The Man Within quotes

But was it only in the dream? He could not stay here and again he began to run, very stumblingly because of the roots of the trees.

Oh, but he was tired, tired, tired.

His wrist was hurting and felt damp and weak, slashed by the thorns in the hedge. If Carlyon had suddenly appeared now in front of him, he would have thrown himself down on his knees and cried. Carlyon wouldn’t do anything.

“You are a man, aren’t you?” she said with sudden vehemence and was met with a purely mechanical leer and response. “Do you want me to prove it?”

It was as though the young man’s face were a mask to which small strings were attached.

She had pulled one and the mouth had opened and the lips had twisted a little at one corner. She felt a brief wonder as to what string would work the eyes that remained watching her suspiciously, a little frightened, completely unresponsive to the lips.

He was indeed alone. Perhaps that other part of him remained silent, not through self-righteousness, but because it had no words to speak. There was nothing in him but sentimentality and fear and cowardice, nothing in him but negatives.

How could anyone believe in him if he did not even exist?

He was surprised, deep in the maze in which he chased himself, when she answered him. “I’ve been alone, too, the last two nights. I don’t mind the daytime, but I get a bit scared at night now he’s dead.”

“

Need you be a fool as well as a coward?

” she answered in an offhand tired fashion. “Why should I plan anything? I’m not sufficiently interested in you.” She released her hand and moved out of doors.

He could find a childish comfort, bury his head beneath the bedclothes and fear no more the creaking of old furniture, deep in a darkness within a darkness.

Why should any man be plagued as he had ever been plagued, with all the instincts⁠—desires, fears, comforts⁠—of a child and yet possess the wisdom of the man?

In these moments of crisis he felt physically drawn in two—an agonising stretch of the nerves. One part of him said, “Hide yourself in this mist. You will see no one and nothing can hurt you. You will be comforted.” The other part said, “Fool!

Slowly they rose higher and small haloes formed round their summits, a powdery glow like motes in sunlight. Cloaked from all draughts by the surrounding mist they burnt straight upwards, tapering to a point as fine as a needle.

The shadows were driven back into the corners of the room where they crouched darkly like sulking dogs rebuked.

When Andrews had lit the last candle he turned and saw that Elizabeth was watching him.

“Andrews, Andrews,” the voice had lost its charm. That music was spell-less, for Andrews remembered now that it was with the same soft melancholy regret that Carlyon had spoken to the offending smuggler.

Pointing out to the sea he had said: “Look here. Can you tell me what that is?”

and the man had turned his back to scan a waste of small ridges, which formed, advanced, fell and receded, and continued so to form, advance, fall and recede, as his eyes glazed in death.

A man will even forget his own details when he can, until he appears an epic hero, and it needs his woman to see that he’s a fool.

Only a woman can love a real person.

”

“You are so sane,” he said sadly. “You women are all so sane.

A dream is often all there is to a man.

I think that you are lovely, good and full of pity, but that is only a dream. You know all about yourself, how you are greedy for this and that, afraid of insects, full of disgusting physical needs.

“That’s less common,” Carlyon answered. “

Women generally show us up to ourselves and we hate them for it.

I suppose that man would love the woman who showed him up.”

“You hesitate and hesitate and then you are lost,” she replied. “

Can’t you ever shut your eyes and leap?

”

“Why do you always repeat words like that?” he said angrily. “It’s maddening. You sit there cool, collected, at peace.

Oh I’d hate you if I didn’t love you.

”

Dotted across the distance were toy farms, which displayed how far from the isolation he had imagined was the cottage where Elizabeth slept.

Along a white road a scarlet cart crawled like a ladybird along the rim of a leaf.

The Surrey hills peered through a silver veil, as though they were an old nun’s face, austere, curious and indestructibly chaste. A cock a mile away crowed with frosty clarity and a lamb bewildered and invisible cried aloud.

Dotted across the distance were toy farms, which displayed how far from the isolation he had imagined was the cottage where Elizabeth slept. Along a white road a scarlet cart crawled like a ladybird along the rim of a leaf.

The Surrey hills peered through a silver veil, as though they were an old nun’s face, austere, curious and indestructibly chaste.

A cock a mile away crowed with frosty clarity and a lamb bewildered and invisible cried aloud. The turf on which he lay was fresh with the previous rain and mist, yet crisp with salt from the sea.

Save for the passing wind and the small dots of moving men and cattle safely far, the world was motionless.

Above a round blue dew-pond a singing bird floated in the air like a scrap of charred paper, too light to stir.

She will be awake now, he thought, and coming down the stairs into the kitchen. I wish I had stayed to thank her. Will she realise what the knife means?

The flames of the two street lamps ceased to be bright gold breaches in the dark and became finally a faint yellow smear on a grey page. Presently an elderly man shuffled along the pavement and turned them out.

By order of Lewes Corporation day had officially begun.

For several hours yet there was no movement of human beings in the street. A thin grey cat trod delicately along the gutter in a kind of dignified despondency, and a dog came trotting from a side turning, tail erect in spite of the rain.

The sun rose, but not into sight. Grey banked clouds slowly appeared, and that was the one sign of day. Along Lewes High Street there was no sound save the regular drip, drip of water from pipes and gables and sign boards.

Water streamed from the hair, the robes and the sword of the fat stone Justice on the Assize Court, as though she had just risen from the leaden waves of a “pleasure resort,” like Venus out of the Mediterranean.

Unperturbed by cold and damp she stared across the street at the windows of the White Hart with an expressionless gaze. A blind was raised and a young man looked out for a moment at the street.

A blind was raised and a young man looked out for a moment at the street. Through another window the fading light of a candle could be seen moving upwards, as an elderly, sharp-featured man mounted the stairs to bed.

The flames of the two street lamps ceased to be bright gold breaches in the dark and became finally a faint yellow smear on a grey page.

Presently an elderly man shuffled along the pavement and turned them out. By order of Lewes Corporation day had officially begun.

The blind of the White Hart was again raised and the same young man looked out, watching the byplay with an intent interest. He was fully dressed and his eyes were strained as though he had been unable to sleep.

The cat, suddenly conscious that she was a show for two male creatures, leapt on a railing and disappeared.

Dog and man watched in disappointed boredom the steps on which she had stood.

He knew too well how each would look, how Druce would finger his lower lip, how Hake would pull at a particular portion of his beard. He knew, as though he heard them, the words they would whisper to each other.

Haven’t I lived with them, eaten with them, slept with them, for three years, he thought.

He was afraid to look at the gallery. There would be young, desirable women there who would watch him with contempt—“The informer, traitor, Judas.” Not even honour among thieves. And he was afraid, too, damnably afraid.

“No,” he whispered, his lips moving, “for Elizabeth.” The sound of her name gave him courage.

It was like a trumpet blown a long way off by a pale courageous spirit.

He raised his eyes.

A bearded man called Hake in the second row of the prisoners sprang to his feet and shook his fist at Andrews.

“It’s him or you still,” he cried. “He’ll get you for this.”

A warder pulled him down.

“Where is your father?” Mr. Braddock asked.

“In hell I hope,” Andrews answered, and a burst of laughter from the gallery came like a breath of cool spring wind to a tropic night.

No relief of cool winds was allowed in a court of justice. Laughter was suppressed by the usher’s cries.

“No.” Andrews’s voice drooped wearily. He felt a sudden longing to explain to this red-faced counsel who plagued him so with questions that he had not slept all night.

“I don’t expect anyone to understand,” he said.

In his heart he added—save Elizabeth—and Carlyon.

Andrews put his hand to his head. “You made me forget her,” he said. “I can’t face her after this.”

“How young you are,” she said. “Surely you know by this time that the feeling won’t last. For a day we are disgusted and disappointed and disillusioned and feel dirty all over. But we are clean again in a very short time, clean enough to go back and soil ourselves all over again.”

“One must reach an end some time.”

“It’s worse at home,” he said. “My mother’s dead.”

“You should run away,” the stranger said carelessly and turning his back stared again at the sunset.

Andrews watched him. At that moment his heart, barren of any object of affection, was ready open to hero worship. The man stood in front of him with his legs a little apart as though balancing himself upon the spinning globe.

That night Carlyon stayed at an inn in the town and Andrews, as he said good night, asked the question he had been longing to ask all the evening. “Do you want me to come?” “Yes,” Carlyon had answered.

“We both love the same things. They do not love them at this school, and my men, fine men, mind you, do not love them. We are made to be friends.”

“Made to be friends,” Andrews laughed, walking over the downs. What a mess he had made of that friendship. He wondered whether if he had the power, he would undo what he had done;

“Those men are different. They are not cowards.”

“They must be cowards,” she said with unanswerable logic, “if they intend to revenge themselves on me.”

Outside the sun allured him with pale gold. What woman dared to compete with the sun in beauty or yet in sense of peace?

“You are so afraid of death,” she said.

“I’m afraid of extinction,” Andrews said, resting his hand on the barrel of the gun, in which he found comfort. “I am all that I have. I’m afraid of losing that.”

“There is no danger,” she said. “We go on.”

Elizabeth asked with a small puzzled frown, “What do you mean by chaos?”

“It is as though,” Andrews said slowly, “there were about six different people inside me. They all urge different things. I don’t know which is myself.”

“The one who left the knife and the one who stays here now,” she said.

A faint puzzled frown dimmed for a moment the radiance.

“Why do you always make little of the good you do,” she asked, “and make much of the bad?”

He bit his lip angrily. “If you want to know why I came,” he said, “I’ll tell you. Remember it’s your fault if all this peace is spoiled.”

He put up his hands to her face and pulled it down to him. “How sane and even you are,” he said. “I can’t believe that you are younger than I am. You seem so wise. Dear sanity.”

“Dear madness,” she replied.

“Tell me,” Andrews said, “aren’t you afraid of this thing that has happened to us—this falling in love. It’s terribly changing. So strong that I feel that it could fling me at any moment into Heaven or hell.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “It’s not what you call respectability. It’s a belief in God. I can’t alter that for you. I’d leave you first.”

“What has He done for you?”

Her candour was very evident to him in the manner in which she met his challenge. She did not sweep it aside in a vague rush of words, as some pious women would have done. She was silent, seeking an answer.

“Listen,” she said. “We shall need water before tonight. You must go with a pail now before it is dangerous to the well. The pail is in the corner there. Bring it.” Her voice was brisk and commanding and Andrews obeyed.

At the door, watching the night which grew outside like a dark flower opening rapid petals, she directed him.

“Down that path,” she said, “behind those trees. Two minutes’ walk, no more.” Still examining the night she commanded, “Go now—now.”

Pail in hand he walked down the path, but a soft, somehow imploring, echo of that “soon” brushed him on the cheek and made him turn.

A white flower upon a slender stem which trembled in the dusk was what he seemed to see.

Indeed the image was not fancy only, for one hand extended itself across the dark to find support against the door.

“A woman,” he begged desperately.

“Nought but a bloody hoor,” the farmer returned with crushing simplicity.

Andrews unwisely lost his temper. “You damned liar,” he cried.

She had seen Joe coming and she had sent him away. That was the reason for her impatience and the disbelief in her whispered “soon.” He remembered how she had said to him. “I had no right to make you risk yourself.”

Cutting him across the face like the thong of a whip struck the thought⁠—she put her trust in my cowardice.

And she was right, right, right. Her sacrifice had been safe with him. And yet remembering that “soon” he knew that she had hoped, however faintly, for his return, but a return of his own will, as her lover, accepting danger voluntarily.

His only object was to reach the cottage as soon as might be and fling himself upon any whom he might find there. They would kill him probably and then they would go because their object was achieved.

“You trusted in my cowardice to keep me safe,” he cried through the dark. “You were wrong, wrong, wrong,” but his heart felt sick at the thought of how nearly she had been right.

“Go faster, you devil,” he called to the horse, beating it unmercifully upon the flank, till the wretched animal which was old and uncertain in eyesight stumbled in its efforts to obey.