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The Assize of Jealousy7
"No aristocrat has any right to be jealous," Benham wrote. "If he chances to be mated with a woman who does not see his vision or naturally go his way, he has no right to expect her, much less to compel her to go his way. What is the use of dragging an unwilling companion through morasses of uncongenial thought to unsought ends? What is the use of dragging even a willing pretender, who has no inherent will to seek and live the aristocratic life?
"But that does not excuse him from obedience to his own call. . . ."
He wrote that very early in his examination of the Third Limitation. Already he had thought out and judged Amanda. The very charm of her, the sweetness, the nearness and magic of her, was making him more grimly resolute to break away. All the elaborate process of thinking her over had gone on behind the mask of his silences while she had been preoccupied with her housing and establishment in London; it was with a sense of extraordinary injustice, of having had a march stolen upon her, of being unfairly trapped, that Amanda found herself faced by foregone conclusions. He was ready now even with the details of his project. She should go on with her life in London exactly as she had planned it. He would take fifteen hundred a year for himself and all the rest she might spend without check or stint as it pleased her. He was going round the world for one or two years. It was even possible he would not go alone. There was a man at Cambridge he might persuade to come with him, a don called Prothero who was peculiarly useful in helping him to hammer out his ideas. . . .
To her it became commandingly necessary that none of these things should happen.
She tried to play upon his jealousy, but her quick instinct speedily told her that this only hardened his heart. She perceived that she must make a softer appeal. Now of a set intention she began to revive and imitate the spontaneous passion of the honeymoon; she perceived for the first time clearly how wise and righteous a thing it is for a woman to bear a child. "He cannot go if I am going to have a child," she told herself. But that would mean illness, and for illness in herself or others Amanda had the intense disgust natural to her youth. Yet even illness would be better than this intolerable publication of her husband`s ability to leave her side. . . .
She had a wonderful facility of enthusiasm and she set herself forthwith to cultivate a philoprogenitive ambition, to communicate it to him. Her dread of illness disappeared; her desire for offspring grew.
"Yes," he said, "I want to have children, but I must go round the world none the less."
She argued with all the concentrated subtlety of her fine keen mind. She argued with persistence and repetition. And then suddenly so that she was astonished at herself, there came a moment when she ceased to argue.
She stood in the dusk in a window that looked out upon the park, and she was now so intent upon her purpose as to be still and self- forgetful; she was dressed in a dinner-dress of white and pale green, that set off her slim erect body and the strong clear lines of her neck and shoulders very beautifully, some greenish stones caught a light from without and flashed soft whispering gleams from amidst the misty darkness of her hair. She was going to Lady Marayne and the opera, and he was bound for a dinner at the House with some young Liberals at which he was to meet two representative Indians with a grievance from Bengal. Husband and wife had but a few moments together. She asked about his company and he told her.
"They will tell you about India."
"Yes."
She stood for a moment looking out across the lights and the dark green trees, and then she turned to him.
"Why cannot I come with you?" she asked with sudden passion. "Why cannot I see the things you want to see?"
"I tell you you are not interested. You would only be interested through me. That would not help me. I should just be dealing out my premature ideas to you. If you cared as I care, if you wanted to know as I want to know, it would be different. But you don`t. It isn`t your fault that you don`t. It happens so. And there is no good in forced interest, in prescribed discovery."
"Cheetah," she asked, "what is it that you want to know--that I don`t care for?"
"I want to know about the world. I want to rule the world."
"So do I."
"No, you want to have the world."
"Isn`t it the same?"
"No. You`re a greedier thing than I am, you Black Leopard you-- standing there in the dusk. You`re a stronger thing. Don`t you know you`re stronger? When I am with you, you carry your point, because you are more concentrated, more definite, less scrupulous. When you run beside me you push me out of my path. . . . You`ve made me afraid of you. . . . And so I won`t go with you, Leopard. I go alone. It isn`t because I don`t love you. I love you too well. It isn`t because you aren`t beautiful and wonderful. . . ."
"But, Cheetah! nevertheless you care more for this that you want than you care for me."
Benham thought of it. "I suppose I do," he said.
"What is it that you want? Still I don`t understand."
Her voice had the break of one who would keep reasonable in spite of pain.
"I ought to tell you."
"Yes, you ought to tell me."
"I wonder if I can tell you," he said very thoughtfully, and rested his hands on his hips. "I shall seem ridiculous to you."
"You ought to tell me."
"I think what I want is to be king of the world."
She stood quite still staring at him.
"I do not know how I can tell you of it. Amanda, do you remember those bodies--you saw those bodies--those mutilated men?"
"I saw them," said Amanda.
"Well. Is it nothing to you that those things happen?"
"They must happen."
"No. They happen because there are no kings but pitiful kings. They happen because the kings love their Amandas and do not care."
"But what can YOU do, Cheetah?"
"Very little. But I can give my life and all my strength. I can give all I can give."
"But how? How can you help it--help things like that massacre?"
"I can do my utmost to find out what is wrong with my world and rule it and set it right."
"YOU! Alone."
"Other men do as much. Every one who does so helps others to do so. You see-- . . . In this world one may wake in the night and one may resolve to be a king, and directly one has resolved one is a king. Does that sound foolishness to you? Anyhow, it`s fair that I should tell you, though you count me a fool. This--this kingship--this dream of the night--is my life. It is the very core of me. Much more than you are. More than anything else can be. I mean to be a king in this earth. KING. I`m not mad. . . . I see the world staggering from misery to misery and there is little wisdom, less rule, folly, prejudice, limitation, the good things come by chance and the evil things recover and slay them, and it is my world and I am responsible. Every man to whom this light has come is responsible. As soon as this light comes to you, as soon as your kingship is plain to you, there is no more rest, no peace, no delight, except in work, in service, in utmost effort. As far as I can do it I will rule my world. I cannot abide in this smug city, I cannot endure its self-complacency, its routine, its gloss of success, its rottenness. . . . I shall do little, perhaps I shall do nothing, but what I can understand and what I can do I will do. Think of that wild beautiful country we saw, and the mean misery, the filth and the warring cruelty of the life that lives there, tragedy, tragedy without dignity; and think, too, of the limitless ugliness here, and of Russia slipping from disorder to massacre, and China, that sea of human beings, sliding steadily to disaster. Do you think these are only things in the newspapers? To me at any rate they are not things in newspapers; they are pain and failure, they are torment, they are blood and dust and misery. They haunt me day and night. Even if it is utterly absurd I will still do my utmost. It IS absurd. I`m a madman and you and my mother are sensible people. . . . And I will go my way. . . . I don`t care for the absurdity. I don`t care a rap."
He stopped abruptly.
"There you have it, Amanda. It`s rant, perhaps. Sometimes I feel it`s rant. And yet it`s the breath of life to me. . . . There you are. . . . At last I`ve been able to break silence and tell you. . . ."
He stopped with something like a sob and stood regarding the dusky mystery of her face. She stood quite still, she was just a beautiful outline in the twilight, her face was an indistinctness under the black shadow of her hair, with eyes that were two patches of darkness.
He looked at his watch, lifting it close to his face to see the time. His voice changed. "Well--if you provoke a man enough, you see he makes speeches. Let it be a lesson to you, Amanda. Here we are talking instead of going to our dinners. The car has been waiting ten minutes."
Amanda, so still, was the most disconcerting of all Amandas. . . .
A strange exaltation seized upon her very suddenly. In an instant she had ceased to plot against him. A vast wave of emotion swept her forward to a resolution that astonished her.
"Cheetah!" she said, and the very quality of her voice had changed, "give me one thing. Stay until June with me."
"Why?" he asked.
Her answer came in a voice so low that it was almost a whisper.
"Because--now--no, I don`t want to keep you any more--I am not trying to hold you any more. . . . I want. . . ."
She came forward to him and looked up closely at his face.
"Cheetah," she whispered almost inaudibly, "Cheetah--I didn`t understand. But now--. I want to bear your child."
He was astonished. "Old Leopard!" he said.
"No," she answered, putting her hands upon his shoulders and drawing very close to him, "Queen---if I can be--to your King."
"You want to bear me a child!" he whispered, profoundly moved.
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