“I have a friend,” said he, “who thinks that all the confusion comes from sloth and fear.”
“I should like to meet that friend.”
[II
HAPPINESS]
Human lack of power in moderating and checking the emotions I call servitude. For a man who is submissive to his emotions is not in power over himself, but in the hands of fortune to such an extent that he is often constrained, although he may see what is better for him, to follow what is worse.
—SPINOZA’S Ethics.
CATHLEEN lived in Bloomsbury with a friend of hers, a Miss Cleethorpe, who managed a hostel for young women, clerks, schoolmistresses, shop girls. René took her there after their long conversation in Kensington Gardens, and then, feeling the impossibility of going back to Mitcham Mews, went up to Kentish Town to see his friend the sandy-haired railway porter. He had visited him once before, about a year ago, and could think of no one else with whom he might take refuge. The little man was delighted to see him:
“It’s the sleeper!” he cried. “Lord! I’ve often wondered if you’d go off again, and when you told me you were in the taxi-driving, I said to myself: ‘Well, that’ll keep him awake.’”
Yes. He would be glad to let him have a bed. Wanting to sleep, eh? He often felt like that himself: day after day, day after day, working, and the suburban traffic growing so fast that they couldn’t put on enough trains, and the station morning and evening was like Bedlam.
“London,” he said, “is not what it was when I first came to it. I used to know all the regular gentlemen. But now—well, I tell you, they don’t have a nod for anyone. A bee-line for the city in the morning, and a bee-line for home in the evening. It makes you feel small, it does.”