Section 8

"Somehow I can't talk about this to Edith. It is ridiculous, I know. But in some way I can't…. It isn't fair to her. If I could, I would…. Quite soon after we were married I ceased to talk to her. I mean talking really and simply—as I do to you. And it's never come back. I don't know why…. And particularly I can't talk to her of Hugh…. Little things, little shadows of criticism, but enough to make it impossible…. And I go about thinking about Hugh, and what has happened to him sometimes…as though I was stifling."

Letty compared her case.

"I don't want to talk about Teddy—not a word."

"That's queer…. But perhaps—a son is different. Now I come to think of it—I've never talked of Mary…. Not to any one ever. I've never thought of that before. But I haven't. I couldn't. No. Losing a lover, that's a thing for oneself. I've been through that, you see. But a son's more outside you. Altogether. And more your own making. It's not losing a thing in you; it's losing a hope and a pride…. Once when I was a little boy I did a drawing very carefully. It took me a long time…. And a big boy tore it up. For no particular reason. Just out of cruelty…. That—that was exactly like losing Hugh…."

Letty reflected.

"No," she confessed, "I'm more selfish than that."

"It isn't selfish," said Mr. Britling. "But it's a different thing. It's less intimate, and more personally important."

"I have just thought, 'He's gone. He's gone.' Sometimes, do you know, I have felt quite angry with him. Why need he have gone—so soon?"

Mr. Britling nodded understandingly.

"I'm not angry. I'm not depressed. I'm just bitterly hurt by the ending of something I had hoped to watch—always—all my life," he said. "I don't know how it is between most fathers and sons, but I admired Hugh. I found exquisite things in him. I doubt if other people saw them. He was quiet. He seemed clumsy. But he had an extraordinary fineness. He was a creature of the most delicate and rapid responses…. These aren't my fond delusions. It was so…. You know, when he was only a few days old, he would start suddenly at any strange sound. He was alive like an Æolian harp from the very beginning…. And his hair when he was born—he had a lot of hair—was like the down on the breast of a bird. I remember that now very vividly—and how I used to like to pass my hand over it. It was silk, spun silk. Before he was two he could talk—whole sentences. He had the subtlest ear. He loved long words…. And then," he said with tears in his voice, "all this beautiful fine structure, this brain, this fresh life as nimble as water—as elastic as a steel spring, it is destroyed….

"I don't make out he wasn't human. Often and often I have been angry with him, and disappointed in him. There were all sorts of weaknesses in him. We all knew them. And we didn't mind them. We loved him the better. And his odd queer cleverness!…. And his profound wisdom. And then all this beautiful and delicate fabric, all those clear memories in his dear brain, all his whims, his sudden inventions….

"You know, I have had a letter from his chum Park. He was shot through a loophole. The bullet went through his eye and brow…. Think of it!

"An amazement … a blow … a splattering of blood. Rags of tormented skin and brain stuff…. In a moment. What had taken eighteen years—love and care…."

He sat thinking for an interval, and then went on, "The reading and writing alone! I taught him to read myself—because his first governess, you see, wasn't very clever. She was a very good methodical sort, but she had no inspiration. So I got up all sorts of methods for teaching him to read. But it wasn't necessary. He seemed to leap all sorts of difficulties. He leapt to what one was trying to teach him. It was as quick as the movement of some wild animal….

"He came into life as bright and quick as this robin looking for food….

"And he's broken up and thrown away…. Like a cartridge case by the side of a covert…."

He choked and stopped speaking. His elbows were on his knees, and he put his face between his hands and shuddered and became still. His hair was troubled. The end of his stumpy moustache and a little roll of flesh stood out at the side of his hand, and made him somehow twice as pitiful. His big atlas, from which papers projected, seemed forgotten by his side. So he sat for a long time, and neither he nor Letty moved or spoke. But they were in the same shadow. They found great comfort in one another. They had not been so comforted before since their losses came upon them.