Джон Голсуорси
The Country House
Gregory worked till nearly three, and walked out to a bun-shop, where he lunched off a piece of cake and a cup of coffee. He took an omnibus, and getting on the top, was driven West with a smile on his face and his hat in his hand. He was thinking of Helen Bellew. It had become a habit with him to think of her, the best and most beautiful of her sex – a habit in which he was growing grey, and with which, therefore, he could not part. And those women who saw him with his uncovered head smiled, and thought:
‘What a fine-looking man!’
But George Pendyce, who saw him from the window of the Stoics’ Club, smiled a different smile; the sight of him was always a little unpleasant to George.
Nature, who had made Gregory Vigil a man, had long found that he had got out of her hands, and was living in celibacy, deprived of the comfort of woman, even of those poor creatures whom he befriended; and Nature, who cannot bear that man should escape her control, avenged herself through his nerves and a habit of blood to the head. Extravagance, she said, I cannot have, and when I made this man I made him quite extravagant enough. For his temperament (not uncommon in a misty climate) had been born seven feet high; and as a man cannot add a cubit to his stature, so neither can he take one off. Gregory could not bear that a yellow man must always remain a yellow man, but trusted by care and attention some day to see him white. There lives no mortal who has not a philosophy as distinct from every other mortal’s as his face is different from their faces; but Gregory believed that philosophers unfortunately alien must gain in time a likeness to himself if he were careful to tell them often that they had been mistaken. Other men in this Great Britain had the same belief.
To Gregory’s reforming instinct it was a constant grief that he had been born refined. A natural delicacy would interfere and mar his noblest efforts. Hence failures deplored by Mrs. Pendyce to Lady Malden the night they danced at Worsted Skeynes.
He left his bus near to the flat where Mrs. Bellow lived; with reverence he made the tour of the building and back again. He had long fixed a rule, which he never broke, of seeing her only once a fortnight; but to pass her windows he went out of his way most days and nights. And having made this tour, not conscious of having done anything ridiculous, still smiling, and with his hat on his knee, perhaps really happier because he had not seen her, was driven East, once more passing George Pendyce in the bow-window of the Stoics’ Club, and once more raising on his face a jeering smile.
He had been back at his rooms in Buckingham Street half an hour when a club commissionaire arrived with Mr. Paramor’s promised letter.
He opened it hastily.
“THE NELSON CLUB, “TRAFALGAR SQUARE.
“MY DEAR VIGIL,
“I’ve just come from seeing your ward. An embarrassing complexion is lent to affairs by what took place last night. It appears that after your visit to him yesterday afternoon her husband came up to town, and made his appearance at her flat about eleven o’clock. He was in a condition bordering on delirium tremens, and Mrs. Bellew was obliged to keep him for the night. ‘I could not,’ she said to me, ‘have refused a dog in such a state.’ The visit lasted until this afternoon – in fact, the man had only just gone when I arrived. It is a piece of irony, of which I must explain to you the importance. I think I told you that the law of divorce is based on certain principles. One of these excludes any forgiveness of offences by the party moving for a divorce. In technical language, any such forgiveness or overlooking is called condonation, and it is a complete bar to further action for the time being. The Court is very jealous of this principle of non-forgiveness, and will regard with grave suspicion any conduct on the part of the offended party which might be construed as amounting to condonation. I fear that what your ward tells me will make it altogether inadvisable to apply for a divorce on any evidence that may lie in the past. It is too dangerous. In other words, the Court would almost certainly consider that she has condoned offences so far. Any further offence, however, will in technical language ‘revive’ the past, and under these circumstances, though nothing can be done at present, there may be hope in the future. After seeing your ward, I quite appreciate your anxiety in the matter, though I am by no means sure that you are right in advising this divorce. If you remain in the same mind, however, I will give the matter my best personal attention, and my counsel to you is not to worry. This is no matter for a layman, especially not for one who, like you, judges of things rather as they ought to be than as they are.
“I am, my dear Vigil,
“Very sincerely yours,
“EDMUND PARAMOR. “GREGORY VIGIL, ESQ.
“If you want to see me, I shall be at my club all the evening. – E. P.”
When Gregory had read this note he walked to the window, and stood looking out over the lights on the river. His heart beat furiously, his temples were crimson. He went downstairs, and took a cab to the Nelson Club.
Mr. Paramor, who was about to dine, invited his visitor to join him.
Gregory shook his head.
“No, thanks,” he said; “I don’t feel like dining. What is this, Paramor? Surely there’s some mistake? Do you mean to tell me that because she acted like a Christian to that man she is to be punished for it in this way?”
Mr. Paramor bit his finger.
“Don’t confuse yourself by dragging in Christianity. Christianity has nothing to do with law.”
“You talked of principles,” said Gregory – “ecclesiastical.”
“Yes, yes; I meant principles imported from the old ecclesiastical conception of marriage, which held man and wife to be undivorceable. That conception has been abandoned by the law, but the principles still haunt – ”
“I don’t understand.”
Mr. Paramor said slowly:
“I don’t know that anyone does. It’s our usual muddle. But I know this, Vigil – in such a case as your ward’s we must tread very carefully. We must ‘save face,’ as the Chinese say. We must pretend we don’t want to bring this divorce, but that we have been so injured that we are obliged to come forward. If Bellew says nothing, the Judge will have to take what’s put before him. But there’s always the Queen’s Proctor. I don’t know if you know anything about him?”
“No,” said Gregory, “I don’t.”
“Well, if he can find out anything against our getting this divorce, he will. It is not my habit to go into Court with a case in which anybody can find out anything.”
“Do you mean to say – ”
“I mean to say that she must not ask for a divorce merely because she is miserable, or placed in a position that no woman should be placed in, but only if she has been offended in certain technical ways; and if – by condonation, for instance – she has given the Court technical reason for refusing her a divorce, that divorce will be refused her. To get a divorce, Vigil, you must be as hard as nails and as wary as a cat. Now do you understand?”
Gregory did not answer.
Mr. Paramor looked searchingly and rather pityingly in his face.
“It won’t do to go for it at present,” he said. “Are you still set on this divorce? I told you in my letter that I am not sure you are right.”
“How can you ask me, Paramor? After that man’s conduct last night, I am more than ever set on it.”
“Then,” said Mr. Paramor, “we must keep a sharp eye on Bellew, and hope for the best.”
Gregory held out his hand.
“You spoke of morality,” he said. “I can’t tell you how inexpressibly mean the whole thing seems to me. Goodnight.”
And, turning rather quickly, he went out.
His mind was confused and his heart torn. He thought of Helen Bellew as of the woman dearest to him in the coils of a great slimy serpent, and the knowledge that each man and woman unhappily married was, whether by his own, his partner’s, or by no fault at all, in the same embrace, afforded him no comfort whatsoever. It was long before he left the windy streets to go to his home.
CHAPTER X
AT BLAFARD’S
There comes now and then to the surface of our modern civilisation one of those great and good men who, unconscious, like all great and good men, of the goodness and greatness of their work, leave behind a lasting memorial of themselves before they go bankrupt.
It was so with the founder of the Stoics’ Club.
He came to the surface in the year 187-, with nothing in the world but his clothes and an idea. In a single year he had floated the Stoics’ Club, made ten thousand pounds, lost more, and gone down again.
The Stoics’ Club lived after him by reason of the immortal beauty of his idea. In 1891 it was a strong and corporate body, not perhaps quite so exclusive as it had been, but, on the whole, as smart and aristocratic as any club in London, with the exception of that one or two into which nobody ever got. The idea with which its founder had underpinned the edifice was, like all great ideas, simple, permanent, and perfect – so simple, permanent, and perfect that it seemed amazing no one had ever thought of it before. It was embodied in No. 1 of the members’ rules:
“No member of this club shall have any occupation whatsoever.”
Hence the name of a club renowned throughout London for the excellence of its wines and cuisine.
Its situation was in Piccadilly, fronting the Green Park, and through the many windows of its ground-floor smoking-room the public were privileged to see at all hours of the day numbers of Stoics in various attitudes reading the daily papers or gazing out of the window.
Some of them who did not direct companies, grow fruit, or own yachts, wrote a book, or took an interest in a theatre. The greater part eked out existence by racing horses, hunting foxes, and shooting birds. Individuals among them, however, had been known to play the piano, and take up the Roman Catholic religion. Many explored the same spots of the Continent year after year at stated seasons. Some belonged to the Yeomanry; others called themselves barristers; once in a way one painted a picture or devoted himself to good works. They were, in fact, of all sorts and temperaments, but their common characteristic was an independent income, often so settled by Providence that they could not in any way get rid of it.
But though the principle of no occupation overruled all class distinctions, the Stoics were mainly derived from the landed gentry. An instinct that the spirit of the club was safest with persons of this class guided them in their elections, and eldest sons, who became members almost as a matter of course, lost no time in putting up their younger brothers, thereby keeping the wine as pure as might be, and preserving that fine old country-house flavour which is nowhere so appreciated as in London.
After seeing Gregory pass on the top of a bus, George Pendyce went into the card-room, and as it was still empty, set to contemplation of the pictures on the walls. They were effigies of all those members of the Stoics’ Club who from time to time had come under the notice of a celebrated caricaturist in a celebrated society paper. Whenever a Stoic appeared, he was at once cut out, framed, glassed, and hung alongside his fellows in this room. And George moved from one to another till he came to the last. It was himself. He was represented in very perfectly cut clothes, with slightly crooked elbows, and race-glasses slung across him. His head, disproportionately large, was surmounted by a black billycock hat with a very flat brim. The artist had thought long and carefully over the face. The lips and cheeks and chin were moulded so as to convey a feeling of the unimaginative joy of life, but to their shape and complexion was imparted a suggestion of obstinacy and choler. To the eyes was given a glazed look, and between them set a little line, as though their owner were thinking:
‘Hard work, hard work! Noblesse oblige. I must keep it going!’
Underneath was written: “The Ambler.”
George stood long looking at the apotheosis of his fame. His star was high in the heavens. With the eye of his mind he saw a long procession of turf triumphs, a long vista of days and nights, and in them, round them, of them – Helen Bellow; and by an odd coincidence, as he stood there, the artist’s glazed look came over his eyes, the little line sprang up between them.
He turned at the sound of voices and sank into a chair. To have been caught thus gazing at himself would have jarred on his sense of what was right.
It was twenty minutes past seven, when, in evening dress, he left the club, and took a shilling’s-worth to Buckingham Gate. Here he dismissed his cab, and turned up the large fur collar of his coat. Between the brim of his opera-hat and the edge of that collar nothing but his eyes were visible. He waited, compressing his lips, scrutinising each hansom that went by. In the soft glow of one coming fast he saw a hand raised to the trap. The cab stopped; George stepped out of the shadow and got in. The cab went on, and Mrs. Bellew’s arm was pressed against his own.
It was their simple formula for arriving at a restaurant together.
In the third of several little rooms, where the lights were shaded, they sat down at a table in a corner, facing each a wall, and, underneath, her shoe stole out along the floor and touched his patent leather boot. In their eyes, for all their would-be wariness, a light smouldered which would not be put out. An habitue, sipping claret at a table across the little room, watched them in a mirror, and there came into his old heart a glow of warmth, half ache, half sympathy; a smile of understanding stirred the crow’s-feet round his eyes. Its sweetness ebbed, and left a little grin about his shaven lips. Behind the archway in the neighbouring room two waiters met, and in their nods and glances was that same unconscious sympathy, the same conscious grin. And the old habitue thought:
‘How long will it last?’… “Waiter, some coffee and my bill!”
He had meant to go to the play, but he lingered instead to look at Mrs. Bellew’s white shoulders and bright eyes in the kindly mirror. And he thought:
‘Young days at present. Ah, young days!’…
“Waiter, a Benedictine!” And hearing her laugh, O his old heart ached. ‘No one,’ he thought, ‘will ever laugh like that for me again!’… “Here, waiter, how’s this? You’ve charged me for an ice!” But when the waiter had gone he glanced back into the mirror, and saw them clink their glasses filled with golden bubbling wine, and he thought: ‘Wish you good luck! For a flash of those teeth, my dear, I’d give – ’
But his eyes fell on the paper flowers adorning his little table – yellow and red and green; hard, lifeless, tawdry. He saw them suddenly as they were, with the dregs of wine in his glass, the spill of gravy on the cloth, the ruin of the nuts that he had eaten. Wheezing and coughing, ‘This place is not what it was,’ he thought; ‘I shan’t come here again!’
He struggled into his coat to go, but he looked once more in the mirror, and met their eyes resting on himself. In them he read the careless pity of the young for the old. His eyes answered the reflection of their eyes, ‘Wait, wait! It is young days yet! I wish you no harm, my dears!’ and limping-for one of his legs was lame – he went away.
But George and his partner sat on, and with every glass of wine the light in their eyes grew brighter. For who was there now in the room to mind? Not a living soul! Only a tall, dark young waiter, a little cross-eyed, who was in consumption; only the little wine-waiter, with a pallid face, and a look as if he suffered. And the whole world seemed of the colour of the wine they had been drinking; but they talked of indifferent things, and only their eyes, bemused and shining, really spoke. The dark young waiter stood apart, unmoving, and his cross-eyed glance, fixed on her shoulders, had all unconsciously the longing of a saint in some holy picture. Unseen, behind the serving screen, the little wine-waiter poured out and drank a glass from a derelict bottle. Through a chink of the red blinds an eye peered in from the chill outside, staring and curious, till its owner passed on in the cold.
It was long after nine when they rose. The dark young waiter laid her cloak upon her with adoring hands. She looked back at him, and in her eyes was an infinite indulgence. ‘God knows,’ she seemed to say, ‘if I could make you happy as well, I would. Why should one suffer? Life is strong and good!’
The young waiter’s cross-eyed glance fell before her, and he bowed above the money in his hand. Quickly before them the little wine-waiter hurried to the door, his suffering face screwed into one long smile.
“Good-night, madam; good-night, sir. Thank you very much!”
And he, too, remained bowed over his hand, and his smile relaxed.
But in the cab George’s arm stole round her underneath the cloak, and they were borne on in the stream of hurrying hansoms, carrying couples like themselves, cut off from all but each other’s eyes, from all but each other’s touch; and with their eyes turned in the half-dark they spoke together in low tones.
PART II
CHAPTER I
GREGORY REOPENS THE CAMPAIGN
At one end of the walled garden which Mr. Pendyce had formed in imitation of that at dear old Strathbegally, was a virgin orchard of pear and cherry trees. They blossomed early, and by the end of the third week in April the last of the cherries had broken into flower. In the long grass, underneath, a wealth of daffodils, jonquils, and narcissus, came up year after year, and sunned their yellow stars in the light which dappled through the blossom.
And here Mrs. Pendyce would come, tan gauntlets on her hands, and stand, her face a little flushed with stooping, as though the sight of all that bloom was restful. It was due to her that these old trees escaped year after year the pruning and improvements which the genius of the Squire would otherwise have applied. She had been brought up in an old Totteridge tradition that fruit-trees should be left to themselves, while her husband, possessed of a grasp of the subject not more than usually behind the times, was all for newer methods. She had fought for those trees. They were as yet the only things she had fought for in her married life, and Horace Pendyce still remembered with a discomfort robbed by time of poignancy how she had stood with her back to their bedroom door and said, “If you cut those poor trees, Horace, I won’t live here!” He had at once expressed his determination to have them pruned; but, having put off the action for a day or two, the trees still stood unpruned thirty-three years later. He had even come to feel rather proud of the fact that they continued to bear fruit, and would speak of them thus: “Queer fancy of my wife’s, never been cut. And yet, remarkable thing, they do better than any of the others!”
This spring, when all was so forward, and the cuckoos already in full song, when the scent of young larches in the New Plantation (planted the year of George’s birth) was in the air like the perfume of celestial lemons, she came to the orchard more than usual, and her spirit felt the stirring, the old, half-painful yearning for she knew not what, that she had felt so often in her first years at Worsted Skeynes. And sitting there on a green-painted seat under the largest of the cherry-trees, she thought even more than her wont of George, as though her son’s spirit, vibrating in its first real passion, were calling to her for sympathy.
He had been down so little all that winter, twice for a couple of days’ shooting, once for a week-end, when she had thought him looking thinner and rather worn. He had missed Christmas for the first time. With infinite precaution she had asked him casually if he had seen Helen Bellew, and he had answered, “Oh yes, I see her once in a way!”
Secretly all through the winter she consulted the Times newspaper for mention of George’s horse, and was disappointed not to find any. One day, however, in February, discovering him absolutely at the head of several lists of horses with figures after them, she wrote off at once with a joyful heart. Of five lists in which the Ambler’s name appeared, there was only one in which he was second. George’s answer came in the course of a week or so.
“MY DEAR MOTHER,
“What you saw were the weights for the Spring Handicaps. They’ve simply done me out of everything. In great haste,
“Your affectionate son,
“GEORGE PENDYCE.”
As the spring approached, the vision of her independent visit to London, which had sustained her throughout the winter, having performed its annual function, grew mistier and mistier, and at last faded away. She ceased even to dream of it, as though it had never been, nor did George remind her, and as usual, she ceased even to wonder whether he would remind her. She thought instead of the season visit, and its scurry of parties, with a sort of languid fluttering. For Worsted Skeynes, and all that Worsted Skeynes stood for, was like a heavy horseman guiding her with iron hands along a narrow lane; she dreamed of throwing him in the open, but the open she never reached.
She woke at seven with her tea, and from seven to eight made little notes on tablets, while on his back Mr. Pendyce snored lightly. She rose at eight. At nine she poured out coffee. From half-past nine to ten she attended to the housekeeper and her birds. From ten to eleven she attended to the gardener and her dress. From eleven to twelve she wrote invitations to persons for whom she did not care, and acceptances to persons who did not care for her; she drew out also and placed in due sequence cheques for Mr. Pendyce’s signature; and secured receipts, carefully docketed on the back, within an elastic band; as a rule, also, she received a visit from Mrs. Husell Barter. From twelve to one she walked with her and “the dear dogs” to the village, where she stood hesitatingly in the cottage doors of persons who were shy of her. From half-past one to two she lunched. From two to three she rested on a sofa in the white morning-room with the newspaper in her hand, trying to read the Parliamentary debate, and thinking of other things. From three to half-past four she went to her dear flowers, from whom she was liable to be summoned at any moment by the arrival of callers; or, getting into the carriage, was driven to some neighbour’s mansion, where she sat for half an hour and came away. At half-past four she poured out tea. At five she knitted a tie, or socks, for George or Gerald, and listened with a gentle smile to what was going on. From six to seven she received from the Squire his impressions of Parliament and things at large. From seven to seven-thirty she changed to a black low dress, with old lace about the neck. At seven-thirty she dined. At a quarter to nine she listened to Norah playing two waltzes of Chopin’s, and a piece called “Serenade du Printemps” by Baff, and to Bee singing “The Mikado,” or the “Saucy Girl” From nine to ten thirty she played a game called piquet, which her father had taught her, if she could get anyone with whom to play; but as this was seldom, she played as a rule patience by herself. At ten-thirty she went to bed. At eleven-thirty punctually the Squire woke her. At one o’clock she went to sleep. On Mondays she wrote out in her clear Totteridge hand, with its fine straight strokes, a list of library books, made up without distinction of all that were recommended in the Ladies’ Paper that came weekly to Worsted Skeynes. Periodically Mr. Pendyce would hand her a list of his own, compiled out of the Times and the Field in the privacy of his study; this she sent too.
Thus was the household supplied with literature unerringly adapted to its needs; nor was it possible for any undesirable book to find its way into the house – not that this would have mattered much to Mrs. Pendyce, for as she often said with gentle regret, “My dear, I have no time to read.”
This afternoon it was so warm that the bees were all around among the blossoms, and two thrushes, who had built in a yew-tree that watched over the Scotch garden, were in a violent flutter because one of their chicks had fallen out of the nest. The mother bird, at the edge of the long orchard grass, was silent, trying by example to still the tiny creature’s cheeping, lest it might attract some large or human thing.
Mrs. Pendyce, sitting under the oldest cherry-tree, looked for the sound, and when she had located it, picked up the baby bird, and, as she knew the whereabouts of all the nests, put it back into its cradle, to the loud terror and grief of the parent birds. She went back to the bench and sat down again.
She had in her soul something of the terror of the mother thrush. The Maldens had been paying the call that preceded their annual migration to town, and the peculiar glow which Lady Malden had the power of raising had not yet left her cheeks. True, she had the comfort of the thought, ‘Ellen Malden is so bourgeoise,’ but to-day it did not still her heart.
Accompanied by one pale daughter who never left her, and two pale dogs forced to run all the way, now lying under the carriage with their tongues out, Lady Malden had come and stayed full time; and for three-quarters of that time she had seemed, as it were, labouring under a sense of duty unfulfilled; for the remaining quarter Mrs. Pendyce had laboured under a sense of duty fulfilled.
“My dear,” Lady Malden had said, having told the pale daughter to go into the conservatory, “I’m the last person in the world to repeat gossip, as you know; but I think it’s only right to tell you that I’ve been hearing things. You see, my boy Fred” (who would ultimately become Sir Frederick Malden) “belongs to the same club as your son George – the Stoics. All young men belong there of course – I mean, if they’re anybody. I’m sorry to say there’s no doubt about it; your son has been seen dining at – perhaps I ought not to mention the name – Blafard’s, with Mrs. Bellew. I dare say you don’t know what sort of a place Blafard’s is – a lot of little rooms where people go when they don’t want to be seen. I’ve never been there, of course; but I can imagine it perfectly. And not once, but frequently. I thought I would speak to you, because I do think it’s so scandalous of her in her position.”
An azalea in a blue and white pot had stood between them, and in this plant Mrs. Pendyce buried her cheeks and eyes; but when she raised her face her eyebrows were lifted to their utmost limit, her lips trembled with anger.
“Oh,” she said, “didn’t you know? There’s nothing in that; it’s the latest thing!”
For a moment Lady Malden wavered, then duskily flushed; her temperament and principles had recovered themselves.
“If that,” she said with some dignity, “is the latest thing, I think it is quite time we were back in town.”
She rose, and as she rose, such was her unfortunate conformation, it flashed through Mrs. Pendyce’s mind ‘Why was I afraid? She’s only – ’ And then as quickly: ‘Poor woman! how can she help her legs being short?’
But when she was gone, side by side with the pale daughter, the pale dogs once more running behind the carriage, Margery Pendyce put her hand to her heart.
And out here amongst the bees and blossom, where the blackbirds were improving each minute their new songs, and the air was so fainting sweet with scents, her heart would not be stilled, but throbbed as though danger were coming on herself; and she saw her son as a little boy again in a dirty holland suit with a straw hat down the back of his neck, flushed and sturdy, as he came to her from some adventure.
And suddenly a gush of emotion from deep within her heart and the heart of the spring day, a sense of being severed from him by a great, remorseless power, came over her; and taking out a tiny embroidered handkerchief, she wept. Round her the bees hummed carelessly, the blossom dropped, the dappled sunlight covered her with a pattern as of her own fine lace. From the home farm came the lowing of the cows on their way to milking, and, strange sound in that well-ordered home, a distant piping on a penny flute …
“Mother, Mother, Mo-o-ther!”
Mrs. Pendyce passed her handkerchief across her eyes, and instinctively obeying the laws of breeding, her face lost all trace of its emotion. She waited, crumpling the tiny handkerchief in her gauntleted hand.
“Mother! Oh, there you are! Here’s Gregory Vigil!”
Norah, a fox-terrier on either side, was coming down the path; behind her, unhatted, showed Gregory’s sanguine face between his wings of grizzled hair.
“I suppose you’re going to talk. I’m going over to the Rectory. Ta-to!”
And preceded by her dogs, Norah went on.
Mrs. Pendyce put out her hand.
“Well, Grig,” she said, “this is a surprise.”
Gregory seated himself beside her on the bench.
“I’ve brought you this,” he said. “I want you to look at it before I answer.”
Mrs. Pendyce, who vaguely felt that he would want her to see things as he was seeing them, took a letter from him with a sinking heart.
“Private.
“LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS,
“April 21, 1892.
“MY DEAR VIGIL,
“I have now secured such evidence as should warrant our instituting a suit. I’ve written your ward to that effect, and am awaiting her instructions. Unfortunately, we have no act of cruelty, and I’ve been obliged to draw her attention to the fact that, should her husband defend the suit, it will be very difficult to get the Court to accept their separation in the light of desertion on his part – difficult indeed, even if he doesn’t defend the suit. In divorce cases one has to remember that what has to be kept out is often more important than what has to be got in, and it would be useful to know, therefore, whether there is likelihood of opposition. I do not advise any direct approaching of the husband, but if you are possessed of the information you might let me know. I hate humbug, my dear Vigil, and I hate anything underhand, but divorce is always a dirty business, and while the law is shaped as at present, and the linen washed in public, it will remain impossible for anyone, guilty or innocent, and even for us lawyers, to avoid soiling our hands in one way or another. I regret it as much as you do.