The Jervaise Comedy Part 35

If I had not been truly in love with her I should have been permanently offended by that speech. It stung me. What she implied was woundingly true of that old self of mine which had so recently come under my observation and censure. I could see that; and yet if any one but Anne had accused me I should have gone off in high dudgeon. The hint of red in my hair would not permit me to accept insult with meekness. And while I was still seeking some way to avoid giving expression to my old self whose influence was painfully strong just then, she spoke again.

"Now you're offended," she said.

I avoided a direct answer by saying, "What you accused me of thinking and planning might have been true of me yesterday; it isn't true, now."

"Have you changed so much since yesterday?" she asked, as if she expected me to confess, now, quite in the familiar manner. She had given me an opportunity for the proper continuation. I refused it.

"I have only one claim on you," I said boldly.

"Well?" she replied impatiently.

"You recognised me last night."

It was very like her not to fence over that. She had a dozen possible equivocations, but she suddenly met me with no attempt at disguise.

"I _thought_ I did," she said. "Just for a minute."

"And now? You know...?"

She leaned her elbows on the gate and stared out over the moonlit mysteries of the Park.

"You're not a bit what I expected," she said.

I misunderstood her. "But you can't..." I began.

"To look at," she interrupted me.

I felt a thrill of hope. "But neither are you," I said.

"Oh!" she commented softly.

"I've had romantic visions, too," I went on; "of what she would look like when I did meet her. But when I saw you, I remembered, and all the visions--oh! scattered; vanished into thin air."

"If you hadn't been so successful..." she murmured.

"I'm sorry for that," I agreed. "But I'm going to make amends. I realised it all this afternoon in the wood when I went to meet Arthur. I'm going to begin all over again, now. I'm coming to Canada--to work." The whole solution of my problem was suddenly clear, although I had not guessed it until that moment. "I'm going to buy a farm for all of us," I went on quickly, "and all the money that's over, I shall give away. The hospitals are always willing to accept money without asking why you give it. They're not suspicious, _they_ don't consider themselves under any obligation."

"How much should you have to give away?" she asked.

"Thirty or forty thousand pounds," I said. "It depends on how much the farm costs."

"Hadn't you better keep a little, in case the farm fails?" she put in.

"It won't fail," I said. "How could it?"

"And you'd do all that just because you've--remembered me?"

"There was another influence," I admitted.

"What was that?" she asked, with the sound of new interest in her voice.

"All this affair with the Jervaises," I said. "It has made me hate the possession of money and the power money gives. That farm of ours is going to be a communal farm. Our workers shall have an interest in the profits.

No one is to be the proprietor. We'll all be one family--no sc.r.a.ping for favours, or fears of dismissal; we'll all be equal and free."

She did not answer that, at once; and I had an unpleasant feeling that she was testing my quality by some criterion of her own, weighing the genuineness of my emotion.

"Did you feel like this about things this afternoon?" she asked, after what seemed to me an immense interval.

I was determined to tell her nothing less than the truth. "No," I confessed, "much of it was a result of what you said to me. I--I had an illumination. You made me see what a poor thing my life had been; how conventional, artificial, worthless, it was. What you said about my plays was so true. I had never realised it before--I hadn't bothered to think about it."

"I don't remember saying anything about your plays," she interrupted me.

"Oh! you did," I a.s.sured her; "very little; nothing directly; but I knew what you felt, and when I came to think it over, I agreed with you."

"I've only seen _one_," she remarked.

"They're all the same," I a.s.sured her, becoming fervent in my humility.

"But why go to Canada?" she asked. "Why not try to write better plays?"

"Because I saw my whole life plainly, in the wood this afternoon," was my reply. "I did not know what to do then. I couldn't see any answer to my problem. But when you were speaking to me a minute ago, I realised the whole thing clearly. I understood what I wanted to do.

"It's a form of conversion," I concluded resolutely.

"I'm sure you mean it all--now," she commented, as if she were speaking to herself.

"It isn't a question of _meaning_ anything," I replied. "The experiences of this week-end have put the whole social question in a new light for me.

I could never go back, now, to the old life. My conscience would always be reproaching me, if I did."

"But if you're rich, and feel like that, oughn't you to shoulder your responsibilities?" she asked.

"Do something? Wouldn't it be rather like running away to give your money to the hospitals and go to Canada to work on a farm?"

"That's my present impulse," I said. "And I mean to follow it. I don't know that I shall want to stay in Canada for the rest of my life. I may see further developments after I've been there for a few years. But..."

"Go on," she urged me.

"But I want to--to stay near you--all of you. I can't tell you how I admire your father and mother and Arthur and--all of you. And you see, I admit that this conversion of mine has been very sudden. I--I want to learn."

"Do you always follow your impulses like this?" she put in.

"I've never had one worth following before," I said.

"What about wanting to fight Frank Jervaise?" she asked. "And running away from the Hall? And suddenly taking Arthur's side in the row? and all those things? Didn't you follow your impulses, then?"

And yet, it had never before occurred to me that I was impulsive. I had imagined myself to be self-controlled, rather business-like, practical. I was frankly astonished at this new light on my character.

"I suppose I did, in a way," I admitted doubtfully.