"Quentin, I wish you wouldn't feel that way towards the boys. I can't help loving them."
"But you love them more than me."
"I don't, indeed I don't. And you mustn't think they hate you. They've got their hand against every one, you know, and of course they feel sick about the Kent lands, there's no denying it. If they knew you loved me, they might hate you then—they'd be jealous; and if I told them now—oh, it would be all misery at home!—for them as well as for me. I'd far rather have my secret—that hurts only me. When we've settled anything definitely, of course I shall tell them. But we may have to go on like this for years."
Quentin groaned.
"Yes, Janey, that's true—that's the damned truth. You should never have loved a helpless fool like me, all tied up in paper and strings. Good Lord! my father will have something to answer for—if there's any one to answer to for our muddlings in this muddled hell."
"But you'll win your independence."
"Yes; if two things happen: if my father dies, which he isn't likely to, and which, hang it all, I don't want him to—or if I can make enough by my writing to support two people, which is never done by pessimistic poets in this world of optimistic prose. I ought to hear from Baker soon—he's had that manuscript over a month—he's the twenty-eighth man that's had it. Oh, damn it all, Janey!"
They were sitting together on a tree-trunk under the hedge, the darkness creeping up round them. Quentin drew very close to Janey, and clutched her hand.
"I'm a beast to go whining to you like this—but it helps me. It's such a relief to get all my furies off my chest and feel your sympathy—feel it, Janey, you needn't speak, words seem to nail things down. Oh, why were you and I born into this muddle and never given a chance? I've never had a chance—not the shadow of one. All my life I've suffered that vile plague, dependence, and it's poisoned my blood and sapped my strength and perverted my reason. My father's to blame for it. The whole object of his life has been to keep me dependent on him. He's stinted me of everything—friends, money, education—just to keep me dependent. He's well off, as you know, but he allows me a miserable screw many tradesmen would be ashamed to offer their sons. He's made my bad health an excuse for cutting short my time at college, and for not bringing me up to any profession. He's in terror lest I should strike out a line for myself. He wants me to live my whole life on a negation—'thou shalt not,' he says. He doesn't say it because he's my father, but because he's a clergyman. It's that which has spoiled him, because it hasn't let him go to life for his principles. Christianity never does. I hate Christianity, Janey—Christianity's a piece of Semitic bargaining—all Semitic religions are commercial, but Christianity has been so far Europeanised that it offers its rewards not for what you do but for what you don't do. I once wrote a poem on the Christian heaven—God and all the angels and curly-locked saints yawning their heads off because they're all so tired of doing nothing, and at last all falling asleep together. Ugh! One reason I love you, Janey, is that you're so beautifully pagan—just like the country here. The country's all pagan at bottom, and that's why every one loves the country, even the Christians."
Janey smiled, and pressed his hand. She knew Quentin liked "talking," so she let him "talk," though she troubled very little about the questions that were so vital to him. She knew it relieved him to pour into her ears the torrent of abuse which was always roaring against its sluices, and had no other outlet—unless it found its way into publishers' offices and damaged his poor chances there.