“Just at present I am engaged in a gala of the heart. You may have noticed that.—I am not a strict landlord with the various personalities gathered beneath my roof.—In the present case I am really blessed. But you should see the sluts that get in sometimes! They all become steadily my fiancée too.—Fiancée! Observe how one apes the forms of conventional life. It does not mean anything, so one lets it stop. Its the same with the café fools I have for friends—there’s a Greek fool, a German fool, a Russian fool,—an English fool!—There are no ‘friends’ in this life any more than there are ‘fiancées.’ So it doesn’t matter. You drift on side by side with this live stock—friends, fiancées, ‘colleagues,’ and what not.”
Hobson sat staring with a bemused seriousness at the ground.
“Why should I not speak plainly and cruelly of my poor, ridiculous fiancée to you or any one?—After all, it is chiefly myself I am castigating.—But you, too, must be of the party! The right to see implies the right to be seen. As an offset for your prying, scurvy way of peeping into my affairs you must offer your own guts, such as they are⸺!”
“How have I pried into your affairs?” Hobson asked with a circumspect surprise.
“Any one who stands outside, who hides himself in a deliquescent aloofness, is a sneak and a spy⸺”
“That seems to me to be a case of smut calling the kettle black. I should not have said that you were conspicuous⸺”
“No.—You know you have joined yourself to those who hush their voices to hear what other people are saying!—Every one who does not fight openly and bear his share of the common burden of ignominy in life, is a sneak, unless it is for a solid motive.—The quiet you claim is not to work in.—What have you exchanged your temper, your freedom, and your fine voice against? You have exchanged them for an old hat that does not belong to you, and a shabbiness you have not merited by suffering neediness.—Your pseudo-neediness is a sentimental indulgence.—Every man should be forced to dress up to his income, and make a smart, fresh appearance.—Patching the seat of your trousers, instead⸺!”
“Wait a minute,” Hobson said, with a laugh. “You accuse me of sentimentality in my choice of costume. I wonder if you are as free from sentimentality.”
“I don’t care a tinker’s blue curse about that.—I am talking about you.—Let me proceed.—With your training, you are decked in the plumes of very fine birds indeed. But your plumes are not meant to fly with, but merely to slouch and skip along the surface of the earth.—You wear the livery of a ridiculous set, you are a cunning and sleek domestic. No thought can come out of your head before it has slipped on its uniform. All your instincts are drugged with a malicious languor, an arm, a respectability, invented by a set of old women and mean, cadaverous little boys.”
Hobson opened his mouth, had a movement of the body to speak. But he relapsed.