Герберт Джордж Уэллс
Love and Mr. Lewisham
CHAPTER XXI.
HOME!
Then a furtive payment of witnesses, and Lewisham was beside her. His face was radiant. A steady current of workers going home to their half-holiday rest poured along the street. On the steps before them lay a few grains of rice from some more public nuptials.
A critical little girl eyed our couple curiously and made some remark to her ragamuffin friend.
"Not them," said the ragamuffin friend, "They've only been askin' questions."
The ragamuffin friend was no judge of faces.
They walked back through the thronged streets to Vauxhall station, saying little to one another, and there Lewisham, assuming as indifferent a manner as he could command, recovered their possessions from the booking-office by means of two separate tickets and put them aboard a four-wheeler. His luggage went outside, but the little brown portmanteau containing Ethel's trousseau was small enough to go on the seat in front of them. You must figure a rather broken-down four-wheeler bearing the yellow-painted box and the experienced trunk and Mr. Lewisham and all his fortunes, a despondent fitful horse, and a threadbare venerable driver, blasphemous sotto voce and flagellant, in an ancient coat with capes. When our two young people found themselves in the cab again a certain stiffness of manner between them vanished and there was more squeezing of hands. "Ethel Lewisham," said Lewisham several times, and Ethel reciprocated with "Husbinder" and "Hubby dear," and took off her glove to look again in an ostentatious manner at a ring. And she kissed the ring.
They were resolved that their newly-married state should not appear, and with considerable ceremony it was arranged that he should treat her with off-hand brusqueness when they arrived at their lodging. The Teutonic landlady appeared in the passage with an amiable smile and the hope that they had had a pleasant journey, and became voluble with promises of comfort. Lewisham having assisted the slatternly general servant to carry in his boxes, paid the cabman a florin in a resolute manner and followed the ladies into the sitting-room.
Ethel answered Madam Gadow's inquiries with admirable self-possession, followed her through the folding-doors and displayed an intelligent interest in a new spring mattress. Presently the folding-doors were closed again. Lewisham hovered about the front room pulling his moustache and pretending to admire the oleographs, surprised to find himself trembling…
The slatternly general servant reappeared with the chops and tinned salmon he had asked Madam Gadow to prepare for them. He went and stared out of the window, heard the door close behind the girl, and turned at a sound as Ethel appeared shyly through the folding-doors.
She was suddenly domestic. Hitherto he had seen her without a hat and jacket only on one indistinct dramatic occasion. Now she wore a little blouse of soft, dark red material, with a white froth about the wrists and that pretty neck of hers. And her hair was a new wonderland of curls and soft strands. How delicate she looked and sweet as she stood hesitating there. These gracious moments in life! He took two steps and held out his arms. She glanced at the closed door of the room and came flitting towards him…
CHAPTER XXII.
EPITHALAMY
For three indelible days Lewisham's existence was a fabric of fine emotions, life was too wonderful and beautiful for any doubts or forethought. To be with Ethel was perpetual delight – she astonished this sisterless youngster with a thousand feminine niceties and refinements. She shamed him for his strength and clumsiness. And the light in her eyes and the warmth in her heart that lit them!
Even to be away from her was a wonder and in its way delightful. He was no common Student, he was a man with a Secret Life. To part from her on Monday near South Kensington station and go up Exhibition Road among all the fellows who lived in sordid, lonely lodgings and were boys to his day-old experience! To neglect one's work and sit back and dream of meeting again! To slip off to the shady churchyard behind the Oratory when, or even a little before, the midday bell woke the great staircase to activity, and to meet a smiling face and hear a soft, voice saying sweet foolish things! And after four another meeting and the walk home – their own home.
No little form now went from him and flitted past a gas lamp down a foggy vista, taking his desire with her. Never more was that to be. Lewisham's long hours in the laboratory were spent largely in a dreamy meditation, in – to tell the truth – the invention of foolish terms of endearment: "Dear Wife," "Dear Little Wife Thing," "Sweetest Dearest Little Wife," "Dillywings." A pretty employment! And these are quite a fair specimen of his originality during those wonderful days. A moment of heart-searching in that particular matter led to the discovery of hitherto undreamt-of kindred with Swift. For Lewisham, like Swift and most other people, had hit upon, the Little Language. Indeed it was a very foolish time.
Such section cutting as he did that third day of his married life – and he did very little – was a thing to marvel at. Bindon, the botany professor, under the fresh shock of his performance, protested to a colleague in the grill room that never had a student been so foolishly overrated.
And Ethel too had a fine emotional time. She was mistress of a home —their home together. She shopped and was called "Ma'am" by respectful, good-looking shopmen; she designed meals and copied out papers of notes with a rich sense of helpfulness. And ever and again she would stop writing and sit dreaming. And for four bright week-days she went to and fro to accompany and meet Lewisham and listen greedily to the latest fruits of his imagination.
The landlady was very polite and conversed entertainingly about the very extraordinary and dissolute servants that had fallen to her lot. And Ethel disguised her newly wedded state by a series of ingenious prevarications. She wrote a letter that Saturday evening to her mother – Lewisham had helped her to write it – making a sort of proclamation of her heroic departure and promising a speedy visit. They posted the letter so that it might not be delivered until Monday.
She was quite sure with Lewisham that only the possible dishonour of mediumship could have brought their marriage about – she sank the mutual attraction beyond even her own vision. There was more than a touch of magnificence, you perceive, about this affair.
It was Lewisham had persuaded her to delay that reassuring visit until Monday night. "One whole day of honeymoon," he insisted, was to be theirs. In his prenuptial meditations he had not clearly focussed the fact that even after marriage some sort of relations with Mr. and Mrs. Chaffery would still go on. Even now he was exceedingly disinclined to face that obvious necessity. He foresaw, in spite of a resolute attempt to ignore it, that there would be explanatory scenes of some little difficulty. But the prevailing magnificence carried him over this trouble.
"Let us at least have this little time for ourselves," he said, and that seemed to settle their position.
Save for its brevity and these intimations of future trouble it was a very fine time indeed. Their midday dinner together, for example – it was a little cold when at last they came to it on Saturday – was immense fun. There was no marked subsidence of appetite; they ate extremely well in spite of the meeting of their souls, and in spite of certain shiftings of chairs and hand claspings and similar delays. He really made the acquaintance of her hands then for the first time, plump white hands with short white fingers, and the engagement ring had come out of its tender hiding-place and acted as keeper to the wedding ring. Their eyes were perpetually flitting about the room and coming back to mutual smiles. All their movements were faintly tremulous.
She professed to be vastly interested and amused by the room and its furniture and her position, and he was delighted by her delight. She was particularly entertained by the chest of drawers in the living room, and by Lewisham's witticisms at the toilet tidies and the oleographs.
And after the chops and the most of the tinned salmon and the very new loaf were gone they fell to with fine effect upon a tapioca pudding. Their talk was fragmentary. "Did you hear her call me Madame? Mádáme– so!" "And presently I must go out and do some shopping. There are all the things for Sunday and Monday morning to get. I must make a list. It will never do to let her know how little I know about things… I wish I knew more."
At the time Lewisham regarded her confession of domestic ignorance as a fine basis for facetiousness. He developed a fresh line of thought, and condoled with her on the inglorious circumstances of their wedding. "No bridesmaids," he said; "no little children scattering flowers, no carriages, no policemen to guard the wedding presents, nothing proper – nothing right. Not even a white favour. Only you and I."
"Only you and I. Oh!"
"This is nonsense," said Lewisham, after an interval.
"And think what we lose in the way of speeches," he resumed. "Cannot you imagine the best man rising: – 'Ladies and gentlemen – the health of the bride.' That is what the best man has to do, isn't it?"
By way of answer she extended her hand.
"And do you know," he said, after that had received due recognition, "we have never been introduced!"
"Neither have we!" said Ethel. "Neither have we! We have never been introduced!"
For some inscrutable reason it delighted them both enormously to think that they had never been introduced…
In the later afternoon Lewisham, having unpacked his books to a certain extent, and so forth, was visible to all men, visibly in the highest spirits, carrying home Ethel's shopping. There were parcels and cones in blue and parcels in rough grey paper and a bag of confectionery, and out of one of the side pockets of that East-end overcoat the tail of a haddock protruded from its paper. Under such magnificent sanctions and amid such ignoble circumstances did this honeymoon begin.
On Sunday evening they went for a long rambling walk through the quiet streets, coming out at last into Hyde Park. The early spring night was mild and clear and the kindly moonlight was about them. They went to the bridge and looked down the Serpentine, with the little lights of Paddington yellow and remote. They stood there, dim little figures and very close together. They whispered and became silent.
Presently it seemed that something passed and Lewisham began talking in his magnificent vein. He likened the Serpentine to Life, and found Meaning in the dark banks of Kensington Gardens and the remote bright lights. "The long struggle," he said, "and the lights at the end," – though he really did not know what he meant by the lights at the end. Neither did Ethel, though the emotion was indisputable. "We are Fighting the World," he said, finding great satisfaction in the thought. "All the world is against us – and we are fighting it all."
"We will not be beaten," said Ethel.
"How could we be beaten – together?" said Lewisham. "For you I would fight a dozen worlds."
It seemed a very sweet and noble thing to them under the sympathetic moonlight, almost indeed too easy for their courage, to be merely fighting the world.
* * * * *
"You 'aven't bin married ver' long," said Madam Gadow with an insinuating smile, when she readmitted Ethel on Monday morning after Lewisham had been swallowed up by the Schools.
"No, I haven't very long," admitted Ethel.
"You are ver' 'appy," said Madam Gadow, and sighed.
"I was ver' 'appy," said Madam Gadow.
CHAPTER XXIII.
MR. CHAFFERY AT HOME
The golden mists of delight lifted a little on Monday, when Mr. and Mrs. G.E. Lewisham went to call on his mother-in-law and Mr. Chaffery. Mrs. Lewisham went in evident apprehension, but clouds of glory still hung about Lewisham's head, and his manner was heroic. He wore a cotton shirt and linen collar, and a very nice black satin tie that Mrs. Lewisham had bought on her own responsibility during the day. She naturally wanted him to look all right.
Mrs. Chaffery appeared in the half light of the passage as the top of a grimy cap over Ethel's shoulder and two black sleeves about her neck. She emerged as a small, middle-aged woman, with a thin little nose between silver-rimmed spectacles, a weak mouth and perplexed eyes, a queer little dust-lined woman with the oddest resemblance to Ethel in her face. She was trembling visibly with nervous agitation.
She hesitated, peering, and then kissed Mr. Lewisham effusively. "And this is Mr. Lewisham!" she said as she did so.
She was the third thing feminine to kiss Lewisham since the promiscuous days of his babyhood. "I was so afraid – There!" She laughed hysterically.
"You'll excuse my saying that it's comforting to see you – honest like and young. Not but what Ethel … He has been something dreadful," said Mrs. Chaffery. "You didn't ought to have written about that mesmerising. And of all letters that which Jane wrote – there! But he's waiting and listening – "
"Are we to go downstairs, Mums?" asked Ethel.
"He's waiting for you there," said Mrs. Chaffery. She held a dismal little oil lamp, and they descended a tenebrous spiral structure into an underground breakfast-room lit by gas that shone through a partially frosted globe with cut-glass stars. That descent had a distinctly depressing effect upon Lewisham. He went first. He took a deep breath at the door. What on earth was Chaffery going to say? Not that he cared, of course.
Chaffery was standing with his back to the fire, trimming his finger-nails with a pocket-knife. His gilt glasses were tilted forward so as to make an inflamed knob at the top of his long nose, and he regarded Mr. and Mrs. Lewisham over them with – Lewisham doubted his eyes for a moment – but it was positively a smile, an essentially waggish smile.
"You've come back," he said quite cheerfully over Lewisham to
Ethel. There was a hint of falsetto in his voice.
"She has called to see her mother," said Lewisham. "You, I believe, are Mr. Chaffery?"
"I would like to know who the Deuce you are?" said Chaffery, suddenly tilting his head back so as to look through his glasses instead of over them, and laughing genially. "For thoroughgoing Cheek, I'm inclined to think you take the Cake. Are you the Mr. Lewisham to whom this misguided girl refers in her letter?"
"I am."
"Maggie," said Mr. Chaffery to Mrs. Chaffery, "there is a class of being upon whom delicacy is lost – to whom delicacy is practically unknown. Has your daughter got her marriage lines?"
"Mr. Chaffery!" said Lewisham, and Mrs. Chaffery exclaimed, "James!
How can you?"
Chaffery shut his penknife with a click and slipped it into his vest-pocket. Then he looked up again, speaking in the same equal voice. "I presume we are civilised persons prepared to manage our affairs in a civilised way. My stepdaughter vanishes for two nights and returns with an alleged husband. I at least am not disposed to be careless about her legal position."
"You ought to know her better – " began Lewisham.
"Why argue about it," said Chaffery gaily, pointing a lean finger at Ethel's gesture, "when she has 'em in her pocket? She may just as well show me now. I thought so. Don't be alarmed at my handling them. Fresh copies can always be got at the nominal price of two-and-seven. Thank you … Lewisham, George Edgar. One-and-twenty. And … You – one-and-twenty! I never did know your age, my dear, exactly, and now your mother won't say. Student! Thank you. I am greatly obliged. Indeed I am greatly relieved. And now, what have you got to say for yourselves in this remarkable affair?"
"You had a letter," said Lewisham.
"I had a letter of excuses – the personalities I overlook … Yes, sir – they were excuses. You young people wanted to marry – and you seized an occasion. You did not even refer to the fact that you wanted to marry in your letter. Pure modesty! But now you have come here married. It disorganises this household, it inflicts endless bother on people, but never you mind that! I'm not blaming you. Nature's to blame! Neither of you know what you are in for yet. You will. You're married, and that is the great essential thing… (Ethel, my dear, just put your husband's hat and stick behind the door.) And you, sir, are so good as to disapprove of the way in which I earn my living?"
"Well," said Lewisham. "Yes – I'm bound to say I do."
"You are really not bound to say it. The modesty of inexperience would excuse you."
"Yes, but it isn't right – it isn't straight."
"Dogma," said Chaffery. "Dogma!"
"What do you mean by dogma?" asked Lewisham.
"I mean, dogma. But we must argue this out in comfort. It is our supper hour, and I'm not the man to fight against accomplished facts. We have intermarried. There it is. You must stop to supper – and you and I must thresh these things out. We've involved ourselves with each other and we've got to make the best of it. Your wife and mine will spread the board, and we will go on talking. Why not sit in that chair instead of leaning on the back? This is a home —domus– not a debating society – humble in spite of my manifest frauds… That's better. And in the first place I hope – I do so hope" – Chaffery was suddenly very impressive – "that you're not a Dissenter."
"Eh!" said Lewisham, and then, "No! I am not a Dissenter."
"That's better," said Mr. Chaffery. "I'm glad of that. I was just a little afraid – Something in your manner. I can't stand Dissenters. I've a peculiar dislike to Dissenters. To my mind it's the great drawback of this Clapham. You see … I have invariably found them deceitful – invariably."
He grimaced and dropped his glasses with a click against his waistcoat buttons. "I'm very glad of that," he said, replacing them. "The Dissenter, the Nonconformist Conscience, the Puritan, you know, the Vegetarian and Total Abstainer, and all that sort of thing, I cannot away with them. I have cleared my mind of cant and formulae. I've a nature essentially Hellenic. Have you ever read Matthew Arnold?"
"Beyond my scientific reading – "
"Ah! you should read Matthew Arnold – a mind of singular clarity. In him you would find a certain quality that is sometimes a little wanting in your scientific men. They are apt to be a little too phenomenal, you know, a little too objective. Now I seek after noumena. Noumena, Mr. Lewisham! If you follow me – ?"
He paused, and his eyes behind the glasses were mildly interrogative. Ethel re-entered without her hat and jacket, and with a noisy square black tray, a white cloth, some plates and knives and glasses, and began to lay the table.
"I follow you," said Lewisham, reddening. He had not the courage to admit ignorance of this remarkable word. "You state your case."
"I seek after noumena," repeated Chaffery with great satisfaction, and gesticulated with his hand, waving away everything but that. "I cannot do with surfaces and appearances. I am one of those nympholepts, you know, nympholepts … Must pursue the truth of things! the elusive fundamental … I make a rule, I never tell myself lies – never. There are few who can say that. To my mind – truth begins at home. And for the most part – stops there. Safest and seemliest! you know. With most men – with your typical Dissenter par excellence– it's always gadding abroad, calling on the neighbours. You see my point of view?"
He glanced at Lewisham, who was conscious of an unwonted opacity of mind. He became wary, as wary as he could manage to be on the spur of the moment.
"It's a little surprising, you know," he said very carefully, "if I may say so – and considering what happened – to hear you …"
"Speaking of truth? Not when you understand my position. Not when you see where I stand. That is what I am getting at. That is what I am naturally anxious to make clear to you now that we have intermarried, now that you are my stepson-in-law. You're young, you know, you're young, and you're hard and fast. Only years can give a mind tone– mitigate the varnish of education. I gather from this letter – and your face – that you are one of the party that participated in that little affair at Lagune's."
He stuck out a finger at a point he had just seen. "By-the-bye! – That accounts for Ethel," he said.
Ethel rapped down the mustard on the table. "It does," she said, but not very loudly.
"But you had met before?" said Chaffery.
"At Whortley," said Lewisham.
"I see," said Chaffery.
"I was in – I was one of those who arranged the exposure," said
Lewisham. "And now you have raised the matter, I am bound to say – "
"I knew," interrupted Chaffery. "But what a shock that was for Lagune!" He looked down at his toes for a moment with the corners of his mouth tucked in. "The hand dodge wasn't bad, you know," he said, with a queer sidelong smile.
Lewisham was very busy for a moment trying to get this remark in focus. "I don't see it in the same light as you do," he explained at last.
"Can't get away from your moral bias, eh? – Well, well. We'll go into all that. But apart from its moral merits – simply as an artistic trick – it was not bad."
"I don't know much about tricks – "
"So few who undertake exposures do. You admit you never heard or thought of that before – the bladder, I mean. Yet it's as obvious as tintacks that a medium who's hampered at his hands will do all he can with his teeth, and what could be so self-evident as a bladder under one's lappel? What could be? Yet I know psychic literature pretty well, and it's never been suggested even! Never. It's a perpetual surprise to me how many things are not thought of by investigators. For one thing, they never count the odds against them, and that puts them wrong at the start. Look at it! I am by nature tricky. I spend all my leisure standing or sitting about and thinking up or practising new little tricks, because it amuses me immensely to do so. The whole thing amuses me. Well – what is the result of these meditations? Take one thing: – I know eight-and-forty ways of making raps – of which at least ten are original. Ten original ways of making raps." His manner was very impressive. "And some of them simply tremendous raps. There!"
A confirmatory rap exploded – as it seemed between Lewisham and
Chaffery.
"Eh?" said Chaffery.
The mantelpiece opened a dropping fire, and the table went off under
Lewisham's nose like a cracker.
"You see?" said Chaffery, putting his hands under the tail of his coat. The whole room seemed snapping its fingers at Lewisham for a space.
"Very well, and now take the other side. Take the severest test I ever tried. Two respectable professors of physics – not Newtons, you understand, but good, worthy, self-important professors of physics – a lady anxious to prove there's a life beyond the grave, a journalist who wants stuff to write – a person, that is, who gets his living by these researches just as I do – undertook to test me. Test me!.. Of course they had their other work to do, professing physics, professing religion, organising research, and so forth. At the outside they don't think an hour a day about it, and most of them had never cheated anybody in their existence, and couldn't, for example, travel without a ticket for a three-mile journey and not get caught, to save their lives… Well – you see the odds?"
He paused. Lewisham appeared involved in some interior struggle.
"You know," explained Chaffery, "it was quite an accident you got me – quite. The thing slipped out of my mouth. Or your friend with, the flat voice wouldn't have had a chance. Not a chance."
Lewisham spoke like a man who is lifting a weight. "All this, you know, is off the question. I'm not disputing your ability. But the thing is … it isn't right."
"We're coming to that," said Chaffery.
"It's evident we look at things in a different light."
"That's it. That's just what we've got to discuss. Exactly!"
"Cheating is cheating. You can't get away from that. That's simple enough."
"Wait till I've done with it," said Chaffery with a certain zest. "Of course it's imperative you should understand my position. It isn't as though I hadn't one. Ever since I read your letter I've been thinking over that. Really! – a justification! In a way you might almost say I had a mission. A sort of prophet. You really don't see the beginning of it yet."
"Oh, but hang it!" protested Lewisham.
"Ah! you're young, you're crude. My dear young man, you're only at the beginning of things. You really must concede a certain possibility of wider views to a man more than twice your age. But here's supper. For a little while at any rate we'll call a truce."
Ethel had come in again bearing an additional chair, and Mrs. Chaffery appeared behind her, crowning the preparations with a jug of small beer. The cloth, Lewisham observed, as he turned towards it, had several undarned holes and discoloured places, and in the centre stood a tarnished cruet which contained mustard, pepper, vinegar, and three ambiguous dried-up bottles. The bread was on an ample board with a pious rim, and an honest wedge of cheese loomed disproportionate on a little plate. Mr. and Mrs. Lewisham were seated facing one another, and Mrs. Chaffery sat in the broken chair because she understood its ways.
"This cheese is as nutritious and unattractive and indigestible as Science," remarked Chaffery, cutting and passing wedges. "But crush it – so – under your fork, add a little of this good Dorset butter, a dab of mustard, pepper – the pepper is very necessary – and some malt vinegar, and crush together. You get a compound called Crab and by no means disagreeable. So the wise deal with the facts of life, neither bolting nor rejecting, but adapting."
"As though pepper and mustard were not facts," said Lewisham, scoring his solitary point that evening.
Chaffery admitted the collapse of his image in very complimentary terms, and Lewisham could not avoid a glance across the table at Ethel. He remembered that Chaffery was a slippery scoundrel whose blame was better than his praise, immediately afterwards.
For a time the Crab engaged Chaffery, and the conversation languished. Mrs. Chaffery asked Ethel formal questions about their lodgings, and Ethel's answers were buoyant, "You must come and have tea one day," said Ethel, not waiting for Lewisham's endorsement, "and see it all."
Chaffery astonished Lewisham by suddenly displaying a complete acquaintance with his status as a South Kensington teacher in training. "I suppose you have some money beyond that guinea," said Chaffery offhandedly.
"Enough to go on with," said Lewisham, reddening.
"And you look to them at South Kensington, to do something for you – a hundred a year or so, when your scholarship is up?"
"Yes," said Lewisham a little reluctantly. "Yes. A hundred a year or so. That's the sort of idea. And there's lots of places beyond South Kensington, of course, even if they don't put me up there."
"I see," said Chaffery; "but it will be a pretty close shave for all that – one hundred a year. Well, well – there's many a deserving man has to do with less," and after a meditative pause he asked Lewisham to pass the beer.
"Hev you a mother living, Mr. Lewisham?" said Mrs. Chaffery suddenly, and pursued him through the tale of his connexions. When he came to the plumber, Mrs. Chaffery remarked with an unexpected air of consequence that most families have their poor relations. Then the air of consequence vanished again into the past from which it had arisen.
Supper finished, Chaffery poured the residuum of the beer into his glass, produced a Broseley clay of the longest sort, and invited Lewisham to smoke. "Honest smoking," said Chaffery, tapping the bowl of his clay, and added: "In this country – cigars – sound cigars – and honesty rarely meet."
Lewisham fumbled in his pocket for his Algerian cigarettes, and Chaffery having regarded them unfavourably through his glasses, took up the thread of his promised apologia. The ladies retired to wash up the supper things.
"You see," said Chaffery, opening abruptly so soon as the clay was drawing, "about this cheating – I do not find life such a simple matter as you do."
"I don't find life simple," said Lewisham, "but I do think there's a Right and a Wrong in things. And I don't think you have said anything so far to show that spiritualistic cheating is Right."
"Let us thresh the matter out," said Chaffery, crossing his legs; "let us thresh the matter out. Now" – he drew at his pipe – "I don't think you fully appreciate the importance of Illusion in life, the Essential Nature of Lies and Deception of the body politic. You are inclined to discredit one particular form of Imposture, because it is not generally admitted – carries a certain discredit, and – witness the heel edges of my trouser legs, witness yonder viands – small rewards."
"It's not that," said Lewisham.
"Now I am prepared to maintain," said Chaffery, proceeding with his proposition, "that Honesty is essentially an anarchistic and disintegrating force in society, that communities are held together and the progress of civilisation made possible only by vigorous and sometimes even, violent Lying; that the Social Contract is nothing more or less than a vast conspiracy of human beings to lie to and humbug themselves and one another for the general Good. Lies are the mortar that bind the savage Individual man into the social masonry. There is the general thesis upon which I base my justification. My mediumship, I can assure you, is a particular instance of the general assertion. Were I not of a profoundly indolent, restless, adventurous nature, and horribly averse to writing, I would make a great book of this and live honoured by every profound duffer in the world."
"But how are you going to prove it?"
"Prove It! It simply needs pointing out. Even now there are men – Bernard Shaw, Ibsen, and such like – who have seen bits of it in a new-gospel-grubbing sort of fashion. What Is man? Lust and greed tempered by fear and an irrational vanity."
