This attitude seemed to me so simple and obvious that I was really astonished at Giles giving no sign of assent. Such perfect stupidity was almost interesting.
“What would you like me to do?” I asked, laughing. “I can’t start a row with him because of the opinion he has formed of me. Of course, I’ve heard of the contemptuous way he alludes to me. But he doesn’t intrude his contempt on my notice. He has never expressed it in my hearing. For even just now he didn’t know we could hear him. I should only make myself ridiculous.”
That hopeless Giles went on puffing at his pipe moodily. All at once his face cleared, and he spoke.
“You missed my point.”
“Have I? I am very glad to hear it,” I said.
With increasing animation he stated again that I had missed his point. Entirely. And in a tone of growing self-conscious complacency he told me that few things escaped his attention, and he was rather used to think them out, and generally from his experience of life and men arrived at the right conclusion.
This bit of self-praise, of course, fitted excellently the laborious inanity of the whole conversation. The whole thing strengthened in me that obscure feeling of life being but a waste of days, which, half-unconsciously, had driven me out of a comfortable berth, away from men I liked, to flee from the menace of emptiness . . . and to find inanity at the first turn. Here was a man of recognized character and achievement disclosed as an absurd and dreary chatterer. And it was probably like this everywhere—from east to west, from the bottom to the top of the social scale.
A great discouragement fell on me. A spiritual drowsiness. Giles’ voice was going on complacently; the very voice of the universal hollow conceit. And I was no longer angry with it. There was nothing original, nothing new, startling, informing, to expect from the world; no opportunities to find out something about oneself, no wisdom to acquire, no fun to enjoy. Everything was stupid and overrated, even as Captain Giles was. So be it.
The name of Hamilton suddenly caught my ear and roused me up.
“I thought we had done with him,” I said, with the greatest possible distaste.