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Making of a Bigot

<h2>CHAPTER XVI. EILEEN.</h2> EDDY lay for some days in bed, battered and bruised, and slightly broken. He was not seriously damaged; not irreparably like Arnold; Arnold, who was beyond piecing together. Through the queer, dim, sad days and nights, Eddy’s weakened thoughts were of Arnold; Arnold the cynical, the sceptical, the supercilious, the scornful; Arnold, who had believed in nothing, and had yet been murdered for believing in something, and saying so. Arnold had hated democratic tyranny, and his hatred had given his words and his blows a force that had recoiled on himself and killed him. Eddy’s blows on that chaotic, surprising evening had lacked this energy; his own consciousness of hating nothing had unnerved him; so he hadn’t died. He had merely been buffeted about and knocked out of the way like so much rubbish by both combatant sides in turn. He bore the scars of the strikers’ fists and boots, and of the heavy truncheon of the law. Both sides had struck him as an enemy, because he was not whole-heartedly for them. It was, surely, an ironical epitome, a brief summing-up in terms of blows, of the story of his life. What chaos, what confusion, what unheroic shipwreck of plans and work and career dogged those who fought under many colours! One died for believing in something; one didn’t die for believing in everything; one lived on incoherently, from hand to mouth, despised of all, accepted of none, fruitful of nothing. For these the world has no use; the piteous, travailing world that needs all the helpers, all the workers it can get. The dim shadows of his room through the long, strange nights seemed to be walls pressing round, pressing in closer and closer, pushed by the insistent weight of the unredressed evil without. Here he saw himself lying, shut by the shadow walls into a little secluded place, allowed to do nothing, because he was no use. The evil without haunted his nightmares; it must have bitten more deeply into his active waking moments than he had known. It seemed hideous to lie and do nothing. And when he wanted to get up at once and go out and do something to help, they would not let him. He was no use. He never would be any use. More and more it seemed to him clear that the one way to be of use in this odd world—of the oddity of the world he was becoming increasingly convinced, comparing it with the many worlds he could more easily have imagined—the one way, it seemed, to be of use was to take a definite line and stick to it and reject all others; to be single-minded and ardent, and exclusive; to be, in brief, a partisan, if necessary a bigot. In procession there moved before him the fine, strong, ardent people he had known, who had spent themselves for an idea, and for its inherent negations, and he saw them all as martyrs; Eileen, living on broken and dead because so utter had been her caring for one person that no one else was any good; Molly, cutting two lives apart for a difference of principle; Billy Raymond, Jane Dawn, all the company of craftsmen and artists, fining words and lines to their utmost, fastidiously rejecting, laying down insuperable barriers between good and bad, so that never the twain should meet; priests and all moral reformers, working against odds for these same barriers in a different sphere; all workers, all artists, all healers of evil, all makers of good; even Daphne and Nevill, parted for principles that could not join; and Arnold, dead for a cause. Only the aimless drifters, the ineptitudes, content to slope through the world on thoughts, were left outside the workshop unused. In these dark hours of self-disgust, Eddy half thought of becoming a novelist, that last resource of the spiritually destitute. For novels are not life, that immeasurably important thing that has to be so sternly approached; in novels one may take as many points of view as one likes, all at the same time; instead of working for life, one may sit and survey it from all angles simultaneously. It is only when one starts walking on a road that one finds it excludes the other roads. Yes; probably he would end a novelist. An ignoble, perhaps even a fatuous career; but it is, after all, one way through this queer, shifting chaos of unanswerable riddles. When solutions are proved unattainable, some spend themselves and their all on a rough-and-ready shot at truth, on doing what they can with the little they know; others give it up and talk about it. It was as a refuge for such as these that the novelist’s trade was presented to man, we will not speculate from whence or by whom.... Breaking into these dark reflections came friends to see him, dropping in one by one. The first was Professor Denison, the morning after the accident. A telegram had brought him up from Cambridge, late last night. Seeing his grey, stricken face, Eddy felt miserably disloyal, to have come out of it alive. Dr. Denison patted him on the shoulder and said, “Poor boy, poor boy. It is hard for you,” and it was Eddy who had tears in his eyes. “I took him there,” he muttered; but Dr. Denison took no notice of that. Eddy said next, “He spoke so splendidly,” then remembered that Arnold had spoken on the wrong side, and that that, too, must be bitter to his father. Professor Denison made a queer, hopeless, deprecatory gesture with his hands. “He was murdered by a cruel system,” he said, in his remote, toneless voice. “Don’t think I blame those ignorant men who did him to death. What killed him was the system that made those men what they are—the cruel oppression, the economic grinding—what can you expect....” He broke off, and turned helplessly away, remembering only that he had lost his son. Every day as long as he stayed in London he came into Eddy’s room after visiting Arnold’s, and sat with him, infinitely gentle, silent, and sad. Mrs. Oliver said, “Poor man, one’s too dreadfully sorry for him to suggest it, but it’s not the best thing for you to have him, dear.” The other visitors who came were probably better for Eddy, but Mrs. Oliver thought he had too many. All his friends seemed to come all day. And once Eileen Le Moine came, and that was not as it should be. Mrs. Oliver, when the message was sent up, turned to Eddy doubtfully; but he said at once, “Ask her if she’ll come up,” and she had to bear it. Mrs. Le Moine came in. Mrs. Oliver slightly touched her hand. For a moment her look hung startled on the changed, dimmed brilliance she scarcely recognised. Mrs. Le Moine, whatever her sins, had, it seemed, been through desperate times since they had parted at Welchester fourteen months ago. There was an absent look about her, as if she scarcely took in Eddy’s mother. But for Eddy himself, stretched shattered on the couch by the fire, her look was pitiful and soft. Mrs. Oliver’s eyes wavered from her to Eddy. Being a lady of kind habits, she usually left Eddy alone with his friends for a little. In this instance she was doubtful; but Eddy’s eyes, unconsciously wistful, decided her, and she yielded. After all, a three-cornered interview between them would have been a painful absurdity. If Eddy must have such friends, he must have them to himself.... When they were alone, Eileen sat down by him, still a little absent and thoughtful, though, bending compassionate eyes on him, she said softly, of him and Arnold, “You poor boys....” Then she was broodingly silent, and seemed to be casting about how to begin. Suddenly she pulled herself together. “We’ve not much time, have we? I must be quick. I’ve something I want to say to you, Eddy.... Do you know Mrs. Crawford came to see me the other day?” Eddy shook his head, languidly, moved only with a faint surprise at Mrs. Crawford’s unexpectedness. Eileen went on, “I just wondered had she told you. But I thought perhaps not.... I like her, Eddy. She was nice to me. I don’t know why, because I supposed—but never mind. What she came for was to tell me some things. Things I think I ought to have guessed for myself. I think I’ve been very stupid and very selfish, and I complaining to you about my troubles all this long while, and never thinking how it might be doing you harm. I ought to have known why Molly broke your engagement.” “There were a number of reasons,” said Eddy. “She thought we didn’t agree about things and couldn’t pull together.” Eileen shook her head. “She may have. But I think there was only one reason that mattered very much. She didn’t approve of me, and didn’t like it that you were my friend. And she was surely right. A man shouldn’t have friends his wife can’t be friends with too; it spoils it all. And of course she knew she couldn’t be friends with me; she thinks me bad. Molly would find it impossible even if it wasn’t wrong, to be friends with a bad person. So of course she had the engagement ended; there was no other way.... And you never told me it was that.... You should have told me, you foolish boy. Instead, you went on seeing me and being good to me, and letting me talk about my own things, and—and being just the one comfort I had, (for you have been that; it’s the way you understand things, I suppose)—and I all the time spoiling your life. When Mrs. Crawford told me how it was I was angry with you. You had a right to have told me. And now I’ve come to tell you something. You’re to go to Molly and mend what’s broken, and tell her you and I aren’t going to be friends any more. That will be the plain truth. We are not. Not friends to matter, I mean. We won’t be seeing each other alone and meeting the way we’ve been doing. If we meet it will be by chance, and with other people; that won’t hurt.” Eddy, red-faced and indignant, said weakly, “It will hurt. It will hurt me. Haven’t I lost enough friends, then, that I must lose you, too?” A queer little smile touched her lips. “You have not. Not enough friends yet. Eddy, what’s the best thing of all in this world of good things? Don’t you and I both know it? Isn’t it love, no less? And isn’t love good enough to pay a price for? And if the price must be paid in coin you value—in friendship, and in some other good things—still, isn’t it worth it? Ah, you know, and I know, that it is!” The firelight, flickering across her white face, lit it swiftly to passion. She, who had paid so heavy a price herself, was saying what she knew. “So you’ll pay it, Eddy. You’ll pay it. You’ll have to pay more than you know, before you’ve done with love. I wonder will you have to pay your very soul away? Many people have to do that; pay away their own inmost selves, the things in them they care for most, their secret dreams. ‘I have laid my dreams under your feet. Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.’... It’s like that so often; and then she—or he—doesn’t always tread softly; they may tread heavily, the way the dreams break and die. Still, it’s worth it....” She fell into silence, brooding with bent head and locked hands. Then she roused herself, and said cheerfully, “You may say just what you like, Eddy, but I’m not going to spoil your life any more. That’s gone on too long already. If it was only by way of saying thank you, I would stop it now. For you’ve been a lot of use to me, you know. I don’t think I could easily tell you how much. I’m not going to try; only I am going to do what I can to help you patch up your affairs that you’ve muddled so. So you go to Molly directly you get home, and make her marry you. And you’ll pay the price she asks, and you’ll go on, both of you, paying it and paying it, more and more of it, as long as you both live.” “She won’t have me,” said Eddy. “No one would have me, I should think. Why should they? I’m nothing. Everyone else is something; but I’m nothing. I can do nothing, and be nothing. I am a mere muddle. Why should Molly, who is straight and simple and direct, marry a muddle?” “Because,” said Eileen, “she cares for it. And she’ll probably straighten it out a bit; that’s what I mean, partly, by the price ... you’ll have to become straight and simple and direct too, I wouldn’t wonder, in the end. You may die a Tory country gentleman, no less, saying, ‘To hell with these Socialist thieves’—no, that’s the horrid language we use in Ireland alone isn’t it, but I wouldn’t wonder if the English squires meant the same. Or you might become equally simple and direct in another direction, and say, ‘Down with the landed tyrants,’ only Molly wouldn’t like that so well. But it’ll be a wonder if you don’t, once you’re married to Molly, have to throw overboard a few creeds, as well as a few people. Anyhow, that’s not your business now. What you’ve got to do now is to get your health again and go down to Welchester and talk to Molly the way she’ll see reason.... And now I must go. Your mother doesn’t care for me to be here, but I had to come this once; it’s never again, you can tell her that.” Eddy sat up and frowned. “Don’t go on like that, Eileen. I’ve not the least intention of having my friendships broken for me like this. If Molly ever marries me—only she won’t—it will be to take my friends; that is certain.” She shook her head and smiled down on him as she rose. “You’ll have to let your friends settle whether they want to be taken or not, Eddy.... Dear, kind, absurd boy, that’s been so good to me, I’m going now. Goodbye, and get well.” Her fingers lightly touched his forehead, and she left him; left him alone in a world become poor and thin and ordinary, shorn of some beauty, of certain dreams and laughter and surprises. Into it came his mother. “Is Mrs. Le Moine gone, then, dear?” “Yes,” he said. “She is gone.” So flatly he spoke, so apathetically, that she looked at him in anxiety. “She has tired you. You have been talking too much. Really, this mustn’t happen again....” He moved restlessly over on to his side. “It won’t happen again, mother. Never again.” <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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