It is ironical that Lathom, coming to Suburbia to find raw, red life, should have failed to recognise it when he saw it. It was there, all right, in this dry little man, with no imagination beyond beefsteak and mushrooms, but it did not wear bright colours, and Lathom liked colours. The thing was farcical. And I believe I was the most farcical fool in the whole outfit. Even then, the mocking censor which views one’s personality from the outside sat sniggering in a corner of my brain. Here was I, a successful novelist, presented with this monstrous situation—one which was quite in my own line of work, too—and I hadn’t even had the wits to see it coming. The thing was a gift.
I could see myself tackling it, too, in quite the right modern, cynical way. No nonsense. No foolish shibboleths about honour and self-sacrifice. A lucid exposure of the situation—an epigram or so—a confrontation of Harrison (as representing the old morality) with the unsentimental frankness of the new.
And the damnable thing was that I didn’t do it. When it came to saying, “My good man, you are mistaken. My friend Lathom is the man you ought to be after. He and your wife are carrying on a love-affair, for which you are largely to blame, if, indeed, any blame attaches to these unsophisticated manifestations of natural selection”—when it came to the point, I didn’t say it. Looking at Harrison, I couldn’t say it. I behaved like a perfect little gentleman, and said nothing whatever.
After that, I can only suppose that I became quite intoxicated by this new and heroic view of myself. I went straight off to Lathom and told him about it. I oozed priggishness. I said:
“I have stood by you. I have kept silence. I have agreed to leave the house at once. But I will only do it if you will promise me to chuck the whole business—clear out at the same time that I do. Leave these people alone. You have no right to ruin the life of this decent man and his wife, who were getting along quite well in their way till you came along.”