelligence.

  But having a fair acquaintance with the thought of others, Mr. Jackson flattered himself that he was a thinker; and on suitable occasions attacked from his village pulpit the scarlet weed of heresy, expounding to an intelligent congregation of yokels and small boys the manifold difficulties of the Athanasian Creed. He was at his best in pouring vials of contempt upon the false creed of atheists, Romanists, Dissenters, and men of science. The theory of Evolution excited his bitterest scorn, and he would set up, like a row of nine-pins, the hypotheses of the greatest philosophers of the century, triumphantly to knock them down by the force of his own fearless intellect. His congregation were inattentive, and convinced beyond the need of argument, so they remained pious members of the Church of England.

  But this particular sermon, after mature consideration, the Vicar had made up his mind to devote to a matter of more pressing interest. He repeated the text. Mrs. Jackson, who knew what was coming, caught the curate’s eye, and looked significantly at James. The homily, in fact, was directed against him; his were the pride, the arrogancy, and the evil way. He was blissfully unconscious of these faults, and for a minute or two the application missed him; but the Vicar of Little Primpton, intent upon what he honestly thought his duty, meant that there should be no mistake. He crossed his t’s and dotted his i’s, with the scrupulous accuracy of the scandal-monger telling a malicious story about some person whom charitably he does not name, yet wishes everyone to identify.

  Colonel Parsons started when suddenly the drift of the sermon dawned upon him, and then bowed his head with shame. His wife looked straight in front of her, two flaming spots upon her pale cheeks. Mary, in the next pew, dared not move, hardly dared breathe; her heart sank with dismay, and she feared she would faint.

  “How he must be suffering!” she muttered.

  They all felt for James intensely; the form of Mr. Jackson, hooded and surpliced, had acquired a new authority, and his solemn invective was sulphurous with the fires of Hell. They wondered how James could bear it.

  “He hasn’t deserved this,” thought Mrs. Parsons.

  But the Colonel bent his head still lower, accepting for his son the reproof, taking part of it himself. The humiliation seemed merited, and the only thing to do was to bear it meekly. James alone appeared unconcerned; the rapid glances at him saw no change in his calm, indifferent face. His eyes were closed, and one might have thought him asl
eep. Mr. Jackson noted the attitude, and attributed it to a wicked obstinacy. For the repentant sinner, acknowledging his fault, he would have had entire forgiveness; but James showed no contrition. Stiff-necked and sin-hardened, he required a further chastisement.

  “Courage, what is courage?” asked the preacher. “There is nothing more easy than to do a brave deed when the blood is hot. But to conduct one’s life simply, modestly, with a meek spirit and a Christ-like submission, that is ten times more difficult Courage, unaccompanied by moral worth, is the quality of a brute-beast.”

  He showed how much more creditable were the artless virtues of honesty and truthfulness; how better it was to keep one’s word, to be kind-hearted and dutiful. Becoming more pointed, he mentioned the case which had caused them so much sorrow, warning the delinquent against conceit and self-assurance.

  “Pride goeth before a fall,” he said. “And he that is mighty shall be abased.”

  They walked home silently, Colonel Parsons and his wife with downcast eyes, feeling that everyone was looking at them. Their hearts were too full for them to speak to one another, and they dared say nothing to James. But Major Forsyth had no scruples of delicacy; he attacked his nephew the moment they sat down to dinner.

  “Well, James, what did you think of the sermon? Feel a bit sore?”

  “Why should I?”

  “I fancy it was addressed pretty directly to you.”

  “So I imagine,” replied James, good-humouredly smiling. “I thought it singularly impertinent, but otherwise uninteresting.”

  “Mr. Jackson doesn’t think much of you,” said Uncle William, with a laugh, ignoring his sister’s look, which implored him to be silent.

  “I can bear that with equanimity. I never set up for a very wonderful person.”

  “He was wrong to make little of your attempt to save young Larcher,” said Mrs. Parsons, gently.