No.There was no thinking to be done here, no thinking at all.He would go on along the track and presently he would strike a road and so come to an inn.One can solve no problems when one is engaged in a struggle with the elements.The thing to do now was to find that track again....
It took Benham two hours of stumbling and walking, with a little fence climbing and some barbed wire thrown in, before he got down into Shere to the shelter of a friendly little inn.And then he negotiated a satisfying meal, with beef-steak as its central fact, and stipulated for a fire in his bedroom.
The landlord was a pleasant-faced man; he attended to Benham himself and displayed a fine sense of comfort.He could produce wine, a half-bottle of Australian hock, Big Tree brand No.8, a virile wine, he thought of sardines to precede the meal, he provided a substantial Welsh rarebit by way of a savoury, he did not mind in the least that it was nearly ten o'clock.He ended by suggesting coffee."And a liqueur?"Benham had some Benedictine!
One could not slight such sympathetic helpfulness.The Benedictine was genuine.And then came the coffee.
The cup of coffee was generously conceived and honestly made.
A night of clear melancholy ensued....
17
Hitherto Benham had not faced in any detail the problem of how to break with Mrs.Skelmersdale.Now he faced it pessimistically.She would, he knew, be difficult to break with.(He ought never to have gone there to lunch.) There would be something ridiculous in breaking off.In all sorts of ways she might resist.And face to face with her he might find himself a man divided against himself.
That opened preposterous possibilities.On the other hand it was out of the question to do the business by letter.A letter hits too hard; it lies too heavy on the wound it has made.And in money matters he could be generous.He must be generous.At least financial worries need not complicate her distresses of desertion.
But to suggest such generosities on paper, in cold ink, would be outrageous.And, in brief--he ought not to have gone there to lunch.After that he began composing letters at a great rate.
Delicate--explanatory.Was it on the whole best to be explanatory?...
It was going to be a tremendous job, this breaking with her.And it had begun so easily....
There was, he remembered with amazing vividness, a little hollow he had found under her ear, and how when he kissed her there it always made her forget her worries and ethical problems for a time and turn to him....
"No," he said grimly, "it must end," and rolled over and stared at the black....
Like an insidious pedlar, that old rascal whom young literary gentlemen call the Great God Pan, began to spread his wares in the young man's memory....
After long and feverish wanderings of the mind, and some talking to himself and walking about the room, he did at last get a little away from Mrs.Skelmersdale.
He perceived that when he came to tell his mother about this journey around the world there would be great difficulties.She would object very strongly, and if that did not do then she would become extremely abusive, compare him to his father, cry bitterly, and banish him suddenly and heartbrokenly from her presence for ever.
She had done that twice already--once about going to the opera instead of listening to a lecture on Indian ethnology and once about a week-end in Kent....He hated hurting his mother, and he was beginning to know now how easily she was hurt.It is an abominable thing to hurt one's mother--whether one has a justification or whether one hasn't.
Recoiling from this, he was at once resumed by Mrs.Skelmersdale.
Who had in fact an effect of really never having been out of the room.But now he became penitent about her.His penitence expanded until it was on a nightmare scale.At last it blotted out the heavens.He felt like one of those unfortunate victims of religious mania who are convinced they have committed the Sin against the Holy Ghost.(Why had he gone there to lunch? That was the key to it.
WHY had he gone there to lunch?)...He began to have remorse for everything, for everything he had ever done, for everything he he give in to sex.
It's the same thing really.The misleading of instinct."This set the key of his thought throughout the afternoon--until Amanda happened to him.
