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Page 15
And vaguely, dully, he contemplated his life, spread out behind him
like a misty landscape, and thought what a failure it had been. What
had it come to? What had it brought him? What had he done or won?
Nothing, nothing. It had brought him nothing but old age, solitude,
disappointment, and, to-night especially, a sense of fatigue and
apathy that weighed upon him like a suffocating blanket. On a table, a
yard or two away, stood a decanter of whisky, with some soda-water
bottles and tumblers; he looked at it with heavy eyes, and he knew
that there was what he needed. A little whisky would strengthen him,
revive him, and make it possible for him to bestir himself and undress
and go to bed. But when he thought of rising and moving to pour the
whisky out, he shrank from that effort as from an Herculean labour;
no--he was too tired. Then his mind went back to the friends he had
left in Chelsea half an hour ago; it seemed an indefinably long time
ago, years and years ago; they were like blurred phantoms, dimly
remembered from a remote past.
Yes, his life had been a failure; total, miserable, abject. It had
come to nothing; its harvest was a harvest of ashes. If it had been a
useful life, he could have accepted its unhappiness; if it had been a
happy life, he could have forgiven its uselessness; but it had been
both useless and unhappy. He had done nothing for others, he had won
nothing for himself. Oh, but he had tried, he had tried. When he had
left Oxford people expected great things of him; he had expected great
things of himself. He was admitted to be clever, to be gifted; he was
ambitious, he was in earnest. He wished to make a name, he wished to
justify his existence by fruitful work. And he had worked hard. He had
put all his knowledge, all his talent, all his energy, into his work;
he had not spared himself; he had passed laborious days and studious
nights. And what remained to show for it? Three or four volumes upon
Political Economy, that had been read in their day a little, discussed
a little, and then quite forgotten--superseded by the books of newer
men. 'Pulped, pulped,' he reflected bitterly. Except for a stray dozen
of copies scattered here and there--in the British Museum, in his
College library, on his own bookshelves--his published writings had by
this time (he could not doubt) met with the common fate of
unappreciated literature, and been 'pulped.'
'Pulped--pulped; pulped--pulped.' The hateful word beat rhythmically
again and again in his tired brain; and for a little while that was
all he was conscious of.
So much for the work of his life. And for the rest? The play? The
living? Oh, he had nothing to recall but failure. It had sufficed
that he should desire a thing, for him to miss it; that he should set
his heart upon a thing, for it to be removed beyond the sphere of his
possible acquisition. It had been so from the beginning; it had been
so always. He sat motionless as a stone, and allowed his thoughts to
drift listlessly hither and thither in the current of memory.
Everywhere they encountered wreckage, derelicts; defeated aspirations,
broken hopes. Languidly he envisaged these. He was too tired to
resent, to rebel. He even found a certain sluggish satisfaction in
recognising with what unvarying harshness destiny had treated him, in
resigning himself to the unmerited.
He caught sight of his hand, lying flat and inert upon the brown
leather arm of his chair. His eyes rested on it, and for the moment he
forgot everything else in a sort of torpid study of it. How white it
was, how thin, how withered; the nails were parched into minute
corrugations; the veins stood out like dark wires; the skin hung
loosely on it, and had a dry lustre: an old man's hand. He gazed at it
fixedly, till his eyes closed and his head fell forward. But he was
not sleepy, he was only tired and weak.
He raised his head with a start and changed his position. He felt
cold; but to endure the cold was easier than to get up, and put
something on, or go to bed.
How silent the world was; how empty his room. An immense feeling of
solitude, of isolation, fell upon him. He was quite cut off from the
rest of humanity here. If anything should happen to him, if he should
need help of any sort, what could he do? Call out? But who would hear?
At nine in the morning the porter's wife would come with his tea. But
if anything should happen to him in the meantime? There would be
nothing for it but to wait till nine o'clock.
Ah, if he had married, if he had had children, a wife, a home of his
own, instead of these desolate bachelor chambers!
If he had married, indeed! It was his sorrow's crown of sorrow that he
had not married, that he had not been able to marry, that the girl he
had wished to marry wouldn't have him. Failure? Success? He could have
accounted failure in other things a trifle, he could have laughed at
what the world calls failure, if Elinor Lynd had been his wife. But
that was the heart of his misfortune, she wouldn't have him.
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