第83章 CHAPTER THE FIFTH(14)

"You see, Benham," he went on, "she's human.She's not really feminine.I mean, she's--unsexed.She isn't fitted to be a wife or a mother any more.We've talked about the possible life in England, very plainly.I've explained what a household in Cambridge would mean....It doesn't attract her....In a way she's been let out from womanhood, forced out of womanhood, and I see now that when women are let out from womanhood there's no putting them back.Icould give a lecture on Anna.I see now that if women are going to be wives and mothers and homekeepers and ladies, they must be got ready for it from the beginning, sheltered, never really let out into the wild chances of life.She has been.Bitterly.She's REALLY emancipated.And it's let her out into a sort of nothingness.She's no longer a woman, and she isn't a man.She ought to be able to go on her own--like a man.But I can't take her back to Cambridge.Even for her sake."His perplexed eyes regarded Benham.

"You won't be happy in Cambridge--alone," said Benham.

"Oh, damnably not! But what can I do? I had at first some idea of coming to Moscow for good--teaching."He paused."Impossible.I'm worth nothing here.I couldn't have kept her.""Then what are you going to do, Billy?"

"I don't KNOW what I'm going to do, I tell you.I live for the moment.To-morrow we are going out into the country.""I don't understand," said Benham with a gesture of resignation.

"It seems to me that if a man and woman love each other--well, they insist upon each other.What is to happen to her if you leave her in Moscow?""Damnation! Is there any need to ask that?""Take her to Cambridge, man.And if Cambridge objects, teach Cambridge better manners."Prothero's face was suddenly transfigured with rage.

"I tell you she won't come!" he said.

"Billy!" said Benham, "you should make her!""I can't."

"If a man loves a woman he can make her do anything--""But I don't love her like that," said Prothero, shrill with anger.

"I tell you I don't love her like that."

Then he lunged into further deeps."It's the other men," he said, "it's the things that have been.Don't you understand? Can't you understand? The memories--she must have memories--they come between us.It's something deeper than reason.It's in one's spine and under one's nails.One could do anything, I perceive, for one's very own woman....""MAKE her your very own woman, said the exponent of heroic love.

"I shirk deeds, Benham, but you shirk facts.How could any man make her his very own woman now? You--you don't seem to understand--ANYTHING.She's nobody's woman--for ever.That--that might-have-been has gone for ever....It's nerves--a passion of the nerves.

There's a cruelty in life and-- She's KIND to me.She's so kind to me...."And then again Prothero was weeping like a vexed child.

15

The end of Prothero's first love affair came to Benham in broken fragments in letters.When he looked for Anna Alexievna in December--he never learnt her surname--he found she had left the Cosmopolis Bazaar soon after Prothero's departure and he could not find whither she had gone.He never found her again.Moscow and Russia had swallowed her up.

Of course she and Prothero parted; that was a foregone conclusion.

But Prothero's manner of parting succeeded in being at every phase a shock to Benham's ideas.It was clear he went off almost callously;it would seem there was very little crying.Towards the end it was evident that the two had quarrelled.The tears only came at the very end of all.It was almost as if he had got through the passion and was glad to go.Then came regret, a regret that increased in geometrical proportion with every mile of distance.

In Warsaw it was that grief really came to Prothero.He had some hours there and he prowled the crowded streets, seeing girls and women happy with their lovers, abroad upon bright expeditions and full of delicious secrets, girls and women who ever and again flashed out some instant resemblance to Anna....

In Berlin he stopped a night and almost decided that he would go back."But now I had the damned frontier," he wrote, "between us."It was so entirely in the spirit of Prothero, Benham thought, to let the "damned frontier" tip the balance against him.

Then came a scrawl of passionate confession, so passionate that it seemed as if Prothero had been transfigured."I can't stand this business," he wrote."It has things in it, possibilities of emotional disturbance--you can have no idea! In the train--luckily I was alone in the compartment--I sat and thought, and suddenly, Icould not help it, I was weeping--noisy weeping, an uproar! Abeastly German came and stood in the corridor to stare.I had to get out of the train.It is disgraceful, it is monstrous we should be made like this....

"Here I am stranded in Hanover with nothing to do but to write to you about my dismal feelings...."After that surely there was nothing before a broken-hearted Prothero but to go on with his trailing wing to Trinity and a life of inappeasable regrets; but again Benham reckoned without the invincible earthliness of his friend.Prothero stayed three nights in Paris.

"There is an extraordinary excitement about Paris," he wrote."Alevity.I suspect the gypsum in the subsoil--some as yet undescribed radiations.Suddenly the world looks brightly cynical....None of those tear-compelling German emanations....

"And, Benham, I have found a friend.

"A woman.Of course you will laugh, you will sneer.You do not understand these things....Yet they are so simple.It was the strangest accident brought us together.There was something that drew us together.A sort of instinct.Near the Boulevard Poissoniere....""Good heavens!" said Benham."A sort of instinct!""I told her all about Anna!"

"Good Lord!" cried Benham.

"She understood.Perfectly.None of your so-called ‘respectable'

women could have understood....At first I intended merely to talk to her...."Benham crumpled the letter in his hand.