“Write. I’ve got it in me.... But I’ve got off the track. I was showing you that cigarette case because I wanted to ask you if you could imagine what it was like to be an outcast, to have money enough to buy things like that, and to see how they’re begrudged to you. Every time I used to go in to buy things I’d earned enough money to buy, I was made to feel that. My money was good enough, but I wasn’t. If you could have seen the swell English tailor I bought my clothes from! He hated me for being able to get them. Because I’m ‘common.’ Well, as a matter of fact, I’m really very uncommon—darned uncommon.... The point I’m making is, that all the fine, good things in the world are put aside for a few people. Everybody knows it. All the shop people know it. They don’t want outsiders to get any of their choice things. They’re like watch-dogs—fool watch-dogs, starving to death while they watch other people’s meat.... When I was younger and doing more reading and thinking, I used to think the best way to bring about the changes I hoped to see was for the people on top to be awakened. They’ve got the money, the leisure, the power, the education, I thought.... But I learned pretty soon it would never come that way. They haven’t got either brains or compassion enough. They’ve used all their privileges to corrupt, not to enlighten. And not through wickedness or diplomacy, mind you, but from stupidity.”
He pulled out his watch.
“Oh!” he said. “I’ve got to go! Are you all right?”
“Perfectly, thank you!” she answered, smiling. “Only a little confused by all you’ve been telling me.”
It was not his words, however, that remained in her memory after he had gone. They meant little to her. It was the curious vitality and force of the man, his candour, his innocence, his baffling air of certainty. She thought of his activities, his ideas, his tireless flow of talk, and the woods, usually so full of interest and charm for her, were suddenly blank. The mystery and wonder she had seen in the smallest plant were suddenly nothing at all in comparison to the wonder of a human being.
She became uneasily doubtful of her philosophic attitude toward her fellows, her great desire to escape them.
“He’s ...” she thought, with half a smile. “He’s a breath of life in all this stagnation.... A breath of life!”
CHAPTER SIX
THE UNLAWFUL PICNIC
§ i
AFTER lunch they all, Claudine, Andrée, and Edna, dressed themselves in their ceremonial garments, the modish and immaculate white required by the gold-providing Gilbert, and went down to the railway station to meet him. There were other wives there, and other children, and a little swarm of bucolic onlookers. And there was also the “breath of life” in tramping outfit, with immense waterproof boots and a new Panama hat. He came over to them immediately.