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The New Machiavelli Chapter 15 Part 1 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter fifteen of the New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells.
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Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Antoniogus.
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Speaker 1: The breaking point one, and then we broke down. We
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Speaker 1: broke our faith with both Margaret and Shusmith, flung career
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Speaker 1: and duty out of our lives, and went away together.
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Speaker 1: It is only now, almost a year after these events,
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Speaker 1: that I can begin to see what happened to me.
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Speaker 1: At the time, it seemed to me I was a rational,
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Speaker 1: responsible creature. But indeed I had not parted from her
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Speaker 1: two days before I became a monomaniac to whom nothing
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Speaker 1: could matter but Isabel. Every truth had to be squared
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Speaker 1: to that obsession, every duty. It astounds me to think
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Speaker 1: how I forgot Margaret, forgot my work, forgot everything, but
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Speaker 1: that we two were parted. I still believe that with
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Speaker 1: better chances, we might have escaped the consequences of the
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Speaker 1: emotional storm that presently seized us both. But we had
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Speaker 1: no foresight of that and no preparation for it, and
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Speaker 1: our circumstances betrayed us. It was partly Shoesmith's some wisdom
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Speaker 1: in delaying his marriage until after the end of the session,
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Speaker 1: partly my own amazing folly in returning within four days
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Speaker 1: to Wetsminster. But we were all of us intent upon
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Speaker 1: the defeat of scandal and the complete restoration of appearances.
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Speaker 1: It seemed necessary that Shoesmith's marriage should not seem to
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Speaker 1: be hurried. Still more necessary that I should not vanish inexplicably.
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Speaker 1: I had to be visible with Margaret in London just
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Speaker 1: as much as possible. We went to restaurants, we visited
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Speaker 1: the theater. We could even contemplate the possibility of my
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Speaker 1: presence at the wedding. For that, however, we had schemed
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Speaker 1: a week end visit to Wales, and a fictitious sprained
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Speaker 1: ankle at the last moment, which would justify my absence.
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Speaker 1: I cannot convey to you the intolerable, wretchedness and rebellion
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Speaker 1: of my separation from Isabel. It seemed that in the
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Speaker 1: past two years all my thoughts had spun commissieurs to
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Speaker 1: Isabel's brain, and I could think of nothing that did
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Speaker 1: not lead me surely to the need of the one
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Speaker 1: intimate I had found in the world. I came back
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Speaker 1: to the house and the office and my home. I
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Speaker 1: filled all my days with appointments and duty, and it
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Speaker 1: did not save me in the least from a lonely
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Speaker 1: emptiness such as I had never felt before in all
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Speaker 1: my life. I had little sleep in the daytime. I
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Speaker 1: did a hundred things. I even spoke in the house
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Speaker 1: on two occasions, and by my own low standards, spoke well.
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Speaker 1: And it seemed to me that I was going about
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Speaker 1: in my own brain like a hushed survivor in a
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Speaker 1: house whose owner lies dead up stairs. I came to
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Speaker 1: a crisis after that wild dinner of Tarvril's, something in
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Speaker 1: that stripped my soule bare. It was an occasion made
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Speaker 1: absurd and strange by the odd accident that the house
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Speaker 1: caught far upstairs while we were dining below. It was
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Speaker 1: a men's dinner, a dinner of all sorts, said Tarvril
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Speaker 1: when he invited me. Everything from Evesham and gained to
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Speaker 1: Wilkins the author, and heaven knows what will happen. I
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Speaker 1: remember that afterwards Tarvril was accused of having planned the
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Speaker 1: fire to make his dinner a marvel and a memory.
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Speaker 1: It was indeed a wonderful occasion, and I suppose if
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Speaker 1: I had not been altogether drenched in misery. I should
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Speaker 1: have found the same wild amusement in it that glowed
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Speaker 1: in all the others. There were one or two university dons,
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Speaker 1: Lord George Fester, the racing man, Panmuir, the artist, two
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Speaker 1: or three big city men Western Massinghay, and another prominent
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Speaker 1: liberal whose name I can't remember. The three men Tarvril
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Speaker 1: had promised, and as mere Lord Rasseleton, Wohlsort, the member
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Speaker 1: for monkton Niel, and several others. We began a little
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Speaker 1: coldly with due logs, but the conversation was already becoming general,
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Speaker 1: so far as such a long table permitted. When the
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Speaker 1: fire asserted itself, It asserted itself first as a penetrating
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Speaker 1: and emphatic smell of burning rubber. It was caused by
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Speaker 1: the fusing of an electric wire. The reek forced its
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Speaker 1: way into the discussion of the peaking massacres that had
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Speaker 1: sprung up between Evesh and Walsort and the others. At
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Speaker 1: the end of the table. Something burning, said the man
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Speaker 1: next to me. Something must be burning, said Panmuir. Tarvril
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Speaker 1: hated undignified interruptions. He had a particularly importent turboble butler
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Speaker 1: with a cadaverous, sad face and an eye of rigid disapproval.
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Speaker 1: He spoke to this individual over his shoulder. Just see,
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Speaker 1: will you, he said, and caught up the pause in
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Speaker 1: the talk. To his left, Wilkins was asking questions, and
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Speaker 1: I too was curious the story of the siege of
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Speaker 1: the legations in China in the year nineteen hundred and
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Speaker 1: all that followed upon. That is just one of those
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Speaker 1: disturbing interludes in history that refused to join on to
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Speaker 1: that general scheme of Protestation by which civilization is maintained.
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Speaker 1: It is a break in the general flow of experience,
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Speaker 1: as disconcerting to state craft as the robbery of my
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Speaker 1: knife and the scuffle that followed it had been to
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Speaker 1: me when I was a boy at Penge. It is
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Speaker 1: like a tear in a curtain, revealing quite unexpected backgrounds.
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Speaker 1: I had never given the business a thought for years.
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Speaker 1: Now this talk brought back a string of pictures to
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Speaker 1: my mind. How the reliefs arrived and the plundering began.
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Speaker 1: Our section after section of the international Army was drawn
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Speaker 1: into murder and pillage. How the infection spread upward until
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Speaker 1: the wives of ministers were busy looting, and the very
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Speaker 1: sentinels stripped and crawled like snakes into the palace they
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Speaker 1: were set to guard. It did not stop at robbery.
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Speaker 1: Men were murdered, women being plundered were outraged, children were butchered.
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Speaker 1: Strong men had found themselves with arms in a lawless,
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Speaker 1: defenseless city, and this had followed. Now it was all recalled.
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Speaker 1: Respectable ladies addicted to district visiting at home were as
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Speaker 1: bad as any one, said Panmuir Glaisbrook told me of
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Speaker 1: one flushed like a woman as a bargains sale, he said,
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Speaker 1: and when he pointed out to her that the silk
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Speaker 1: she had got was blood stained, she just said, oh
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Speaker 1: bother and threw it aside and went back. We became
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Speaker 1: aware that Tarvrill's butler had returned. We tried not to
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Speaker 1: seem to listen. Beg pardon, my lord, he said, the
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Speaker 1: house is on fire, my lord, up stairs, my lord,
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Speaker 1: just overhead, my lord. The modes are throwing water, my lord,
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Speaker 1: and i've telephone fire. No, my lord, no immediate danger.
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Speaker 1: It's all right, said Tarvril to the table. Generally, go on,
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Speaker 1: it's not a general conflagration, and the fire brigade won't
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Speaker 1: be five minutes. Don't see that it's our affair. The
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Speaker 1: stuff's insured, they say. Old Lady Pascar shortly was dreadful
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Speaker 1: like a harpy. The dowager Impress had shown her some
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Speaker 1: little things of hers pet things hidden away. Susan went
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Speaker 1: straight for them, used to take an umbrella for the
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Speaker 1: silks born shop lifter. It was evident he didn't want
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Speaker 1: his dinner spoilt, and we played up loyally. This is
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Speaker 1: recorded history, said Wilkins. Practically it makes one wonder about
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Speaker 1: unrecorded history in India, for example. But nobody touched that. Thomson,
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Speaker 1: said Tavrill to the imperturbable butler, and indicating the table generally, Champagne, Champagne.
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Speaker 1: Keep it going, my lord, and Thompson marshaled his assistance.
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Speaker 1: Some man I didn't know began to remember things about Mandalay.
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Speaker 1: It's queer, he said, how people break out at times,
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Speaker 1: and told his story of an army doctor, brave, public, spirited,
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Speaker 1: and as it happened, deeply religious, who was caught one
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Speaker 1: evening by the excitement of plundering and stole and hid,
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Speaker 1: twisted the wrist of a boy until it broke, and
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Speaker 1: was afterwards overcome by wild remorse. I watched Evesham listening intently. Strange,
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Speaker 1: he said, very strange. We are such stuff as thieves
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Speaker 1: are made of. And in China too they murdered people.
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Speaker 1: But the sake of murdering a part, So to speak
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Speaker 1: from mercenary considerations, I'm afraid there's no doubt of it
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Speaker 1: in certain cases, no doubt at all. Young soldiers fresh
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Speaker 1: from German high schools and English homes. Did our people,
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Speaker 1: asked some Patriot, not so much. But I'm afraid there
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Speaker 1: were cases. Some of the Indian troops were pretty bad.
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Speaker 1: Gain picked up the tale with confirmations. It is all
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Speaker 1: printed in the vividest way as a picture upon my memory.
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Speaker 1: So that were I a painter, I think I could
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Speaker 1: give the deep, rich browns and warm grays beyond the
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Speaker 1: brightly lit table, the various distinguished faces strongly illuminated, interested
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Speaker 1: and keen above the black and white of evening dress,
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Speaker 1: the alert men's servants with the heavier, clean shaved faces
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Speaker 1: indistinctly seen in the dimness behind. Then this was colored
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Speaker 1: emotionally for me by my aching sense of loss and sacrifice,
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Speaker 1: and by the chance trend of our talk to the
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Speaker 1: breeches and unrealities of the civilized scheme. We seemed a
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Speaker 1: little transitory circle of light in a universe of darkness
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Speaker 1: and violence, an effect to which the diminishing spell of
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Speaker 1: burning rubber, the trampling of feet overhead, the swish of
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Speaker 1: water added enormously. Everybody, unless perhaps it was Evesham, drank
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Speaker 1: rather carelessly because of the suppressed excitement of our situation,
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Speaker 1: and talked the louder and more freely. But well, a
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Speaker 1: flimsy thing. Our civilization is, said Evesham, a mere thin
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Speaker 1: net of habits and associations, a suppo. As those men
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Speaker 1: came back, said Wilkins. Lady Pasca shortly did chuckled Eavesham.
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Speaker 1: How they fit in with the rest of their lives.
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Speaker 1: Wilkins speculated, I suppose there's peaking stained police officers peking
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Speaker 1: stain jpas trying petty pilferers in the severest manner. Then
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Speaker 1: for a time things became preposterous. There was a sudden
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Speaker 1: cascade of water by the fireplace, and then absurdly the
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Speaker 1: ceiling began to rain upon us. First at this point
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Speaker 1: and then that my new suit cried someone pere up,
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Speaker 1: peer up, A new vertical line of blackened water would
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Speaker 1: establish itself and form a spreading pool upon the gleaming cloth.
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Speaker 1: The men nearest would arrange catchment areas of plates and
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Speaker 1: flower bowls. Draw up, said Tarvril. Draw up, that's a
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Speaker 1: bad end of the table. He turned to the imperturbable butler.
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Speaker 1: Take round bath towels, he said, And presently the men
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Speaker 1: behind us were offering, within flexible dignity. Powiser bath towser
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Speaker 1: wool sort with streaks of blackened water on his forehead,
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Speaker 1: was suddenly reminded of a wet year when he had
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Speaker 1: followed the French army maneuvers. An animated dispute sprang up
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Speaker 1: between him and Neil about the relative efficiency of the
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Speaker 1: new French and German field guns. Rasseleton joined in, and
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Speaker 1: a little drunken shriveled Oxford Don of some sort with
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Speaker 1: a black splashed shirt front, who presently silenced them all
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Speaker 1: by the immensity and particularity of his knowledge of field artillery.
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Speaker 1: Then the talk drifted to sedan and the effect of
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Speaker 1: dead horses upon drinking water, which brought Rasseleton and Western
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Speaker 1: massing Hay into a dispute of great vigor and emphasis.
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Speaker 1: Trouble in South Africa, said Western massing Hay. Wasn't that
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Speaker 1: we didn't boil our water. It was that we didn't
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Speaker 1: boil our men. The boars drank the same stuff we did.
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Speaker 1: They didn't get to that argument went on for some time.
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Speaker 1: I was attacked across the table by a man named
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Speaker 1: Burshort about my endowment of motherhood schemes. But in the
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Speaker 1: gaps of that debate I could still hear Western massing Hay,
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Speaker 1: at intervals repeat in a rather thickened voice. They didn't
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Speaker 1: get deafentry. I think Evesham went early. The rest of
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Speaker 1: us clustered more and more closely towards the drier end
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Speaker 1: of the room. The table was pushed along, and the
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Speaker 1: area beneath the extinguished conflagration abandoned to a tinkling, splashing
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Speaker 1: company of pots and pans and bowls and baths. Everybody
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Speaker 1: was now disposed to be hilarious and noisy, to say
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Speaker 1: startling and aggressive things. We must have sounded a queer
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Speaker 1: clamor to a listener in the next room. The devil
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Speaker 1: inspired them to begin baiting me. Ours. Isn't the Tory
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Speaker 1: party anymore, said Burshort. Remington has made it the obstetric party.
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Speaker 1: That's good, said Western massing Hay, with all his teeth gleaming.
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Speaker 1: I shall use that against you in the house. I
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Speaker 1: shall denounce you for abusing private confidences. If you do,
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Speaker 1: said Tavril. Remington wants us to give up launching dreadnoughts
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Speaker 1: and launch babies instead. Burshort urged for the price of
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Speaker 1: one dreadnought. The little shriveled don, who had been omniscient
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Speaker 1: about guns, joined in the baiting and displayed himself a
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Speaker 1: venomous creature. Something in his eyes told me he knew
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Speaker 1: Isabelle and hated me for it. Love of five thinking,
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Speaker 1: he began a little thickly and knocking over a wine
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Speaker 1: glass with a too easy gesture. Love of five thinking.
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Speaker 1: Two things don't go together. No philosophy worth a damn
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Speaker 1: ever came out of excesses of love. Salt Lake City,
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Speaker 1: pigot and Agapemoni again, no works to matter. Everybody laughed.
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Speaker 1: Got to recognize these facts, said my assailant. Love and
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Speaker 1: fine thinking, pretty phase, attractive suit more for political decorations,
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Speaker 1: postcard Christmas gilt lets in a wreath of white flowes
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Speaker 1: not otherwise valuable. I made some remark. I forget what,
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Speaker 1: but he overbore me. Real things. We want to hate,
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Speaker 1: hate and coarse thinking. I belong to the school of
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Speaker 1: miss Ineff's aunt. What said some one intent in? Little Dorrit,
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Speaker 1: explained tarvil go on. Hate a fool, said my assailants.
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Speaker 1: Tarfril glanced at me. I smiled to conceal the loss
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Speaker 1: of my temper. Hate, said the little man, emphasizing his
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Speaker 1: point with a clumsy fist. Hates the driving force. What's morality?
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Speaker 1: Hate rotten goings on? What's patriotism? Hate in the lowing foreigners?
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Speaker 1: What's radicalism? Hate of lords? What's toryism? Hate of disturbance?
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Speaker 1: Is all right? Hate from top to bottom? Hate of
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Speaker 1: a mess? Remington oad It the other day said he
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Speaker 1: ain'ted a mule. There you are. If you couldn't get
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Speaker 1: hate into an election, damnit, people won't bowl bowl for love?
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Speaker 1: No me, he paused, but before anyone could speak, he
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Speaker 1: had resumed. Then there's about fine thinking, like going into
16:42
Speaker 1: a bare pit arm with a daggle Talgan talgon gulf, noometer,
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Speaker 1: like going to fight a mad dog with Shakespeare and
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Speaker 1: the Bible. Fine thinking? What we want in the the
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Speaker 1: is thinking we can get. Thinking that stands up alone,
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Speaker 1: form means work for all that all thing. The gentleman
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Speaker 1: from Cambridge paused you a frag He said, I are
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Speaker 1: so going a battle a wet tissue paper. My best
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Speaker 1: answer on the spur of the moment was the Japanese did,
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Speaker 1: which was absurd. I went on to some other reply,
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Speaker 1: I forget exactly what, and the talk of the whole
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Speaker 1: table drew round me. It was an extraordinary revelation to me.
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Speaker 1: Everyone was unusually careless and outspoken, and it was amazing
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Speaker 1: how manifestly they echoed the feeling of this old Tory spokesman.
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Speaker 1: They were quite friendly to me. They regarded me and
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Speaker 1: the Blue Weekly as valuable party assets for Toryism. But
17:49
Speaker 1: it was clear their tauch no more importance to what
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Speaker 1: were my realities than they did to the remarkable therapeutic
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Speaker 1: claims of missus Eddy. They were flushed and amused. Perhaps
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Speaker 1: they went a little too far in their resolves to
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Speaker 1: draw me, but they left the impression on my mind
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Speaker 1: of men irrevocably set upon narrow and cynical views of
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Speaker 1: political life. For them, the political struggle was a game
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Speaker 1: whose counters were human hate and human credulity. Their real
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Speaker 1: aim was just every one's aim, the preservation of the
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Speaker 1: class and way of living to which their lives were attuned.
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Speaker 1: They did not know how tired I was, how exhausted
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Speaker 1: mentally and morally, nor how cruel their convergent attack on
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Speaker 1: me chanced to be. But my temper gave way. I
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Speaker 1: became tart and fierce. Perhaps my replies were a trifle absurd,
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Speaker 1: and Tarvrial, with that quick eye and sympathy of his,
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Speaker 1: came to the rescue. Then for a time I sat
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Speaker 1: silent and drank port wine while the others talked. The
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Speaker 1: disorder of the room, the still dripping ceiling, the noise,
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Speaker 1: the displaced ties and crumpled shirts of my companions jarred
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Speaker 1: on my tormented nerves. It was long past midnight when
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Speaker 1: we dispersed. I remember Tarvril coming with me into the
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Speaker 1: hall and then suggesting we should go upstairs to see
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Speaker 1: the damage. A manservant carried up two flickering candles for us.
19:26
Speaker 1: One end of the room was gutted. Curtains, hangings, several
19:30
Speaker 1: chairs and tables were completely burnt. The paneling was scorched
19:34
Speaker 1: and warped. Three smashed windows made the candles flare and gutter,
19:40
Speaker 1: and some scraps of broken china still lay on the
19:43
Speaker 1: puddled floor. As we surveyed this, lady Tarvriel appeared back
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Speaker 1: from some party, a slender, white cloaked, satin footed figure
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Speaker 1: with amazed blue eyes beneath her golden hair. I remember
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Speaker 1: how stupidly we laughed at her surprise. Two. I parted
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Speaker 1: from Panmuir at the corner of Aldington Street and went
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Speaker 1: my way alone. But I did not go home. I
20:14
Speaker 1: turned westward and walked for a long way, and then
20:18
Speaker 1: struck northward aimlessly. I was too miserable to go to
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Speaker 1: my house. I wandered about that night like a man
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Speaker 1: who had discovered his gods are dead. I can look
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Speaker 1: back now, detached yet sympathetic, upon that wild confusion of
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Speaker 1: moods and impulses, and by it I think I can understand,
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Speaker 1: oh half the wrongdoing and blundering in the world. I
20:42
Speaker 1: do not feel now the logical force of the process
20:46
Speaker 1: that must have convinced me then that I had made
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Speaker 1: my sacrifice and spent my strength in vain. At no
20:53
Speaker 1: time had I been under any illusion that the Tory
20:56
Speaker 1: Party had higher ideals than any other party. Yet it
21:00
Speaker 1: came to me like a thing newly discovered, that the
21:03
Speaker 1: men I had to work with had, for the most part,
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Speaker 1: no such dreams, no sense of any collective purpose, no
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Speaker 1: atom of the faith I held. They were just as
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Speaker 1: immediately intent upon personal ends, just as limited by habits
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Speaker 1: of thought as the men in any other group or party.
21:22
Speaker 1: Perhaps I had slipped, unawares for a time into the
21:25
Speaker 1: delusions of a party man, but I do not think so. No.
21:30
Speaker 1: It was the mood of profound despondency that had followed
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Speaker 1: upon the abrupt cessation of my familiar intercourse with Isabelle
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Speaker 1: that gave this fact that had always been present in
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Speaker 1: my mind its quality of devastating revelation. It seemed as
21:48
Speaker 1: though I had never seen before nor suspected, the stupendous
21:52
Speaker 1: gap between the chaotic aims, the routine, the conventional acquiescences,
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Speaker 1: the vulgarizations of the personal life life, and that clearly
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Speaker 1: conscious development and service of a collective thought and purpose
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Speaker 1: at which my efforts aimed. I had thought them but
22:09
Speaker 1: a little way apart, and now I saw they were
22:12
Speaker 1: separated by all the distance between Earth and Heaven. I
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Speaker 1: saw now in myself and everyone around me. A concentration
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Speaker 1: upon interests close at hand, an inability to detach oneself
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Speaker 1: from the provocations, tendernesses, instinctive hates, dumb lusts, and shy
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Speaker 1: timidities that touched one at every point, and save for
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Speaker 1: rare exalted moments, a regardlessness of broader aims and remoter
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Speaker 1: possibilities that made the white passion of state Craft seem
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Speaker 1: as unearthly and irrelevant to human life as the story
22:50
Speaker 1: and astronomy tell, half proven but altogether incredible, of habitable
22:56
Speaker 1: planets and answering intelligences, Sun's distances uncounted across the deep.
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Speaker 1: It seemed to me I had aspired too high and
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Speaker 1: thought too far, had mocked my own littleness by presumption,
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Speaker 1: had given the uttermost dear reality of life for a
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Speaker 1: theorizer's dream. All through that wandering agony of mine that night,
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Speaker 1: a dozen threads of thought into wove. Now I was
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Speaker 1: a soul speaking in protest to God against a task
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Speaker 1: too cold and high for it. And now I was
23:31
Speaker 1: an angry man, scorned and pointed upon, who had let
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Speaker 1: life cheat him of the ultimate pride of his soul.
23:38
Speaker 1: Now I was a fool of ambition who opened his
23:41
Speaker 1: box of gold to find blank emptiness. And now I
23:45
Speaker 1: was a spinner of flimsy thoughts, whose web taught to
23:49
Speaker 1: rags at a touch. I realized for the first time
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Speaker 1: how much I had come to depend upon the mind
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Speaker 1: and faith of Isabelle, how she had confirmed me and
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Speaker 1: sustained me, how little strength I had to go on
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Speaker 1: with our purposes now that she had vanished from my life.
24:08
Speaker 1: She had been the incarnation of those great abstractions, the
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Speaker 1: saving reality, the voice that answered back. There was no
24:16
Speaker 1: support that night in the things that had been. We
24:19
Speaker 1: were alone together on the cliff for evermore. That was
24:23
Speaker 1: very pretty in its way, but it had no truth
24:26
Speaker 1: whatever that could help me now, no ounts of sustaining value.
24:32
Speaker 1: I wanted isabel that night, no sentiment or memory of her,
24:36
Speaker 1: but Isabel alive to talk to me, to touch me,
24:40
Speaker 1: to hold me together. I wanted, unendurably, the dusky gentleness
24:46
Speaker 1: of her presence, the consolation of her voice. We were
24:51
Speaker 1: alone together on the cliff. I startled a passing cabman
24:55
Speaker 1: into interest by laughing aloud at that magnificent and characteristic sentimentality.
25:01
Speaker 1: What a lie it was, and how satisfying it had been.
25:06
Speaker 1: That was just where we shouldn't remain. We, of all people,
25:09
Speaker 1: had no distinction from that humanity whose lot is to forget.
25:14
Speaker 1: We should go out to other interests, new experiences, new demands.
25:20
Speaker 1: That tall and intricate fabric of ambitious understandings we had
25:24
Speaker 1: built up together in our intimacy would be the first
25:27
Speaker 1: to go, and last, perhaps to endure with us, would
25:31
Speaker 1: be a few gross memories of sights and sounds and trivial,
25:35
Speaker 1: incidental excitements. I had a curious feeling that night that
25:41
Speaker 1: I had lost touch with life for a long time,
25:44
Speaker 1: and had now been reminded of its quality. That infernal
25:49
Speaker 1: little Don's parody of my ruling phrase hate and course
25:53
Speaker 1: thinking stuck in my thoughts like a poisoned dart a
25:57
Speaker 1: center of inflammation. Just as a man who is debilitated
26:02
Speaker 1: has no longer the vitality to resist an infection, so
26:06
Speaker 1: my mind, slackened by the crisis of my separation from Isabelle,
26:11
Speaker 1: could find no resistance to his emphatic suggestion. It seemed
26:16
Speaker 1: to me that what he had said was overpoweringly true,
26:20
Speaker 1: not only of contemporary life, but of all possible human life.
26:25
Speaker 1: Love is the rare thing, the treasured thing. You lock
26:28
Speaker 1: it away jealously and watch and well. You may hate
26:32
Speaker 1: an aggression and force keep the streets and rule the world.
26:37
Speaker 1: And fine thinking is in the rough issues of life.
26:40
Speaker 1: Weak thinking is a balanced, in decisive process discovers with
26:45
Speaker 1: disloyal impartiality, a justice and a defect on each disputing side.
26:51
Speaker 1: Good honest men, as Dayton calls them, rule the world
26:55
Speaker 1: with a way of thinking out decisions like shooting cart
26:59
Speaker 1: loads of brick, and with a steadfast pleasure in hostility.
27:04
Speaker 1: Dayton liked to call his antagonists blaggards and scoundrels. It
27:09
Speaker 1: justified his opposition. The lords were scoundrels, all people richer
27:13
Speaker 1: than he were scoundrels, all socialists, all troublesome poor people.
27:18
Speaker 1: He liked to think of jail's and justice being done.
27:22
Speaker 1: His public spirit was saturated with the somber joys of
27:26
Speaker 1: conflict and the pleasant thought of condigned punishment for all
27:30
Speaker 1: reculcitrant souls. That was the way of it. I perceived
27:35
Speaker 1: that had survival value. As the biologists say, he was
27:39
Speaker 1: full enough in politics to be a consistent and happy politician.
27:45
Speaker 1: Hate and coarse thinking how the infernal truth of the
27:49
Speaker 1: phrase beat me down that night. I couldn't remember that
27:53
Speaker 1: I had known this all along, and that it did
27:56
Speaker 1: not really matter in the slightest degree. I had worked
28:00
Speaker 1: it all out long ago, in other terms, when I
28:02
Speaker 1: had seen how all parties stood for interests inevitably, and
28:06
Speaker 1: how the purpose in life achieves itself, if it achieves
28:10
Speaker 1: itself at all, as a byproduct of the war of
28:13
Speaker 1: individuals and classes. Hadn't I always known that science and
28:18
Speaker 1: philosophy elaborate themselves in spite of all the passion and
28:22
Speaker 1: narrowness of men, in spite of the vanities and weakness
28:26
Speaker 1: of their servants, in spite of all the heated disorder
28:29
Speaker 1: of contemporary things. Wasn't it my own phrase to speak
28:34
Speaker 1: of that greater mind in men in which we are
28:37
Speaker 1: but moments and transitorially lit cells. Hadn't I known that
28:42
Speaker 1: the spirit of man still speaks like a thing that
28:45
Speaker 1: struggles out of mud and slime, and that the mere
28:48
Speaker 1: effort to speak means choking and disaster. Hadn't I known
28:53
Speaker 1: that we who think without fear and speak without discretion
28:57
Speaker 1: will not come to our own for the next two
28:59
Speaker 1: thirds years. It was the last was most forgotten of
29:04
Speaker 1: all that faith mislaid before mankind. In my vision that
29:09
Speaker 1: night stretched new centuries of confusion, vast stupid wars, hastily
29:15
Speaker 1: conceived laws, foolish temporary triumphs of order, lapses, setbacks, despairs, catastrophes,
29:23
Speaker 1: new beginnings, a multitudinous wilderness of time, a nigh plotnust
29:29
Speaker 1: drama of wrong headed energies. In order to assuage my
29:33
Speaker 1: parting from Isabelle, we had set ourselves to imagine great
29:36
Speaker 1: rewards for our separation, great personal rewards. We had promised
29:41
Speaker 1: ourselves success, visible and shining in our lives. To console
29:47
Speaker 1: ourselves in our separation, we had made out of the
29:50
Speaker 1: Blue Weekly and our Young Tory movement preposterously enormous things,
29:55
Speaker 1: as though those poor fertilizing touches at the soil were
29:59
Speaker 1: in the germinating seeds of the millennium, As though a
30:03
Speaker 1: million lives such as ours had not to contribute before
30:07
Speaker 1: the beginning of the beginning. That poor pretense had failed,
30:12
Speaker 1: that magnificent proposition shriveled to nothing. In the black loneliness
30:17
Speaker 1: of that night, I saw that there were to be
30:21
Speaker 1: no such compensations, so far as my real services to
30:25
Speaker 1: mankind were concerned. I had to live an unrecognized and
30:30
Speaker 1: unrewarded life. If I made successes, it would be by
30:35
Speaker 1: the way our separation would alter nothing of that. My
30:40
Speaker 1: scandal would cling to me now for all my life,
30:43
Speaker 1: a thing affecting relationships, embarrassing and hampering my spirit. I
30:49
Speaker 1: should follow the common lot of those who lived by
30:51
Speaker 1: the imagination, and follow it now an infinite loneliness of soul,
30:56
Speaker 1: The one good comforter, the one effectual familiar, was lost
31:00
Speaker 1: to me forever. I should do good and evil together,
31:04
Speaker 1: no one caring to understand. I should produce much weary work,
31:09
Speaker 1: much bad spirited work, much absolute evil. The good in
31:14
Speaker 1: me would be too often ill expressed and missed or misinterpreted.
31:20
Speaker 1: In the end, I might leave one gleaming flake, or
31:23
Speaker 1: so amidst the slag heaps for a moment of postmortem sympathy.
31:28
Speaker 1: I was afraid beyond measure of my derelict self because
31:32
Speaker 1: I believed with all my soul in love and fine thinking.
31:36
Speaker 1: That did not mean that I should necessarily either love
31:39
Speaker 1: steadfastly or think finely. I remember how I fell talking
31:45
Speaker 1: to God. I think I talked out loud. Why do
31:48
Speaker 1: I care for these things? I cried, when I can
31:51
Speaker 1: do so little? Why am I apart from the jolly, thoughtless,
31:55
Speaker 1: fighting life of men? These dreams fade to nothingness and
31:59
Speaker 1: leave me bear, I scolded, Why don't you speak to
32:04
Speaker 1: a man? Show yourself? I thought, I had a gleam
32:07
Speaker 1: of you in Isabelle, and then you take her away?
32:11
Speaker 1: Do you really think I can carry on this game alone?
32:14
Speaker 1: Doing your work in darkness and silence, living in muddled conflict,
32:19
Speaker 1: half living, half dying. Grotesque analogies arose in my mind.
32:26
Speaker 1: I discovered a strange parallelism between my now tattered phrase
32:31
Speaker 1: of love and fine thinking and the love and the
32:34
Speaker 1: word of Christian thought. Was it possible the Christian propaganda had,
32:40
Speaker 1: at the outset meant just that system of attitudes I
32:44
Speaker 1: had been feeling my way towards from the very beginning
32:47
Speaker 1: of my life. Had I spent a lifetime making my
32:50
Speaker 1: way back to Christ? It mocks humanity to think how
32:55
Speaker 1: Christ had been overlaid. I went along now, recalling long
32:59
Speaker 1: neglected phrases and sentences. I had a new vision of
33:04
Speaker 1: that great central figure, preaching love with hate and course thinking,
33:09
Speaker 1: even in the disciples about him, rising to a tidal
33:12
Speaker 1: wave at last in that clamor for Barabbas and that
33:16
Speaker 1: public satisfaction in his fate. It's curious to think that
33:20
Speaker 1: hopeless love and a noisy, disordered dinner should lead a
33:24
Speaker 1: man to these speculations. But they did. He did mean that,
33:29
Speaker 1: I said, and suddenly thought of what a bludgeon they'd
33:32
Speaker 1: made of his Christianity. Athwart that perplexing patient enigma. Sitting
33:38
Speaker 1: inaudibly among politicians and sinners, danced and gibbered along procession
33:44
Speaker 1: of the champions of Orthodoxy. He wasn't human, I said,
33:48
Speaker 1: and remembering that last despairing cry, My God, My God,
33:53
Speaker 1: why hast thou forsaken me? Oh? He forsakes everyone, I said,
33:58
Speaker 1: flying out as a tired mind, kind will with an
34:01
Speaker 1: obvious repartee, I passed at a bound from such monstrous
34:06
Speaker 1: theology to a towering rage against the bailies. In an
34:11
Speaker 1: instant and with no sense of absurdity. I wanted, in
34:15
Speaker 1: the intervals of love and fine thinking, to fling about
34:18
Speaker 1: that strenuously virtuous couple. I wanted to kick a keyhole
34:23
Speaker 1: of the peep show into the gutter and make a
34:26
Speaker 1: common massacre of all the prosperous rascaldom that makes a
34:30
Speaker 1: trade and rule of virtue. I can still feel that transition.
34:36
Speaker 1: In a moment, I had reached that phase of weakly
34:39
Speaker 1: decisive anger, which is for people of my temperament, the
34:43
Speaker 1: concomitant of exhaustion. I will have her, I cried by heaven.
34:48
Speaker 1: I will have her. Life mocks me and cheats me.
34:52
Speaker 1: Nothing can be made good to me again. Why shouldn't
34:56
Speaker 1: I save what I can? I can't save myself with her,
35:02
Speaker 1: I remember myself as a sort of anticlimax to that,
35:05
Speaker 1: rather tediously asking my way home, I was somewhere in
35:09
Speaker 1: the neighborhood of Holland Park. It was then between one
35:14
Speaker 1: and two. I felt that I could go home now
35:17
Speaker 1: without any risk of meeting Margaret. It had been the
35:21
Speaker 1: thought of returning to Margaret that had sent me wandering
35:24
Speaker 1: that night. It is one of the ugliest facts I
35:28
Speaker 1: recall about that time of crisis, the intense aversion I
35:32
Speaker 1: felt for Margaret, no sense of her goodness, her injury
35:36
Speaker 1: and nobility, and the enormous generosity of her forgiveness. Suffice
35:41
Speaker 1: to mitigate that I hope now that in this book
35:45
Speaker 1: I am able to give something of her silvery splendor.
35:49
Speaker 1: But all through this crisis I felt nothing of that,
35:53
Speaker 1: and there was a triumphant kindliness about her that I
35:56
Speaker 1: found intolerable. She meant to be so kind to me,
36:00
Speaker 1: to offer unstinted consolation, to meet my needs, to supply
36:05
Speaker 1: just all she imagined Isabel had given me. When I
36:10
Speaker 1: left Tarvrills, I felt I could anticipate exactly how she
36:14
Speaker 1: would meet my homecoming. She will be perplexed by my
36:18
Speaker 1: crumpled shirt front on which I had spilt some drops
36:21
Speaker 1: of wine. She would overlook that by an effort explain
36:25
Speaker 1: it sentimentally, resolve it should make no difference to her.
36:30
Speaker 1: She would want to know who had been present, what
36:33
Speaker 1: we had talked about, show the alertest interest in whatever
36:37
Speaker 1: it was. It didn't matter what. No. I couldn't face her,
36:43
Speaker 1: so I did not reach my study until two o'clock.
36:47
Speaker 1: There I remember stood the new and very beautiful old
36:50
Speaker 1: silver candlesticks that she had set there two days since
36:54
Speaker 1: to please me, the foolish kindliness of it. But in
36:59
Speaker 1: her sir for expression, Margaret heaped presents upon me. She
37:04
Speaker 1: had fitted these candlesticks with electric lights, and I must
37:08
Speaker 1: I suppose have lit them to write. My note to Isabel,
37:13
Speaker 1: give me a word. The world aches without you, was
37:17
Speaker 1: all I scrawled. Though I fully meant that she should
37:20
Speaker 1: come to me. I knew, though I ought not to
37:23
Speaker 1: have known, that now she had left her flat, she
37:26
Speaker 1: was with the Belfis. She was to have been married
37:29
Speaker 1: from the Belfies. And I sent my letter there. And
37:33
Speaker 1: I went out into the silent Square and posted the
37:36
Speaker 1: note forthwith, because I knew quite clearly that if I
37:40
Speaker 1: left it until morning, I should never post it at all.
37:45
Speaker 1: End of Chapter fifteen, Section one