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The New Machiavelli Chapter 4 Part 3 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter four, Section three of the New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells.
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Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by
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Speaker 1: Antoniogus nine. That holiday was full of big comprehensive effects.
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Speaker 1: The first view of their own valley and the distant
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Speaker 1: Valasian Alps, for example, which we saw from the shoulder
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Speaker 1: of the mountain above the Gemi, and the early summer
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Speaker 1: dawn breaking over Italy. As we moved from our nights
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Speaker 1: crouching and munch bread and chocolate, and stretched our stiff
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Speaker 1: limbs among the tumbled and precipitous rocks that hung over
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Speaker 1: Lake Chingolo, and surveyed the winding, tiring, rocky track going
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Speaker 1: down and down to Antre Andarpiano. And our thoughts were
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Speaker 1: as comprehensive as our impressions. Willersley's mind abounded in historical matter.
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Speaker 1: He had an inaccurate, abundant habit of topographical reverence. He
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Speaker 1: made me see and trace and see again the Roman
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Speaker 1: Empire sweep up these winding valleys, and the coming of
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Speaker 1: the first great peace among the warring tribes of men.
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Speaker 1: In the retrospect, each of us seems to have been
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Speaker 1: talking about our outlook almost continually. Each of us, you see,
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Speaker 1: was full of the same question, very near and altogether
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Speaker 1: predominant to us, the question what am I going to
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Speaker 1: do with my life? He saw it almost as importantly
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Speaker 1: as I, but from a different angle, because his choice
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Speaker 1: was largely made and mine still hung in the balance.
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Speaker 1: I feel we might do so many things, I said,
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Speaker 1: and everything that calls one calls one away from something else.
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Speaker 1: Willsley agreed, without any modest disavowals. We have got to
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Speaker 1: think out, he said, just what we are and what
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Speaker 1: we are up to. We've got to do that now
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Speaker 1: and then. It's one of those questions it is inadvisable
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Speaker 1: to reopen. So subsequently he beamed at me through his glasses.
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Speaker 1: The sententious use of long words was a playful habit
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Speaker 1: with him that, in a slight, deliberate humor habit's occasional
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Speaker 1: extension lecturing, was doing very much to intensify. You've made
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Speaker 1: your decision, he nodded, with a peculiar forward movement of
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Speaker 1: his head. How would you put it? Social service education,
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Speaker 1: whatever else matters or doesn't matter, It seems to me
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Speaker 1: there is one thing we must have an increase, and
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Speaker 1: that is the number of people who can think a
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Speaker 1: little and have, he beamed again, an adequate sense of causation.
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Speaker 1: You're sure it's worth while for me, certainly. I don't
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Speaker 1: discuss that any more. I don't limit myself too narrowly,
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Speaker 1: he added. After all, the work is wall one. We
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Speaker 1: who know, we who feel, are building the great modern state,
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Speaker 1: joining wall to wall and way to weigh, the new
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Speaker 1: great England rising out of the decaying old. We are
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Speaker 1: the real statesman. I like that use of statesmen, Yes,
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Speaker 1: I said, with many doubts. Yes, of course. Willesley is
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Speaker 1: middle aged now, with silver in his hair and a
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Speaker 1: deepening benevolence in his always amiable face. And he has
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Speaker 1: very fairly kept his word. He has lived for social
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Speaker 1: service and to do vast masses of useful, undistinguished, fertilizing work.
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Speaker 1: Think of the days of arid, administrative plodding, and of contention,
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Speaker 1: still more arid and unrewarded, that he must have spent
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Speaker 1: his little affectations of gesture and manner. Imitative affectations, for
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Speaker 1: the most part, have increased, and the humorous beam and
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Speaker 1: the humorous intonations have become a thing he puts on
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Speaker 1: every morning like an old coat. His devotion is mingled
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Speaker 1: with a considerable whimsicality, And they say he is easily
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Speaker 1: flattered by subordinates and easily offended into opposition by colleagues.
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Speaker 1: He has made mistakes at times and followed wrong courses.
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Speaker 1: Still there he is a flat contradiction to all the
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Speaker 1: ordinary doctrine of motives, a man who has foregone any
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Speaker 1: chances of wealth and profit, foregone any easier paths to distinction,
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Speaker 1: foregone marriage and parentage, in order to serve the community.
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Speaker 1: He does it without any fee or reward except his
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Speaker 1: personal self satisfaction in doing this work. And he does
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Speaker 1: it without any hope of future joys and punishments. For
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Speaker 1: he is an implacable rationalist, no doubt he idealizes himself
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Speaker 1: a little and dreams of recognition. No doubt he gets
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Speaker 1: his pleasure from a sense of power, from the spending
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Speaker 1: and husbanding of large sums of public money, and from
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Speaker 1: the inevitable proprietorship he must feel in the fair, fine,
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Speaker 1: well ordered schools he has done so much to develop.
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Speaker 1: But for me, he can say, there would have been
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Speaker 1: a job about those diagrams and that subject. All this
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Speaker 1: would have been less ably taught. The fact remains that
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Speaker 1: for him the rewards have been adequate, if not to
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Speaker 1: content at any rate to keep him working. Of course,
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Speaker 1: he covets the notice of the world he has served
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Speaker 1: as a lover, covets the notice of his mistress. Of course,
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Speaker 1: he thinks somewhere, somewhen he will get credit. Only last
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Speaker 1: year I heard some men talking of him, and they
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Speaker 1: were noting, with little mean smiles, how he had shown
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Speaker 1: himself self conscious while there was talk of some honorary
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Speaker 1: degree giving or other. It would, I have no doubt,
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Speaker 1: please him greatly if his work were to flower into
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Speaker 1: a crimson gown in some academic part ere. Why shouldn't it.
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Speaker 1: But that is incidental vanity at the worst. He goes
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Speaker 1: on anyhow, most men don't. But we had our walk
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Speaker 1: twenty years or more ago. Now he was oldish even
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Speaker 1: then as a young man, just as he is oldish
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Speaker 1: still in middle age. Long may his industrious elderliness flourish
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Speaker 1: for the good of the world. He lectured a little
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Speaker 1: in conversation, then he lectures more now and listens less toilsomely,
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Speaker 1: disentangling what you already understand, giving you in detail the
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Speaker 1: data you know. These are things like collosities that come
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Speaker 1: from a man's work. Our long three week's talk comes
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Speaker 1: back to me as a memory of ideas and determinations,
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Speaker 1: slowly growing, all mixed up with the smell of wood
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Speaker 1: smoke and pine woods, and huge precipices and remote gleams
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Speaker 1: of snow fields, and the sound of cascading torrents rushing
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Speaker 1: through deep gorges far below. It is mixed too with
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Speaker 1: gossips with waitresses and fellow travelers, with my first essays
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Speaker 1: in colloquial German and Italian, with disputes about the way
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Speaker 1: to take, and other things that I will tell of
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Speaker 1: in another sex. But the white passion of human service
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Speaker 1: was our dominant theme, not simply, perhaps not altogether unselfishly,
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Speaker 1: but quite honestly, and with at least a frequent self forgetfulness.
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Speaker 1: Did we want to do fine and noble things to
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Speaker 1: help in their developing, to lessen misery, to broaden and
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Speaker 1: exalt life. It is very hard, perhaps it is impossible,
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Speaker 1: to present in a page or two the substance and
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Speaker 1: quality of nearly a month's conversation, conversation that is casual
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Speaker 1: and discursive, in form that ranges carelessly from triviality to immensity,
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Speaker 1: and yet is constantly resuming a constructive process as workmen
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Speaker 1: on a wall, loiter and jest, and go and come back,
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Speaker 1: and all the while build. We got it more and
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Speaker 1: more definite that the core of our purpose, beneath all
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Speaker 1: its varied aspects, must needs be order and discipline. Muddle said,
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Speaker 1: I is the enemy that remains my belief to this day.
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Speaker 1: Clearness and order, light and foresight, These things I know
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Speaker 1: for good. It was Muddle had just given us all
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Speaker 1: the still freshly painful disasters and humiliations of the war.
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Speaker 1: Muddle that gives us the visibly sprawling disorder of our
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Speaker 1: cities and industrial countryside. Muddle that gives us the waste
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Speaker 1: of life, the limitations, wretchedness and unemployment of the poor.
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Speaker 1: Muddle I remember myself quoting Kipling, All along a dirtiness,
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Speaker 1: all along a mess, all along a doing things. Rather
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Speaker 1: more or less. We build the state, we said, over
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Speaker 1: and over again, that is what we're for. Servants of
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Speaker 1: the new reorganization. We planned, half in earnest and half
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Speaker 1: utopianizing a league of social service. We talked of the
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Speaker 1: splendid world of men that might grow out of such
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Speaker 1: unpaid and paid work. As we were setting our faces
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Speaker 1: to do. We spoke of the intricate difficulties, the monstrous
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Speaker 1: passive resistances, the hostilities to such a development. As we
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Speaker 1: conceived our work subserved, and we spoke with that underlying
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Speaker 1: confidence in the invincibility of the causes we adopted that
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Speaker 1: is natural to young and scarcely tried men. We talked
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Speaker 1: much of the detailed life of politics, so far as
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Speaker 1: it was known to us, and there Willesley was more
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Speaker 1: experienced and far better informed than I. We discussed possible
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Speaker 1: combinations and possible developments, and the chances of some great
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Speaker 1: constructive movement coming from the heart searchings the Boer War
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Speaker 1: had occasioned. We would sink to gossip even at the
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Speaker 1: Suaytonius level. Willesley would decline towards illuminating anecdotes that I
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Speaker 1: capped more or less loosely from my private reading. We
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Speaker 1: were particularly wise, I remember, upon the ma management of newspapers,
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Speaker 1: because about that we knew nothing. Whatever. We perceived that
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Speaker 1: great things were to be done through newspapers. We talked
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Speaker 1: of sweying opinion and moving great classes to massive action.
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Speaker 1: Men are egotistical, even in devotion. All our splendid projects
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Speaker 1: were thick set with the first personal pronoun. We both
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Speaker 1: could write, and all that we said in general terms
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Speaker 1: was reflected in the particular. In our minds. It was
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Speaker 1: ourselves we saw, and no others writing and speaking that
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Speaker 1: moving word. We had already produced manuscript and passed the
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Speaker 1: initiations of proof reading. I had been a frequent speaker
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Speaker 1: in the union, and Willesley was an active man on
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Speaker 1: the school board. Our feet were already on the lower
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Speaker 1: rungs that led up and up. He was six and
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Speaker 1: twenty and I twenty two. We intimated our individual careers
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Speaker 1: in terms of bold expectation. I had prophetic glimpses of
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Speaker 1: walls and hoardings, clamorous vote for Remington and Willersley, no
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Speaker 1: doubt saw himself chairman of this committee on that saying
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Speaker 1: a few slightly ironical words after the declaration of the pole,
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Speaker 1: and then sitting friendly beside me on the government benches.
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Speaker 1: There was nothing impossible in such dreams. Why not the
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Speaker 1: Board of Education for him? My preference at that time
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Speaker 1: wavered between the local government board. I had great ideas
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Speaker 1: about town planning, about revisions of municipal areas and reorganized
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Speaker 1: internal transit and the War Office. I swayed strongly towards
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Speaker 1: the latter as the journey progressed. My educational bias came
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Speaker 1: later the swelling ambitions that have tramped over alpine passes,
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Speaker 1: how many of them, like mine, have come almost within
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Speaker 1: sight of realization before they failed. There were times when
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Speaker 1: he posed like young gods of an exterior, and times
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Speaker 1: when we were full of the absurdest little solicitudes about
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Speaker 1: our prospects. There were times when one surveyed the whole
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Speaker 1: world of men as if it was a little thing
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Speaker 1: at one's feet. And by way of contrast, I remember,
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Speaker 1: once lying in bed it must have been during this holiday,
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Speaker 1: though I cannot for the life of me fix wear
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Speaker 1: and speculating whether perhaps some day I might not be
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Speaker 1: a KCB Sir Richard Remington k c B m B.
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Speaker 1: But the big style prevailed. We could not tell from
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Speaker 1: minute to minute whether we were planning for a world
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Speaker 1: of solid reality or telling ourselves fairy tales about this
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Speaker 1: prospect of life. So much seemed possible, and everything we
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Speaker 1: could think of so improbable. There were lapses when it
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Speaker 1: seemed to me I could never be anything but just
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Speaker 1: the entirely unimportant and undistinguished young man. I was forever
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Speaker 1: and ever. I couldn't even think of myself as five
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Speaker 1: and thirty. Once. I remember Willesley going over a list
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Speaker 1: of failures and why they had failed. But young men
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Speaker 1: in the twenties do not know much about failures. Ten
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Speaker 1: Willersley and I professed ourselves socialists. But by this time
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Speaker 1: I knew my Rodbertus as well as my marks. And
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Speaker 1: there was much in our socialism that would have shocked
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Speaker 1: Chris Robinson as much as anything in life could have
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Speaker 1: shocked him. Socialism as a simple democratic cry we had
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Speaker 1: done with forever. We were socialists, because individualism for us
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Speaker 1: meant muddle, meant a crowd of separated, undisciplined little people,
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Speaker 1: all obstinately and ignorantly doing things jarringly, each one in
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Speaker 1: his own way. Each I said, quoting words of my
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Speaker 1: fathers that rose apt in my memory, snarling from his
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Speaker 1: own little bit of property, like a dog tied to
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Speaker 1: a cart's tail, is sent, said Willisley. Essentially, we're a
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Speaker 1: conscription in peace and war alike. The man who owns
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Speaker 1: property is a public official and has to behave as such.
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Speaker 1: That's the gist of socialism. As I understand it, or
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Speaker 1: to be dismissed from his post, I said, and replaced
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Speaker 1: by some better sort of official. A man's nonetheless an official,
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Speaker 1: because he is irresponsible. What he does with his property
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Speaker 1: affects people just the same private. No one is really private,
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Speaker 1: but an outlaw. Order and devotion were the very essence
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Speaker 1: of our socialism, and a splendid collective vigor and happiness
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Speaker 1: its end. We projected an ideal state, an organized state
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Speaker 1: as confident and powerful as modern science, as balanced and
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Speaker 1: beautiful as a body, as beneficent as sunshine, the organized
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Speaker 1: state that should end muddle forever. It ruled all our
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Speaker 1: ideals and gave form to all our ambition. Every man
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Speaker 1: was to be definitely related to that, to have his
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Speaker 1: predominant duty to that. Such was the England renewed we
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Speaker 1: had in mind, and how to serve that end, To
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Speaker 1: subdue undisciplined worker and undisciplined wealth to it, and make
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Speaker 1: the scientific commonweal King was the continuing substance of our intercourse.
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Speaker 1: Eleven every day. The wine of the mountains was stronger
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Speaker 1: in our blood, and the flush of our youth deeper.
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Speaker 1: We will go in the morning sunlight along some narrow
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Speaker 1: alpine moolepath, shouting large suggestions for national reorganization, and weighing
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Speaker 1: considerations as lightly as though the world was wax in
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Speaker 1: our hands. Great England, we said, in effect, over and
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Speaker 1: over again, and we will be among the makers. England renewed.
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Speaker 1: The country has been warned, it has learnt its lesson.
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Speaker 1: The disasters and anxieties of the war have sunk in.
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Speaker 1: England has become serious. Oh, there are big things before
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Speaker 1: us to do, big enduring things. One evening we walked
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Speaker 1: up to the lodger of a little pilgrimage church I
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Speaker 1: forget its name, that stands out on a conical hill
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Speaker 1: at the head of a winding stair above the town
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Speaker 1: of Le Carno. Down below, the houses clustered amidst a
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Speaker 1: confusion of heat, bitter and greenery. I had been sitting
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Speaker 1: silently on the parapet, looking across to the purple mountain
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Speaker 1: masses where Switzerland passes into Italy, and the drift of
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Speaker 1: our talk seemed suddenly to gather to a head. I
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Speaker 1: broke into speech, giving form to the thoughts that had
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Speaker 1: been accumulating. My words have long since passed out of
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Speaker 1: my memory. The phrases of familiar expression have altered for me,
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Speaker 1: but the substance remains as clear as ever. I said,
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Speaker 1: how we were in our measure, emperors and kings, men
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Speaker 1: under driven, free to do as we please with life.
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Speaker 1: We classed among the happy ones. Our bread and common
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Speaker 1: necessities were given us for nothing. We had abilities. It
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Speaker 1: wasn't modesty but cowardice to behave as if we hadn't,
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Speaker 1: and fortune watched us to see what we might do
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Speaker 1: with opportunity in the world. There are so many things
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Speaker 1: to do, you see, began Willesley in his judicial lecturer's voice.
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Speaker 1: So many things we may do. I interrupted, with all
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Speaker 1: these years before us. We are exceptional men. It's our place,
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Speaker 1: our duty to do things here. Anyhow, I said, answering
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Speaker 1: the faint amusement of his face. I've got no modesty.
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Speaker 1: Everything conspires to set me up. Why should I run
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Speaker 1: about like all those grubby little beasts down there, seeking
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Speaker 1: nothing but mean, little vanities and indulgences, and then take
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Speaker 1: credit for modesty. I know I am capable, I know
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Speaker 1: I have imagination modesty. I know if I don't attempt
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Speaker 1: the very biggest things in life, I'm a damned shirk.
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Speaker 1: The very biggest, somebody has to attempt them. I feel
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Speaker 1: like a loaded gun that is only a little perplexed
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Speaker 1: because it has to find out just where to aim itself.
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Speaker 1: The lake and the frontier villages, a white puff of
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Speaker 1: steam on the distant railway to Luino, the busy boats
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Speaker 1: and steamers trailing triangular wakes of foam, the long vista
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Speaker 1: eastward towards battlemented Belinzona, the vast mountain distances now tinged
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Speaker 1: with sunset light behind this nearer landscape. And the southward
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Speaker 1: waters with the remote coast town shining dimly, waters that
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Speaker 1: merged at last in a luminous golden haze, made a
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Speaker 1: broad panoramic spectacle. It was as if one surveyed the world,
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Speaker 1: and it was like the games I used to set
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Speaker 1: out upon my nursery floor. I was exalted by it.
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Speaker 1: I felt larger than men, so king should feel. That
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Speaker 1: sense of largeness came to me then, and it has
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Speaker 1: come to me since again and again, a splendid intimation
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Speaker 1: or a splendid vanity. Once I remember when I looked
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Speaker 1: at Genoa from the mountain crest behind the town and
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Speaker 1: saw that multitudinous place in all its beauty of width
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Speaker 1: and abundance and clustering human effort. And once, as I
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Speaker 1: was steaming past the brown low hills of Staten Island
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Speaker 1: towards the towering vigor and clamorous vitality of New York City,
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Speaker 1: that mood rose to its quintessence. And once it came
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Speaker 1: to me as I shall tell on dover Cliffs, and
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Speaker 1: a hundred times when I have thought of England as
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Speaker 1: our country might be, with no wretched poor, no wretched rich,
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Speaker 1: a nation armed and ordered, trained and purposeful amidst its
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Speaker 1: vales and rivers, that emotion of collective ends and collective
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Speaker 1: purposes has returned to me. I felt as great as human.
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Speaker 1: For a brief moment, I was humanity, looking at the
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Speaker 1: world I had made and had still to make twelve
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Speaker 1: and mingled with these dreams of power and patriotic service,
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Speaker 1: there was another series of a different quality and a
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Speaker 1: different color, like the antagonistic color of a shot silk.
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Speaker 1: The white life and the red life contrasted and interchanged,
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Speaker 1: passing swiftly at a turn from one to another, and
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Speaker 1: refusing ever to mingle peacefully one with the other. I
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Speaker 1: was asking myself openly and distinctly, what are you going
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Speaker 1: to do for the world? What are you going to
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Speaker 1: do with yourself? And with an increasing strength and persistence, nature,
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Speaker 1: in spite of my averted attention, was asking me, in
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Speaker 1: penetrating undertones, what are you going to do about this
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Speaker 1: other fundamental matter, the beauty of girls and women and
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Speaker 1: your desire for them. I have told of my sisterless
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Speaker 1: youth and the narrow circumstances of my upbringing. It made
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Speaker 1: all womenkind mysterious to me. If it had not been
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Speaker 1: for my Staffordshire cousins, I do not think I should
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Speaker 1: have known any girls at all until I was twenty
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Speaker 1: of Staffordshire. I will tell a little later, but I
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Speaker 1: can remember still how through all those ripening years, the
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Speaker 1: thought of women's beauty, their magic presence in the world
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Speaker 1: beside me, and the unknown, untried reactions of their intercourse
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Speaker 1: grew upon me, and grew as a strange presence grows
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Speaker 1: in a room when one is occupied by other things.
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Speaker 1: I busied myself and pretended to be wholly occupied. And
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Speaker 1: there the woman stood full half of life neglected, and
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Speaker 1: it seemed to my averted mind sometimes that she was there,
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Speaker 1: clad and dignified and divine and sometimes aphrodite, shining and commanding,
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Speaker 1: and sometimes that Venus whose stoops and allures this. This
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Speaker 1: travel abroad seemed to have released a multitude of things
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Speaker 1: in my mind. The clear air, the beauty of the sunshine,
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Speaker 1: the very blue of the glaciers made me feel my
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Speaker 1: body and quickened all those disregarded dreams. I saw the
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Speaker 1: sheathed beauty of women's forms all about me, in the
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Speaker 1: cheerful waitresses at the inns, in the pedestrians one encountered,
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Speaker 1: in the tracks, in the chance fellow travelers at the
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Speaker 1: hotel tables confound it, said I, and talked all the
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Speaker 1: more zealously of that greater England that was calling us.
22:35
Speaker 1: I remember that we passed two Germans, an old man
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Speaker 1: and a tall fair girl, father and daughter, who were
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Speaker 1: walking down from sass. She came swinging and shining towards us,
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Speaker 1: easy and strong. I worshiped her as she approached goutarch,
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Speaker 1: said Willesley, removing his hat. Margan, said the old man, saluting.
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Speaker 1: I stared stockishly at the girl, who passed with an
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Speaker 1: indifferent face. That sticks in my mind as a picture
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Speaker 1: remains in a room. It has kept their bright and
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Speaker 1: fresh as a thing seen yesterday. For twenty years I
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Speaker 1: flirted hesitatingly once or twice with comely serving girls, and
23:18
Speaker 1: was a little ashamed lest Willesley should detect the keen
23:21
Speaker 1: interest I took in them. And then as we came
23:24
Speaker 1: over the pass from Santa Maria Majore to Canobio, my
23:28
Speaker 1: secret preoccupation took me by surprise and flooded me and
23:32
Speaker 1: broke down my pretenses. The women in that valley are
23:36
Speaker 1: very beautiful women, vary from valley to valley in the Alps,
23:40
Speaker 1: and a plain and squat here and divinities five miles away.
23:44
Speaker 1: And as we came down we passed a group of
23:47
Speaker 1: five or six of them resting by the wayside. Their
23:50
Speaker 1: burthens were beside them, and one, like Ceres, held a
23:54
Speaker 1: reaping hook in her brown hand. She watched us approaching
23:58
Speaker 1: and smiled faintly, her eyes at mine. There was some greeting,
24:03
Speaker 1: and two of them laughed together. We passed glorious girls,
24:08
Speaker 1: they were, said Willesley, And suddenly an immense sense of
24:12
Speaker 1: boredom enveloped me. I saw myself striding on down that
24:17
Speaker 1: winding road, talking of politics and parties and bills of Parliament,
24:22
Speaker 1: and all sorts of desiccated things. That road seemed to
24:26
Speaker 1: me to wind on forever, down to dust, an infinite dreariness.
24:31
Speaker 1: I knew it for a way of death. Reality was
24:34
Speaker 1: behind us. Willesley set himself to draw a sociological moral.
24:40
Speaker 1: I'm not so sure, he said, in a voice of
24:42
Speaker 1: intense discriminations. After all, that agricultural work isn't good for women.
24:47
Speaker 1: Damn agricultural work, I said, and broke out into a
24:51
Speaker 1: vigorous cursing of all I held, dear fettered things we are,
24:55
Speaker 1: I cried. I wonder why I stand it? Stand what
25:00
Speaker 1: why don't I go back and make love to those
25:02
Speaker 1: girls and let the world anew and everything go hang
25:06
Speaker 1: deep breasts and rounded limbs, and we poor emasculated devils
25:11
Speaker 1: go tramping by with the blood of youth in us.
25:15
Speaker 1: I am not quite sure, Remington, said Willesley, looking at
25:18
Speaker 1: me with a deliberately quaint expression over his glasses. That
25:22
Speaker 1: picturesque scenery is altogether good for your morals. That fever
25:27
Speaker 1: was still in my blood when we came to Lucano thirteen,
25:35
Speaker 1: along the hot and dusty lower road between the Rideau
25:38
Speaker 1: of Trafiume and Canobio, Willesley had developed his first blister.
25:44
Speaker 1: And partly because of that, and partly because there was
25:47
Speaker 1: a bag at the station that gave us the refreshment
25:50
Speaker 1: of clean linen, and partly because of the lazy lower
25:53
Speaker 1: air into which we had come, we decided upon three
25:57
Speaker 1: or four days sojourn in the Empress Hotel. We dined
26:02
Speaker 1: that night at a tarbler dote, and I found myself
26:06
Speaker 1: next to an englishwoman who began a conversation that was
26:09
Speaker 1: resumed presently in the hotel lounge. She was a woman
26:13
Speaker 1: of perhaps thirty three or thirty four, slenderly built, with
26:18
Speaker 1: a warm reddish skin and very abundant, fair golden hair,
26:23
Speaker 1: the wife of a petulant looking, heavy faced man of
26:26
Speaker 1: perhaps fifty three, who smoked a cigar and dozed over
26:30
Speaker 1: his coffee, and presently went to bed. He always goes
26:35
Speaker 1: to bed like that, she confided, startlingly. He sleeps after
26:40
Speaker 1: all his meals. I never knew such a man to sleep.
26:43
Speaker 1: Then she returned to our talk, whatever it was we
26:47
Speaker 1: had begun at the Dingler table, with itineraries and the
26:50
Speaker 1: usual topographical talk, and she had envied our pedestrian travel.
26:55
Speaker 1: My husband doesn't walk, she said. His heart is weak,
26:59
Speaker 1: and he cannot manage the hills. There was something friendly
27:03
Speaker 1: and adventurous in her manner. She conveyed she liked me,
27:07
Speaker 1: and when presently Willsley drifted off to write letters, our
27:11
Speaker 1: talk sank at once to easy, confidential undertones. I felt enterprising,
27:17
Speaker 1: and indeed it is easy to be daring with people
27:20
Speaker 1: one has never seen before and may never see again.
27:23
Speaker 1: I said, I love beautiful scenery and all beautiful things,
27:27
Speaker 1: and the pointing note in my voice made her laugh.
27:31
Speaker 1: She told me I had bold eyes, and so far
27:33
Speaker 1: as I can remember, I said, she made them bold
27:37
Speaker 1: blue they are. She remarked, smiling archly. I like blue eyes.
27:42
Speaker 1: Then I think we compared ages, and she said she
27:45
Speaker 1: was the woman of thirty, George Moore's Woman of thirty.
27:50
Speaker 1: I had not read George Moore at the time, but
27:52
Speaker 1: I pretended to understand that I think was our limit.
27:56
Speaker 1: That evening she went to bed, smiling good night, quite
28:00
Speaker 1: prettily down the big staircase, and Iron Willersley went out
28:04
Speaker 1: to smoke in the garden. My head was full of her,
28:08
Speaker 1: and I found it necessary to talk about her. So
28:11
Speaker 1: I made her a problem in sociology. Who the deuce
28:15
Speaker 1: are these people? I said, And how do they get
28:17
Speaker 1: a living? They seem to have plenty of money. He
28:21
Speaker 1: strikes me as being Willesley. What is a dry salter?
28:24
Speaker 1: I think is a retired dry salter? Willisley theorized, while
28:29
Speaker 1: I thought of the woman and that provocative quality of
28:32
Speaker 1: dash she had displayed. The next day, at lunch, she
28:36
Speaker 1: and I met like old friends. A huge mass of
28:39
Speaker 1: private thinking during the interval had been added to our
28:42
Speaker 1: effect upon one another. We talked for a time of
28:46
Speaker 1: insignificant things. What do you do, she asked, rather quickly
28:50
Speaker 1: after lunch, Take a siesta sometimes, I said, and hung
28:55
Speaker 1: for a moment eye to eye. We hadn't a doubt
28:59
Speaker 1: of each other, but my heart was beating like a
29:01
Speaker 1: steamer propeller when it lifts out of the water. To
29:05
Speaker 1: get a view from your room, she asked, after a pause.
29:10
Speaker 1: It's on the third floor, number seventeen, near the staircase,
29:13
Speaker 1: my friend's next door. She began to talk of books.
29:18
Speaker 1: She was interested in Christian science, she said, and spoke
29:21
Speaker 1: of a book. I forget altogether what that book was called,
29:25
Speaker 1: though I remember to this day with the utmost exactness,
29:28
Speaker 1: the purplish magenta of its cover. She said she would
29:31
Speaker 1: lend it to me, and hesitated. Willesley wanted to go
29:35
Speaker 1: for an expedition across the lake that afternoon, but I refused.
29:40
Speaker 1: He made some other proposals that I rejected abruptly. I
29:44
Speaker 1: shall write in my room, I said, why not write
29:47
Speaker 1: down here? I shall write in my room. I snarled,
29:51
Speaker 1: like a thwarted animal, and he looked at me curiously.
29:55
Speaker 1: Very well, he said, then I'll make some notes and
29:58
Speaker 1: think about that order of our out under the magnolias.
30:02
Speaker 1: I hovered about the lounge for a time, buying postcards
30:06
Speaker 1: and feverishly restless, watching the movements of the other people.
30:11
Speaker 1: Finally I went up to my room and sat down
30:13
Speaker 1: by the windows, staring out. There came a little tap
30:17
Speaker 1: at the unknocked door, and in an instant, like the
30:20
Speaker 1: go of a trut bowstring, I was up and had
30:23
Speaker 1: it open. Here is that book, she said, and we hesitated.
30:29
Speaker 1: Come in, I whispered, trembling from head to foot. You're
30:33
Speaker 1: just a boy, she said, in a low tone. I
30:36
Speaker 1: did not feel a bit like a lover. I felt
30:39
Speaker 1: like a burglar. With the safe door nearly opened, come in,
30:43
Speaker 1: I said, almost impatiently, for anyone might be in the passage,
30:47
Speaker 1: and I gripped her wrist and drew her towards me.
30:51
Speaker 1: What you mean, she answered, with a faint smile on
30:55
Speaker 1: her lips, and awkward and yielding. I shut the door
30:59
Speaker 1: behind her, still holding her with one hand, then turned
31:03
Speaker 1: upon her. She was laughing nervously, and without a word,
31:06
Speaker 1: drew her to me and kissed her. And I remember
31:10
Speaker 1: that as I kissed her, she made a little noise,
31:13
Speaker 1: almost like the purring mew with which a cat will
31:16
Speaker 1: greet one, and her face close to mine became solemn
31:20
Speaker 1: and tender. She was suddenly a different being from the
31:24
Speaker 1: discontented wife who had tapped a moment since on my
31:27
Speaker 1: door a woman trance figured that evening I came down
31:33
Speaker 1: to dinner a monster of pride. For behold, I was
31:37
Speaker 1: a man. I felt myself the most wonderful and unprecedented
31:41
Speaker 1: of adventurers. It was hard to believe that any one
31:45
Speaker 1: in the world before had done as much. My mistress
31:48
Speaker 1: and I met smiling. We carried things off admirably, and
31:53
Speaker 1: it seemed to me that Willesley was the dullest old
31:55
Speaker 1: dog in the world. I wanted to give him advice.
31:59
Speaker 1: I wanted to give him derisive pokes. After dinner and
32:03
Speaker 1: coffee in the lounge, I was too excited and hilarious
32:06
Speaker 1: to go to bed. I made him come with me
32:09
Speaker 1: down to the cafe under the arches by the pier,
32:12
Speaker 1: and there drank beer and talked extravagant nonsense about everything
32:17
Speaker 1: under the sun, in order not to talk about the
32:19
Speaker 1: happenings of the afternoon. All the time, something shouted within me.
32:25
Speaker 1: I am a man, I am a man. What shall
32:29
Speaker 1: we do tomorrow? Said he? I'm for loafing. I said,
32:33
Speaker 1: let's row in the morning and spend tomorrow afternoon just
32:36
Speaker 1: as we did today. They say the church behind the
32:39
Speaker 1: town is worth seeing. We'll go up about sunset. That's
32:43
Speaker 1: the best time for it. We can start about five.
32:47
Speaker 1: We heard music and went further along the arcade to
32:50
Speaker 1: discover a place where girls in operatic Swiss peasant costume
32:54
Speaker 1: were singing and dancing on a creaking, protesting little stage.
32:59
Speaker 1: Ay Ay made their generous display of pink neck and
33:02
Speaker 1: arm with the seasoned eye of a man who has
33:04
Speaker 1: lived in the world. Life was perfectly simple and easy,
33:08
Speaker 1: I felt, if I took it the right way. Next day,
33:13
Speaker 1: Willesley wanted to go on, but I delayed altogether. I
33:17
Speaker 1: kept him back four days. Then abruptly my mood changed,
33:22
Speaker 1: and we decided to start early the following morning. I remember,
33:26
Speaker 1: though a little indistinctly, the feeling of my last talk
33:29
Speaker 1: with that woman, whose surname, odd as it may seem,
33:33
Speaker 1: either I never learnt or I have forgotten. Her Christian
33:36
Speaker 1: name was Milly. She was tired and rather low spirited,
33:40
Speaker 1: and disposed to be sentimental, And for the first time
33:44
Speaker 1: in our intercourse, I found myself liking her for the
33:47
Speaker 1: sake of her own personality. There was something kindly and
33:51
Speaker 1: generous appearing behind the veil of naive and uncontrolled sensuality
33:56
Speaker 1: she had worn. There was a curious quality of motherly
34:00
Speaker 1: in her attitude to me that something in my nature
34:03
Speaker 1: answered and approved. She didn't pretend to keep it up,
34:07
Speaker 1: that she had yielded to my initiative. I've done you
34:10
Speaker 1: no harm, she said, a little doubtfully, an odd note
34:14
Speaker 1: for a man's victim. And we've had a good time.
34:18
Speaker 1: You have liked me, haven't you. She interested me in
34:22
Speaker 1: her lonely, dissatisfied life. She was childless and had no
34:26
Speaker 1: hope of children, and her husband was the only son
34:29
Speaker 1: of a rich meat salesman, very mean, a mighty smoker.
34:34
Speaker 1: He reeks of it, she said, always, and interested in
34:38
Speaker 1: nothing but golf, billiards, which he played very badly, pigeon shooting,
34:43
Speaker 1: convivial freemasonry, and stock exchange punting. Mostly they drifted about
34:48
Speaker 1: the riviera. Her mother had contrived her marriage when she
34:52
Speaker 1: was eighteen. They were the first samples I ever encountered
34:56
Speaker 1: of the great multitude of functionless property owners which encumbers
35:01
Speaker 1: modern civilization. But at the time I didn't think much
35:04
Speaker 1: of that aspect of them. I tell all this business
35:08
Speaker 1: as it happened, without comment, because I have no comment
35:11
Speaker 1: to make. It was all strange to me, strange rather
35:15
Speaker 1: than wonderful. And it may be some dream of beauty
35:19
Speaker 1: died forever in those furtive meetings. It happened to me,
35:23
Speaker 1: and I could scarcely have been more irresponsible in the matter,
35:27
Speaker 1: or controlled events less. If I had been suddenly pushed
35:30
Speaker 1: over a cliff into water. I swam, of course, finding
35:34
Speaker 1: myself in it. Things tested me, and I reacted, as
35:38
Speaker 1: I have told. The bloom of my innocence, if ever
35:42
Speaker 1: there had been such a thing, was gone and here
35:46
Speaker 1: is the remarkable thing about it. At the time, and
35:49
Speaker 1: for some days, I was overweeningly proud. I have never
35:53
Speaker 1: been so proud before or since. I felt I had
35:56
Speaker 1: been promoted to virility. I was unable to conceal my
36:00
Speaker 1: exultation from Willesley. It was a mood of shining, shameless,
36:05
Speaker 1: ungracious self approval. As he and I went along in
36:09
Speaker 1: the cool morning sunshine by the rice fields, in the
36:12
Speaker 1: throat of the Valmada, as silence fell between us. You know,
36:18
Speaker 1: I said abruptly about that woman. Willsley did not answer
36:23
Speaker 1: for a moment. He looked at me over the corner
36:25
Speaker 1: of his spectacles. Things went pretty far, he asked, oh,
36:31
Speaker 1: all the way? And I had a twinge of fatuous
36:35
Speaker 1: pride in my unpremeditated achievement. She came to your room.
36:39
Speaker 1: I nodded. I heard her. I heard her whispering, the
36:44
Speaker 1: whispering and rustling and so on. I was in my
36:46
Speaker 1: room yesterday. Any one might have heard you. I went
36:50
Speaker 1: on with my head in the air. You might have
36:53
Speaker 1: been caught, and that would have meant endless trouble. You
36:56
Speaker 1: might have incurred all sorts of consequences. What did you
36:59
Speaker 1: know about her. We have wasted four days in that hot,
37:03
Speaker 1: close place when we found that league of social service
37:07
Speaker 1: we were talking about. He said, with a determined eye
37:10
Speaker 1: upon me, chastity will be first among the virtues prescribed.
37:15
Speaker 1: I shall form a rival league, I said, a little damped.
37:18
Speaker 1: I'm hanged if I give up a single desire in
37:21
Speaker 1: me until I know why. He lifted his chin and
37:25
Speaker 1: stared before him through his glasses at nothing. There are
37:28
Speaker 1: some things, he said, that a man who means to
37:31
Speaker 1: work to do great public services must turn his back upon.
37:35
Speaker 1: I'm not discussing the rights or wrongs of this sort
37:38
Speaker 1: of thing. It happens to be the conditions we work under.
37:42
Speaker 1: It will probably always be so. If you want to
37:45
Speaker 1: experiment in that way, if you want even to discuss it,
37:49
Speaker 1: hon't you go from political life. You must know that.
37:52
Speaker 1: So you're a strange man, Remington, with a kind of
37:56
Speaker 1: kink in you. You've a sort of force. You might
38:00
Speaker 1: happen to do immense things. Only he stopped. He had
38:05
Speaker 1: said all that he had forced himself to say. I
38:08
Speaker 1: mean to take myself as I am. I said, I'm
38:12
Speaker 1: going to get experience for humanity out of all my
38:14
Speaker 1: talents and Bury nothing. Willsley twisted his face to its
38:19
Speaker 1: humorous expression. I doubt if sexual proclivities, he said dryly,
38:25
Speaker 1: come within the scope of the parable. I let that
38:29
Speaker 1: go for a little while. Then I broke out. Sex,
38:33
Speaker 1: said I is a fundamental thing in life. We went
38:37
Speaker 1: through all this at Trinity. I'm going to look at it,
38:40
Speaker 1: experience it, think about it, and get it square with
38:43
Speaker 1: the rest of life. Career and politics must take their
38:46
Speaker 1: chances of that. It's part of the general English slackness
38:50
Speaker 1: that they won't look this in the face. God's what
38:53
Speaker 1: a muffled time we're coming out of. Sex means breeding,
38:57
Speaker 1: and breeding is a necessary function in a nation. The
39:00
Speaker 1: Romans broke up upon that the Americans fade out amidst
39:04
Speaker 1: their successes eugenics. That wasn't eugenics, said Willesley. It was
39:10
Speaker 1: a woman, I said, after a little interval, feeling oddly
39:14
Speaker 1: that I had failed altogether to answer him, and yet
39:17
Speaker 1: had a strong dumb case against him. End of Chapter four,
39:23
Speaker 1: end of Book one.