“Of course they’re beasts.” It was the adjusted image to which she had brought that other perception of men which, running parallel with the perception of their superior position, had permeated her childhood years.
CHAPTER IV
She’s left the school! She’s living in the splendid house in Pilchester Square looking for a post!
She’s found a post! She’s private secretary to Mr. Simcox!
She’s left the splendid house in Pilchester Square! She’s living an independent life! She’s going to Mr. Simcox’s office, her office, every day, just like a man! She’s living on her own salary in a boarding house in Bayswater!
What jumps! One clutches, as at flying papers in a whirlwind, at a stable moment in which to pin her down and describe her as she jumps. One can’t. The thing’s too breathless. It’s a maelstrom. It’s an earthquake. It’s a deluge. It’s a boiling pot. It’s youth. What it must be to live it! One thing pouring on to another so that it’s impossible anywhere to pick hold of a bit that isn’t changing into something else even as it is examined. That’s youth all over. Always and all the time all change. What it must be to live it!
What it must be! Why, when youth comes bursting out of tutelage there’s not a stable thing beneath its feet nor above its head a sky that stays the same for two hours together! Every stride’s a stepping-stone that tilts and throws you; every dawn a sudden midnight even while it breaks, and every night a blinding brilliance when it’s darkest. New faces, new places, new dresses, new dishes; new foes, new friends; new tasks, new triumphs; never a pause, never a platform; every day a year and every year a day—not life on a firm round world but life in the heart of a whirling avalanche. How youth can live it! And all the time, all the time while poor, dear youth is hurtling through it, there’s age, instead of streaming sympathy like oil upon those boiling waters, standing in slippered safety, in buttoned dignity, in obese repose, bawling at tumbling youth, “Why can’t you settle down! Why can’t you settle down! Why do you behave like that? Why can’t you do as I do? Why can’t you be like your wise and sober Uncle Forty? Or like your good and earnest Auntie Fifty? Why can’t you behave like your pious grandmother? Why can’t you imitate your noble grandfather? Oh, grrrr-r, why can’t you, you impious, unnatural, ill-mannered, irresponsive, irresponsible exasperating young nuisance, you!” Is it any wonder poor youth bawls back, or feels and behaves like bawling back, “How to goodness can I behave like my infernal uncle or my maddening aunt when I’m whirling along head over heels in the middle of a roaring avalanche?”
Oh, poor youth, that all have lived but none remembers!