'We're alive! So we deserve it.'
They swept the meadows and the pine copse in their flight. There was a crimson dawn. They smelt the sea, the wide salt marshes. Freedom of space was theirs.
Perhaps he didn't quite understand what she meant, yet it made him feel happy and careless. In a sense it made him feel—spiritual. She had said something that was beyond the reach of language, of accurate language. But it was true, true as a turnip. It satisfied him as a mouthful of mashed potatoes, and was as easy to eat and swallow. What a simile! He laughed to himself.
'Be more accurate in your language,' he said slyly.
'And stick in grammar all your life!' she replied. They moved on. Tom looked superior and aloof. He did not belong to this ridiculous party.
'Hurry up, Daddy,' and Joan poked him in the ribs. 'Mother's waiting. You're thinking of your old Primers.' It was true. He had paused a moment. A sentence had flashed into his mind and made him stop, while Mother and Tom were waiting in the corridor beyond, something about the 'courage of a fly.'
A fly, the most fearless of attack of all creatures, an insect incapable of fear. He remembered that Athena gave Menelaus, in order that he might resist Hector—what? Not weapons or money or skill or strength. No. Athena gave him—'the courage of a fly.'
It struck him suddenly that the reckless courage of a fly—a fly that settles on the nose, the lips, the hand of a being enormously more powerful and terrible than itself—was unequalled among all living creatures. No lion or tiger dared the half, no man the quarter. But a fly, depending solely on its swift, unconquerable wings and power of darting flight, risked these amazing odds. He—in paying this high price for the tickets recklessly—had shown the courage of the fly: the sneers of Tom, the abuse of Mother, the scorn of cautious and careful convention. He had the money in his pocket, then why not spend it? His labour had deserved it; he had earned it; he was indeed 'alive.' Like an audacious fly he had settled on the nose of Fate. And all this Joan had snapped into a sentence:
'We deserve it. We're alive!'
'Is it all right, dear?' asked Mother anxiously. She was stuck with her elaborate flounces in a corner of the corridor. The programme-seller was at her elbow, pressingly.