P.S. Or rather one part of me conquered. I’ve got into the habit of associating myself with that part and applauding when it triumphs. But, after all, is it the best part? In these particular circumstances, perhaps yes. It’s probably better to be dispassionately analytical than to be overwhelmed by Everard’s stage-managing and eloquence into becoming a British Freeman. But in other circumstances? Rampion’s probably right. But having made a habit of dividing and conquering in the name of the intellect, it’s hard to stop. And perhaps it isn’t entirely a matter of second nature; perhaps first nature comes in too. It’s easy to believe one ought to change one’s mode of living. The difficulty is to act on the belief. This settlement in the country, for example; this being rustic and paternal and a good neighbour; this living vegetably and intuitively—is it really going to be possible? I imagine it; but in fact, in fact … ? Meanwhile, it might be rather interesting to concoct a character on these lines.
A man who has always taken pains to encourage his own intellectualist tendencies at the expense of all the others. He avoids personal relationships as much as he can, he observes without participating, doesn’t like to give himself away, is always a spectator rather than an actor. Again, he has always been careful not to distinguish one day, one place from another; not to review the past and anticipate the future at the New Year, not to celebrate Christmas or birthdays, not to revisit the scenes of his childhood, not to make pilgrimages to the birthplaces of great men, battlefields, ruins, and the like. By this suppression of emotional relationships and natural piety he seems to himself to be achieving freedom—freedom from sentimentality, from the irrational, from passion, from impulse and emotionalism. But in reality, as he gradually discovers, he has only narrowed and desiccated his life, and what’s more, has cramped his intellect by the very process he thought would emancipate it. His reason’s free, but only to deal with a small fraction of experience. He realizes his psychological defects, and desires, in theory, to change. But it’s difficult to break lifelong habits; and perhaps the habits are only the expression of an inborn indifference and coldness which it might be almost impossible to overcome. And for him at any rate, the merely intellectual life is easier; it’s the line of least resistance, because it’s the line that avoids other human beings. Among them his wife. For he’d have a wife and there would be the elements of drama in the relations between the woman, living mainly with her emotions and intuitions, and the man whose existence is mainly on the abstracted intellectual plane. He loves her in his way and she loves him in hers. Which means that he’s contented and she’s dissatisfied; for love in his way entails the minimum of those warm, confiding human relationships which constitute the essence of love in her way. She complains; he would like to give more, but finds it hard to change himself. She even threatens to leave him for a more human lover; but she is too much in love with him to put the threat into effect.
That Sunday afternoon Elinor and Everard Webley drove down into the country.
“Forty-three miles in an hour and seven minutes,” said Everard, looking at his watch as he stepped out of the car. “Not bad, considering that includes getting out of London and being held up by that filthy charabanc in Guildford. Not at all bad.”
“And what’s more,” said Elinor, “we’re still alive. If you knew the number of times I just shut my eyes and only expected to open them again on the Day of Judgment …”
He laughed, rather glad that she should have been so frightened by the furiousness of his driving. Her terrors gave him a pleasing sense of power and superiority. He took her arm protectively and they walked away down the green path into the wood. Everard drew a deep breath.
“This is better than making political speeches,” he said, pressing her arm.
“Still,” said Elinor, “it must be rather wonderful to sit on a horse and make a thousand people do whatever you want.”
Everard laughed. “Unfortunately there’s a bit more in politics than that.” He glanced at her. “You enjoyed the meeting?”
“I was thrilled.” She saw him again on his white horse, heard his strong vibrating voice, remembered her exultation and those sudden tears. Magnificent, she said to herself, magnificent! But there was no recapturing the exultation. His hand was on her arm, his huge presence loomed almost threateningly over her. “Is he going to kiss me?” she nervously wondered. She tried to drive out the questioning dread and fill its place with yesterday’s exultation. Magnificent! But the dread would not be exorcized. “I thought your speech was splendid,” she said aloud, and wondered parenthetically as she spoke what it had been about. She remembered the sound and timbre of the words, but not their significance. Hopeless! “Oh, what lovely honeysuckle!”
Everard reached up, enormous, and picked a couple of blossoms. “Such beauty, such loveliness!” He quoted Keats, fumbled in his memory for a line in the Midsummer Night’s Dream. He wondered lyrically why one lived in towns, why one wasted one’s time in the pursuit of money and power, when there was all this beauty waiting to be known and loved.
Elinor listened rather uncomfortably. He seemed to turn it on, this love of beauty, like an electric light—turn out the love of power, turn out efficiency and political preoccupations, and turn on the love of beauty. But why shouldn’t he, after all? There was nothing wrong in liking beautiful things. Nothing, except that in some obscure, indescribable way Everard’s love of beauty wasn’t
