“I’m not forcing anything. It’s Roger who forces his scepticism and his satire on us,” Palgrave declared.
“I’m sorry to have displeased you,” said Oldmeadow with a slight severity. “I am unaware of having displayed my disagreeable qualities more than is usual with me.”
“Of course not. What rot, Palgrave! Roger is always disagreeable, bless him!” Barney declared with a forced laugh. “Adrienne understands him perfectly. As he says: she isn’t stupid.”
“Oh, all right. I’m sorry,” Palgrave rose, thrusting his hands in his pockets and looking down at the two as he stood above them. He hesitated and then went on: “All I know is that for the first time in my life—the very first time, mind you—all the things we are told about in religion, all the things we read about in poetry, the things we’re supposed to care for and live by, have been made real to me—outside of books and churches. What do we ever see of them at home here, with dear Mummy and the girls? What do we ever talk of, all of us—but the everlasting round—hunting, gardening, cricket, hay; village treats and village charities. A lot of chatter about people—What a rotter So-and-so is; and How perfectly sweet somebody else: and a little about politics—Why doesn’t somebody shoot Lloyd George?—and How wicked Home Rulers are. That’s about all it amounts to. Oh, I know we’re not as stupid as we sound. She sees that. We can feel things and see things though we express ourselves like savages. But we’re too comfortable to think; that’s what’s the trouble with us. We don’t want to change; and thought means change. And we’re shy; idiotically shy; afraid to express anything as it really comes to us; so that I sometimes wonder if things will go on coming; if we shan’t become like the Chinese—a sort of objet d’art set of people, living by rote, in a rut. Well. That’s all I mean. With her one isn’t ashamed or afraid to know and say what one feels. With her one wants to feel more. And I, for one, reverence her and am grateful to her for having made beauty and goodness real to me.” Having so delivered himself, Palgrave, who had, after his deep flush, become pale, turned away and marched out of the room.
The older men sat silent for a moment, Oldmeadow continuing to smoke and Barney turning the stem of his wine-glass in his fingers. “I’m awfully sorry,” he said at last. “I can’t think what’s got into the boy. He’s in rather a moil just now, I fancy.”
“He’s a dear boy,” said Oldmeadow. “There’s any amount of truth in what he says. He’s at an age when one sees these things, if one is ever going to see them. I hope he’ll run straight. He ought to amount to something.”
“That’s what Adrienne says,” said Barney. “She says he’s a poet. You think, too, then, that we’re all in such a rut; living Chinese lives; automata?”
“It’s the problem of civilization, isn’t it, to combine automatism with freedom. Without a rut to walk in you reach nowhere—if we’re to walk together. And yet we must manage to ramble, too; individuals must; that’s what it comes to, I suppose. Individuals must take the risk of rambling and alter the line of the rut for the others. Palgrave may be a rambler. But I hope he won’t go too far afield.”
“You do like her, Roger, don’t you?” said Barney suddenly.
It had had to come. Oldmeadow knew that, as the depth of silence fell about them. It was inevitable between them, of course. Yet he wished it might have been avoided, since now it must be too late. He pressed out the glow of his cigar and leaned his arms on the table, not looking at his friend while he meditated, and he said finally—and it might seem, he knew, another evasion—“Look here, Barney, I must tell you something. You know how much I care about Nancy. Well, that’s the trouble. It’s Nancy I wanted you to marry.”