CHAPTER X

 

June 16^th 1912

 

Books.  The table in Anthony's room was covered with them.  The five folio volumes of Bayle, in the English edition of 1738.  Rickaby's translation of the Summa contra Gentiles.  De Gourmont's Problème du Style.  The Way of Perfection.  Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground.  Three volumes of Byron's Letters.  The works of St  John of the Cross in Spanish.  The plays of Wycherley.  Lee's History of Sacerdotal Celibacy.

      If only, Anthony thought as he came in from his walk, if only one had two sets of eyes!  Janus would be able to read Candide and the Imitation simultaneously.  Life was so short, and books so countlessly many.  He pored voluptuously over the table, opening at random now one volume, now another.  'He would not lie down,' he read; 'then his neck was too large for the aperture, and the priest was obliged to drown his exclamations by still louder exhortations.  The head was off before the eye could trace the blow; but from an attempt to draw back the head, notwithstanding it was held forward by the hair, the first head was cut off close to the ears; the other two were taken off more cleanly.  The first turned me quite hot and thirsty and made me shake so that I could hardly hold the opera glass …' 'Happiness being the peculiar good of an intelligent nature, must attach to the intelligent nature on the side of something that is peculiar to it.  But appetite is not peculiar to intelligent nature, but is found in all things, though diversely in diverse beings.  The will, as being an appetite, is not a peculiar appurtenance of an intelligent nature, except so far as it is dependent on the intelligence; but intelligence in itself is peculiar to an intelligent nature.  Happiness therefore consists in an act of the intellect substantially and principally rather than in an act of the will …' 'Even in my most secret soul I have never been able to think of love as anything but a struggle, which begins with hatred and ends with moral subjection …' ' “I will not be a cuckold, I say; there will be a danger in making me a cuckold.”  “Why, wert thou well cured of thy last clap?” …'  'La primera noche o purgación es amarga y terrible para el sentido, como ahora diremos. La segunda no tiene comparación, porque es horrenda y espantable para el espíritu …'  'I think I have read somewhere that preciseness has been carried so far that ladies would not say, J'ai mangé des confitures, but des fitures.  At this rate, above one half of the words of the Dictionary of the French Academy should be struck out …'

       In the end, Anthony settled down to The Way of Perfection of St Teresa.  When Brian came in, an hour later, he had got as far as the Prayer of Quiet.

      'B-busy?' Brian asked.

      Anthony shook his head.

      The other sat down.  'I c-came to s-see if there was anything more to s-settle about to-m-morrow.'  Mrs Foxe and John Thursley, Mr and Mrs Beavis were coming down to Oxford for the day.  Brian and Anthony had agreed to entertain them together.

      Hock or Sauterne cup?  Lobster mayonnaise or cold salmon?  And if it rained, what would be the best thing to do in the afternoon?

      'Are you c-coming to the F-fabians this evening?' Brian asked, when the discussion of the next day's plans was at an end.

      'Of course,' said Anthony.  There was to be voting, that evening, for next term's president.  'It'll be a close fight between you and Mark Staithes.  You'll need all the votes you can …'

      Interrupting him, 'I've st-stood down,' said Brian.

      'Stood down? But why?'

      'V-various reasons.'

      Anthony looked at him and shook his head.  'Not that I'd have ever dreamt of putting up,' he said.  'Can't imagine anything more boring than to preside over any kind of organization.'  Even belonging to an organization was bad enough.  Why should one be bullied into making choices when one didn't want to choose; into binding oneself to a set of principles when it was so essential to be free; into committing oneself to associate with other people when as likely as not one would want to be alone; into promising in advance to be at given places at given times?  It was with the greatest difficulty that Brian had persuaded him to join the Fabians; for the rest he was unattached.  'Inconceivably boring,' he insisted.  'But still, once in the running, why stand down?'

      'Mark'll be a b-better president than I.'

      'He'll be ruder, if that's what you mean.'

      'B-besides, he was so a-awfully k-keen on g-getting elected,' Brian began; then broke off, suddenly conscience-stricken.  Anthony might think he was implying a criticism of Mark Staithes, was assuming the right to patronize him.  'I mean, he kn-knows he'll do the j-job so well,' he went on quickly.  'W-whereas I … So I r-really didn't see why …'

      'In fact you thought you might as well humour him.

      'No, n-no!' cried Brian in a tone of distress.  'Not th-that.'

      'Cock of the dunghill,' Anthony continued, ignoring the other's protest.  'He's got to be cock – even if it's only of the tiniest little Fabian dunghill.'  He laughed.  'Poor old Mark!  What an agony when he can't get to the top of his dunghill!  One's lucky to prefer books.'  He patted St Teresa affectionately.  'Still, I wish you hadn't stood down.  It would have made me laugh to see Mark trying to pretend he didn't mind when you'd beaten him.  You're reading a paper, aren't you,' he went on, 'after the voting?'

      Relieved by the change of subject, Brian nodded.  'On Syn …' he began.

      'On sin?'

      'Synd-dicalism.'

      They both laughed.

      'Odd, when you come to think of it,' said Anthony when their laughter subsided, 'that the mere notion of talking to socialists about sin should seem so … well, so outrageous, really.  Sin … socialism.'  He shook his head.  'It's like mating a duck with a zebra.'

      'You could t-talk about sin if you st-started from the other end.'

      'Which end?'

      'The s-social end.  O-organizing s-society so well that the i-individual simply c-couldn't commit any sins.'

      'But do you honestly think such a society could exist?'

      'P-perhaps,' said Brian doubtfully, but reflected that social change could hardly abolish those ignoble desires of his, couldn't even legitimate those desires, except within certain conventional limits.  He shook his head.  'N-no, I don't kn-know,' he concluded.

      'I can't see that you could do more than just transfer people's sins from one plane to another.  But we've done that already.  Take envy and ambition, for example.  They used to express themselves on the plane of physical violence.  Now, we've reorganized society in such a way that they have to express themselves for the most part in terms of economic competition.'

      'Which we're g-going to ab-abolish.'

      'And so bring physical violence back into fashion, eh?'

      'Th-that's why you h-hope, d-don't you?' said Brian; and laughing, 'You're awful!' he added.

      There was a silence.  Absently, Brian picked up The Way of \Perfection, and, turning over the pages, read a line here, a paragraph there.  Then with a sigh he shut the book, put it back in its place and, shaking his head, 'I c-can't understand,' he said, 'why you read this sort of st-stuff.  S-seeing that you d-don't b-believe in it.'

      'But I do believe,' Anthony insisted.  'Not in the orthodox explanation, of course.  Those are obviously idiotic.  But in the facts.  And in the fundamental metaphysical theory of mysticism.'

      'You m-mean that you can g-get at t-truth by some s-sort of d-direct union with it?'

      Anthony nodded.  'And the most valuable and important sort of truth only in that way.'

      Brian sat for a time in silence, his elbows on his knees, his long face between his hands, staring at the floor.  Then, without looking up, 'It s-seems to me,' he said at last, 'that you're r-running with the h-hare and the h-h-h … and the h-h …'

      'Hunting for the hounds,' Anthony supplied.

      The other nodded.  'Using sc-scepticism against r-religion – ag-against any s-sort of i-idealism, really,' he added, thinking of the barbed mockery with which Anthony loved to puncture any enthusiasm that seemed to him excessive.  'And using th-this st-stuff' – he pointed to The Way of Perfection – 'a-against s-scientific argument, when it s-suits your b-b-b …' 'book' refused to come: 'when it s-suits you bee-double-o-kay.'

      Anthony relit his pipe before answering.  'Well, why shouldn't one make the beset of both worlds?' he asked, as he threw the spent match into the grate.  'Of all the worlds.  Why not?'

      'W-well, c-consistency, s-single-mindedness …'

      'But I don't value single-mindedness.  I value completeness.  I think it's one's duty to develop all one's potentialities – all of them.  Not stupidly stick to only one.  Single-minded-ness!' he repeated.  'But oysters are single-minded.  Ants are single-minded.'

      'S-so are s-saints.'

      'Well, that only confirms my determination not to be a saint.'

      'B-but h-how can you d-do anything if you're not s-single-minded?  It's the f-first cond-dition of any ach-achievement.'

      'Who tells you I want to achieve anything?' asked Anthony.  'I don't.  I want to be, completely.  And I want to know.  And so far as getting to know is doing, I accept the conditions of it, single-mindedly.'  With the stem of his pipe he indicated the books on the table.

      'You d-don't accept the c-conditions of th-that kind of kn-knowing,' Brian retorted, pointing once more at The Way of Perfection.  'P-praying and f-fasting and all th-that.'

      'Because it isn't knowing; it's a special kind of experience.  There's all the difference in the world between knowing and experiencing.  Between learning algebra, for example, and going to bed with a woman.'

      Brian did not smile.  Still staring at the floor, 'B-but you th-think,' he said, 'that m-mystical experience b-brings one into c-contact with truth?'

      'And so does going to bed.'

      'D-does it?' Brian forced himself to ask.  He disliked this sort of conversation, disliked it more than ever now that he was in love with Joan – in love, and yet (he hated himself for it) desiring her basely, wrongly …

      'If it's the right woman,' the other answered with an airy knowingness, as though he had experimented with every kind of female.  In fact, though he would have been ashamed to admit it, he was a virgin.

      'S-so you needn't b-bother about the f-fasting,' said Brian, suddenly ironical.

      Anthony grinned.  'I'm quite content with only knowing about the way of perfection,' he said.

      'I think I should w-want to exp-experience it too,' said Brian, after a pause.

      Anthony shook his head.  'Not worth the price,' he said.  'That's the trouble of all single-minded activity; it costs you your liberty.  You find yourself driven into a corner.  You're a prisoner.'

      'But if you w-want to be f-free, you've g-got to be a p-prisoner.  It's the c-condition of freedom – t-true freedom.'

      'True freedom!' Anthony repeated in the parody of a clerical voice.  'I always love that kind of argument.  The contrary of a thing isn't the contrary; oh, dear me, no!  It's the thing itself, but as it truly is.  Ask a diehard what conservatism is; he'll tell you it's true socialism.  And the brewers' trade papers; they're full of articles about the beauty of True Temperance.  Ordinary temperance is just gross refusal to drink; but true temperance, true temperance is something much more refined.  True temperance is a bottle of claret with each meal and three double whiskies after dinner.  Personally, I'm all for true temperance, because I hate temperance.  But I like being free.  So I won't have anything to do with true freedom.'

      'Which doesn't p-prevent it from being t-true freedom,' the other obstinately insisted.

      'What's in a name?' Anthony went on.  'The answer is, Practically everything, if the name's a good one.  Freedom's a marvellous name. That's why you're so anxious to make use of it.  You think that, if you call imprisonment true freedom, people will be attracted to the prison.  And the worst of it is you're quite right.  The name counts more with most people than the thing.  They'll follow the man who repeats it most often and in the loudest voice.  And of course “True Freedom” is actually a better name than freedom tout court.  Truth – it's one of the magical words.  Combine it with the magic of “freedom” and the effect's terrific.'  After a moment's silence, 'Curious,' he went on, digressively and in another tone, 'that people don't talk about true truth,' he repeated experimentally.  'No, it obviously won't do.  It's like beri-beri, or Wagga-Wagga.  Nigger talk.  You couldn't take it seriously.  If you want to make the contrary of truth acceptable, you've got to call it spiritual truth, or inner truth, or higher truth, or even …'

      'But a m-moment ago you were s-saying that there w-was a k-kind of higher truth.  S-something you could only g-get at m-mystically.  You're c-contradicting yourself.'

      Anthony laughed.  'That's one of the privileges of freedom.  Besides,' he added, more seriously, 'there's that distinction between knowing and experiencing.  Known truth isn't the same as experienced truth.  There ought to be two distinct words.'

      'You m-manage to wr-wriggle out of e-everything.'

      'Not out of everything,' Anthony insisted.  'There'll always be those.'  He pointed again to the books.  'Always knowledge.  The prison of knowledge – because of course knowledge is also a prison.  But I shall always be ready to stay in that prison.'

      'A-always?' Brian questioned.

      'Why not?'

      'Too m-much of a l-luxury.'

      'On the contrary.  It's a case of scorning delights and living laborious days.'

      'Which are thems-selves del-lightful.'

      'Of course.  But mayn't one take pleasure in one's work?'

      Brian nodded.  'It's not exactly th-that,' he said.  'One doesn't w-want to exp-ploit one's p-privileges.'

      'Mine's only a little one,' said Anthony.  'About six pounds a week,' he added, specifying the income that had come to him from his mother.'

      'P-plus all the r-rest.'

      'Which rest?'

      'The l-luck that you happen to l-like this sort of thing.'  He reached out and touched the folio Bayles.  'And all your g-gifts.'

      'But I can't artificially make myself stupid,' Anthony objected.  'Nor can you.'

      'N-no, but we can use what we've g-got for s-something else.'

      'Something we're not suited for,' the other suggested sarcastically.

      Ignoring the mockery, 'As a k-kind of th-thank-offering,' Brian went on with a still intenser passion of earnestness.

      'For what?'

      'For all that we've been g-given.  M-money, to start with.  And then kn-knowledge, t-taste, the power to c-c …' He wanted to say 'create,' but had to be content with 'to do things.'  'B-being a scholar or an artist – it's l-like purs-suing your p-personal salvation.  But there's also the k-kingdom of G-god.  W-waiting to be realized.'

      'By the Fabians?' asked Anthony in a tone of pretended ingenuousness.

      'Am-among others.'  There was a long half-minute of silence.  'Shall I say it?' Brian was wondering.  'Shall I tell him?'  And suddenly, as though a dam had burst, his irresolution was swept away.  'I've decided,' he said aloud, and the feeling with which he spoke the words was so strong that it lifted him, almost without his knowledge, to his feet and sent him striding restlessly about the room, 'I've decided that I shall g-go on with ph-philosophy and l-literature and h-history till I'm thirty.  Then it'll be time to do something else.  S-something more dir-rect.'

      'Direct?' Anthony repeated.  'In what way?'

      'In getting at p-people.  In r-realizing the k-kingdom of G-god …'  The very intensity of his desire to communicate what he was feeling reduced him to dumbness.

      Listening to Brian's words, looking up into the serious and ardent face, Anthony felt himself touched, profoundly, to the quick of his being … felt himself touched, and, for that very reason, came at once under a kind of compulsion, as though in self-defence, to react to his own emotion, and his friend's, with a piece of derision.  'Washing the feet of the poor, for example,' he suggested.  'And drying them on your hair.  I'll be awkward if you go prematurely bald.'

      Afterwards, when Brian had gone, he felt ashamed of his ignoble ribaldry – humiliated, at the same time, by the unreflecting automatism with which he had brought it out.  Like those pithed frogs that twitch when you apply a drop of acid to their skin.  A brainless response.

      'Damn!' he said aloud, then picked up his book.

      He was deep once more in The Way of Perfection, when there was a thump at the door and a voice, deliberately harshened so as to be like the voice of a drill-sergeant on parade, shouted his name.

      'These bloody stairs of yours!' said Gerry Watchett as he came in.  'Why the devil do you live in such a filthy hole?'

      Gerry Watchett was fair-skinned, with small, unemphatic features and wavy golden-brown hair.  A good-looking young man, but good-looking, in spite of is height and powerful build, almost to girlish prettiness.  For the casual observer, there was an air about him of Arcadian freshness and innocence, strangely belied, however, upon a closer examination, by the hard insolence in his blue eyes, by the faint smile of derision and contempt that kept returning to his face, by the startling coarseness of those thick-fingered, short-nailed hands.

      Anthony pointed to a chair.  But the other shook his head.  'No, I'm in a hurry.  Just rushed in to say you've got to come to dinner tonight.'

      'But I can't.'

      Gerry frowned.  'Why not?'

      'I've got a meeting of the Fabians.'

      'And you call that a reason for not coming to dine with me?'

      'Seeing I've promised to …'

      'Then I can expect you at eight?'

      'But really …'

      'Don't be a fool!  What does it matter?  A mother's meeting?'

      'But what excuse shall I give?

      'Any bloody thing you like.  Tell them you've just had twins.'

      'All right, then,' Anthony agreed at last.  'I'll come.'

      'Thank you very kindly,' said Gerry, with mock politeness.  'I'd have broken your neck if you hadn't.  Well, so long.'  At the door he halted.  'I'm having Bimbo Abinger, and Ted, and Willie Monmouth, and Scroope.  I wanted to get old Gorchakov too: but the fool's gone and got ill at the last moment.  That's why I had to ask you,' he added with a quiet matter-of-factness that was far more offensive than any emphasis could have been; then turned, and was gone.

      'Do you l-like him?' Brian had asked one day when Gerry's name came up between them.  And because the question evoked an uneasy echo in his own consciousness, Anthony had answered, with a quite unnecessary sharpness, that of course he liked Gerry.  'Why else do you suppose I go about with him?' he had concluded, looking at Brian with irritable suspicion.  Brian made no reply; and the question had returned like a boomerang upon the asker.  Yes, why did he go about with Gerry?  For of course he didn't like the man; Gerry had hurt and humiliated him, was ready, he knew, to hurt and humiliate him again on the slightest provocation.  Or rather without any provocation at all – just for fun, because it amused to humiliate people, because he had a natural talent for inflicting pain.  So why, why?

      Mere snobbery, as Anthony was forced to admit to himself, was part of the discreditable secret.  It was absurd and ridiculous; but the fact remained, nevertheless, that it pleased him to associate with Gerry and his friends.  To be the intimate of these young aristocrats and plutocrats, and at the same time to know himself their superior in intelligence, taste, judgment, in all the things that really mattered, was satisfying to his vanity.

      Admitting his intellectual superiority, the young barbarians expected him to pay for their admiration by amusing them.  He was their intimate, yes; but as Voltaire was the intimate of Fredrick the Great, as Diderot of the Empress Catherine.  The resident philosopher is not easily distinguished from the court fool.

      With genuine appreciation, but at the same time patronizingly, offensively, 'Good for the Professor!' Gerry would say after one of his sallies.  Or, 'Anthony drink for the old Professor,' as though he were an Italian organ-grinder, playing for pennies.

      The prick of remembered humiliation was sharp like an insect's sting.  With sudden violence Anthony heaved himself out of his chair and began to walk, frowning, up and down the room.

      A middle-class snob tolerated because of his capacities as an entertainer.  The thought was hateful, wounding.  'Why do I stand it?' he wondered.  'Why am I such a damned fool?  I shall write Gerry a note to say I can't come.'  But time passed; the note remained unwritten.  For, after all, he was thinking, there were also advantages, there were also satisfactions.  An evening spent with Gerry and his friends was exhilarating, was educative.  Exhilarating and educative, not because of anything they said or thought – for they were all stupid, all bottomlessly ignorant; but because of what they were, of what their circumstances had made them.  For, thanks to their money and their position, they were able actually to live in such freedom as Anthony had only imagined or read about.  For them, the greater number of the restrictions which had always hedged him in did not even exist.  They permitted themselves as a matter of course licences which he took only in theory, and which he felt constrained even then to justify with all the resources of a carefully perverted metaphysics, an ingeniously adulterated mystical theology.  By the mere force of social and economic circumstances, these ignorant barbarians found themselves quite naturally behaving as he did not dare to behave even after reading all Nietzsche had said about the Superman, or Casanova about women.  Nor did they have to study Patanjali or Jacob Boehme in order to find excuses for their intoxications of wine and sensuality: they just got drunk and had their girls, like that, as though they were in the Garden of Eden.  They faced life, not diffidently and apologetically, as Anthony faced it, not wistfully, from behind invisible bars, but with the serenely insolent assurance of those who know that God intended them to enjoy themselves and had decreed the unfailing acquiescence of their fellows in all their desires.

      True, they also had their confining prejudices; they too on occasion were as ready as poor old Brian to lock themselves up in the prison of a code.  But code and prejudices were of their own particular caste; therefore, so far as Anthony was concerned, without binding force.  Their example delivered him from the chains that his upbringing had fastened upon him, but was powerless to bind him with those other chains in which they themselves walked through life.  In their company the compulsion of respectability, the paralyzing fear of public opinion, the inhibitory maxims of middle-class prudence fell away from him; but when Bimbo Abinger indignantly refused even to listen to the suggestion that he should sell the monstrous old house that was eating up three-quarters of his income, when Scroope complained that he would have to go into Parliament, because in his family the eldest sons had always sat in the House of Commons before coming into the title, Anthony could only feel the amused astonishment of an explorer watching the religious articles of a tribe of blackamoors.  A rational being does not allow himself to be converted to the cult of Mumbo Jumbo; but he will have no objection to occasionally going a bit native.  The worship of Mumbo Jumbo means the acceptance of taboos; going native means freedom.  'True Freedom!' Anthony grinned to himself; his good humour and equanimity had returned.  A snob, a middle-class snob.  No doubt.  But there was a reason for his snobbery, a justification.  And if the lordly young barbarians tended to regard him as a sort of high-class buffoon – well, that was the price he had to pay for their gift of freedom.  There was no price to be paid for associating with the Fabians; but then, how little they had to give him!  Socialist doctrines might to some extent theoretically liberate the intellect; but the example of the young barbarians was a liberation in the sphere of practice.

      'So frightfully sorry,' he scribbled in his note to Brian.  'Suddenly remembered I'd booked myself for dinner tonight.' ('Booked' was one of his father's words – a word he ordinarily detested for its affectation.  Writing a lie, he had found it coming spontaneously to his pen.) 'Alas' (that was also a favourite locution of  his father's), 'shan't be able to listen to you on sin!  Wish I could get out of this, but don't see how.  Yours, A.'

 

      By the time their fruit was on the table they were all pretty drunk.  Gerry Watchett was telling Scroope about that German baroness he had had on the boat, on the way to Egypt.  Abinger had no audience, but was reciting limericks: the Young Lady of Wick, the Old Man of Devizes, the Young Man called Maclean – a whole dictionary of national biography.  Ted and Willie were having a violent quarrel about the best way of shooting grouse.  Alone of the party, Anthony was silent.  Speech would have compromised the delicate happiness he was then enjoying.  That last glass of champagne had made him the inhabitant of a new world, extraordinarily beautiful and precious and significant.  The apples and oranges in the silver bowl were like enormous gems.  Each glass, under the candles, contained not wine, but a great yellow beryl, solid and translucent.  The roses had the glossy texture of satin and the shining hardness and distinctness of form belonging to metal or glass.  Even sound was frozen and crystalline.  The Young Lady of Kew was the equivalent, in his ears, of a piece of sculptured jade, and that violently futile discussion about grouse seemed like a waterfall in winter.  Le transparent glacier des vols qui n'ont pas fui, he thought with heightened pleasure.  Everything was supernaturally brilliant and distinct, but at the same time how remote, how strangely irrelevant!  Bright against the outer twilight of the room, the faces grouped about the table might have been things seen on the other side of a sheet of plate-glass, in an illuminated aquarium.  And the aquarium was not only without, it was also, mysteriously, within him.  Looking through the glass at those sea flowers and submarine gems, he was himself a fish – but a fish of genius, a fish that was also a god.  ICHTHUS – Iesos Christos theou huios soter.  His divine fish-soul hung there, poised in its alien element, gazing, gazing through huge eyes that perceived everything, understood everything, but having no part in what it saw.  Even his own hands lying there on the table in front of him had ceased, in any real sense, to be his.  From his aquarium fastness he viewed them with the same detached and happy admiration as he felt for the fruits and flowers, or those other transfigured bits of still life, the faces of his friends.  Beautiful hands! contrived – how marvellously! - to perform their innumerable functions – the pointing of double-barrelled guns at flying birds, the caressing the thighs of German baronesses in liners, the playing of imaginary scales upon the tablecloth, so.  Enchanted, he watched the movement of his fingers, the smooth sliding of the tendons under the skin.  Exquisite hands!  But no more truly a part of himself, of the essential fish-soul in its timeless aquarium, than the hands of Abinger peeling that banana, the hands of Scroope carrying a match to his cigar.  I am not my body, I am not my sensations, I am not even my mind; I am that I am.  I om that I om.  The sacred word OM represents Him.  God is not limited by time.  For the One is not absent from anything, and yet is separated from all things …

      'Hi, Professor!'  A piece of orange-peel struck him on the cheek.  He started and turned round.  'What the hell are you thinking about?' Gerry Watchett was asking in the purposely harsh voice which it amused him to put on like a hideous mask.

      The momentarily troubled waters of the aquarium had already returned to rest.  A fish once more, a divine and remotely happy Fish, Anthony smiled at him with serene indulgence.

      'I was thinking about Plotinus,' he said.

      'Why Plotinus?'

      'Why Plotinus?  But, my dear sir, isn't it obvious?  Science is reason, and reason is multitudinous.'  The fish had found a tongue; eloquence flowed from the aquarium in an effortless stream.  'But if one happens to be feeling particularly unmultitudinous – well, what else is there to think about except Plotinus?  Unless, of course, you prefer the pseudo-Dionysius, or Eckhart, or St Teresa.   The flight of the Alone to the Alone.  Even St Thomas is forced to admit that no mind can see the divine substance unless it is divorced from bodily senses, either by death or by some rapture.  Some rapture, mark you!  But a rapture is always a rapture, whatever it's due to.  Whether it's champagne, or saying OM, or squinting at your nose, or looking at a crucifix, or making love – preferably in a boat, Gerry; I'm the first to admit it; preferably in a boat.  What are the wild waves saying?  Rapture!  Ecstasy!  Fairly yelling it.  Until, mark you, until, the breath of this corporeal frame and even the motion of our human blood almost suspended, we are laid asleep in body, and become a living soul, while with an eye made quiet …'

      'There was a Young Fellow of Burma,' Abinger suddenly declaimed.

      'Made quiet,' Anthony repeated more loudly, 'by the power of harmony …'

      'Whose betrothed had good reasons to murmur.'

      'And the deep power of joy,' shouted Anthony, 'we see …'

      'But now that they're married he's

      'Been taking cantharides …'

      'We see into the life of things.  The life of things, I tell you.  The life of things.  And damn all Fabians!' he added.

     

      Anthony got back to his lodgings at about a quarter to midnight, and was unpleasantly startled, as he entered the sitting-room, to see someone rising with the violent impatience of a Jack-in-the-box from an armchair.

      God, what a fright …!'

      'At last!' said Mark Staithes.  His emphatically featured face wore an expression of angry impatience.  'I've been waiting nearly an hour.'  Then, with contempt, 'You're drunk,' he added.

      'As though you'd never been drunk!' Anthony retorted.  'I remember …'

      'So do I,' said Mark Staithes, interrupting him.  'But that was in my first year.'  In his first year, when he had felt it necessary to prove that he was manly – manlier than the toughest of them, noisier, harder-drinking.  'I've got something better to do now.'

      'So you imagine,' said Anthony.

      The other looked at his watch.  'I've got about seven minutes,' he said.  'Are you sober enough to listen?'

      Anthony sat down with dignity and in silence.

      Short, but square-shouldered and powerful, Mark stood over him, almost menacingly.  'It's about Brian,' he added.

      'About Brian?'  Then with a knowing smile, 'That reminds me,' Anthony added, 'I ought to have congratulated you on being our future president.'

      'Fool!' said Mark angrily.  'Do you think I go about accepting charity?  When he withdrew, I withdrew too.'

      'And let that dreary little Mumby walk into the job?'

      'What the devil do I care about Mumby?'

      'What do any of us care about anybody?' said Anthony sententiously.  'Nothing, thank god.  Absolutely noth …'

      'What does he mean by insulting me like that?'

      'Why?  Little Mumby?'

      'No; Brian, of course.'

      'He thinks he's being nice to you.'

      'I don't want his damned niceness,' said Mark.  'Why can't he behave properly?'

      'Because it amuses him to behave like a Christian.'

      'Well, then, tell him for God's sake to try it on someone else in future.  I don't like having Christian tricks played on me.'

      'You want a cock to fight with, in fact.'

      'What do you mean?'

      'Otherwise it's no fun being on top of the dunghill.  Whereas Brian would like us all to be jolly little capons together.  Well, so far as dunghills are concerned, I'm all for Brian.  It's when we come to the question of the hens that I begin to hesitate.'

      Mark looked at his watch again.  'I must go.'  At the door he turned back.  'Don't forget to tell him what I've told you.  I like Brian, and I don't want to quarrel with him.  But if he tries being charitable and Christian again …'

      'The poor boy will forfeit your esteem for ever,' concluded Anthony.

      'Buffoon!' said Staithes, and, slamming the door behind him, hurried downstairs.

      Left alone, Anthony took the fifth volume of the Historical Dictionary and began to read what Bayle had to say about Spinoza.