# A Child of the Age (Adams)/Chapter 7

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When I first woke up, I thought I was back in my room at Glastonbury: then recalled, but slowly, all that had happened the day before.—That next-day awakening was a dreary thing: everything that I had done seemed so purposeless! It would be better to marry a red-cheeked woman, with untidy gold hair and a brown homely dress, and smoke a pipe in the sun all day while she brushed out the house. The picture I conjured up made me laugh aloud. I leaped out of bed. The sun was shining.
I went to the other far window: pulled down the upper part, and looked out. The air clear and rather sharp, but not cold: as something almost corporal, to my inhaling lungs. I had no watch. It was about half-past seven or eight, I thought. A man came with sounding steps down the street and passed invisibly below me. I pulled up the window again; stripped, and prepared to wash. Such a little jug and such a little basin! And no sponge!—What was I to do without a sponge?
I made the best of it: dried myself on the one flabby towel, and began to dress. Dressed quickly, and then taking up my hat, went slowly downstairs.
​At the house door, I met Mrs. Smith coming out of the room on the left, where I had seen the card. I said 'Good morning,' and she said 'Good morning, sir,' and I asked if there was a park anywhere near? (I had an idea that there were parks all about London.) She told me that it was about ten minutes sharp walk to the Regent's Park, and gave me some confused directions how to get there. I bought a half-pound of dates and a large brown loaf at a shop close by, and with these under my arm, asked my way, which was a very simple one; passed out of a somewhat dirty road, through some lodge gates, and so over two bridges into the Park itself. I sauntered along the side of the lake, looking at the swans and ducks.
It was a glorious morning. The sun breathed a gentle heat upon me, and warmed me gratefully. The dew was still on the grass: a few people hurried across by the pathways: every now and then a duck whirred through the air. I reached another bridge, went on to it, and stood and watched a flight of sparrows bathing themselves wantonly in the shallows of a small bay on the far shore.
'It is beautiful,' I said.
I ate my dates and loaf on a seat beside a tree on an elevation that runs up there parallel to the curve of the lake. The loaf was of good thick crumby bread, and satisfied without satiating me; the dates, a half-pound, 4d., gave the bread a flavour. The only thing that seemed lacking was a crystal stream from which I might drink a pure cool draught. My breakfast done, I rose almost readily, and went back again to the bridge that leads to the gates. For, the fight is begun and loitering looks like laggardness.
Finding myself in the road that led to my street, Maitland Street, and opposite a small newspaper-stationer's, I went in and invested in a pen, nibs, ink and paper. These were my weapons. Then I proceeded on home: went upstairs: found my bed already made (which was pleasing): put my weapons on the table, myself into the chair and, tilted back, began to consider.
I had seen somewhere or other that Byron received £500 or so for his shorter pieces, 'The Bride of Abydos,' ​'Giaour/ etc. There is, then, surely a good chance of my getting at least £10, or perhaps £20 if my book sells well, for two pieces, each of (say) 600 lines. On that I could subsist for a long time and a long time meant more poems and more money. You see, if you only live as economically as I am going to … Well, many things may be done.
After a little preliminary thought, I came to this: I had had these almost two years two tales in my head, that is, connected narratives with a definite beginning and end; a story, a fact: not the embodiment of a passing humour that, being exalted, has to be climbed up to, but a narrative, to be clothed in the best clothes I could put on it, and then sent on a journey with the reader to amuse and try to instruct him, if only in a lesson of pathos, on the road.—I at once set upon the first of my 'tales.'
By the time it grew dusk, I had finished over two hundred lines of it. I was not at all satisfied. I had not, I thought, twined the melody of the rhythm enough into the sense: that is, had lost some of the scent, in transplanting my flower. I was afraid of becoming a mere painter, and losing the scent altogether. Still, I reflected, the less subtle I try to be, the more likely am I to please those who are likely to read this poem of mine. One must live prose, before one lives poetry: prose is paying for your cake, and poetry is eating it. Get something to support your body first: the body is the keystone. It is no good having your brain full and your belly empty, for at that rate you soon die, and look foolish.
For all such thoughts, I was a little ashamed of what I had done. My muse had not moved me: she dwelt but in the suburbs of my good pleasure. 'Well, well, it cannot be helped.'—So I left her there, and went out into the streets to buy stamps and return Colonel James his money.
I wandered far that night. At last to the Serpentine, where I stood, some little time, trying to explain the lamp reflections across the water—two together, large space, two together. Then I must have gone down Piccadilly, and through Leicester Square: then into ​the Strand, I think, and so down by Charing Cross station, for I went under a bridge and ended on the Embankment.
I came home with an 'aerial breathlessness' upon me: sat down to my poem and finished it. It had indeed moved me this time: two tears had fallen from my eyes. But, what I had heard called 'mysticism' by some people (meaning, as I supposed, that it seemed so to them) had run riot, and I knew that I had not written what I meant to write.—I lost patience. It seemed very hard, that I should not be allowed to try to do my best. I thought, not unbitterly, of the thousands of silly men and women, who squandered on luxury for mere luxury's sake, or hoarded for mere hoarding's sake, that which would enable me … Then it struck me that sometimes men starved.—The thought seemed like a cruel being of darkness. I looked up sharply, almost hearing a sort of clang of its departing wings. And there arose a circling black cloud, from the outer dark-smokiness of which many, many eyes looked at me, the eyes of the many, many men who had struggled and perished. I glanced up sharply again, almost hearing my own mental reply: 'Ay, but great men never struggled and perished: they always struggle and win!' But still that circling black cloud stayed, with the many, many eyes looking at me from the outer dark-smokiness, the eyes of the many, many men who had struggled and perished.
For four days I worked at my two poems: finished them and, sauntering out that night, looked into a newspaper-shop's window by chance, and there noted a publisher's name and address on a board below, and sent him the poems next day. I had said nothing more to him than that I begged to submit them for his inspection, enclosing stamps for their return in case of rejection. I was sure that he would take them.
I spent most of my time in my room, either writing more poetry, or reading and studying a Shakespeare, which I had bought for a few pence in the Edgware Road market one Saturday night from an amusing man who was selling off a cartload of books to the stolid people as he best could. Generally in the late ​afternoon I went out for a walk into the Regent's Park, feeling as if I were away from the streets and the life-worn people there. Many happy hours were spent by me wandering whistling over the middle grass plateau (it seemed to me like a plateau), thinking of my work and, sometimes, of the dear woman to whom some day I should tell all of this; for she had come back to me now, and not quite what she had ever been before, more real because more gentle, more loving, more true, knowing what was in my heart and soul and having much in her own heart and soul that mine would be glad to know of. Often I watched the sun setting in the cloud banks, and once saw him in the dim, slatey, sky-layer, hanging like a blood-red spider, gradually covered with a sort of dusty smokiness and darkened till he was wrapped invisible from me.
I lived all the time on bread, with an occasional relish of fruit or a glass of milk.
I soon learnt my way about, at any rate in one great block that was between Regent's Park and the Thames by Charing Cross. I was very fond of wandering by night: especially to the top of Primrose Hill, to look out over the great city, and the rings of light closer to, as in a vestibule-court of an almost boundless palace-building: especially, too, I loved the populous streets like Oxford Street and the Strand.
One night I had wandered along Oxford Street past the Circus, and then turned down on the right into the block of buildings that is between Seven Dials and Regent Street; had wandered on and on, till I found myself in dim streets, in which every now and then shadows as of women moved with a certain inspiration of fear. I passed close to some of them, drawn as by some latent power of fascination on the ground and in them, but not looking at their faces: till at last, passing somewhat quickly into an alley, I met one face to face under a protruding shadowed lamp. For a moment I stood breathless, with my eyes in the mad wolfishness and glitter of hers, and then, like a lightning flash that fills the whole air, terror of her filled me quite. I leaped aside and then past her: plunged into a dark-covered way that was behind and beyond her, and ​hurried on, past two silver-ornamented women who stood laughing and talking at a corner shop-door, out into a city street again, not streets of this city of horrible shadowiness! But the impression of that place, its shadowed air, its shadowed women, and the mad wolfishness and glitter of their eyes, was upon me all that night, turning my sleep into a nightmare. It was several days before that impression left me.
It was about this time that a vague idea came to me that I had caught some fever. My hands were so hot at nights, and cheeks and ears. I grew so impatient too. One evening I tilted over the table; and the ink-bottle was in the middle of my scattered blacked sheets on the floor, and I was almost crying, and had scarcely heart to pick the things up again.
This was the evening I determined to go down to Norfolk Square and see the house in which Clayton lived. I rose from the table where I had been reading with the light of a coffin-wicked dip-candle (the gas was an extra shilling a week), took up my hat, and set out. It was a long walk. At last I entered Norfolk Square, a long dark oblong, with a long black thin-railed garden in the middle. And, when I found out No. 21, I was facing a lampless eyeless house, up from the area rails of which protruded a towering To Let board. In a few moments, standing, I realised this, and turned away sick at heart. I was quite alone in this city, this careless, cruel London, and, if I were to lie down there in the hollow under the garden rails, and sleep, and never wake again, there would be no one, not a man, not a woman, not a child who … I gave up the thought as I began walking. I had never realised that I was quite alone here before this. The realisation seemed to deaden the soul in me. My later weary wandering of that night saw nothing of what was around me. I reached home somehow, and bed, and sleep.
The next morning I went for a long walk out to Hendon, and when I got there, lying on the grass, felt too languid to move: till at last, I summoned enough resolution to set off home again. It was two when I got there, hungry and yet not hungry, thirsty and yet not thirsty, hot and yet shivering. I sat down: lounged ​over the table, and began to read at the opened Shakespeare. I read on till it grew a little dusk. All at once a few of the letters seemed to disappear or to have disappeared. I strained my eyes. More went. I peered closer. Two atmospheric circles almost invisible were out-turning on either side of my sight. In a little I could make out nothing but a blurred mass where the two small printed pages had been. I closed them up; then leant my face in my arms over the table and closed my eyes; but the two atmospheric circles almost invisible still were out-turning on either side of my sightlessness. I felt dimly that I had made that movement somewhere before: perhaps in a dream? No, it was not in a dream. I remember now. It was once when a boy (and that is why it may have seemed at first like a dream to me) went to the bench and, half upon it, leant his face in his arms on the cool table-cover.… And could not weep soft tears: the tears were dried behind his eyes.
I started up impatiently. I was crying, my hands were wet with my tears. This was all accursed folly! Hysteria: like a woman! What was the matter with me? Was I ill? Or going to be ill? Or what?… I was tired. That was all. It was nothing more.—But my eyes!… O God, if I break down! 'Nay!' I cried aloud, smiling through my tears. 'I'm the boy who says there is no God!' "The fool hath said in his heart——" Cha! That's David's opinion. If ever I write Psalms, I'll put it the other way on. David was the man who never saw the righteous deserted nor the righteous man begging his bread. There 's "inspiration" for you! You blind old driveller you! into the ditch, I say! There'll be plenty of your tribe to follow.' I smiled again, but differently:
'Still Kebes: always hunting out something!'
I had waited for thirteen days now.
It happened that, the afternoon after I had the affair with the eyes, coming home from Hampstead Heath by the Grove End Road with my eyes as usual on the ground, I saw what looked like a small part of a silver coin in a heap of dust by a lamp-post. I stopped; ​bent; stretched down my hand, and found a two-shilling piece. I looked up. I could see no one in the road: no one behind me. I might take it then; for how could I possibly find its owner? And to have found it, I, who had never found anything in my life before! It seemed quite strange.—I had three shillings now. That meant another fortnight. On the force of it, I got a glass of milk, as I went down the Edgware Road.
I came home almost buoyant, and had run up the two first steps before I saw someone was descending. I drew down and back. It was a petticoated being, a girl, but of what sort, the dark of the place and the duskiness of the hour combined to hide. Anyhow, she said 'Thank you,' and went on: and I up and, as I went to my door, I thought that the one on the left must be hers; but perhaps she sleeps up in the attics like a clay-homed swallow? Then I remembered to have heard muffled stirring in that room by mine, and concluded it must indeed be hers, and proceeded to forget all about the matter.
The next day was chilly and rainy. I set out for a walk to Hampstead; for I must, I felt, take exercise to keep 'breakdown' at a fit distance. I had some trouble with my heel which had become sore, till, at last, by the time I was three-quarters there, economical pain-shirking foot positions had made every step painful. None the less I was determined to get as far as the Hampstead Pond. It began to drizzle. I toiled on. I found once that deep thoughts made me forget the pain of movement: so I kept trying this plan, with short-timed success, till (now a quarter way back again, and the rain thicker) a desperate attempt to separate body and soul by resolution proved fruitless. Then an utter despair came upon me. I stood still. It was at a corner in front of the rails of the dingy garden of a lampless house. I could have sunk down upon the shining pavement there; covered my face with my arms, and sobbed myself like a tired child to sleep, but oh! a sleep that should know no waking, no waking to misery and despair! At that moment a light leaped up and out from the big window on the left of the ​door. I saw it, but did not move. Then I leant against the nearer hard, cemented gate-post in that dreary rain of half-darkness, and my body seemed all bloodless. A girl, with her dress huddled up all round her, showing dainty white petticoats and dark-coloured stockings, and with a nice umbrella spread over her, came hurrying up to me. I looked at her slowly. She gave me a quick glance, and hurried more. A devil rose in me. I made a short half-step after her. I would seize her: tear that thing from her hand: rip and rend her laced clothes: rip and rend them off her, till she stood tattered, naked, there in the rain of the half-darkness with me! And all I would desire more, would be to take mud and bespatter and befoul her, and then turn and go on my way with wild laughter. The thoughts were lightning swift. I gave a cry of fierce-suppressed delight: stepped: and halted. Was I mad?—I turned, and went back, and on.
When I got home I set upon a poem by the light of a new dip. If I had had to die for it, alone and in the early grey morning, I could not have kept out my mysticism now I must speak to some one now! it could not always be silence! I had need to speak to some one. I thought my heart was breaking. And I could not fall asleep till I had told my death-tale.
But I was too weary to finish it. I gave it up at last. I was in an evil plight, I knew: burning and shivering and with an empty stomach. I undressed slowly, as usual, in the dark, save for the light that came from the gas-lamp in the street through the far-window. As I got into bed I determined that the next day I would seek some work, even manual; for I did not, after all, care to die till I had heard about my poems (it was ridiculous! I smiled, but in a strange, sad way), and I should have to pay four shillings at the end of the week, rent, and I had only three left for food. 'Wherefore, work must be done if money is to be earned: work, even manual, and why not?' At last I fell asleep.
But in the morning I lay in a half-dreamy, half-exhausted state of heat, from which I had not will enough for long to rouse myself. This grew into a ​dull, languorous lethargy, not unsweet, and in my very bones, making me altogether indifferent to everything save a sort of aching hunger, which at last drove me out of bed to the table for the half-pound of dates and the loaf I had bought last afternoon. I got them: went back into bed again, and, I suppose, ate them. When I awoke it was evening, the gas-lamp lighting up a part of the far end of the room. I felt flushed with the hunger still in me, and became aware of many troublous crumbs in the sheets and some date-stones, but of neither bread nor dates. In a little I got up, and washed and dressed slowly and listlessly, with the dull hunger ever in me. Now I would go out, I thought. I went to the door, opened it, and heard a voice say:
'Well, I can't help it, you must go!' It was Mrs. Smith's voice, harder and drier than usual.
Another answered some soft, pleading words. I leant against the door-post, rather exhausted, scarcely knowing why I stayed there.
A pause. Then:
'You know it's the second week owing,' pursued Mrs. Smith, 'I can't do it any more, and what's more, I won't! So there!… You must give me something, or you must go, that's all.'
'I've only got a shilling,' said the other voice, 'I gave it you. Won't you wait till the end of the week, Mrs. Smith? 'I shall have my wages then?'
'You said that last week! No, not I! Tick's not nat'ral to me, I say. I'm a lone widdy woman, I am, but I pays my way, and why don't every one, I want to know?… Why didn't you pay me last week, then.?'
'I was ill. I had to pay for the medicine.'
'Drat the medicine! You shouldn't be ill.… Come now, what are you going to do? Look sharp. Don't go and be blubbering now. It's no go with me, young woman—that!'
Another pause.
'I've never blubbered to you, Mrs. Smith. I asked you to wait a bit, that's all. I'm down on my luck, that's what I am. A lady took a piece of work I did ​out of hours, a week ago; but she won't pay for it till the end of the month, she says.'
'O my eye, that's likely, ain't it now? It's all fudge—that's what it is! Now look here. You pay me to-night or you go! So there, plain and straight! I've got to live like the rest of you, I suppose? Will you give it me now } What 's more, let me tell you, I'm reg'lar hard up, meeself.… You've given me a shilling already. Now come! give us the rest, and I'll let you go tick for the other week till Saturday.'
Another pause.
'—You know you can get it, if you like, you know you can.' Mrs. Smith's voice too was soft now, but hoarsely.
'I can't! How can I? Or else I would give it you.'
'O you can—if you like.'
'How can I?'
'Oh, come! You know well enough!… You ain't so bad looking as all that.'
I put my hands behind me; my breath went from me. My fingers scraped lightly on the wood and paper. I was trembling all over. I did not know whether to cry out, or, keeping silence, to see what would be the end.
I waited, the blood pulsing through my head, and whirring in my ears, till I was nigh blinded and deafened.
It seemed to me that it was half an hour before either of them spoke again.
Then:
'O do wait, do wait, Mrs. Smith,' pleaded the other, 'I really will pay you on Saturday night. I will really. I've been ill. I will——'
Her voice maddened me. I pulled-to my door somehow and threw myself on to the bed, shivering and clutching myself, muttering into the pillow: 'O, there cannot be a God in heaven, who is just and good and will let such things be!'
At last I stopped.—What would she do? The thought stayed me all into listening for a moment.
Then I began to struggle again, and again stopped and listened. It seemed I was so for hours.
As I listened the fourth or fifth time, I heard Mrs. Smith's voice almost at the door: then there came ​silence: a door closed: I heard slow heavy footsteps with clamping heels go down the stairs. My door was ajar.—I got up, and closed and carefully latched it.
'What would she do?'
'What is the girl to me?' I thought. 'There are hundreds like—what she will be, in this city. And one more: "What is one among so many?" All soulless things too—like me! And useless things too, who will try to do no more than live in the sun, breed maggots, and perish. Whereas I —— What will she do?
I came to my bed and lay, face downwards, on it.
'… That three shillings perhaps means life,' I thought again, 'who knows if I can get any work? and how to live in the meantime? And I'm so frightfully weak.… Means life: means hope, and all my dreams! itteans everything! That is its meaning. And, if I give it up.… No; I won't give it up! I won't give up my life! It is the only thing here: the rest is but hope and fancy.'
I heard a board creak.
Some one went down the stairs quietly but quickly. … Who was it?—Along the passage. The door closed. It was just beneath my head. I seemed to see it, and her. I got on to my knees on the bed: pulled up the piece of linen, that hung half across the window, and looked out.—She was hurrying across the road, with her head bent down, and her hands hanging beside her.
'Let her go?' I thought, 'what is she to me? Let her go. Let her go.—Why, see: if I had gone out in the morning, as I had intended, I might very well never have known anything about it. I will not do it. Why, now——' I stopped.
'You coward!' I cried, 'you miserable coward!'
I covered my face with my hands, pressing my elbows against my body and tightening eveiy muscle in my body.
At last I moaned:
'If I only thought there was a God—who saw us! both!—A good God—who would not leave us die—despairing—I would give it her!—But—as it is—I—I——'
'Coward!' I cried, almost choking. 'Coward!… You cannot let her go!'
​I got up on to the carpeted plank: dragged open the door: and went quickly down the steps. At the foot, with my hand on the latch, I cried out: 'Mrs. Smith! Mrs. Smith!' And, when she came from the room on the left just by me, put the three shillings into her hand, the florin and one shilling, and said:
'There is the money for her.'
I had the door open as her fingers closed. She was staring at me stupidly enough; but I saw that she understood what I meant. Then I stepped out quickly: ran across the road, and stopped for a moment, looking ahead to see if I could see her.… If she escaped me after all!
Three great gas-jets flared some fifty yards down, on the opposite side, in front of a fish-shop. I saw her pass by it, casting an irresolute shadow, her head bent down as before, her hands evidently holding one another in front. A few people were moving to and fro. I walked quickly along the pavement, till I came opposite her.
She hesitated for a moment at the corner of a street. I crossed over, just behind her. As she made her first step forward, I touched her arm, and said:
'Stop.'
She started, turned round sharply, and seemed to recognise me. For a moment we stood facing one another.
'You must not go,' I said, 'I have persuaded Mrs. Smith. She will let you—she will wait till the end of the week.'
She answered nothing. Then I turned from her, and walked away.
I had gone some ten yards, when I heard her running after me. She laid her hand for a moment on my arm, and said, panting:
'You are very kind, sir: very kind. You're very good——'
'I am neither kind, nor good. I have done nothing,' I said.
'You have paid Mrs. Smith for me,' she said, 'I know you have. She would not wait else.—But I will pay you back, sir, for sure, on Saturday.'
​'You need not trouble about it—' (Looking at her face, I added smiling :) 'Child.'
'Indeed, sir, I am very grateful to you,' she said.
I could not bear to listen to her any more.
'It is nothing,' I said. 'I am very glad to have been of any use to you.—Good-night.'
And left her.
Near the end of the street I passed a man who stopped and stared at me, till I noticed it and stopped also, wondering what was the matter. I had no hat on; that was it. I proceeded a little: then, almost as if recollecting something, turned back and came home. I found my hat up in my room: put it on, and went out again. I felt as if I must go, as if I was going, somewhere.
Wandered out towards the Park and then, up-skirting it, on to Primrose Hill, up which I climbed slowly. It seemed to me that I would not much care whether I lived or died. I would seek for no work. No, not I! It was nothing to me what happened, or to anyone else, or to God. I was glad the girl had not been driven to prostitute herself in these hellish London streets. When the barrier of the first time you do a thing is broken through, the second time is easier, and the third easier still. I am only sorry that this miserable carcase of mine should have so conquered me as to give the tyranny of its thoughts to my soul. These last few days have unmade me.'
I stood by a bench not far from the top, and turned, and looked out over the darkness from which came the cool breeze fanning my feverish face. All at once I cried out passionately:
'I will know, I will know!'
Then my head fell down on to my breast, and I said:
'Oh fool, fool! Dost thou think, then, that thou art the first, and wilt be the last, to cry that cry? They have not known, they will never know!—Ay, they are all wise, and they none of them find out anything! They beat the air with heavy flails, proving each other fools and us slaves and beasts, and then they also die, and rot, and are eaten. Behold, I here, a starving beggar-boy, know all that they know, and that is— ​Nothing! Ay, you foolish Wisdoms, that spend your days in spinning clothes of air with which to clothe the long procession of Humanity, behold I here, a starving beggar-boy, laugh at you and say to you what you know: 'Why, you go naked,—naked, as when you came from your mother's womb!' Oh, oh, oh! we are all fools together. And there's a consolation in that; but not much, if you happen to be starving.—Starving? I, starving,' I cried fiercely, 'with a better head on my shoulders than all these damned … Come, come, we mustn't boast—even now!'
Laughing a sad, short laugh, I stepped out and down, and began to descend.
Half way, or so, down, some impulse made me stop and look up. And I saw what I took for a small woman, coming down also, just above the seat where I had been standing. Seeing her, I laughed again.—The poor girl! (For, of course, it was my girl, following me.) She thought me, me! a good, kind, heaven-sent saviour, perhaps?
I burst out into a keen short laugh and went on: went on in home, with the wings of a shadowy bird-thing or moth-thing fluttering in my inner ear.—Up these weary old stairs with an up-pulling arm.—The landing at last.—My door open.—My room.
I took the match-box off its mantelpiece corner; found the candle; struck a light; lit it, and looked. Then I saw a large envelope lying on the table, and started.
I looked at the candle-light, one long half-vacant look, and turned and went to the table, and took up the letter and slowly opened it and read:
'Dear Sir,—Our reader thinks very well of your Poems; but as there is little sale in poetry now-a-days, he does not, on that account, think the work would command a remunerative sale. The following is an extract from the report which we have received on the ms. "There is evidence of power in his book which, with due care and cultivation, may ripen into ability to achieve real and lasting poetic work."
'If it were not for the poor attention poetry attracts in these days, we would gladly have made you an offer for a little work which contains so much beauty and melody.—
Yours faithfully, Parker, Innes, & Co.'
'We are sending the ms. to you per book-post.'
​I put it down with a short laugh, and smiling, shrugged my shoulders.
'Very well. There is nothing left for me now, I suppose, but to write my will after Chatterton, and invest in——arsenic and water, was it? But I forget; I have no money! I must go out into the streets, even at this hour then, and beg a few pence to be able to kill myself, since in London, too, one can't die for nothing! There is the river. My old river at Glastonbury. If I could roll over and over in the long green weeds, why, it wouldn't matter much whether I was able to come back to the brown earth again, would it? And to look up through the dusky, jewelled light-shafts of the currents! Ha, there are flocks down there! I read about it in a story book once, and a man went down in a sack to find them. But he was drownded. No, drowned. Drownded is bad grammar; but what's the odds, I say? These idiotic wordmongers here talk about nothing but grammar …" For a good knowledge of the classics (especially of Cicero) is the foundation of all that is worth knowing in the humani.…"—You think so, my good fellow? You think Art's growing more and more of a drug, do you? And you think, too, that I shall be great—some day? But I've no ambition to be great, I tell you. Fools are great. When they die they rot and are eaten. We all shall die some day, and rot, and be eaten. I wish I were a worm.… Hush! Hush! What was that? Who's there? hi! who's there? Rayne? You, Rayne!—No, I assure you! Not starving! Only——But take care, or you'll have the boat over. Why are women done up like mummies? If ever I have a wife, Rayne, she shall wear knickerbockers, and race up Taygetus.… Hush, hush! Here's Christ come to see me. O dear Christ, O sweet Christ, give me your soft hand! I'll tell you all about it. I seem to know you so much better than God. And I haven't a friend in the world. I'm afraid they won't understand them … Poor little poems! Too mystic; too mystic! I must keep out my mysticism; but how can I, when my heart's breaking? breaking, breaking.… Chut, chut, there! You mustn't sit down on the bed like that. Why, you're ​a woman! These are clothes, and here's . . . your soft breast? And your face? and your hair? O you dear woman, why are you holding me so with your soft arms, and laying my face on your soft breast? Let's go to sleep like that—together. Will you? Come close to me, I will tell you something. Do you know, I've been longing for you to come to me . . . to come to me, ever since … But let's rest, now you are come, dear. I saw a woman with a sweet face to-night. She passed me on the pavement in the crowd: but not so sweet as yours. I love to . . . Closer, closer! Let me feel you, I am beginning to be afraid! Don't let these wasp-waisted waterspouts touch me!. . . How dark it grows.—The waterspouts! the waterspouts! Ashtaroth, the terrible woman! A star over her brow, driving in the midst, under the shadows.—They are on to me! over me! I am sinking!…—Up! up! Hold me up!. . . Catch me by the hair. . . . Rayne!. . . Rayne!'
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