The Irrational Knot | Page 8

thoughtless people. "I
cannot understand why she is so unlucky: she is such a nice woman!":
that is the formula. As if people with any force in them ever were
altogether nice!
And so I claim the first order for this jejune exploit of mine, and invite
you to note that the final chapter, so remote from Scott and Dickens
and so close to Ibsen, was written years before Ibsen came to my
knowledge, thus proving that the revolt of the Life Force against
readymade morality in the nineteenth century was not the work of a
Norwegian microbe, but would have worked itself into expression in
English literature had Norway never existed. In fact, when Miss Lord's
translation of A Doll's House appeared in the eighteen-eighties, and so
excited some of my Socialist friends that they got up a private reading
of it in which I was cast for the part of Krogstad, its novelty as a
morally original study of a marriage did not stagger me as it staggered
Europe. I had made a morally original study of a marriage myself, and
made it, too, without any melodramatic forgeries, spinal diseases, and
suicides, though I had to confess to a study of dipsomania. At all events,
I chattered and ate caramels in the back drawing-room (our green-room)
whilst Eleanor Marx, as Nora, brought Helmer to book at the other side
of the folding doors. Indeed I concerned myself very little about Ibsen
until, later on, William Archer translated Peer Gynt to me _viva voce_,
when the magic of the great poet opened my eyes in a flash to the
importance of the social philosopher.
I seriously suggest that The Irrational Knot may be regarded as an early
attempt on the part of the Life Force to write A Doll's House in English

by the instrumentality of a very immature writer aged 24. And though I
say it that should not, the choice was not such a bad shot for a stupid
instinctive force that has to work and become conscious of itself by
means of human brains. If we could only realize that though the Life
Force supplies us with its own purpose, it has no other brains to work
with than those it has painfully and imperfectly evolved in our heads,
the peoples of the earth would learn some pity for their gods; and we
should have a religion that would not be contradicted at every turn by
the thing that is giving the lie to the thing that ought to be.
WELWYN, _Sunday, June_ 25, 1905.

BOOK I

THE IRRATIONAL KNOT

CHAPTER I
At seven o'clock on a fine evening in April the gas had just been lighted
in a room on the first floor of a house in York Road, Lambeth. A man,
recently washed and brushed, stood on the hearthrug before a pier glass,
arranging a white necktie, part of his evening dress. He was about thirty,
well grown, and fully developed muscularly. There was no cloud of
vice or trouble upon him: he was concentrated and calm, making no
tentative movements of any sort (even a white tie did not puzzle him
into fumbling), but acting with a certainty of aim and consequent
economy of force, dreadful to the irresolute. His face was brown, but
his auburn hair classed him as a fair man.
The apartment, a drawing-room with two windows, was dusty and
untidy. The paint and wall paper had not been renewed for years; nor
did the pianette, which stood near the fireplace, seem to have been
closed during that time; for the interior was dusty, and the inner end of
every key begrimed. On a table between the windows were some tea
things, with a heap of milliner's materials, and a brass candlestick
which had been pushed back to make room for a partially unfolded
cloth. There was a second table near the door, crowded with coils,
batteries, a galvanometer, and other electrical apparatus. The

mantelpiece was littered with dusty letters, and two trays of Doulton
ware which ornamented it were filled with accounts, scraps of twine,
buttons, and rusty keys.
A shifting, rustling sound, as of somebody dressing, which had been
audible for some minutes through the folding doors, now ceased, and a
handsome young woman entered. She had thick black hair, fine dark
eyes, an oval face, a clear olive complexion, and an elastic figure. She
was incompletely attired in a petticoat that did not hide her ankles, and
stays of bright red silk with white laces and seams. Quite unconcerned
at the presence of the man, she poured out a cup of tea; carried it to the
mantelpiece; and began to arrange her hair before the glass. He, without
looking round, completed the arrangement of his tie,