Part 27 (1/2)
”I liked her demand for a hansom because a four-wheeler was too safe.”
”She was worked up,” I said. ”She's a woman of faultless character, but her instincts, as Altiora would say, are anarchistic--when she gives them a chance.”
”So she takes it out in hansom cabs.”
”Hansom cabs.”
”She's wise,” said Britten....
”I hope, Remington,” he went on after a pause, ”I didn't rag your other guests too much. I've a sort of feeling at moments--Remington, those chaps are so infernally not--not b.l.o.o.d.y. It's part of a man's duty sometimes at least to eat red beef and get drunk. How is he to understand government if he doesn't? It scares me to think of your lot--by a sort of misapprehension--being in power. A kind of neuralgia in the head, by way of government. I don't understand where YOU come in.
Those others--they've no l.u.s.ts. Their ideal is anaemia. You and I, we had at least a l.u.s.t to take hold of life and make something of it.
They--they want to take hold of life and make nothing of it. They want to cut out all the stimulants. Just as though life was anything else but a reaction to stimulation!”...
He began to talk of his own life. He had had ill-fortune through most of it. He was poor and unsuccessful, and a girl he had been very fond of had been attacked and killed by a horse in a field in a very horrible manner. These things had wounded and tortured him, but they hadn't broken him. They had, it seemed to me, made a kind of crippled and ugly demiG.o.d of him. He was, I began to perceive, so much better than I had any right to expect. At first I had been rather struck by his unkempt look, and it made my reaction all the stronger. There was about him something, a kind of raw and bleeding faith in the deep things of life, that stirred me profoundly as he showed it. My set of people had irritated him and disappointed him. I discovered at his touch how they irritated him. He reproached me boldly. He made me feel ashamed of my easy acquiescences as I walked in my sleek tall neatness beside his rather old coat, his rather battered hat, his st.u.r.dier shorter shape, and listened to his denunciations of our self-satisfied New Liberalism and Progressivism.
”It has the same relation to progress--the reality of progress--that the things they paint on door panels in the suburbs have to art and beauty.
There's a sort of filiation.... Your Altiora's just the political equivalent of the ladies who sell traced cloth for embroidery; she's a dealer in Refined Social Reform for the Parlour. The real progress, Remington, is a graver thing and a painfuller thing and a slower thing altogether. Look! THAT”--and he pointed to where under a boarding in the light of a gas lamp a dingy prost.i.tute stood lurking--”was in Babylon and Nineveh. Your little lot make believe there won't be anything of the sort after this Parliament! They're going to vanish at a few top notes from Altiora Bailey! Remington!--it's foolery. It's prigs at play.
It's make-believe, make-believe! Your people there haven't got hold of things, aren't beginning to get hold of things, don't know anything of life at all, s.h.i.+rk life, avoid life, get in little bright clean rooms and talk big over your b.u.mpers of lemonade while the Night goes by outside--untouched. Those Crampton fools slink by all this,”--he waved at the woman again--”pretend it doesn't exist, or is going to be banished root and branch by an Act to keep children in the wet outside public-houses. Do you think they really care, Remington? I don't. It's make-believe. What they want to do, what Lewis wants to do, what Mrs.
Bunting Harblow wants her husband to do, is to sit and feel very grave and necessary and respected on the Government benches. They think of putting their feet out like statesmen, and tilting s.h.i.+ny hats with becoming brims down over their successful noses. Presentation portrait to a club at fifty. That's their Reality. That's their scope. They don't, it's manifest, WANT to think beyond that. The things there ARE, Remington, they'll never face! the wonder and the depth of life,--l.u.s.t, and the night-sky,--pain.”
”But the good intention,” I pleaded, ”the Good Will!”
”Sentimentality,” said Britten. ”No Good Will is anything but dishonesty unless it frets and burns and hurts and destroys a man. That lot of yours have nothing but a good will to think they have good will. Do you think they lie awake of nights searching their hearts as we do? Lewis?
Crampton? Or those neat, admiring, satisfied little wives? See how they shrank from the probe!”
”We all,” I said, ”shrink from the probe.”
”G.o.d help us!” said Britten....
”We are but vermin at the best, Remington,” he broke out, ”and the greatest saint only a worm that has lifted its head for a moment from the dust. We are d.a.m.ned, we are meant to be d.a.m.ned, coral animalculae building upward, upward in a sea of d.a.m.nation. But of all the d.a.m.ned things that ever were d.a.m.ned, your d.a.m.ned s.h.i.+rking, temperate, sham-efficient, self-satisfied, respectable, make-believe, Fabian-spirited Young Liberal is the utterly d.a.m.nedest.” He paused for a moment, and resumed in an entirely different note: ”Which is why I was so surprised, Remington, to find YOU in this set!”
”You're just the old plunger you used to be, Britten,” I said. ”You're going too far with all your might for the sake of the d.a.m.ns. Like a donkey that drags its cart up a bank to get thistles. There's depths in Liberalism--”
”We were talking about Liberals.”
”Liberty!”
”Liberty! What do YOOR little lot know of liberty?”
”What does any little lot know of liberty?”
”It waits outside, too big for our understanding. Like the night and the stars. And l.u.s.t, Remington! l.u.s.t and bitterness! Don't I know them? with all the sweetness and hope of life bitten and trampled, the dear eyes and the brain that loved and understood--and my poor mumble of a life going on! I'm within sight of being a drunkard, Remington! I'm a failure by most standards! Life has cut me to the bone. But I'm not afraid of it any more. I've paid something of the price, I've seen something of the meaning.”
He flew off at a tangent. ”I'd rather die in Delirium Tremens,” he cried, ”than be a Crampton or a Lewis....”
”Make-believe. Make-believe.” The phrase and Britten's squat gestures haunted me as I walked homeward alone. I went to my room and stood before my desk and surveyed papers and files and Margaret's admirable equipment of me.