A Severed Head

Nineteen

Cambridge by moonlight was light blue and brownish black. There was no mist here and a great vault of clear stars hung over the city with an intent luxurious brilliance. It was the sort of night when one knows of other galaxies. My long shadow glided before me on the pavement. Although it was not yet eleven o'clock the place seemed empty and I moved through it like a mysterious and lonely harlequin in a painting: like an assassin.

When the idea had come to me that I was desperately, irrevocably, agonizingly in love with Honor Klein it had seemed at first to shed a great light. It was clear to me that this, just this, was what so urgently and with such novelty of torment ailed me, and also that the thing was inevitable. Inevitable now Honor certainly seemed to be, vast across my way as the horizon itself or the spread wings of Satan; and although I could not as yet trace it out I could feel behind me like steel the pattern of which this and only this could have been the outcome. I had never felt so certain of any path upon which I had set my feet; and this in itself produced an exhilaration.

Extreme love, once it is recognized, has the stamp of the indubitable. I knew to perfection both my condition and what I must instantly do about it. There was, however, as I began to realize as soon as I was safely stowed in the train at Liverpool Street, much cause for anxiety, or rather for terror, and also for puzzlement, or rather for sheer amazement. That I had no business, with two women on my hands already, to go falling in love with a third, troubled me comparatively little. The force that drew me now towards Honor imposed itself with the authority of a cataclysm; and as I felt no possibility of indecision I had, if not exactly no sense of disloyalty, at least no anxieties about disloyalty. I was chosen, and relentlessly, not choosing. Yet this very image brought home the insanity of my position. I was chosen, but by whom or what? Certainly not by Honor, whose words to me, still ringing like a box on the ear, had been far from flattering. I had never felt so certain of any path; but it was a path that seemed likely to lead only to humiliation and defeat.

Yet even this did not yet trouble me very much. The thought that, whatever my reception, I would see Honor again was, in the frenzy of need and desire which had now come upon me, enough. I was perhaps moreover a little the dupe of that illusion of lovers that the beloved object must, somehow, respond, that an extremity of love not only merits but compels some return. I expected nothing very much, I certainly expected nothing precise, but the future was sufficiently open, sufficiently obscure, to receive the now so fierce onward rush of my purpose. I had to see her and that was all.

What had more occupied my mind, as the train drew near to Cambridge, was wonderment at the nature and genesis of this love. When had I begun, unbeknown to myself, to love Honor Klein? Was it when I threw her to the cellar floor? Or when I saw her cut the napkins in two with the Samurai sword? Or at some earlier time, perhaps at that strange moment when I had seen her dusty, booted and spurred, confront the golden potentates who were my oppressors? Or even, most prophetically, when I had glimpsed the curving seam of her stocking in the flaring orange lights at Hyde Park Corner? It was hard to say, and the harder because of the peculiar nature of this love. When I thought how peculiar it was it struck me as marvellous that I had nevertheless such a deep certainty that it was love. I seemed to have passed from dislike to love without experiencing any intermediate stage. There had been no moment when I reassessed her character, noticed new qualities, or passed less harsh judgements on the old ones: which seemed to imply that I now loved her for the same things for which I had previously disliked her heartily; if indeed I had ever disliked her. None of this, on the other hand, made me doubt that now I loved her. Yet it was in truth a monstrous love such as I had never experienced before, a love devoid of tenderness and humour, a love practically devoid of personality.

It was strange too how little this passion which involved, so it seemed, a subjection of my whole being had to do in any simple or comprehensible sense with the flesh. It had to do with it, as my blood at every moment told me, but so darkly. I preserved the illusion of never having touched her. I had knocked her down but I had never held her hand; and at the idea of holding her hand I practically felt fault. How very different was this from my old love for Antonia, so warm and radiant with golden human dignity, and from my love for Georgie, so tender and sensuous and gay. Yet, too, how flimsy these other attachments seemed by comparison. The power that held me now was like nothing I had ever known: and the image returned to me of the terrible figure of Love as pictured by Dante. El m'ha percosso in terra e stammi sopra.

It occurred to me later as remarkable and somehow splendid that one thing which I never envisaged in these early moments was that my condition was in any way bogus or unreal. Where-ever it might lead, it was sufficiently what it seemed and had utterly to do with me: I would not, I could not, attempt to disown it or explain it away. If it was grotesque it was a grotesqueness which was of my own substance and to which, beyond any area of possible explanation, I laid an absolute claim. I had no idea what I would do when I saw Honor. It seemed quite likely that I would simply collapse speechless at her feet. Nothing of this mattered. I was doing what I had to do and my actions were, with a richness, my own.

I glided, motley and all, into the great checkered picture of King's Parade. Beyond the slim street lamps the great crested form of King's chapel rose towards the moon, its pi

I checked the numbers and could see ahead the house which must be hers. There was a single light on upstairs. The sight of that light made my heart increase its pace so hideously that I had to slow down and then stop and hold on to a lamp-post while I tried to breathe evenly and quietly. I wondered if I had better wait a while and attempt, not to calm myself which was impossible, but simply to organize my breathing so as to be sure not to swoon. I stood for a few minutes and breathed steadily. I decided that I must wait no longer in case Honor should take it into her head to go to bed. I knew she could hardly be in bed at this hour, and pictured the upstairs room as a study. Then I pictured her there sitting at a desk surrounded by books. Then I pictured myself beside her. I advanced to the door and leaned against the wall.

There was a single bell. I had not until that moment envisaged the possibility that she might have lodgers. In any case there was only one bell and I pressed it. I heard no sound within and after a moment I pressed the bell again. Still no sound. I stepped back and looked up at the lit curtained window. I returned to the door and pushed it gently, but it was locked. I peered through the letter box. The hall was in darkness and there was no sound of approaching feet. I held the letter box open and pressed the bell again. I decided that the bell must be out of order and I wondered what to do next. I might either call out, or bang on the door, or throw stones at the window. I stood meditating on these various courses for a little while, and they all seemed insuperably difficult. I was uncertain whether I could control my voice sufficiently to produce the right sort of cry, and the other methods were too brusque. In any case I did not relish a head thrust from a window, a confused encounter at a street doorway. What I really wanted was to slink quietly into some room and find myself at once in Honor's presence.