He quizzed her. “You look for my conservatory? My herbaceous border? I defy you. You’ll never find them. If you could the game would be up. All the same, all my superfluous pence find their way to the nurserymen—nurserymen of sorts. . . .”
As she did not press him he resumed his monologue. “Mind you, I say that I have the best time of any man on this earth. But you’re judging me, I know. The women are always the worst. They think it such shameful waste of time, when one might be dressing one’s person, or looking at theirs.”
She wasn’t judging him at all; she was drinking him up—him and his wisdom. For the first time in her life she was really interested in something in a man which did not reside in his sex, or which, it is perhaps kinder to say, had no relation to her own. So absorbed was she that his cut at her kind did not affect her, if she heard it; but she noticed at once that he had stopped.
“Please go on—please tell me more about yourself—about your way of life, I mean. Oh, I think you are extraordinary!”
She had completely forgotten herself. Her eyes had not for a moment left searching his face; her hands cupped her cheeks, her knees supported her elbows; and all about her arms and shoulders her loose hair streamed and rippled. Her face was hot, her eyes like wet stars; she had never looked so pretty, perhaps because she neither knew nor cared anything about it, whether she looked well or whether he thought so. It was plain that he had other things to think of—and one thing is plainer, that if she had not, her hair would have been up long ago.
He laughed at her wonderment. “Oh, I don’t know that I’m extraordinary at all—on the contrary, everybody else seems extraordinary to me. It’s so simple. I don’t doubt but I could make you see what a great life I lead—that’s my business as an artist. But it would do you no sort of good—and I’m not a proselytizer. The thing is to get your fun out of what you’re obliged to do—or, if you prefer it, to make it your business to do what you like. The Socialists say so, and so do I. After that we differ. We differ as to ways and means. They say that people can only be made happy by dynamite. Dynamite first, Act of Parliament afterwards. Mr. Wells tones down the dynamite; talks about a comet. It’s dynamite he means. That’s where he’s wrong. You can shred people’s morals by blowing their neighbours up—but not their characters. Their morals will go to pieces because character remains. You don’t want that at all. Morals will always follow character, and that’s what you must get at, but not by dynamite. Well, how are you going to develop character? I say by Poverty. Pride’s Purge! There’s my nostrum for the world-sickness—Poverty, Poverty, Poverty! In fact, I’m a Franciscan—by temperament and opinion, and not because I’m in love with the Virgin Mary. I have nothing, and possess all things; I’m rich because I’m destitute; I’m always filling myself because I’m always empty. Do you see?”
She looked doubtfully, frowned a little, then took her eyes from him. “No, I don’t see. I don’t understand you. I know that you are not laughing at me; but I think you will now. Never mind; you’ve been very nice to me.”
“My dear young lady,” he said, his glass in mid-career, “I assure you that I’m not laughing at all. I’m telling you what I believe to be literal truth. Perhaps one of these days you will be really poor, and then you’ll agree with me. How can you fill yourself if you’re full already? and where do you find any pleasure in life except in wanting a thing, and getting it? Can’t you distinguish between having and using? Can’t you see that to possess this Common, fenced and guarded by keepers and varlets of sorts, would be exactly the same as to use it as I do now, with all the hamper of the stake in the county added on to it?”
She looked at her toes, frowned, tried to think—then raised her eyes. “Yes, yes, perhaps I see that. But you must know that I am quite poor. And yet——”
“Ah,” he said, “you’re not poor enough. You can’t allow yourself to be. It isn’t pence that you must hoard, but opinion, my friend, the sound opinion of your neighbours—and of yourself, too. Look here: apply what I’ve been saying about this Common to every blessed thing—from God to groundsel, from the Kingdom of Heaven to your villa at Putney—apply it to religion, to rank, to marriage, to murder, and blazes—and you’ll see. But you shall work it out at home, for I’m going to take you to bed.” He rose here and stretched himself, his hands deep in his pockets. Her eyes pleaded.