At six, when he was dressed again, he took his car and drove down to the hotel to have a talk with Helen. By this time, he calculated, she would have got over her first shock, she would be ready to listen to him. Forgetting all about the Doll’s House and the sanity of it had been intended to preserve, he was filled, as he drove, with an extraordinary elation. In a few minutes he would be seeing her again. Would be telling her of the discoveries he had suddenly made that morning: the discovery that he cared for her, the discovery that he had been a fool and worse, unspeakably worse than a fool . . . It would be difficult, it would be all but impossible to say these things about himself; but for that very reason the thought that he was going to say them filled him with profound happiness.
He drew up at the door of the hotel and hurried into the hall.
‘Madame Ledwidge est-elle dans sa chambre, mademoiselle?’
‘Mais non, monsieur, Madame vient de partir.’
‘Elle vient de partir?’
‘Madame est allée prendre le rapide à Toulon.’
Anthony looked at his watch. The train had already started. In a wretched little car like his there was no hope of getting to Marseilles before it left again for Paris.
‘Merci, mademoiselle, merci,’ he said, lapsing by force of habit into that excessive politeness by means of which he protected himself from the disquieting world of the lower classes.
‘Mais de rien, monsieur.’
He drove home again, wondering miserably whether he oughtn’t to be thankful for the deliverance. The postman had called in his absence. There was a letter from his broker, advising him to sell at least a part of that block of gold-mining shares he had inherited from Uncle James. There seemed to be no likelihood of their appreciating any further; in view of which, the wisest course would be to take advantage of the present prices and re-invest in sound English industrials such as . . . He threw the letter aside. Occasions, as usual, had been conspiring for him – thrusting good fortune upon him, malignantly. Now, in the depression, he was better off than ever before. Better off when other people were worse off. Freer while they were more hopelessly enslaved. The ring of Polycrates . . . It looked as though the gods had already begun their vengeance.
He went to bed early, and at two was woken by that horribly familiar dream that had haunted his boyhood and plagued him from time to time even as a grown man. In substance it was always the same. Nothing much was ever visible; but there was generally a knowledge that he was in company, surrounded by dim presences. He took a mouthful of some indeterminate food, and instantly it expanded between his teeth, became progressively more rubbery and at the same time stickier, till it was like a gag smeared with a kind of gum that dried in a thick film on the teeth, tongue, palate. Unspeakably disgusting, this process of asphyxiating expansion, of gluey thickening and clogging, went on and on. He tried to swallow, tried, in spite of the obscure but embarrassing presence of strangers, to disgorge. Without effect.
In the end, he was reduced to hooking the stuff out with his finger – lump after ropy lump of it. But always in vain. For the gag continued to expand, the film to thicken and harden. Until at last he was delivered by starting out of sleep. This night, the expanding mouthful had some kind of vague but horrible connection with the dog. He woke up shuddering. Once awake, he was unable to go to sleep again. A huge accumulation of neglected memories broke through, as it were, into his awareness. Those snapshots. His mother and Mary Amberley. Brian in the chalkpit, evoked by that salty smell of sun-warmed flesh, and again dead at the cliff’s foot, among the flies – like that dog . . .
CHAPTER XIII
May 20th 1934
MADE MY SECOND speech yesterday night. Without serious nervousness. It’s easy enough, once you’ve made up your mind that it doesn’t matter if you make a fool of yourself. But it’s depressing. There’s a sense in which five hundred people in a hall aren’t concrete. One’s talking to a collective noun, an abstraction, not to a set of individuals. Only those already partially or completely convinced of what you’re saying even want to understand you. The rest are invincibly ignorant. In private conversation, you could be certain of getting your man to make at least a grudging effort to understand you. The fact that there’s an audience confirms the not-understander in his incomprehension. Particularly if he can ask questions after the address.
Some of the reasons for this are obvious. Just getting up and being looked at is a pleasure – in many cases, piercing to the point of pain. Excruciating orgasms of self-assertion. Pleasure is heightened if the question is hostile. Hostility is a declaration of personal independence. Makes it clear at the same time that it’s only an accident that the questioner isn’t on the platform himself – accident or else, of course, deliberate plot on the part of ruffians who want to keep him down. Interruptions and questions are generally of course quite irrelevant. Hecklers (like the rest of us) live in their own private world, make no effort to enter other people’s words. Most arguments in public are at cross-purposes and in different languages – without interpreters.
Mark was at the meeting, and afterwards, in my rooms, took pleasure in intensifying my depression.
‘Might as well go and talk to cows in a field.’ The temptation to agree with him was strong. All my old habits of thinking, living, feeling impel me towards agreement. A senseless world, where nothing whatever can be done – how satisfactory! One can go off and (seeing that there’s nothing else to do) compile one’s treatise on sociology – the science of human senselessness. With Mark last night I caught myself taking intense pleasure in commenting on the imbecility of my audience and human beings at large. Caught and checked myself. Reflecting that seeds had been sown, that if only one were to germinate, it would have been worth while to hold the meeting. Worth while even if none were to germinate – for my own sake, as an exercise, a training for doing better next time.
I didn’t say all this. Merely stopped talking and, I suppose, changed my expression. Mark, who notices everything, began to laugh. Foresaw the time when I’d preface every mention of a person or group with the adjective ‘dear.’ ‘The dear Communists,’ ‘the dear armament makers,’ ‘dear General Goering.’
I laughed – for he was comic in his best savage manner. But, after all, if you had enough love and goodness, you could be sure of evoking some measure of answering love and goodness from almost everyone you came in contact with – whoever he or she might be. And in that case almost everyone would really be ‘dear.’ At present, most people seem more or less imbecile or odious; the fault is at least as much in oneself as in them.
May 24th 1934.
PUT IN FOUR hours this morning at working up my notes. Extraordinary pleasure! How easily one could slip back into uninterrupted scholarship and idea-mongering! Into that ‘Higher Life’ – which is simply death without tears. Peace, irresponsibility – all the delights of death here and now. In the past, you had to go into a monastery to find them. You paid for the pleasures of death with obedience, poverty, chastity. Now you can have them gratis and in the ordinary world. Death completely without tears. Death with smiles, death with the pleasures of bed and bottle, death in private with nobody to bully you. Scholars, philosophers, men of science – conventionally supposed to be unpractical.
But what other class of men has succeeded in getting the world to accept it and (more astonishing) go on accepting it at its own valuation? Kings have lost their divine right, plutocrats look as though they were going to lose theirs. But Higher Lifers continue to be labelled as superior. It’s the fruit of persistence. Persistently paying compliments to themselves, persistently disparaging other people. Year in, year out, for the last sixty centuries. We’re High, you’re Low; we’re of the Spirit, you’re of the World. Again and again, like Pears Soap. It’s been accepted, now, as an axiom. But, in fact, the Higher Life is merely the better death-substitute.
A more complete escape from the responsibilities of living with alcohol or morphia or addiction to sex or property. Booze and dope destroy health. Sooner or later sex addicts get involved in responsibilities. Property addicts can never get all the stamps, Chinese vases, houses, varieties of lilies or whatever it may be, that they want. Their escape is a torment of Tantalus. Whereas the Higher Lifer escapes into a world where there’s no risk to health and the minimum of responsibilities and tortures. A world,
