“Work, if you like to put it so; it’s the same thing. The trouble so far has been I haven’t worked hard enough. I’ve stopped to speak to the woman by the wayside. I’ve paltered with compromise, and the other thing has caught me.… I’ve got to renounce it, that is all.”
“It isn’t that your work is contemptible.”
“By Jove! No. It’s—arduous. It has its dusty moments. There are places to climb that are not only steep but muddy——”
“The world wants leaders. It gives a man of your class a great deal. Leisure. Honour. Training and high traditions——”
“And it expects something back. I know. I am wrong—have been wrong anyhow. This dream has taken me wonderfully. And I must renounce it. After all it is not so much—to renounce a dream. It’s no more than deciding to live. There are big things in the world for men to do.”
Melville produced an elaborate conceit. “If there is no Venus Anadyomene,” he said, “there is Michael and his Sword.”
“The stern angel in armour! But then he had a good palpable dragon to slash and not his own desires. And our way nowadays is to do a deal with the dragons somehow, raise the minimum wage and get a better housing for the working classes by hook or by crook.”
Melville does not think that was a fair treatment of his suggestion.
“No,” said Chatteris, “I’ve no doubt about the choice. I’m going to fall in—with the species; I’m going to take my place in the ranks in that great battle for the future which is the meaning of life. I want a moral cold bath and I mean to take one. This lax dalliance with dreams and desires must end. I will make a time table for my hours and a rule for my life, I will entangle my honour in controversies, I will give myself to service, as a man should do. Clean-handed work, struggle, and performance.”
“And there is Miss Glendower, you know.”