There was nothing else for it! His thoughts were betraying him. He had to have alcohol. He rolled to one side of the bed, tore his collar open, and staggered to his feet. Already, the resolution to indulge himself softened the clash of uncertainties. When he had gone to a cellarette, and taken a drink from a decanter there, his misery grew warm and sweet. His body was inundated in the hot painful essence of his own soul. He was helpless and at ease, bathed in himself.
Standing by the window, he watched the cold small moon rising above the houses on the other side of the street. Strange and alone in whiteness, it flashed above the dark roofs that glistened with a purplish light. Charles, startled by the poesy of his own mood, compared it to a piece of shattered mirror reflecting emptiness. He was ingenuously surprised by his imaginings. Staring, with his large naïve eyes, at the glowing moon in the profound starless sky, he was convinced of an incredible beauty in everything, but particularly in himself.
Paul knew that in a fortnight he was expected to be away at college. Without having spoken to any one of his resolve, he had decided on rebellion. Of late he had been a regular attendant at industrial gatherings. When he talked to Socialists, Communists, or even people with anarchistic leanings, he was conscious of making himself absurd with the illogical violence of his remarks. He felt that he was continually doing himself an injustice, for almost everything he said suggested that he was taking the side of the oppressed only to gratify a personal spite. At the same time, he confessed to himself that the revolution pleased him doubly when it emphasized the triviality and complacency of women like Julia and her friends, who titillated their vanity by trifling with matters which concerned the actual life and death of a huge, semi-submerged class.
On one occasion he listened to the tempestuous speech of a young Rumanian Jewess, and was exalted by the mere passion of her words, irrespective of their content. It seemed beautiful to him that this young woman, under the suspicion of the police, was able to express her faith with such utter recklessness. He wished that he too might endanger himself. He hated the bourgeois comfort of his uncle's home. In order to achieve such righteous defiance it was necessary to suffer something at the hands of the enemy. Instead of running away to sea, as he had at first planned, he decided that he ought to go into a factory to work, and live in a low quarter of the city. There was Byronic pleasure in imagining the loneliness that would be his lot. His desperation would be a rebuke to those who despised him as a credulous youth. Above everything, he wanted to be poor and socially lost. When he was at home, his uncle nagged him and his aunt watched him continually with curiosity and resentment. She thought he was lazy, that he lounged about the streets and was untidy in his dress.
Paul haunted slums where sex in its crudest form was always manifest. He treasured his aversion to it. The deeper understanding of life had lifted him above its necessities. He was never so much in the mood to enter the battle for industrial right, in utter disregard of selfish interests, as after resisting an appeal to what he termed his elemental nature. Then he became impatient of his exclusion from present dangers.
At last he was introduced to the Rumanian Jewess he had so much admired. But when he saw that she was interested in men, and even something of a coquette, it filled him with repugnance. He observed much in her that he had not taken account of before. There was something coarse and sensual in her heavy figure. Her skin, that was dark and oily, now appeared to him unclean. And in her friendly eyes, with their look of frank invitation, he discovered a secret depravity. This made him question the need to merge his sense of self in the impersonal self of the working class. It seemed certain that, to remain pure for leadership, he must live apart.
In the vague morning street figures passed dimly on their way to work. The sun, half visible, melted in pale rays that trembled on the wet roofs of houses. The diffused shadows lay on the pavements in transparent veils. Julia, on her way to the laboratory, saw Paul walking in front of her, stooping, a tall, awkward figure with a cap pulled over its face. She called, "Paul!" She noticed that he hesitated perceptibly before he glanced back. In her state of mind she felt rebuked for everything that went wrong around her. Paul's hesitation challenged her conscience.
He turned and awaited her approach. She took his cold limp fingers. He seemed shy—almost angry—and would not look at her. "May and I have missed you, Paul. Were you trying to run away from me?" A moment before hearing her voice he had felt worldly and old and self-possessed. He hated himself because, at the time, she always obliged him to believe in her estimate of him rather than his own. He walked along beside her with his hands in his pockets, his head lowered. "Until I met your aunt the other day I thought you had taken the long voyage you were always talking about. We haven't been such bad friends that we deserve to be ignored, have we?"