“I’ve never read them,” said she, “but I’ve heard their names often enough to follow you. Go on.”
“When I had read them, I started thinking, I thought a great deal ... and then I wanted to work. As a labourer. So as to understand all those who were destitute.... God, how difficult words are! I simply can’t speak to you about myself.”
“And about Peace you speak ... as if you were inspired!”
“About Peace ... perhaps, but not about myself. I went to America, I became a workman. But the terrible thing was that I felt I was not a workman. I had money. I gave it all to the poor ... nearly. But I kept just enough never to be hungry, to live a little more comfortably than my mates, to take a day’s rest when I was tired, to buy meat and wine and medicines when I wanted them ... to go to the theatre dressed as a gentleman. Do you understand? I was a Sunday workman. I was an amateur labourer. I remained a gentleman, a ‘toff.’ I come of a good middle-class family: well, over there, in America, while I was a workman, I remained—I became even more than I had been—an aristocrat. I felt that I was far above my fellow-workmen. I knew more than they, I knew a great deal: they could tell it by listening to me. I was finer-grained, more delicately constituted than they: they could tell it by looking at me. They regarded me as a wastrel who had been kicked out of doors, who had ‘seen better days;’ but they continued to think me a gentleman and I myself felt a gentleman, a ‘toff.’ I never became a proper workman. I should have liked to, so as to understand the workman thoroughly and afterwards, in the light of my knowledge, to work for his welfare, back in my own country, in my own station of life. But, though I was living among working people, I did not understand them. I shuddered involuntarily at their jokes, their oaths, their drinking, their friendship even. I remained a gentleman, a ‘toff.’ I remained of a different blood and a different culture. My ideas and my theories would have had me resemble my mates; but all my former life—my birth, my upbringing, my education—all my own and my parents’ past, all my inherited instincts were against it. I simply could not fraternize with them. I kept on trying something different, thinking it was that that was amiss: a different sort of work, a different occupation. Nothing made any difference. I remained a harmless, inquisitive amateur; and just that settled conviction, that I could leave off at any time if I wished, was the reason why my life never became the profoundly serious thing which I would have had it. It remained amateurish. It became almost a mockery of the life of my mates. I was free and they were slaves. I was vigorous and they were worked to death. To me, after my brain-work, that manual and muscular labour came as a tonic. If I was overtired, I rested, left my job, looked for something else after a few weeks. The others would be sweated, right up to their old age, till they had yielded the last ounce of their working-power. I should work just as long as I took pleasure in it. I looked healthy and well, even though my face and hands became rough. I ate in proportion to the hardness of my work. And I thought: if they could all eat as I do, it would be all right. Then I felt ashamed of myself, distributed all my money, secretly, among the poor and lived solely on my wages ... until I fell ill ... and cured myself with my money. It became absurd. And never more so than when I, habitually well-fed, looked down upon my mates because their unalterable ideal appeared to be ... to eat beef every day! Do they long for nothing better and higher and nobler, I thought, than to eat beef? It was easy for me to think like that and look down on them, I who ate beef whenever I wanted to! Well-fed, even though tired with my work, I could think of nobler things than beef. And yet ... and yet, though I felt all this at the time, I still continued to despise them for their base ideal. That was because of my blood and my birth, but especially because of my superior training and education. And then I became very despondent and thought, ‘I shall never feel myself their brother; I shall remain a gentleman, a “toff;” it is not my fault: it is the fault of everything, of all my past life.’ ... Then, suddenly, without any transition, I went back to Europe. I have lectured here ... on Peace. In a year’s time, perhaps, I shall be lecturing on War. I am still seeking. I no longer know anything. Properly speaking, I never did know anything. I seek and seek.... But why have I talked to you at such length about myself? I am ashamed of myself, I am ashamed. Perhaps I have no right to go on seeking. A man seeks when he is young, does he not? When he has come to my age, which is the same as yours, he ought to have found and he has no right to go on seeking. And, if he hasn’t found, then he looks back upon his life as one colossal failure, as one huge mistake—mistake upon mistake—and then things become hopeless, hopeless, hopeless....”
She was silent....
She thought of her own life, her small feminine life—the life of a small soul that had not thought and had not felt, that was only just beginning to feel and only just beginning at rare intervals to think—and she saw her own small life also wasting the years in mistake upon mistake.
“Oh,” he said, in a voice filled with longing, “to have found what one might have gone on seeking for years! To have found, when young, happiness ... for one’s self ... and for others! Oh, to be young, to be once more young!... And then to seek ... and then to find when young ... and to meet when young ... and to be happy when young and to make others—everybody!—happy!... To be young, oh, to be young!”
“But you are not old,” she said. “You are in the prime of life.”
“I hate that phrase,” he said, gloomily. “The prime of life occurs at my age in people who do not seek, but who have quietly travelled a definite, known path. Those are the people who, when they are my age, are in the prime of life. I am not: I have sought; I have never found. I now feel all the sadness of my wasted efforts; I now feel ... old. I feel old. What more can I do now? Think a little more; try to keep abreast of modern thought and modern conditions; seek a little, like a blind man. And,” with a bitter laugh, “I have even lost that right: the right to seek. You seek only when you are very young, or else it becomes absurd.”
“You are echoing me,” she said, in gentle reproach.