“Well, maybe.”
The confiding shoulder rested more heavily against him as against a cushion and she began to hum a tune. She seemed to have forgotten the points of the compass, him, everything, just as a child suddenly forgets everything in day-dream land.
The absolute contentment of doing nothing, resting, listening to the waves, had fallen upon him too, with a something else, a sort of mesmerism born of his companion, the strangest feeling as though Jude were a part of himself, as though he had put his arm round his own waist and a new self,—a much pleasanter self than the old one, less stiff, more human, and somehow more alive.
The metronomic rhythm of the little waves falling on the sand seemed to mix his thoughts together and blur them; but he saw Skelton, Sir William Skelton, Bart., he saw a girl he, Ratcliffe, had been engaged to, he saw all sorts of men and all sorts of women, everyone he had ever known, it seemed to him, in a nebulous cluster, and they all seemed, somehow, not quite alive,—not dead, but sleeping in the trance we call civilization, their days ordered by the beat of a metronome,—get up—wash—dress—eat—work or play—eat—work or play—eat—work or play—bed—sleep—get up—wash—dress etc.,—all the figures moving like one, their very laughter and tears ordered except when they got drunk or went mad.
It seemed to him that vivid life was not so much a question of vitality as of freedom.
Was that the secret Satan had discovered,—Satan, who had no hankering after great riches, but was free as a gull? Satan and Jude were gulls,—seagulls, untamable as seagulls and as far from civilization! It was as though his arm were round a bird,—quiescent by some miracle and allowing him to handle it, and imparting to him, somehow, the knowledge of its vitality,—the vitality of freedom.
“What I like about the old Sarah,” said he, “is the way she just pots about—with nothing to do.”
“Nothing to do!”
“Well, you and Satan can take things easy.”
“Oh, can we? That’s news—what d’you call easy?”